Actually, Tim found it. :-) We went and looked at it yesterday, and it fits the bill to a T. I should have taken pictures of it, but I found one online that is exactly like the one we will be renting, except for the color scheme of the fabric on the couch and dinette. So here are some pictures of it: So, I don't know if you can notice this or not, but there is a queen bed in the back, then there are bunk beds to the side, and then the cabover bed that sleeps 2. Do you know what this means?? We won't have to break down the couch and table every night and then put them back together every morning like we did for a year and 3 months!!!! Woohoo! Everyone is going to have their own bed they can just crawl into whenever they want! We are going to be SO spoiled. :-) We were planning on leaving June 11, but this particular RV won't be available until June 15, so we figured it is worth waiting 4 days for! Noah's already hard at work figuring out how to network the 3 TVs to a digital converter box. I don't expect we'll be watching much TV, though - we'll be seeing a huge piece of America right out our windows! And then experiencing it when we stop. Well, that's the latest update from our neck of the woods. We'll keep you posted on more details as we get closer. Blessings!
We now officially have 4 teenagers in the house! Yes, today Nicholas turned 13, and we had a very nice day of celebration! It started out with Dad making a special breakfast for him, and then we had a fantastic party at the YMCA in the afternoon with almost his whole basketball team showing up! They played basketball, ate cake and ice cream while he opened presents, some swam, and then they played basketball some more! He had an absolute blast! Then we had his favorite dinner, pizza, and then he opened up some more presents from us. All in all, a very nice day! Here are some pictures from the events of the day. You have to check out Nicole's Lego Birthday card she made for him that you can see in the last photo. It actually includes a little basketball game where you bend the lego man back while he's holding the basketball and he shoots at the basket, and usually makes it! Hope everyone is having a great week! Blessings to all!
We brought the blueberries down to Port Charlotte, rinsed them, and then laid them out on a purple towel to dry - that usually makes them last in the fridge for at least a week (if we don't eat them all first!). :-) That same day, Saturday, we got a call from the boys - they saw a bear! Wait 'til you see the picture below - the bear is on this branch way up high that looks like it could snap under his weight at any moment!! Amazing! Anyeay, hope you enjoy the pictures! Oh, and 2 weeks ago Nicholas and Nathan thought of this really cool game called 'baseball with a basketball'. The only problem is that when Nicholas was up to bat he swung really hard at the basketball and it bounced back and nailed him in the temple. Nathan came running in and said Nicholas was hurt pretty badly, and sure enough, I go outside and he's bleeding profusely from the head. 3 stops later to find the right place that takes our insurance and does stitches (and ISN'T Brandon Regional Hospital emergency room!), we landed at an Urgent care place in Fishhawk. They took great care of him, gave him 3 stitches, and a week later took them out and his wound looks great! But here's the pictures right after he got the stitches (how do you like his 'pathetic' look? we're thinking about guiding him towards a career in acting). :-)
Tim took the boys on a whirlwind trip this weekend. They left at 4am on Friday and drove to Clingman's Dome, NC. They spent the night at a hotel in Pigeon Forge, hiked parts of the Appalaccian trail on Saturday, went back to their hotel for the night and then got up this morning and drove to a huge Zip line a couple hours away, did that, and got home at almost 1am. Nicole and I enjoyed a leisurely Friday morning where neither of us even got out of bed until 10:30am! We then went Blueberry picking, took showers, ran some errands, got ready for the evening and she came to my weekly Friday night ballroom dancing party with me. Saturday morning we got up early and went to the homeschool book sale and then drove downt o Port Charlotte where we spent the rest of Saturday and most of today there. We left there about 4:30pm and drove to church to attend the 6pm service, and then we came home and watched the movie Fireproof. Like I said - busy weekend! Last Saturday night we all got together as a family and started planning our trip. We have a date set to leave of June 11, Lord willing, so we're all excited about that! We spent the whole evening just planning the 1st week, so we have a lot more planning to do, as we are hoping to be gone for 2 1/2 months!! Will try to update this tomorrow with some pictures. Hope everyone is doing well. Blessings to all!
One of the local news stations that did a story on our trip almost 2 years ago called us and asked if they could do a follow up story. The reporter was so awesome - it was a lot of fun reliving the memories. Unfortunately, we were only able to record the segment by using Nicole's camera to video the TV while the story played, and both the sound quality and the picture quality aren't very good. I may try to upload it to our website and see if it is understandable. If so, I'll post the link to it on here. In the meantime, you can see a synopsis of the story here:
http://baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2012/4/16/valrico_rv_family_shBack in January, a brother & sister who are good friends with Nathan & Nicole invited them to go with them to LEGOLAND. Well, Noah & Nicholas just love lego's and after we joined the local homeschool group so that Nathan & Nicholas could play on their basketball teams we were able to sign up for the homeschool field trip to LEGOLAND at a ridiculously reduced price! So today was the field trip, and it was a gorgeous day! Nathan & Nicole stayed home, and I think they felt very grown up to be home for so long by themselves - the longest time they've done that yet for sure. The reporter tweeted Noah while we were at LEGOLAND to let him know that our story was going to run at 5:23pm today. We walked into our house at 5:23pm from LEGOLAND just in time to see the story! How cool is that? Well, that's it for now. I hope to be updating this with a video link soon! Blessings to all!
He is Risen!! I hope everyone is celebrating a wonderful Easter day - what gorgeous weather we are having!! Well, I'm a week late for my monthly updates - so sorry! March saw Nathan & Nicholas get involved on our homeschool basketball teams (Nathan on Varsity and Nicholas on JV). For never playing organized basketball before, they were both starting in the 2nd and 3rd games respectively, so I was one proud mama! :-) But as you can imagine, between games and practices life had certainly become more hectic. The kids' science class will be ending in 10 days, and they will all be done with their math in 2 weeks, so that leaves history and grammar to finish up. They will be taking their Standardized Tests towards the end of this month which is always a great way for me to gauge how they are doing, and how I'm doing with selecting their curriculum!
Well, March Highlights include:
* Spring Break with the Bell Shoals Family Camp at Camp Kulaqua
* Nathan getting his braces off after 2 years and 4 months!! Woohoo!!
* Tim and myself getting into ballroom dancing (I'm going to be in a competition in 10 days!)
* My parents from Michigan coming to see us.
And I'm sure there are others I just can't think of at the moment. I checked Nicole's camera for any pictures that I could post (she being our resident photographer and all) but there just really aren't any. We're going down to Port Charlotte today, so I'll try to ensure we take some photo's and have some to include in my next post!! :-) Again, I wish everyone a very Happy Easter!!!
I'm getting a theme here....once a month updating of this blog in a 'nutshell'. :-) It's just that our lives are so routine now it seems kind of boring. When we were on the road it was a new place almost every day! One new thing for me (and exciting for me!) is that we started regular ballroom dancing lessons! We're at a local Fred Astaire dance studio, where Tim has a lesson with the wife and I have a lesson with the husband on Mondays, and then Tim and I have a lesson together on Fridays. We've had 2 lessons with the husband/wife team on the past 2 Mondays, and I have to say, when we stepped onto the dance floor this past Monday I felt like I had been holding my breath for a whole week since the last lesson, and I was finally able to breathe! I've always loved to dance, but to get training in it is such blast for me! I'm so thankful for my husband who is encouraging me in my passion!
Here are some other highlights of the month in pictures. 1st, we got an incredible deal on a Ninja blender and food processor, and have been having smoothies pretty much every day! I came home from work one day last week to this beauty, compliments of my sweet Nicole: Tim made the most awesome-est guacamole of ALL time (this was before we had the Ninja - he mixed it with his bare hands!). Doesn't this look incredible?!!! Nicholas has been feeling quite the culinary itch lately. Here is what he did with some veggies one night: And then yesterday morning he decided to make banana pancakes from scratch, and then surprise me with breakfast in bed (which the others helped him to arrange): And then this morning it was chocolate chip waffles from scratch, and breakfast in bed for Dad!! - I'm noticing another theme here...food!!! :-) On another note, Tim's counseling practice is booming like never before. We wrapped things up with the church this week so we will be providing care on an 'as needed' basis from here on out. We have been so blessed to see God working - it has been really humbling to be a part of it! We joined the local homeschool group (I know - a little late in the year!) so that Nathan and Nicholas could play on their basketball teams (Nathan on Varsity and Nicholas on JV). They're still having try-outs this week and then I think they will practice throughout the month of March and start playing games in April. Should be exciting! I know Nathan is especially stoked about it! We went and visited my family a couple times this past month, so that was very nice! We have the camper getting worked on so we should be able to actually put it up for sale within the next week or so. So please continue praying about our summer plans! Well, I think that about wraps things up. So I guess until next month (or until something really exciting happens), it is ta-ta for now! Blessings to all!
A whole month has FLOWN by! A busy month, to be sure. A couple weeks ago we went to the Winter Jam concert - 10 Christian bands played and it was amazing! From 5pm until after 10pm the Tampa Bay Times stadium rocked! We left a little early because the last band, Skillet, was so loud even the kids were plugging their ears! But their pyrotechnic stuff was incredible. :-) We also took a trip back to Busch Gardens with our former neighbors a few weeks back, and the lines were MUCH better! The other mom and I even went on the Cheetah Hunt ride with the kids while the men watched their 2 younger daughters, and even though we were biting our nails before we got on we both really LOVED it! Crazy stuff! Last weekend we went down to my parents home, and my Aunt Deb and Uncle Jeff were in town, so we had a very nice visit with the fam! And then this past Friday Nicole and I were able to get together with one of my best friends and her daughter. It was one of those things that I didn't think would ever come together, but all the pieces fell into place beautifully, and the 4 of us enjoyed an overnight stay at the Lakewood Retreat center that our family camped at this past New Years. They have all kinds of accomodations, so we opted for the cheapest, which is a hotel room. We took hikes and played ping pong and four square and tons of board games and prayed together and pet and fed the animals in their petting zoo and just enjoyed each others' company. This friend had lent me a book to read a couple weeks back called Passion To Action about a family of 6 who felt the Lord calling them out of their comfy home and lifestyle to live in a camper and travel around the country. Sound familiar?? My heart so knit with them as I read their story! I just finished the book tonight and got on their website and asked if there was any way I could connect with them, so we'll see where God takes that. On the work front I am leaving my 2nd job because it was just adding too much to my plate. The people I have been working for have been so gracious and understanding. We are still working with the local church I've mentioned, and I so wish I could go into details but for privacy reasons cannot. Suffice it to say it's been nothing short of amazing to be a part of God working and changing and healing and loving His body. Nothing compares. We are still hoping and praying the Lord will open the doors for us to finish our trip and go out west this summer, so please be praying with us about that! Those of you who have been following this blog may remember how the house we are renting had some major problems with the refrigerator, so the landlord replaced it. Now it's the dishwasher (see photo below), so guess what - we'll be getting a new dishwasher probably this week! We waited a couple of weeks before calling them because we felt so badly to report another major appliance like that and we were hoping maybe it was just a fluke problem that would go away. But it is definitely a permanent problem, so we'll be thankful to get a new one. Well, it is late and this is WAY too long, so I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from this past month:
I hope everyone had a nice Christmas! My birthday is exactly 1 week before Christmas, so we celebrated that, and then had a lovely Christmas last weekend. When the kids were under 2 years old (yes, we had 4 kids under the age of 2 at one point) we took them all to Busch Gardens because they were free, but that was the last time we had been there. So we all went to Busch Gardens on Thursday, and they have a deal where you buy a 1 day ticket and it gets you back into the park for a whole year! Good thing, too, because the place was PACKED! Some rides had 2+ hours wait! With all those people there, I couldn't believe it when I recognized this lady near the Zagora Cafe'. She was the wife of the couple we stayed with when we were in Switzerland last year, can you believe it!!! They are in the USA for a couple of weeks, so we're going to try to hook up with them before they head back. She and their 3 boys were on their way out of the park, but ended up hanging out with us for about 20 minutes catching up with each other. That was SO cool! And then Friday we packed up the ole' camper and headed out of dodge up to Brooksville for the one last hurrah I referenced in my last post before we sell the camper. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous, and this place we're staying at, called Lakewood Retreat, is such a haven. Nathan and Nicole each brought a friend, so Nathan and his buddy slept in a tent next to our camper, while Nicole and her friend slept in the cab-over. There was SOOO much to do here it literally wore me out! We played tennis and putt-putt and ping pong and this cool roll the pool balls down this alley to knock 5 pool balls in the goal and air hockey and basketball and bike riding and canoeing and hiking and a human foosball game. Whew! I knew it wore me out, but I didn't feel so badly when Nathan also had to rest for a bit before celebrating the New Year. So he and I laid in the back bedroom of the camper and took turns half-sleeping and then playing Boggle on his iTouch while the others played games at the front of the camper. :-) We were too worn out to go through the trouble of a campfire, so we heated up s'mores in the microwave!! Isn't that pathetic?! ahah! But they still tasted delicious! Then around 11pm we had an extended prayer time, and finally we broke out the sparkling apple cider and toasted all around as we turned on the TV and realized we had just missed the ball dropping! :-) Tim's challenge to us all was Jesus' question from Luke 18:8 "...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" So we prayed that 2012 and would be a year of faith. May God richly bless you and your family with faith this coming year!! Happy New Year!
I don't know about you, but this year has FLOWN by!! This fall has been a little bittersweet as we remember last fall - we've stopped ourselves on various days over the past couple of months and said, "Hey, remember last year at this time we were...." Such great memories!! We've had our camper parked at a lot where this guy rents out class A RVs. We wanted easier access to it, so the Reiblings are graciously letting us park it there for the time being. The plan is to take this month to clean it up, go on one last hurrah with it for New Years, and then sell it in January. When we went to go pick it up from the RV rental place on Saturday to move it to the Reiblings, Tim had told me he had gone into one of the RVs there and suggested I go check it out. As I stepped into it I can't explain the unexpected emotions I felt - only that I walked out of there with tears in my eyes. And then I had an idea - "let's take the money we make when we sell our RV and rent this one I am stepping out of and go finish the trip out west next summer! " So I don't know if that's the Lord's will, but I would like to ask for prayers that if it is, all doors will be opened to us for it to happen! I must say, I'm still so very peaceful we are where we are. The church we are working with is experiencing such amazing healing and just God's spirit. I was journaling about it this morning and I wrote, "I feel so convinced of Your movement that we are literally along for the ride – that anything that is happening (in this church we are working with) is solely because of You and Nothing because of us – I feel so humbled and awed that You would choose to work through us like this – it staggers me. I feel so sure that if it wasn’t us, You would be using someone else to bring about this transformation..." I've said it before and I have to say it again, there is nothing like knowing You're exactly where God wants you. I have absolutely no regrets - though I still sometimes have questions. I'll look back over these past 2 years and say to God, "Really? You had us sell our house and go on the road for a few months and live in our RV for a year and 6 weeks (but who's counting?), and finally rent a house? It still seems a little crazy!" But like I said, no regrets! Well, it's just my ramblings today - no pictures - sorry! I'm grateful to all of you who have encouraged and prayed for us along this journey! Hope everyone is having a great week and not getting too stressed because of Christmas! Blessings to all!
|
RSS Feed