church
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april.
April was full of pollen, warm temperatures followed by 45-degree days, pushing through school work amidst spring fever, and Easter festivities. Two of our friends that Amie babysits for gave her a gift card for a manicure, so I took her and Caroline the week before Easter. It was Amie’s first manicure! That same evening, we hosted some of the girls from church to help fill eggs and gift bags for our church Easter egg hunt. This is becoming a very fun annual tradition. We had a Good Friday church service, then the picnic and cookout Saturday afternoon. The weather was perfect; it was my favorite of…
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march.
March is one of my very favorite months, because it’s the month of Daylight Savings time, and typically the month when I can start wearing flip flops again. We had a great New Members’ class and the trampoline miraculously held up yet again with a dozen or so kids jumping (this is always a fear of mine when we have guests). Here’s what else we were up to: Celebrating Kelly’s birthday with charcuterie, wine, and gluten free cupcakes. Noah has been asking me to teach him to iron. I have a great ironing hack. Actually it’s a great make-your-husband-wear-all-his-work-shirts hack. I only iron once a month or so,…
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october.
Visit with Christi and John David posted this to Facebook after we met up in Greenville with the boys’ birth mom one morning this month, and we mean every word: May my boys always know their birth mother, know her fierce love for them, her courage to carry them to term and bear them into this world, and do the impossible to give them another life through adoption. May they love her all the more for it. And may we find our way together in this blended family God has knit together in the unlikeliest but most beautiful of ways. David turns 40! It was…
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he says.
Noah: “Why can’t we be done with sabbatical now? I want to go back to our church. I want to see my friends and my friends want to see me.” Amie: “Because, this summer is a chance for Dad to rest from being a pastor and preaching.” Noah: “Well, why can’t we go to our church and Dad just stay home and watch church on TV or something!?”
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first week.
On June 1, David started a three month sabbatical. It’s a chance for him to take a break from the nonstop demands of full-time ministry, and to spend time in prayer, study, travel, and with our family. Honestly, the first week just felt kind of strange. I was sick with a virus all week, and spent most of my time in bed or on the sofa. It was very nice to have David here to spend time with the kids, but the house still felt kind of lame with me laying around all day. Then Saturday arrived, and as the day progressed we all felt more and more sad that…
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easter weekend 2019.
Easter weekend is my favorite weekend of the year with our church. We had such a great time that it took me a whole week to recover and share about it here on the blog. We like to make the weekend feel sort of like an at-home retreat by having the Good Friday evening service, a Saturday egg hunt and cook-out, and then services Easter morning with brunch served in between. This year we added in serving lunch for one of the ministries our church partners with, Providence Home, Friday, so we got the fun of hanging out together there too. The cook-out on Saturday afternoon was one of those…
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january.
Hello from sunny but cold South Carolina! This winter has been bewildering. It started back in November, and has given us lots of rain and nighttime temperatures in the low 20’s. This is not typical South Carolina weather. I got winter boots and a very soft pink beanie for Christmas and have put them to good use. January has flown by. I thought I’d jump back into blogging by telling you what we’ve been up to this month. I’m sorry to say that I have zero recent photos to include. I’ll do better in February! Riding bikes Amie got a new bike for Christmas, and Noah got one for…
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giving thanks on january 1.
Happy New Year, dear readers! On Sunday afternoon I pulled dusty storage boxes down from the attic, and turned on our Spotify Christmas music playlist one last time while the kids and I took ornaments off the tree and unwound strings of white lights and rolled up the stockings. I’m usually more than ready to take down decorations and reclaim our living room, but this year I found myself a bit melancholy, not quite ready to say good-bye to the Christmas season. We made beautiful memories this year, like always, and I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so special, except maybe a new feeling of togetherness.…
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new members class.
Happy November, my friends! Fall has really and truly come to Columbia. The leaves typically don’t begin turning until after Halloween, and so here and there a golden or berry-colored tree can be spotted and there’s a pleasing brown crunch underfoot. I love this time of year because windows are thrown open day and night, we’ve pulled out everyone’s sweatpants but don’t yet need jackets, and it’s pleasant enough that the kids want to be outside for large portions of their day. I love fall. For our family, fall also means church New Members class, which is one of my favorite things I do as a pastor’s wife. So I…
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leaders collective marriage retreat.
We’d been home from our road trip just over a week before it was time to pack up and leave for a marriage retreat in Charleston. I’ll be honest: that reentry week after our grand adventure hit hard. I planned for it, expected it, but there’s still just an immense amount of reality to face after three glorious weeks of disconnect. I felt myself pulled under the current all week, knowing vaguely I ought to be thankful and re-energized, but not sure how to deal with the pressures of my real life, just the way it is. So pretty much the last thing I wanted to do was think about…
