The celebration

Ryan has known for a long time that all he wanted to do for his birthday was to have some friends over and ride horses. Although the afternoon ended up being dry, after a weekend of rain riding horses just wasn't in the cards. Thankfully, Ryan wasn't too disappointed. We celebrated with the occasion friends and family.It was such a blessing to have all of the Chryst cousins be able to join us for the day. I am so grateful to be close enough to family that we can celebrate these special times together.We just need to work on everyone looking at the camera at the same time!

Spring Break

After enduring 2 days of CAT testing for Peter and Emma, we are in the midst of spending five more days at the beach.I had no idea how beautiful of a week this would be. The kids have been very dissapointed that I didn't have them pack their swim suits.
Although, they have adapted to playing in the ocean with their clothes on.
I have to admit it has been a bit of a inconvience for them not to have their flip flops! Socks and tennis shoes are just not the shoe of choice for the beach. However, anything is better than testing!

Snow day!

We celebrated the consecration of the new building with snow! It hasn't snowed all year and it snows on the evening of the consecration service. None the less, it was a beautiful time to celebrate God's goodness and be challenged to live into this new oppourtunity for ministry. There are times in our families lives when it's hard to identify where our family stops and church begins. The lines are intertwined. This project has blurred those lines even more. Just today, the kids were pretending to be architects and builders using terms and phrases that they had been overhearing for months.
There wasn't much snow but enough to build these snowmen. It wasn't long after the snowmen were built that the snow cream was made and lunch was served picnic style!

sweet memories

It was like rain falling on thirsty ground for me to happen upon this moment unfolding



I admit the moment you just watched was a requested repeat of the spontaneous moment that melted my heart.

Good times like these make all the "pull out my hair" moments worthwhile.

I love these kids more than they know.

If you're wondering....

what my children have been up to these last few weeks while I've been completely absent from blogosphere- here's a good summary

I have been truly grateful for the warm sunny winter weather. My days have found themselves to be very long as Philip has found himself in the position of contractor for the remodeling work at the church. He's gone from way before sun up to way past sun down. My kids have found themselves relegated to the outdoors more than usual for it being winter.

Ryan has been spending the last few weeks setting traps and planning for bird stew. He's torn between cooking his captured birds or keeping them as a pets. He's still hoping for a dog but I think realizes that he might need to take matters into his own hands. He faithfully checks his traps throughout the day and unloads bird seed throughout the yard. Peter has joined in on the bird hunting ventures but is taking a different approach.He's going for the David and Goliath method. He did get to go squirrel hunting with a church friend recently. Amazingly, they sat in the cold for 3 hours without ever seeing a squirrel! Thanks to all the bird seed Ryan's been spreading and the warm temperatures the birds are flocking to our yard.
Nathan's happy to follow along in his "cowboy boots" and his soldier stick. This particular occasion he was given permission to carry the bird net. Yes, it really is a fishing net but that's all they had at Walmart!

As for Emma she happened to be inside at the time of these pictures reading a book.

Apple nachos

I have been so delinquent in keeping current with my blog. I have a running list of excuses in my head as I think to myself, "I should really update things". Oh well; maybe one day I'll finished posting our vacation pictures. In the mean time, I tried out a new snack yesterday - apple nachos Although apples and peanut butter aren't that unusual in our house, it was really fun to serve them like this!

When 6 becomes 4

When my mom left here following Christmas, she explained to Nathan that when we got back from Boone he could come to her house. Well as they say in Roxboro, this little guy is smart. At least once a day while we were in Boone, Nathan asked if we could go home so he could go to Granny's house and feed Maggie (their dog). Although there were many tears from him as we were packing up and preparing to leave "his Boone house", as soon as we pulled into our driveway he declares that it's time to go to Granny's house. Thankfully, my parents were open to the having Ryan and Nathan spend some time with them this week. I don't know if I could have held Nathan off any longer.
Ryan got to join in on the fun while promising to serve as interpreter and to do all his school work that I sent along! It's been a long time since Philip and I have had just Peter and Emma to ourselves. It's been such a blessing to spend these few days with just the big kids. I miss my little guys. I'm thankful that they are soaking up some undivided attention from their grandparents and I hope they are filling up their grandparents hearts with love. It's been really quiet around here. The Lord has used this time and extra room in my brain to speak gentle words of encouragement to me. I am thankful.

Ruff Ridge

While eating our lunch on the parkway, we say the park ranger passed by us about 3 times. On his third time past us, he graciously stopped and explained himself. They were patrolling the area in search of a certain suspicious vehicle. In our brief conversation he did give us the suggestion of driving down the parkway a bit and trying out the Ruff Ridge trail. As soon as he mentioned the trail, I recognized it from my college days. Refreshed from our lunch, we hit the trails again. I'm glad we took his advice because it was a beautiful place.

Hiking

We welcomed the sunshine the following day with great enthusiasm. It's our tradition to hike the Viaduct so that is where we headed to after we had breakfast and packed a picnic lunch. Again, we were greeted with beautiful and unseasonable warm Boone weather.
Our normal entry point to the trail was blocked off so we improvised by walking down road until we found a way to enter the trail. Luckily there wasn't much traffic!Nathan was a champ on this hike. He was determined to be like the big boys and walked for close to an hour.
After a wonderful time in the woods, we found a way out of the woods and back to the road to lead us to the car and to our lunch.I'm quite sure that money could not have bought a more beautiful setting for our lunch.
I love how Nathan knows that these are the blue ridge mountains! Can you tell we had Cheetos with our lunch.

rainy days

After a great weekend with friends who joined us at the cabin and a refreshing visit to the church of my college days, we greeted Monday morning with a down pouring of rain. What's to do in Boone when it's raining? We camped out at Chick-fila while catching up with another friend from college and then hit the bowling alley!It was a fun way to spend a rainy Monday. We stopped by Goodwill on our way home and Philip scored a $6.00 pair of skis and I scored a $3.50 hiking/backpack! Good times.

Vacation recaps

Day One: We set out to experience Howard's Knobb. It's a landmark in Boone and a site I remember visiting while in college. It was a mere coincident that the landmark is named for a man connected to the Revolutionary war times. Check mark for field trip! Unfortunately, after we drove there we find that the park is closed during the winter months. However, we borrowed the drive way of an abandoned house to see the view.

A question

I'm not sure why but I can distinctly remember a woman asking Philip and I this question about 11 years ago, "If you don't watch TV then what do you do?". A lot of time has passed since we had that conversation and for the most part we still don't watch TV. We have come a long way since then. Back then our TV was in a closet and we only brought it out when we had a movie to watch. Now, the TV does sit in the living room and it gets turned on more than it did 12 years ago. We still only watch it on occasion more than I would really like. Nathan has probably watched more TV in his 2 and 1/2 years than Peter watched in 4 but at least he knows how to sing along with the best of them.
This video - this night - of a spontaneous dance party with friends reminded me of that question.