Sorry for the long break in posting. Not too much has been happening around here lately. Swimming is over for the summer, and we have been organizing our upcoming school year. Oh, fun. I have started piano lessons again and am much discouraged by the amount of technique etc. that I have lost over the summer. So sad. Anyway, tomorrow Mary and I have a rafting trip with our year round swim team. YAY! We're sooo excited! I'll write more about that later.

Sorry I don't have more of these....I was hesitant to take my camera for fear of it coming home broken. :)


Playing in the gym (soccer, volleyball, basketball):

Basketball in the (new!) gym:

The playground:

Some people from the trip:

Our assistant pastor (left) and youth pastor (right) in the dining hall:

Robby Holt, our assistant pastor:

Okay, Hannah. My favorite part was roller skating with the kids, mainly because I realized that guys can't skate. Thus, I did see quite a few fall on their faces. Yes, I wanted to pet a zebra, but they didn't have any. Just dogs and cats and rabbits. We didn't pick any blackberries, but they had peach trees and we picked peaches. No one there spoke any foreign languages. :( We had biscuits, eggs, bacon & sausage for breakfast every day, and we had meatloaf one day, tacos one day, burgers one day, some kind of steak thingy another night, and red beans and rice another day. We had something different every day for lunch and dinner so I missed some, but hey, I can't remember everything. I tried to post pictures yesterday, but our card reader didn't work.
:( However I shall try again soon.

As many of you know, this last week we went on a mission trip with North Shore Fellowship (our church) to an orphanage called Palmer Home in Columbus, Mississippi. It was soooo GREAT!!!!!! We drove down in a huge bus last Sunday afternoon. We saw a movie all together in Columbus before going on campus and unpacking. We had a worship time together and went to bed. This is what our schedule looked like Monday thru Thursday: wake up at 6:30, have a quiet time from 7 to 8, eat breakfast at 8, work from 9 to 11:30, clean up for lunch, eat lunch at 12, go back to work at 1, work and work and work again until 4:30, clean up for dinner, eat at 5:30, then FREE TIME with the kids from 6:30 to 8:30, after which we did a worship time and small groups and then we went to bed at any time between 11:30 and 12:30 to get up and do it again in 6-7 hours the next morning. On Monday and Tuesday night we played at the pool on campus with the kids. Wednesday, we took the kids to a skating rink, and Thursday we went to the pool at the Ranch (additional housing for the kids built in 2005). All day Friday we went to Lake Tiak-O'Khata (pronounced tee-a-cata) and had a picnic lunch. We returned to campus Friday night, ate dinner, packed up the bus, and left. :( We had a 4 hour bus ride and, at 11:30 p.m., the trip officially ended at our youth building. If you have any specific questions about the trip, feel free to ask. :)

Yesterday we went tubing in Townsend, TN on the Little River with Kevin. We went last year with Abby Gibbons, and the water was kind of low. We got stuck waaaayy to much. :) This year it was a little higher and tons of fun! We went down the river twice. Afterward for 'dinner' we went to Menchies, a frozen yogurt-make-it-yourself place. It was really fun. I will post pictures of it next week, because I can't this week. (see Palmer Home Trip post)

We're leaving today! We're going on a week-long mission trip to Columbus, Mississippi. We are going to do various construction projects at an orphanage called the Palmer Home. Please pray for us while we are there. I'll post about it next week. (Hopefully with many pictures.) :)

On Wednesday our good friends Susan Garrison/Keister and Hannah Garrison came to visit, along with Susan's adorable baby boy, Hans. We had a delicious dinner on Wednesday night with burgers, watermelon, and chips & dip. Then we played catch phrase and psycaitrist and went to bed. On Thursday morning, instead of our usual breakfast of eggs, we had a breakfast tea! It was complete with scones, brownies, and a fruit salad. It was sooooo good!!!!!! We played around some more and then *sniff, sniff* they had to-to LEAVE! Boo-Hoo. We were so sad. :( However, we're looking forward to next time!

Hannah.....need I say more?

Isn't Hans cute?!?!?!