Fall Fun

Some of the fun we've had since school started back.

Lily's friends painted tote bags at Selah's birthday party. I loved the one Lily made!

Mia got creative too, and made these embroidery pieces for her small group leaders at church. Katie's had beautiful mountains and flowers on it, Anna Michelle is filled with Harry Potter items, and Amanda's is all about Disney. Love to see her express her appreciation for them like this!

The Upper School took a few days to go to Camp Highland for some fun and bonding. 9th-11th goes Wednesday through Friday while 7th-8th comes up Thursday and Friday. Since Ryan is a teacher at the school now, he came up with 7th and 8th graders.

Some of the Upper School teachers all sorted into their house colors. Ryan is repping black for Cambridge's black and gold house!

Mia and a few of her 8th grader friends having fun together!

We are thankful for these kids!

Decker and I had some good quality cuddle time together while Ryan and the girls were at Camp Highland.

The monthly ladies Bible study at school, Abide, has started back. I enjoy studying the Word with these ladies, and I'm thankful for how much this has grown over the last few years!

The school hosted it's first Cultivate event of the year, and it was about the purpose behind reading good books that seek to show truth, goodness, and beauty. It was great to hear several of our teachers talk about they are doing this in their classrooms and encourage the parents to join in. I was excited to win one of the door prizes which was this book called Breaking Bread with the Dead!

Lily and I had a fun time shopping and snacking at Town Center Mall while Mia was having fun at Aubrey's escape room birthday party nearby. I always enjoy one on one time with my girls!

I love that Ryan and I pass this little heart back and forth to one another. We surprise the other with it every so often, and it will show up unexpectedly. I sure do love that guy!

The Upper School has partnered with new teacher, Jordan Lyrerly, and his lovely wife, Eliana, in an outreach ministry to the kids in their apartment complex. Each week the kids come to the Upper School to hang out, read with Stonehaven kids, or receive tutoring. This has only been going for a couple weeks at this point, but Lily is really enjoying it.

Lily and I went to Taste of Smyrna for lunch recently. We enjoyed tacos from Zama and a funnel cake for dessert. So yummy!

Ryan and Mia didn't join us, so we picked up these cute and tasty cookies for them.

Lily's Spanish class has been working on cooking instructions recently, so they took one class to make guacamole and another class to make corn tortillas. What a fun class!

The girls had a ton of fun at the church's back to school event at Round 1. Mia loved taking on Charles in Guitar Hero! They enjoyed being with friends, playing laser tag, and just having fun.

The Braves recently had Spanish night at the ball park to celebrate its players and fans from Latin and Central America. Hannah Hanbury, the school's Spanish teacher, had a great idea of inviting all the Spanish students to go to the game together. Unfortunately, we couldn't get enough tickets, so we decided instead to watch the game together on the big screen tv on the green outside the stadium. It was a lot of fun to hang out at the game with friends and celebrate the Spanish culture with Los Bravos.

Even better, the Braves got the win! The Friday Night Fireworks show started as we were leaving, so we watched from our car as we drove away. This was a great evening!

Mom and Dad went down to Gulf Shores for a few days, and Dad sent this picture of Mom while they were dining at Tacky Jack's. I thought it was a great picture of my beautiful Mom so I wanted to include it here.

Lily made the Varsity volleyball team this year, and she's having a lot of fun (and working really hard!) with them. We're thankful for Coach Anne and this team. Here's to a great season!

We're loving this fabulous fall!

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

Ryan's birthday fell on Labor Day this year which is always nice. We had a lot of fun football watching that weekend, and it was just a restful calm time. On Sunday night, Lily had three of her best friends spend the night: MP, Lauren, and Kate. We adore these girls and often joke about adopting them into our family. When they found out it was Ryan's birthday on Monday, they asked if they could throw him a little surprise party. Of course I said yes!

We all ate a yummy tostada dinner together and then had a delicious Publix cake together.

The girls had gone to Dollar Tree earlier in the day together to buy a bunch of supplies. They were pretty excited about their dinosaur themed party! I let them know when Ryan went to bed, and they came upstairs to quietly decorate. It looked so cute!

Ryan was quite surprised when he came out the next morning and saw his party!

These girls are the sweetest! We are so thankful Lily has such awesome friends!

First Day of School, 2022 - 10th and 8th

 A new school year is upon us!

This year will be an extra special year because Ryan will now be teaching part-time at Stonehaven. I'm so excited for him! He is now the logic school's (7th, 8th, 9th grade) boys bible teacher and the 7th grade history teacher. He has been working so hard this summer to prepare for this. He's even written a new curriculum for the bible classes. 7th and 8th grade is a survey of the Old Testament while 9th grade is a survey of the New Testament. He is going to be an amazing blessing to these boys as he teaches them the overarching story of the bible over these three years. His history class covers the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. He's not as familiar with this timeframe, but he's learning it and will do a great job with it. I can't wait to see all the fun and blessings that come from this school year for him!  

Lily is starting 10th grade and Mia is starting 8th grade. They are growing up quickly!

We love these girls so much!

We are so thankful for Stonehaven. I pray this is a great year for all three of my favorite people as well as for all the other kids and teachers here.

Meet Millie

We can hardly believe that Lily will be 16 in a few short months! She's been learning to drive since turning 15 last October, and she's become a good driver. We decided back in the spring that we wanted to go ahead and get her a car. One, she would actually practice driving in it with us instead of learning on our cars and suddenly start driving this on her own. Two, the car market is somewhat crazy right now, and it's next to impossible to drive a car off the lot. We were incredibly grateful when Grandpops and Grandma Jan also offered to buy her first car for her. We are very appreciative of their generosity. Ryan, Lily, and I started investigating and test driving, and we all landed on a Honda CR-V as being a great first car for her. It has a ton of wonderful safety features, and it comes in a beautiful "sonic gray pearl" which is something of a silver/gray/blue combination. It's a great car.

The car actually came off the factory line and arrived in Smyrna with 3 miles on it while the girls were at camp. Ryan and I picked it up one evening, and then surprised Lily with it when arrived home from Asheville. She was quick to name it Millie.

We pray she will stay safe and be cautious as she drives Millie in the coming months and years!

Fun Times in the July Heat

 While we were in Asheville for camp, we hit up a couple of our other favorite spots. One of those is Malaprop's Bookstore so I could get a couple of their blind date with books. I always love the surprise that comes from these, and I landed two winners this year!

Of course we also stopped at The Chocolate Fetish where we bought a dozen of the most fabulous caramel in milk chocolate with sea salt (plus a few other items to sample).  This is so good!

Ryan and I enjoyed a couple of pretty low-key weeks while the girls were gone. We had just gotten back from Atlantis, and we knew we were heading to New Smyrna the week after their return, so we simply worked and enjoyed some downtime. July 4th was the day after drop-off, so we enjoyed watching all the different fireworks from around the country on tv. We did go to a Braves' game one evening thanks to our dentist giving us his tickets (thanks Dr. Berger!). It's always fun to see a win from them. I surprised Ryan with a dinner date to Mezza Luna. This Italian spot has been in Smyrna for awhile now, and we've heard several people talk about how delicious it is, but we had never tried it. It was a wonderful dinner and fun to try something new. We also took my parents to go see the movie, Elvis, on Sunday afternoon. That was a lot of fun. Not only was the movie really good, but it was cool to hear Mom and Dad talk about going to see Elvis in concert in Vegas in the mid-70's. When we returned to Asheville to pick them up, we went to see the Where the Crawdads Sing. I absolutely loved the book and couldn't wait to see the movie; it was excellent! We always miss our girls when they're away, but we do enjoy our time together too.

This made me laugh one evening. We watched a fun little dog show that was for "regular" dogs (not like the big Westminster dog show each Thanksgiving). These dogs were judged on their ears, cuddly factor, fetch abilities and such. They were adorable! It made me laugh though how much Decker enjoyed watching with us.

What did not make me laugh though was Decker getting under the deck and trying to track down a chipmunk that apparently ran up into a drain pipe. It had been raining a ton, so it was incredibly muddy underneath. He also started to chew up the pipe! We had to wash him off before he could come back into the house. We were quite frustrated with him!

I ordered strawberry and blueberry lemonade truffles from a chocolatier in CT to celebrate the nation's holiday. Not my favorite that I've ordered via Goldbelly but, just like with Mezza Luna, fun to try something new.

We picked the girls up from camp on Friday night. Saturday was spent doing laundry, resting, and repacking to head to the beach. Lily met some friends at The Battery that evening for dinner and another round of escape room. They made it out! She had a great time with MP, Lauren, Liam, Timmy, and Daniel. They made it out!

We headed down to New Smyrna on Sunday morning; everyone had arrived the day before. Some people had to leave early too, but at our max, we had 72 people this year. It rained most afternoons, but the last two days were absolutely gorgeous. Lily and I especially enjoyed sitting under the tents on the beach reading. We all four played in the pool some too which was fun. It was a laid back week which was nice.

We enjoy the delicious breakfast the "three boys" make each year.

That's a lot of biscuits! I'm pretty sure there's a matching set sitting on the counter below. Jodi usually makes all of them each year just like Meme did, but since she's going through chemo treatments this year, Robin and Tiffany stepped in to make them instead; they turned out great!

The girls appreciate that Randy and Georgia play a "birthday money" came each year after breakfast; they are so generous!

Lily and I hung out several evenings on her bed to watch Food Network's "Tournament of Champions" which was a lot of fun. I loved when Mia watched with us too.

It was a lovely week indeed.

A few other fun July items:

I was excited to go out with some friends to celebrate Julie Elrod's birthday! A fun dinner at Superica then over to Silverspot Theater to watch Where the Crawdads Sing. I am so thankful for good friends!

The Evans gave us four tickets to a Braves' game where there were two sets of two seats together about a section apart. Ryan and Mia sat together while Lily and MP sat together. It was a hot, humid evening but the Braves pulled out a win!

I had purchased chocolate pasta at Chocolate Fetish. The sales lady suggested putting it with chicken mole since the main ingredient is chocolate. I decided to try it one evening. The chicken was spicy but tasty, but the chocolate pasta...didn't hit the mark. Don't think we'll have that one again!

Lily and I had a great time going to see Mean Girls down at the Fox. They had to change out one of the main actresses during the show which we'd never seen before; we assume she either got sick or hurt during a costume change backstage. Just like the movie, there's some parts of this I wish were toned back a little but overall, it was a lot of fun. I'll always enjoy a good show with Lily!

I'll end this month's post with a picture of Decker while he's being the good boy he usually is; what a cutie!

It's hard to believe summer time is winding down. A new school year is almost upon us!