Catching Up

We have all been so busy having fun times that I am just getting around to catching up on our blog! Two weekends ago Mitchell and Amelia got to participate with their church choirs in hosting the junior choir from First Baptist Greenville, SC. This was the 5th year that they have taken turns hosting each other for a weekend of fun. It's neat because the kids remember each other from previous years and have formed some new friendships. They arrived at our church on Saturday afternoon where the kids played games and rehearsed for the Sunday service. Then they all headed out to Summer Hill Recreation Club for a swim party. They all had a blast swimming in the indoor pool and enjoying a pizza dinner! Sunday morning they rehearsed again before Sunday school and enjoyed a breakfast together. They sang beautifully together during the service! They are already looking forward to next year's reunion in Greenville!





This past Friday Mitchell and Amelia had the day off for a teacher workday, so Dave also took the day off and we headed to Fernbank to see the Dinosaurs Alive! exhibit. We really enjoyed the exhibit and the related IMAX film. We also headed down the road to The Old Spaghetti Factory for a wonderful lunch of pasta, salad, bread, and chocolate milkshakes... Yum!! Mitchell and Amelia really enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant and eating on the trolley!

On Saturday afternoon Mitchell played in his first ping pong (or table tennis) tournament! He had a great time playing people of all ages. Out of the 4 people that Mitchell played he beat 2 of them and was defeated by 2, so overall he did very well! We all had fun watching the expert level people play... their matches are crazy!

Snow Days!

Well, the schools were closed again today and I can say that all of the kids have had the BEST time playing in the snow for the past 3 days!! On Sunday they played for hours outside as the snow came down in the biggest flakes we have ever seen. Monday there was still plenty of snow to play in and the neighborhood kids gathered in our front yard again for another full day of play... and they were all thrilled at the end of the day to find out that they had another day out of school today! Today they are getting their last fill of the snow before it disappears... they have been outside for most of the day and it doesn't look like they will be in anytime soon! The last 3 days have provided happy children, red cheeks, lots of thrown snowballs, one bruise on Mitchell's face (from taking a shovel to the face while building their fort), and MANY, MANY wonderful memories!! What a treat!!

Snow!!

It has been a few years since we have seen this much snow here in Athens, so we were all very excited to see it starting right after we got home from church. The snow has accumulated very quickly and it looks so beautiful outside... the snowflakes are HUGE! After the ground had a good cover we ventured outside to play for a while... even the dogs had fun! Maybe we'll have a snow day tomorrow!

Winter Break

Mitchell and Amelia had this past Friday and today (Monday) out of school for their winter break so we did the responsible parent thing and took them out of school for an extra day (Thursday) and went on a short vacation! We first drove up to West Virginia to the Resort at Glade Springs which is a great resort near Winterplace ski slopes. We checked in and spent the rest of the day just playing at the resort... we went bowling, played basketball, arcade games, went swimming and enjoyed the hot tub, and Amelia and I even enjoyed the steam room! After dinner we got to bed early to prepare for the next day. We spent ALL DAY Friday on the ski slopes at Winterplace. It was sunny and got up to 50 degrees which made it really great skiing weather! All 28 slopes were open and in great condition, so we all had a blast skiing together! Mitchell and Amelia get better every year! After skiing we drove 2 hours to Winston Salem, NC and spent the night there. We spent all day Saturday with Dave's parents celebrating Valentine's Day. We treated Ann to a take out lunch from a deli... she wanted chili dogs for lunch (something she doesn't get that often)! It was a fairly short trip but you can see from the pictures that we all had a blast together! We are already looking forward to future ski vacations!

70's Day at OCES!

Amelia's school had a 70's Day this past Friday. They all dressed up for the day and even had a 70's dance after school. As you can see Amelia looked really cute, and she had a really great time at the dance! She had a couple of pictures made there with some of her friends which I will post when she gets them back this week.

Girl's Night Away

I had the opportunity to go with some friends to a Christian Women's "retreat" this past weekend that featured Priscilla Shirer. We all had so much fun and learned a lot from her! We all spent Friday night at a hotel in Roswell and had a good old fashioned slumber party that night... hanging out in our PJ's, eating way too much junk food, and we even made a craft! You can see us making, then holding our new cross necklaces in the pictures.

Priscilla Shirer was an amazing speaker... we all felt like we could relate to much of what she said because we are in or near the same stage of life (mothers of young children, and a really busy life). She mostly focused on a wonderful topic for all of us: The Interrupted Life. The four points that she made on this subject are worth sharing!

1) The interrupted life is the privileged life

--when God asks us to do something, we often back off even though we appear ready to

receive

--God gives us the opportunity to participate in our lives

2) The interrupted life is the significant life

--our search for significance ends here

--God doesn't cal you because you are equipped... he equips you because you have

been called

3) The interrupted life is the challenging life

--just when you are settled God calls you to go

--the challenging life will most often be more difficult than the one that you have

planned for yourself

--the grass that is tended to is always greener

4) The interrupted life is an accountable life

--God knows our heart and knows if we are being completely obedient

--disobedience will always cost you more than obedience

We can all relate to these things and many other things that Priscilla had to say because we have all been there! Usually these interruptions (no matter how large or small) will end up being a blessing!

I hope that every day is a blessing for you!

Basketball!

Amelia's basketball season with the Upward Basketball program has gotten off to a great start! We were so proud of Amelia scoring the first 2 baskets in the season opener! She ended up scoring 10 points for her team in that first game! This past Saturday was her 2nd game and she scored 4 points... I guess all of that practice in the driveway has paid off!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Last week we celebrated my Mama's birthday with a shrimp and grits dinner at our house followed by presents and cupcakes. She had a lot of help blowing out the candles on her cupcake tower! We all enjoyed the small celebration and are happy that we can share these important events together!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to everyone! We had a really nice low key Eve and Day with our good friends Dave, Angie and Reese (some of our best Clemson friends) in Greenville, SC. We just hung out, caught up with each other, ate great food, made 2 runs to Starbucks, and of course watched lots of football! All of the games did not go as we wanted them to... thanks to UGA for not making it a total loss for us! We cheered hard for the Tigers, though! Overall a great way to ring in our new year!

A Great Family Trip!

This past Monday our family took a really neat overnight trip together to the Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls State Park in GA. What an experience! We had to hike a 5 mile trail to get to the inn... we were so proud of ourselves for making that trip with ease! The Hike Inn itself is quite an experience... you sleep in bunkbeds in tiny rooms (where you have to make your own bed), eat family style with about 40 other people, and use a compost toilet (probably the most weird for us!). The staff was very nice and it was fun getting to know other people staying there... Mitchell and Amelia had fun playing games in the sunroom with other kids there. The views that we took in were amazing, and we got up early the next morning to experience a very beautiful sunrise over the mountains. The hike back to the state park was a little longer, but we made it! We were all very tired after the trip but we got to experience real quality family time together... and that made every tired step that we took worth it!

Fun Day in Atlanta

Yesterday we decided to head to Atlanta to go to Fernbank Museum with the kids and my parents. The special exhibit was all about Antarctica and the IMAX film was excellent! We really had a fun day exploring there. Of course, the great ending to the day was stopping at Starbucks for their great hot chocolate... YUM!

What did Santa bring?

This is the video we took of Mitchell and Amelia discovering what Santa had brought them. Amelia is pretty excited about her Northface coat, and Mitchell is slightly confused about the ping pong table that Santa left for him... I wonder why? We thought that you would enjoy seeing their reactions!

Merry Christmas!!

What a wonderful Christmas day!! Mitchell and Amelia woke up at about 7:30 and were ready to see what Santa brought them! I think that they were happy with everything! Following our family tradition, after seeing what Santa brought all of us we ate a yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon and monkey bread. Then we all get dressed and gather around the Christmas tree with some Christmas music playing and open all of the presents. We all got a lot of really nice gifts from family and from each other... we can't wait to use/wear/spend all of them! The rest of the day was spent relaxing, playing ping pong, and cooking dinner. My parents came over later in the afternoon for dinner. We just finally got our dining room put together, so we got to use it for the first time... I was so excited! Amelia had even made place cards for everyone with a different picture on each one. The day was special because we had great quality time together. As Amelia said today "we didn't even leave the house yesterday!". In my opinion, that is a wonderful day!

We hope that you also had a wonderful Christmas Day filled with special memories!!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a pretty relaxing day for most of us... Dave had to work until about 3pm. Mitchell and Amelia are enjoying their time out of school and our house usually has some extra children running around! One of my favorite things about Christmas Eve is going to the special church service. After all of the crazy days and preparation for the big day, that is one hour where you can have complete concentration and reflection of what this holiday really means to all of us. The kids favorite part of the service is the lighting of the candles... it really is a beautiful sight with all of the lights off and only candles in the sanctuary! After church we had a chili supper and then made cookies for Santa! We always leave Santa's cookies on our kitchen table... or they will become cookies for Bailey and Jake! We finally got our very wound up children into bed at about 9:30... Santa was getting closer!

Amelia's Voice Recital

This past Sunday night Amelia had her recital for the voice lessons that she has been taking since September. It was a small recital with just six girls singing a song that they had been working on and they had a reception after the show with all of the girl's favorite treats served. All of the girls did a great job singing! Of course we were all very proud of Amelia being able to get up in front of everyone and sing like that! We had a slight problem with video during Amelia's performance so we convinced her to sing again for us at home so we could save the wonderful memory! The only difference here is that she didn't have the music to sing to, but she did a great job even without the music! Enjoy!

A Fun Christmas Season

We have had a really fun Christmas season so far, especially spending time with our families! Two weekends ago we traveled to North Carolina to visit my sister, Debbie, and her family. We had a nice relaxing weekend there with lots of good food and treats, jigsaw puzzle solving, opening presents, and catching a basketball game of Brandon's Saturday morning. I think that their dog Yogi enjoyed all of the attention, especially from Amelia! On Sunday morning we headed over to Dave's parents place for a nice long visit with them. We let Gramps and Gran Ann open their presents from us while we were there and also got to open ours! We ended our NC visit with a great lunch with Dave's brother, Jerry, and his family and Dave's daddy. Then we hit the road to get Mitchell back to Athens for his youth group Christmas party that night. What a fun weekend!

Christmas Musical

Wednesday night was our last church night before the Christmas holidays, and our church traditionally has a banquet to celebrate. The best part of the night is the entertainment before dinner... the children's musical! What a precious sight to see the children dressed as angels and hearing their beautiful voices! Things like this really help you to get in the right frame of mind for the holiday season, doesn't it? Hope you are having a wonderful season so far!

Catching Up!

Wow... so much to catch up on! The holiday has been so filled with fun things that I haven't had much time to sit and blog. First of all, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! We are very thankful that my parents live here in Watkinsville now and were able to spend much of the time with them and my sister Debbie's family. We played games, put together lots of jigsaw puzzles, and of course ate a lot! Since Blake and Lauren are now both in highschool, Dave gave us all a great tour of UGA (our own special private tour with UGA admissions!).

Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend was our special Hanging Of The Greens service at church. All of the children and youth choirs sang at the service, and the sanctuary now looks even more beautiful with all of the greenery! We also hung a little greenery in our own home... the Christmas tree! It was Mitchell's desire to put the tree up over the weekend, and over the next week I was able to decorate the rest of the house, too. Just call us the Griswalds... I love lots of lights! I especially love decorating the tree and going through all of the ornaments... such sweet memories! I get Mitchell and Amelia a new ornament each year and they look forward to seeing what it is when we decorate.

This past Friday night I got to have a night out with Mitchell. For my birthday Dave had given me season tickets to the Broadway series at the Classic Center in Athens. This series included the American Idol's Christmas concert and Mitchell picked that one to go to with me. It was great and we had so much fun! Four of the former American Idol contestants were there and they sang mostly Christmas songs with some of their own mixed in. We had started the night having a wonderful dinner at East West Bistro just a couple of blocks away from the Classic Center... yum! After the concert we finished off the night getting some Starbucks hot chocolate.

Saturday I took Amelia to see another dance studio here in Watkinsville perform "The Grinch" along with some other dances. Amelia's friend Claire from across the street was a mouse in the production and did a great job!

Sunday the kids had dress rehearsal for their Christmas play at church until 2:30 which gave me and Dave time to do a little shopping and lunch together. We are just about all done with shopping... yea!

I hope that your past couple of weeks have been fun and filled with quality time with your families... have a great week!

Weekend in Clemson

We just had a wonderful weekend with my best friends from college and their families! We have been getting together for the Clemson homecoming weekend for many years now, and it gets better and better as the years go by! We all look forward to this weekend all year long and the time spent together at the place where we all met is well worth it. We were all lucky to form a friendship with Meg's husband, Larry, when she met him at Duke after we graduated... he even wore a Clemson shirt for us (although the Duke shirt was right underneath)! We stayed at two cabins at Tugaloo state park right on the lake. We have stayed here for three years now and the kids all enjoy having space to run around outside. There are seven children between the three families and they have the best time playing together! Isn't it neat how children don't really feel that a whole year has gone by and play together as if they see each other every day? They have known each other since they were born, so they have a really special bond!

The game turned out great with a big win for the Tigers! It was a beautiful day, but it got very cold and windy by the end of the game. We went back to the cabin after the game and grilled steaks and roasted marshmellows... yum! What a great weekend!