Oh - wait, I know why!! Because October is the Birthday Marathon month, the beginning of swim meets, hockey tournaments and the final planning moments for the Heart for the Fatherless Orphan Conference in November!! And - Taylor came home to visit too!
So... here's a quick update:
We survived all of the birthdays...whew!
On top of all the other usual stuff that's going on, Lance and Brayden had an acting role in "The Judgement House" at Richland Baptist. They had a great time and did a great job! It is basically a story line that explores the scenarios of someone that has accepted Jesus and someone that hasn't. I think that there was a few hundred people that accepted Jesus and several also rededicated their life too! So cool!! Super proud of them :)
Taylor's hockey season is in full swing. My parents flew out to Cleveland to visit him the middle of October and then he came home to visit a few weekends ago. He's seems to really like his team and his role on it - they recently named him Asst. Captain. We loved having him home - even though it was a short time, we had a great time! We had family pictures taken by our friend Brent Rust - it was super fun:) He had some good friends stop by - we miss them too...And we celebrated Thanksgiving early with him. I think while he was at home he realized how much he missed his little bro & sisters. As a result, he recently moved to a home that is loud like ours and believe it or not dogs that look just like our little "oreo"! It was wonderful for him to start the year out in the home that he did - they took
very good care of him and
spoiled him to death but Taylor just wasn't used to being an only child. God was definately answering prayers last week - the new school allowed him to transfer right away and gave him the same early schedule as his new billet brother that plays on his team.
The weekend before Taylor came home, we had our 3rd Annual Heart for the Fatherless Orphan Conference. This was a "mini-conference". The idea was to be more laid back - not have preregistration, a formal notebook for the conference for each attendee and attendees could just go where they wanted to, etc... I loved it! It was less planning and less stressful for me and we had a great turnout! The only downfall was not being able to follow up with people with contact information. Oh well. I can't wait to see how God will be working in the hearts of the people that came!
Now we are praying about leading a group to Jamaica next summer to work with an organization called
Embracing Orphans. We are going to have our first information meeting Dec.1st - I'm looking forward to seeing who God is calling for this trip:)
Here are a couple of my favorite family pics:
