Mitchell's Spring Formal

Every Tuesday after school for most of this year Mitchell has been attending "Perfectly Polished", which is a class that teaches good etiquette and social skills (including several different dances). Tonight was the big Spring Formal that ends the class year. It was held at Stegeman Coliseum on UGA's campus, and the floor was filled with students from all over Athens with ages ranging from 5th grade to 12th grade. The dances were interesting to watch and we loved looking at all of the beautiful dresses that the girls wore! Mitchell had to escort one girl in to the dance, then he danced each dance with a different girl (with the exception of the line dances where everyone danced in lines). He did a Waltz, Fox Trot and Shag and three different line dances... he did really well!! The highlight of my evening was getting to dance with Mitchell during the Mother/Son dance at the end... what fun! The highlight of Mitchell's evening was going to get ice cream with everyone after the dance was over... he is a boy after all!

Easter Day... Christ Has Risen!!

We woke up to another beautiful day on Easter! Mitchell and Amelia couldn't wait to see what the Easter bunny had brought them so they checked out their baskets first thing! Then we treated them to cinnamon rolls shaped like bunnies and crosses for breakfast... they loved that! Then we all got our Easter clothes on and went to church. The service was beautiful, and afterwards we got to place flowers on the cross outside in front of our church... it looked really pretty! We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and working on Mitchell's school project (yea!... he finished it!). Then we had a wonderful dinner at Mama and Daddy's house to end the great day. Only 4 more days of school before spring break!!

Spring is here!

Everything is starting to bloom!
Amelia and her wonderful appetizers
Jake wants some!
Dave... master of the grill

With the fun Easter weekend keeping us busy (and relaxing a lot) I am now catching up on our blog again. The weekend was so beautiful!! We had a nice relaxing Saturday going to Amelia's softball game, working in the yard, and having our first grill-out of the Spring season. We pretty much spent the whole day outside! Dave was the grill master and Amelia made the family some wonderful appetizers to go with the meal. We were all excited to be able to have dinner outside on the deck for the first time this season... and are looking forward to many more!

Amelia's solo!

I was able to catch a little of Amelia's solo with my camera in between taking pictures... I thought that you would like to hear her beautiful voice, too!

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is always a great day at our church! The children sing at the service... it is always such a treat to hear their sweet voices singing together! And Amelia sang her first solo! It was so great... she has a beautiful voice! Another wonderful sight is to see all of the children entering the church waving their palm branches... it really reminds me of my own childhood at church on Palm Sunday. And after the service all of the children and their families gather together to go on a Easter Egg hunt... the kids really look forward to this! It's kind of like Halloween again with the amount of candy that they bring home! The hunt is followed by a delicious covered dish lunch (you know that you are guaranteed a great meal at any church covered dish lunch!!). All in all it was a beautiful day that we all enjoyed very much... and the start to a very beautiful and meaningful week for all!!

A Tiger Reunion!

As you can see we are playing catch-up with our posts... we had a wonderful stomach bug hit Mitchell and Amelia on Monday and are finally fully recovered!

This past weekend our good friend Martha, from the good old college days, organized a reunion of several of our friends and their families. With all of our busy schedules, we were pretty amazed to have gotten 9 friends together to share some time! We started out the weekend on Friday night at Neil's house (thanks, Burtons, for hosting all of us for the evening... especially you Denise!) with a sort of appetizer/pizza party. We had such a great time catching up with each other after all of these years... and our kids had a blast playing together! The kids entertained themselves outside for most of the night, so the adults really got a chance to visit. We ended up staying there until about 11pm! Then on Saturday we went to the Clemson baseball game... how fun! We were lucky and it didn't start to rain until near the end of the game. From there we headed to Neil's church gym to play and eat (sort of an indoor tailgate party!). It was neat hearing about what was going on in each of our lives, and to see our children play together. We had so much fun that we are already planning our next reunion for football season!

Go Tigers!!!

Greenville, SC trip!

And our busy Saturday continued... after we were done with our mission projects our family loaded a charter bus along with several other children and chaperones and headed to Greenville, SC for the night. About three years ago our children's choir director started a sort of exchange program with First Baptist Greenville's childrens' choir where we take turns visiting each other's church and sing together in the worship service. This year it was our turn to visit them! This program is only for the kids in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades, so this was Mitchell's second trip to Greenville to sing. It is an exciting time for the kids... they get to make new friends, remember old friends from the year before, and stay in a hotel (which for some reason is extremely exciting for all children)! After rehearsing together, we all had a pizza dinner together and played some games. Then after a final rehearsal of the night we got to go ice skating! Since there is not an ice skating rink in Athens, our kids especially enjoyed this wonderful treat! After cold hands and many falls and bruises later, we headed back to the hotel for the night... I think that we finally got all of the kids in bed at around 11:30pm! The next morning the kids sang at both of the church services, with a delicious doughnut breakfast in between! After saying a lot of goodbyes, exchanging email addresses and webkinz names, we loaded the bus once again and headed back to Athens. What a great weekend!

Just a little update on the current weekend (since I am only a week late posting all of this)... this weekend was a LOT more relaxing! With all of the cold temperatures, snow flurries, and lots of wind, all baseball and softball practices were cancelled, so we truly got to just RELAX!!

Operation INASMUCH

Well, as you can see we have been a pretty busy family lately! I will try to catch you up a little at a time with what has been going on with us... starting with this past weekend. Saturday morning our whole family was involved in a project called "Operation INASMUCH" at our church. Basically it is several different mission projects going on locally at the same time. Although I don't have pictures of the project that Amelia and I did, we had a very fun and rewarding morning! We and the rest of our group went around to several different laundromats in Athens and passed out quarters and food (biscuits and doughnuts) to the people doing their laundry there. Boy were they surprised... and VERY appreciative!! Hopefully we brightened their day a little. My Daddy, Dave and Mitchell did a Habitat for Humanity project in Athens. Mitchell was thrilled to get to help with this project (even thought officially he is too young). They worked very hard on the house and got a lot done! Some family will be very blessed to receive that home... it was built with a lot of love! This was the second year of this church- wide project, and we hope that we can continue it for a long time!