Start of a New School Year

It's time for school to start!  I think we were all ready.  The girls were excited to get back to seeing their friends each day at Stonehaven while Ryan and I were glad to get back into the school routine.  It's great that both girls are in the Upper School now since Lily is in 9th grade (high school!!!) and Mia is in 7th.  School was actually delayed by a week this year.  Stonehaven purchased a new Lower School property, and they couldn't get the certificate of occupancy in time from the county.  It's all good though now that school is underway and back into the routine.  We're ready for a great year!

Lily, Nate, and Avery are ready for their eleventh year of school together!

Upper School retreat came at the end of the second week of school.  The 9th and 10th graders left on Wednesday morning while 7th and 8th grade went on Thursday.  They all stayed at Camp Highland until Friday afternoon.  They had the house sorting ceremony for the new students on Thursday afternoon and then snapped this picture of all the kids in their house jerseys.  This is always a great getaway for the kids!

Mia and the 7th grade girls were ready to head to Camp!

I love that the staff snaps pictures all during the day so we can see some of the things going on.  Here's Mia doing one of the team exercises with some friends.

Our friend, Hannah Hanbury, just moved back to Atlanta with her family this year, and we are thrilled she is the new Spanish teacher at Stonehaven.  We were super excited when she got sorted to be in Cambridge house with our girls!

Lily and her friends enjoyed hanging out a ton during this trip.

Lily's glad to have "Wilford" (aka Will Scott) join her in the Upper School.  Will's big sister and Lily's dear friend, Emma, may not be as thrilled!

Mary Preston and Lauren are such sweet friends!

Not 100% sure what Addison is doing here, but I'm glad they're having fun!

Addison, Raegan, and Lily goofing around.

A couple of weeks after Camp Highlands, Mia had a great opportunity to celebrate her friend, Yabsera.  Yabsera was born in Ethiopia and adopted into the Wilkinson family six years ago.  We are so very thankful how God orchestrated bringing her into this family which then extends into being in our lives.  Every year, the Wilkinsons celebrate her adoption day by eating together at their favorite Ethiopian restaurant.  This year, Yabsera asked about having a few friends join in the celebration.  She's rightfully proud of her heritage and excited to share it with her friends.  Mia appreciated being invited to join in and help celebrate Yabsera with Faith, Olivia, Kiev, and Danielle.  She loved this whole evening!

She tried lots of new foods, and said it was really good.  What a great evening!

What a great start to the new school year; we expect it to be a great one!

Summer Wrap Up

We had a great last few weeks of summer.  We had a nice time in Florida.  We arrived in Clearwater Beach on Wednesday evening to enjoy several days with David and Jan.  I realized after the fact that we didn't take a single picture!  It's always nice to visit with them though.  On Sunday, we drove across the state to New Smyrna where we stayed with my family through the next Saturday.  There were 71 of us this year!

Of course, hot dog day with a fabulous fruit salad is my favorite event!

We enjoyed some beautiful weather most days.

Lily and I went down each day.  We enjoyed sitting under the umbrella and reading for hours at a time.  What a great way to pass the day.

You knew when most of the group was together! We aren't easy to hide.

Even an upcoming storm couldn't scare some of them off the beach.

We made it to Bubba Gump's in Daytona one evening too.  My favorite fried shrimp anywhere!

I am so thankful for this group.

Bama came over to keep Decker most of the time while we were in Florida.  We really appreciated that.  Plus, it's always fun to see her!

Who doesn't love a nice ride on someone else's shoulders?

Love when Lily's craftiness comes out! She made this fun painted letter one evening and helped Emma and Addison (her weekly babysitting charges) make one for themselves.  So cute!

Thank you Hendersons!  We sure did appreciate some last minute tickets to go to the Braves' game one afternoon.  They gave us their tickets which includes tickets to the Delta Club.  Not only did we enjoy some delicious food there, but it gave some much needed shade for an inning.  Hey, it's hot on a July afternoon game!

Crystal took Lily and Lucy to Superica at The Battery one evening.  These three have lots of fun together!

I always like to post pictures and remember the fun foods we enjoy!

Lily made these absolutely delicious strawberry cupcakes; we couldn't get enough.  We ordered a meat and cheese board from Oakville Grocery in Napa Valley.  We always love to visit that store when we go, so Goldbelly helped connect us in early July.  This order included a McKinley Cheddar and Point Reyes Toma cheese, Proscuitto San Daniele and Oakville Salumi meats, Castelvetrano olives, Turkish apricots, and Marcona almonds.  What a fabulous dinner!

I may have been a little excited on Goldbelly this month, so I also ordered a six pack sampler of gelatos from Nancy's Fancy Gelatos.  The flavors were Italian Custard (with a Marsala and citrus caramel swirl), passion fruit, salted peanut butter, bourbon vanilla bean, butterscotch budino, and coconut stracciatella (cookies and cream made with coconut milk).  Winner winner.  I made a huevos ranchero breakfast for dinner one night thanks to Piquant Post.  It was very tasty and a fun change-up!

Lily learned to make soft pretzel bites.  They were so good!

We had a fun July 4th meal.  I made pigs in a blanket in puff pastry and cut them into stars.  A few other little yummy sides rounded out the meal.  They turned out pretty cute.  I also used Piquant Post's rosewater parfait.  Technically this is a dish from Lebanon, but it was so perfect with its red, white, and blue theme.  We enjoyed these with Crystal and Jamey which was fun, and then we all watched the New York fireworks show and played spikeball on our deck.  It was a great evening.

Ryan took Mia to Chuck E Cheese one day for an end of summer treat.  Turns out they had done the same thing 5 years ago to the day!

End of July means back to school shopping!

After school supply shopping, we stopped to get new school shoes.  Little did the girls know that Aberle and Ms. Brandy were back in town from Missouri.  We surprised them in the middle of the store!  It was a nice little reunion, but too quick.  We hope they come back through soon!

Mia made and hung up an awesome collage of summer camp pictures over her bed.  It's so fun for her to look up each evening and see all these wonderful friends; she can't wait for camp next summer!

It's been a great summer, even though it was a little slower than normal for us.  Sometimes that downtime is exactly what's needed.  The girls are ready to head back to school now and get back in to our Fall routine.

While the Girls Were Away

 Ryan and I had a ton of fun while the girls were at camp.  We decided not to travel this year since we had just spent a week and a half on vacation, so we were just hanging around the house.  I of course worked several of the days, but we had something different each evening.  Most things we didn't take pictures of.  I had dinner with my parents while Ryan had dinner with our friend, Jamey, one evening; another night he had dinner with our friend Brian while I enjoyed a quiet evening at home.  We went to one of Mark Miller's concerts up in Woodstock with Slade and Kim Casey who we haven't seen in too long.  We had a date to Cru one evening which was so delicious.  On Saturday, we stayed in our pajamas all day and binge watched The Chosen which is such a fantastic show.  We had lunch after church with the Pullens and dinner that evening with the Bishops.  We let the church host VBS in our front and back yards for four days; we love that our home can be used for ministry purposes.  These twelve days were so much fun!

Brian and Katherine Fox treated us to dinner at Nan, an amazing Thai restaurant.  We are so thankful for these two and their friendship.  It was a great evening to relive old memories and think about new ones to come.  What a fun night!

On Monday, after VBS left our house, Ryan and I decided to take a day trip up to Helen, GA.  We've always heard about this little Bavarian town up in North GA, but we've never visited.  It's most famous for how it turns into a German wonderland at Christmastime, but we thought it would be fun to go spend a little time there now.  It was a cute little place to visit!  We got up there about 1:00 and immediately went to the Hofbrahaus to enjoy lunch.  We had a pretzel with beer cheese dip, a chicken schnitzel sandwich with potato salad, and an apple strudel.  They say that their pretzels and strudel are flown in from Germany which is pretty cool.  This was a great meal!

After lunch we just meandered around town.  It was pretty warm but it was a lovely day.  We stopped in and purchased from two candy shops which was fun.  We did a lot of window shopping too.  It's a neat little town.

I can't resist cut out pictures like this!

This was such a fun way to spend the afternoon.  A little adventure, a little bit of yummy food, and a lot of quality time together.  It was great!

When Ryan and I drove back up to Asheville to pick the girls up, we made sure to leave enough time to go by The Chocolate Fetish to get our chocolate fix in (it's soooo good!) and by Malaprops bookstore so I get a couple of "blind date with a book" purchases.  It's always a fun surprise.

We also tried a new to us restaurant called White Duck.  It's a taco joint, and it was delicious.  I'm always up for tacos.  We spent the night at Ridgecrest Conference Center, and then we were so excited to pick the girls up on Friday morning!

We missed these faces!  We went to Tupelo Honey for brunch and then headed home.  As much as we enjoyed our time together, we love having our family together!