We are thanking God for the gift of time with family, for a wonderful holiday season to recharge, and for the opportunity to help out friends in the process.
It has been 5 weeks (how!?) since I posted pictures. Crazy. Time is really starting to fly by as we get closer to 100% funded. (For those of you who missed it we are currently sitting at 80%!!!!! Woo Hoo!)
Josh turned 39 on December 18th. Well, at least that’s what I told him. It worked, for a minute or two! hehe. We had fun making him cheeseburgers and baked potatoes for dinner and had a yummy cake.
We traveled to Fruitport, MI to help out some friends by house, dog, and hamster sitting for a few weeks, while they were on vacation. It was a lot of fun. We had Christmas down there in their beautiful home. My mom and sister (and her family) came for a few days around Christmas, and we all had a really good time relaxing and spending time together playing games and watching movies and eating food. After my extended family left I spent as much time as I could catching up on the kids’ scrapbooks. I made some significant progress. I also downsized a lot of things and feel good about pausing with my current progress to pick back up when we come back for our first home assignment.
We’ve been home for a week now, getting back into the normal routine for school. We switched from geography to literature and language arts. It’s been a nice change; the kids are enjoying reading so many books while we are in one place and near a good library! We also got a month membership to the local community college where the kids have been practicing their swimming. My mom has been taking the girls on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then the boys on Tuesdays and Thursdays for lap swim. Then we all go as a family for open swim. They are getting better and better. Which makes me so glad because in a few months we’ll be surrounded by a lot of water!