First days of school, Birthdays, Anniversary, Another Licensed Driver and other Family Fun

 

The girls are off to a good start for the new school year.

They started at a new Christian School this year not too far from our home. We are grateful for this opportunity for them.

Time at Mamaw and Papaw's house.

Fun times with the cousins before school started. They made Christmas cookies and listened to Christmas music in July.

We had a great celebration for Jennifer's birthday. We were glad that Levi and Alanna were able to come for the weekend.

Apparently this is the only picture we got of Levi and Alanna's visit in late August ;-) Not a Levi visit without a game of Catan.

Jennifer and I celebrate 27 years of marriage on August 1st.

Watchout world: Joel passed his driver's test and now has his license. He has many changes in the last few weeks. He got a job, got his license and started at a vocational training center here taking cooking courses.

We are glad that Luke has reconnected with a friend from school from years ago. They have been able to hangout a bit. They both love our minor league baseball team here in Indy so we took them to a game a few weeks back. 

Trip to Kansas City and Mississippi

 We were grateful for some time away during the kids fall break to go and see Levi and Alanna in Kansas City and Jacob in Mississippi. They are all doing well as you can see in some pics below. We had a fun time although it was a lot of driving.

Levi got some lovings from his sisters

This was the highlight of the trip! Luke got to ride in Levi's space car. He combined Jake's job with Space Force and Levi's job with security on campus and called the police car the space car.

Of course the girls had to get in it too!

We celebrated Jake's bday while we were there

Jake and Ben did some hiking in Mississippi

This is in Levi and Alanna's apartment.

We played some games of course

Lots of snuggle bug hugs for Jake as Emma calls them.

The house where we stayed in Mississippi was a 100 year old home.

It was nice to have Uncle Dan come over and see us too. They only live about an 1 hr or so from where we were.

Jennifer's Birthday, First Day of School, and Fun Stuff

 It has been a busy season for us. But we have managed to sneak in some fun stuff, had some firsts and celebrated Jennifer. 

Grace and Sofia started school this week. Grace is in Kindergarten and Sofia is in 1st grade.

We were trying to sell/buy home to allow them to start school at new school but we were not able to do that so unfortunately they will only go to school here for about 6-8 weeks and have to change schools.

Sofia didn't want to take her pic here.

The boys started school too but no pics ;-) They are doing highschool online. Joel with the same programs he has been doing (he has about 1 1/2 years left and Caleb started with an online school here in Indiana. They both wanted to go to a brick and mortar high school but that hasn't been possible since we have not yet moved to where we will be more permanently.

We got one last fun day in at the Children's musuem the day before school started.

Sofia's new school and other fun times with the family..

 In our transition from Guatemala we have experienced many new things. One of which has been new schools at least for the girls and more particulary, Sofia. Jennifer was doing homeschool with Grace and Sofia the last few years, really more of pre-school than school. This last fall, Sofia was enrolled in an online school here in Indiana. Sofia has had some challenges in learning some of which is a result of being exposed in her first few years of life to 3 different cultures and languages. So after attempting to do the online school, we felt it might be better for her (and Jennifer) to go to a brick and mortar school. She started this week and has loved it so far. Thanks for praying for her!

She loves riding the school bus!

We took her the first morning and met her teacher and some classmates. She has loved the first few days!

Here are a few other fun pictures and times spent together. The boys and Ben are still trying to get at least one time out per month together. In January they were able to go to a Pacer's game. Time is getting short on all our boys being in the house as Levi gets married in May and Jake will most likely be leaving sometime this summer for the Air Force.

We have been trying to spend some alone time with Emma on Wednesday nights when we drop the other kids off for youth/kids activities at church. She loves to go to McD and get an ice cream cone.

This was the boys and Alanna at the Pacer's game. Not sure why the crazy face from Caleb ;-)