More Friday Fun

September 28, 2018 | Stacy

I was happily surprised to hear that for the month of September RGH employees can visit the Strong Museum for free. We dropped Marie off at MOPS to babysit, and Johanna, Katriel, Tabitha and I headed to the museum. It was plenty busy, but not painfully so. We spent FORever in the mini-Wegmans. And we ricocheted around the museum like every other family does.

She wrote that cursive Katriel herself!

We went back to Wegman’s after lunch in the car.

Look what someone wrote on the board before we got in here!

I think I was the oldest mother in the place. Heh. I was younger than plenty of the grandmothers!

We peeled ourselves out of there at 2:30 P.M. so that we could be home in time to take Nigel to work. It was a very full, very fun day.

It’s what we do.

September 20, 2018 | Stacy

I’m not even sure how we pull it all off, to be honest.
The games are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for the most part. And we have to be there by 2:45 in most cases.
The girls have Spanish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at 12:30 P.M.
This means school for Tuesdays and Thursdays has to be done by 11:45 A.M. or so.
Survey says….. it isn’t getting done.
Marie is on top of her studies. And Tab really is, as well. The thing is, it’s hard for me to get school done with the younger girls, and prepare meals, and get to our away games, AND did I fail to mention that we have to get Nigel to FLCC by 2 P.M. on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Yes, really.

Nan has been helping. And John has taken some half days. And I’ll let you know if a few weeks how it is going.

First Day of School–homeschool version

September 5, 2018 | Stacy

Friends invited us to join them at the beach to celebrate “First Day of Not-School.”

We’d never been to a lake beach and I’d always wanted to give it a try. Although it poured buckets as we looked for the place, the skies cleared and we had a lovely time.

I’m shy on photos, but that’s because we were all having too good a time to take many.

I definitely want to do this again! Sadly, it will have to wait until next year at this point!

Churchtime helper

July 1, 2018 | Stacy

It seems like just yesterday, I was doing churchtime with newborn Tabitha in the car seat next to me. These days she helps to lead it.

Mother Daughter Retreat

May 6, 2018 | Stacy

In January, a friend from church shared information about the May Mother Daughter Retreat at Camp Hickory Hill in Varysburg, NY. We’d never gone on any such event, and it did not have a limit of one child per mom, so I decided I’d embrace my newly acquired camping gene and sign us up. I also told my friend Lindsay about the weekend and she signed up to join us.

It was pretty cold and rainy as we drove down, but we met our friends at Mark’s for dinner and continued on to our destination.

I didn’t take photos of our lodging, but our church had a large enough group that we were placed in a lovely building right next to the bathrooms! SCORE!

We headed to the game room for a while

As we were playing games, my girls rushed to the windows. They saw princesses walking by. It wasn’t long before we headed up to the fellowship hall to see what was going on.

The theme for the weekend was Princesses…. since we ARE daughters of the KING of KINGS.

We played a “who am I?” game where we had to ask questions to see if we could guess who we were tagged as.

We had singing, and some games, and ice cream!

It was maybe the worst night’s sleep ever…
Having JUST gotten over the bad back I had endured for about a week, the rock-hard bunk I slept in was enough to cause me to have spasms hour after hour through the night.

My little girls and I were awake bright and early, so I took them out and around to keep the cabin quiet.

We headed back as others were rising, and then we all enjoyed breakfast at the hall.

I realized why my purse was so heavy! Thank you, Stewart, for getting me the flashlight, etc., I may have needed.

Tab and Janessa are special buddies.

Our first assigned activity was archery. This was a lot of fun.

We then did kayaking and canoeing. And then Katriel met this “friend.” (She often embraces the scary to get ahead of it. Not a bad tactic, if it works.)

We had fun doing Nerf wars.

Katriel stayed on top of the ammo.

Lunch was excellent!

Finally it was time to zip line. This was TOO MUCH FUN!!

Why yes. Even my five year old tried it!

We did a few other things, including a few minutes of dress-up with friends.

I love this picture! The Butler and Nickels ladies.

Terrific Twelve

April 16, 2018 | Stacy

We met Tabitha Stacy Butler 12 years ago.
It’s been a wild ride that I wouldn’t trade.

Nene blessed her with STAR WARS sweatshirt.

Nan gave her that spiffy new bathrobe.

It was fun surprising her with new Converse.

There were other gifts, too.
She chose yummy strawberry ice box cake.

And that meant we all won. Winking smile

This “Easter Bunny” is 12.

Bouncing Birthday

April 14, 2018 | Stacy

For her twelfth birthday Tab asked her friend Ava to come over.

I took them to Sky Zone for an hour of bouncing.

We grabbed some amazing sandwiches at Smashburger and headed home.

Tab had made her own birthday cake, and opted to frost it to honor both herself and Ava, whose birthday had been the week before. She also made LEGO girls to look like each of them.

They watched Spiderman and didn’t get much sleep.

She said it was wonderful.

Easter Egg Art

March 26, 2018 | Stacy

The fact that we skillfully decorated 24 eggs is marred only slightly by the fact that they somehow all ended up pretty close to soft-boiled. Ugh.

But we still had a blast. ♥

A mountain top weekend.

March 26, 2018 | Stacy

Some seasons, we find ourselves in the valleys of life; we walk through hard places and experience painful refining.

Other times we are wholly on top of the mountain, just basking in all that is good and joy-filled and life-giving.

On Friday afternoon, it suddenly dawned on me as I dropped off my boys at the Charles Finney School that I was having a mountain-top weekend.

For starters, Marie, Tabitha and Johanna were performing in the church’s production, “Who Can He Be?” This is the same production our church did in 2012 and 2013. I was able to participate in 2012, and John participated in 2013. Marie and Tabitha were also in both of those shows, albeit as markedly younger performers. This time around, both are part of the adult ensemble and had much larger roles.

The boys and I were able to go to the dress rehearsal on Wednesday, March 21st, and I was able to watch a second time on Thursday, March 22nd.

I was blown away by the musical. Though I had been in it in 2012, I had never watched the entire production from start to finish. My sister, Kelly, also played the woman at the well.

My joy would have been complete if that was where it ended.

Oh boy – that’s only half the story.

Since December, Stewart and Nigel have been practicing at the Charles Finney School to be part of their production, “Acts – A City Rising,” a modern retelling of the book of Acts.

Stewart was cast as Saul of Tarsus/Paul, and Nigel was cast as Isaac, a zealous defender of God and persecutor of Christians.

As I dropped them off for their cast call on Friday and hurried home to get the girls ready for their performance and over to the church it dawned on me how this is the kind of joy-filled weekend I had to hang on to. Remembering just how abundantly we were blessed for this weekend should constantly remind me of how God loves us. My kids – my HOMESCHOOLED kids – get to be part of fabulous, Godly stage productions. How cool is that?

I could blow up the internet with images of the boys’ production. They put in almost 100 hours of rehearsal. Stewart met with Mr. Carl Wager many, many times as Mr. Wager helped him advance his singing abilities. I had no idea the treat I was in for as my son sang triumphantly as he conveyed Saul/Paul’s life.

As the boys and I left the production Friday evening, they asked if I had cried at the end. I confessed I had not and they were disappointed. Truth-be-told, I think I was in shock. I believe it wasn’t until after the third production that I truly grasped the full story; until that point I think I was just absorbing, “Those are my handsome boys! There are my handsome boys!”

I feel like I know the apostles so much better after this show. And I am in awe even more of how much God loves us and how He grew the church. I can barely express how moved I was by this musical. What is more, I can barely express how generous God is.