December Pictures

A few miscellaneous pictures from the month...

Mia with her November "birthday buddies" in 5th/6th grade.

Decker always loves to cuddle with Ryan.

The girls love the game app Among Us right now.  They play with their friends a ton.  Lily painted their avatars one day as a fun little activity.  Super cute!

Lily finished her next paint by number kit recently.  I thought it looked really good.

Lily has been taking an art design class as one of her elective practicum classes this semester (the other was mock trial).  I thought this was a really cool self portrait that she made.  She's so creative!

My employees gave me a wonderful gift basket for Christmas!  Manchego and crackers, riesling wine, shortbread cookies, two chocolate bars, and a Natural Body gift certificate which I promptly used the next day for a 90 minute massage!  I love the people I work with!

Mia's class walked up to the Marietta Square one day for a fun Boosterthon reward.  It was a gorgeous day.  The kids got to pick between going to Sarah Jean's ice cream or Bubble Tea; not even a question that Mia chose Bubble Tea!

I had new headshots taken this month as I'm updating my company website.  I greatly appreciated our friend, Stephanie Harvey, coming over to fix my hair and make-up.  As a former professional make-up artist, she knew exactly what to do so I'd look my best under the bright lights.  I am very pleased with how the picture turned out.  Here's a side by side of my last headshot from 2009 and the current one.  Maybe I've...um, matured...just a little in those 11 years!

Another Boosterthon treat for 6th grade was having their 5th grade teacher, Mr. Scheidt, come back one afternoon.  With the quarantine shutdown earlier this year, the class didn't get to have their traditional Hobbit party at year-end.  This is an annual favorite as Mr. Scheidt brought hobbit culture to life with his folk music and traditions.  The class missed this treat terribly, so this was such a fabulous reward!

Ryan and Lily love to snuggle up with one another!

We were so thrilled to welcome our newest nephew, River Hamilton Reynolds, on Dec 5th!  We can't wait to get down to Florida and meet him in person!

On Dec 21, we got together with the Henderson family up at Brian's office, so we could have a good view of "The Bethlehem star" which is where Saturn and Jupiter were visible and extremely close to one another.  This is a pretty rare occurrence and last happened about 700 or so years ago.  After seeing that, we decided to enjoy dinner at Antico together which was delicious and fun.  We spent a few minutes hanging out on the green afterwards where we snapped a couple of pictures.  I love these kids!

I love receiving Christmas cards from family and friends.  We tape them up on our kitchen windows, and it makes me smile every time I come in and see them.  We have some great people in our lives.

This is absolutely my favorite perch this time of year.  I sit in our quiet room, reading by the fire and enjoying the beautiful view of the Peter Lik picture and our tree.  Such contentment when I do this.

What a lovely December it's been!

Thankful for November

 November is such a great month.  It's usually cooling down some, there's a little slower pace at work, and it's a time for giving thanks for the many wonderful blessings in our lives.  I love it.  Here is some of the fun we've had this month.

The girls went with the church youth group to a corn maze and festival up one Saturday. It was a beautiful day, and they had a lot of fun.  They enjoyed getting to spend time with friends, go through the corn maze, watch pig races, pet the animals at the zoo, shoot the corn cannons, and eat some yummy treats.  It was a fun day!

Mia (third from left) was excited to get her picture taken with the all A Q1 report card group.  Way to go Mia!

The school raised a ton of money at this year's Boosterthon.  Mia had run running with her friends and celebrating with popcycles afterwards!

The upper school had a color war instead of running for Boosterthon this year.  They still raised a bunch of money, and I think they had an absolute blast with the color war.  It took a few days for all of the color to come out of Lily's hair, but it was worth it!

It's finally here!!!  Stonehaven has it's own property and has built the first stage of an upper school on it! Truly, we have been praying for this to happen for years, and it's really, finally, truly a reality.  Thanks be to God for this incredible blessing. We know the Lord will be glorified at this school in the years to come. 

Lily was chosen to say the opening prayer at the afternoon ceremony.  She (along with two staff kids - Avery and Nate) have been at the school longer than anyone else, so they let her have this honor.

Here are some pictures taken just before they opened.  It's so beautiful, and this building has been bathed in prayer.  It's amazing.

Lily's locker

One of our favorite service projects each year is filling shoeboxes for Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child.  We let the girls pick who they want to shop for each year.  Lily always picks a 2-4 year girl because they are fun to shop for.  Mia always picks the 10-14 year old boy because she remembers her 2nd grade teacher noting that this group receives the least amount of packages each year.  She doesn't want anyone left out.  I love the hearts of these girls, and we always have fun at Target finding lots of items that we believe will be a blessing to these children.  We pray for the children who will receive these packages before we drop them.  May this small gift bless them by opening their eyes to who Christ is and the greatest gift that He has given to us.

Our church was a central drop off location this year, meaning anyone can drop off and smaller churches can drop off their collections.  I volunteered to work one evening.  We collected boxes that were dropped off and packed them 15 at a time into shipping boxes and loaded them on to the big trucks.  They'll go from the church to the processing center and then off around the world via planes and boats.  We received close to 300 boxes in the evening I worked.  It's so encouraging to see people being generous and helpful, even in a hard year like 2020.

We put our tree and decorations up which always brings some extra cheer to our home! I really want a calm Christmas season this year, so I have already purchased all our gifts and have them wrapped to put under the tree.  It's a great feeling!

Of course, one our favorite traditions is collecting ornaments when we travel, so this year...well, it's a little sparse!  Ryan did pick up two ornaments from his time in Spain back in February, and our family got one from Mercier Orchards when we went over Fall Break.  I ordered this one off Etsy though, and it seems pretty appropriate this year.  Three fabulous trips cancelled, but you know what?  It's ok.  Yes, they would have been a lot of fun, and hopefully we'll make it up at some point.  However, our family is healthy, loved, and safe, so we are doing just fine.  I will choose to always seek to see the blessings instead of complaining.

We bought new trees for the girls to have in their rooms too.  They get to decorate with their own ornaments and enjoy these throughout the Christmas season.

These girls sure do love Decker.

We had Mom and Dad over for dinner the evening before Thanksgiving.  We weren't getting together with the big family on Thanksgiving day, so we wanted to celebrate a little bit with them.  I am so very thankful for my parents and love them so much.  I'm glad they are so close by, and we get to see each other pretty often.  It was a simple dinner of chicken and dumplings and Ryan's corn muffins.  Lily made a fabulous dessert for us called Millionaire's Bars.  It's a shortbread cookie base, homemade caramel in the middle, and salted chocolate on top.  They were so good, and luckily, we have a few left over to enjoy for a few more days!

Thanksgiving morning always starts with sausage casserole and the Macy's parade!

Ryan smoked a ham for us to have.  It was delicious!

I made us garlic butter carrots, roasted green beans with parmesan, homemade applesauce, and baked macaroni with three cheeses. We had more corn muffins and some Welch's sparkling grape juice.  We ate on our fancy fine china, and it was absolutely perfect.

We finished off the meal with the peanut butter pie I made.  So yummy!

Not the Thanksgiving we typically have, but it was absolutely wonderful.  We have so very much to be thankful for in our lives.

As we were cleaning up, we decided that Ryan should pour the ham drippings into the bushes instead of down our drain.  The next time Decker came inside, his head was as sticky as it could possibly be; he apparently thought he'd found the best bushes in the world.  He just kept licking his face all night which had us laughing pretty hard.  Thankfully the groomer was able to see him the next day to get his fluffy clean face back!

Oh you know, just clowning around with my most favorite people.  I love these three so much!

What a fantastic November!