Back to School!

It's hard to believe back to school time is really here!  We are so incredibly grateful for Stonehaven.  They have come up with a really well thought out and prayed over plan to return kids to a face to face school setting.  A few families have chosen to continue using the blended learning method that we used last Spring, and I'm glad that option is available.  Our family is ready to go back though, so we are very thankful this has been planned out.

The process started a few days early as Mia got to go inside and decorate her new locker.  This is such an exciting time for the new 6th graders!  She has several pictures hung up, a little whiteboard that friends can write on, and a cute little disco ball that lights up.  Love it!

 Masks on since they are in a big group; lots of great friends all excited to decorate!

 The big day arrived!  I love seeing these signs each year.

 These two are ready for a great year.  We are praying this will be a healthy and wonderful year for them.

 Lily is excited to be a part of the new Upper School.  Their new building is still under construction (the pandemic shut down a lot of window production so we're stalled out right now).  We are temporarily renting space from Roswell Street Baptist Church to house our 7th-9th graders.  After taking a picture and dropping Mia off at the Lower School location, we drove over to drop Lily off.  We had a little help from Mrs. Hobson to get a picture of her, Avery, and Nate that day; hard to believe these three met each other 10 years ago!

 Mrs Hobson also sent this picture later on in the day.  I love seeing these happy girls together.

 Socially distanced chapel services too.  I appreciate all the steps the school is taking to keep our kids safe and healthy.

Earlier this summer, the foundation of the new school was laid and beams were put up for the new building.  The school reached out to Upper School families to ask what Bible verses they wanted to pray over the school.  They took those and wrote them on the beams that are now inside the walls of the school.  God's Word is the at the heart of our school, and this is no different.  Man, I love this!

Our family couldn't pick just one verse, so we submitted several.  Mrs. Jackson took pictures of each one, so we could see how they were written out.  Our family chose
1 Cor 13:11, Prov 9:9-11, Prov 3:5-6, and Col 3:16-17.

We are so thankful for this school and can't wait to see how it continues to impact God's Kingdom.  To God be the glory!

July and The Beach!

We were finally able to get a change to our scenery this July with our annual family beach trip to New Smyrna Beach.  This was one of our best trips there in several years.  I'm not sure if was being around people again, the beautiful weather we enjoyed, or simply getting to travel, but it was great.  I'm so thankful we have this tradition.

Mia and Papa enjoyed lots of time together, whether hanging out in the condo or boogey-boarding in the ocean.

I sure do love my people.

One of the coolest parts of the week was seeing a Space-X launch from the beach.  It was so bright!  It was a gorgeous day, so we were able to follow the rocket quite high into the sky.

Nice form for cornhole Papa!

We took a break from the sun one day to drive to Orlando and enjoy a delicious Giordanos' pizza.  It was almost like being in Chicago!

Look at that cheese pull!

Much love for these people.

We are so thankful for Granna and Papa.  They're always great, but we such do appreciate that they share their condo with us each year.  I love this time with them.

Dad with his brothers; these three are something else!

Sid, Elaine, Papa, Granna, Judy, Joe, Robin, Randy, and Georgia.  All these cousins love this time with their families.

A somewhat socially responsible picture gathering this year.

It was a wonderful week that we needed!

A few other things going on this month:

Lily has been loving the paint by number kits that we purchased.  Here are three recent ones that she completed.

Decker was not super excited to have the tortilla blanket put on him, but he may the biggest fan of the Dad's beef jerky.

 I love when Lily gets creative.  She made this box for Avery to celebrate her birthday.  She painted the balloons on the cover and then made it a blue theme since that's Avery's favorite color.  She filled it with all sorts of goodies...candies, gum, nail polish, candle, card, etc.  It was so cool!

 More examples of Lily's creativity.  Love it!

 We went up to The Battery for dinner one evening, not connecting that it was finally opening day at home for the Braves.  No one is allowed inside the stadium, but many gathered just outside to watch the game on the big screen.  This is baseball in quarantine times.

It's been a hot month, but we're grateful that we are all healthy and doing well.

A Quiet June

We have all enjoyed a nice, fairly quiet June.  Not a whole lot to report, but here's some pictures.

These girls sure do love Decker.  He's a pretty good little snuggler sometimes.  They took to him with him to Goldberg's for breakfast at the Battery one morning which I think they all enjoyed.

Before and after his quarantine haircut; he needed this so badly!

We were excited to head to Birmingham to finally visit family.  It had been too long!  We simply enjoyed hanging out and catching up with one another.  Merritt absolutely adores Mia and loves being around her.

The girls have been doing some extra chores this summer to earn some spending money.  Mia has been tasked with pressure washing the back porch and sweeping out the garage while Lily has needed to clean out and organize our pantry, downstairs closet, and refrigerator.

We bought a few different spray in hair dyes and had a little fun with it.  We used this purple and green combo to give Mia a Mal from Descendants look.  It was pretty awesome, but she didn't like how it made her hair feel, and the color never seemed to fully dry, so it was coming out on her brush.  Oh well, it looked super cool while in, and it was something fun to try out this summer.

Lily and I had a lot of fun one evening playing Gravity Maze.  We both enjoyed the challenge and completion of this.  I always love getting one on one time with my girls; they are such amazing people.

Mia has been saving up her money since her last birthday, and she used part of it recently to buy an Oculus Quest virtual reality system.  It's so cool!  She is having so much fun with the games, and it's really neat when it's cast up to the tv, so we can all see what she's seeing.  Lily has tried it out too, and enjoys a lot of it.  Really, it's just funny to watch someone move around with this!

Lily and I have both finished our paint by numbers paintings that we started a couple of months ago; this has been a fun new quarantine hobby to pick up!  I painted van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, and Lily painted this beautiful underwater scene.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this!

Neither Ryan nor Mia have enjoyed the painting as much as Lily or I, so they are letting Lily paint theirs.  She's been working hard on Ryan's Venetian scene, and then she'll move on to Mia's tiger.

Just a little staring contest between Lily and Decker.

We had a little redecorating this past week.  Since we remodeled back in 2015, we've had "the girls' office."  It had this beautiful wall size map on it, and it was painted a beautiful shade of blue.  We had sticky notes all over it to remind us of friends serving on the mission field around the world.  The girls' desks were in front of the map, and it was a great homework area.  Lily's keyboard was also in here.

However, we recently received a 1908 Steinway piano that belonged to Ryan's grandmother, the wonderful lady we named Mia after.  We decided to give the room a little bit more formal look to it for this beautiful piece.

Lily is already playing the most beautiful music on this!  We are very thankful to now have this piano, both for the special history it holds for our family and for the lovely music that Lily will make on it in the future.

We celebrated Ryan for Father's Day with a Giordano's pizza!  This is his favorite deep dish Chicago pizza.  When we found out they delivered frozen pies, we knew we had to try it.  We ordered one sausage and one pepperoni.  They ship in dry ice to stay frozen.  We made the pepperoni for him, and it was delicious; it tasted just like being in one of their Chicago restaurants!

Mia went over to Danielle's house for an afternoon/evening of swimming and fun which she greatly enjoyed.  It's so nice to start seeing friends again!

While she was gone, Lily and I watched the last movie in The Hunger Games series.  She's quickly read through those books, and we've watched the movie after she's completed each one.  After dinner, she, Ryan, and I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off together; what a classic!

Like I said, it's been pretty quiet.  We did go over to the Martin's house for another concert by Mark Miller, like we did last month.  That was a lot of fun; it was a beautiful night with great music and good friends.  We've had a ton of fun continuing our quest to watch all the Marvel movies.  We only have three more to go!  This is a great summer for movie watching.  Liz, Kendall, and her girls came over for a day trip, so it was fun to hang out with them again; we went over to my parents on Father's Day and had dinner with them and Wayne's family.  We are always grateful for time with our family.  It's been a nice month, though quiet.  We are healthy and happy to be together.  For that, I am very thankful.