Weekend Recap/Around the House

Friday evening, we enjoyed a super dinner out at El Mariachi's, our local Mexican Restaurant, which was made even more enjoyable by the big discount available from the Catalina coupon on the back of our Kroger receipt! (Have I told you how much I LOVE Kroger?) ;) At the restaurant was "Balloon Man Dan," who provides family entertainment there two Friday evenings per month. He was hilarious, and he made Noah this groovy "fishing pole" hat from balloons.



My parents gave us their washer and "tempermental, but functional" dryer when we left Thomasville, since Grammy was getting an "upgrade" at her house. We were very thankful for these free items, and they both served us well for a few weeks, but the dryer gave up the ghost on Saturday. Since this ISN'T Thomasville, and I can't just call up my friendly local appliance repair guy that I've known for years on a Saturday afternoon, I did my internet research and selected Nicely's repair service...the trouble is, it'll be tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon before a service technician gets over here to take a look. For that reason, my lovely bedroom has been decorated in this fashion most of the time since Saturday, as we've taken advantage of our multi-tasking super-turbo ceiling fan.



Speaking of decorating, here's a little tour of some of the stuff we've decorated with around our house. First, the flowers we planted in the front yard, which the kids have been watering very diligently:



Next, we have the fresh flowers that grace our kitchen counter, placed in a pretty coffee pot I got as a wedding gift years ago. Kroger (have I mentioned how much I love that place) has pretty fresh flowers for sale, at under $5/bunch most of the time, so I've just decided that I'd like to keep some in my kitchen as often as possible.



Also, here's the space above our pretty black kitchen cabinets. No, Chad's protein powder isn't part of the decor. :) I'm looking for something to hang right there in the middle. Any ideas?



Also, in the kitchen, we use a dry-erase board for homeschooling at the table. I don't want our kitchen to look like a classroom ALL the time, especially when we are having company, so I found some pretty fabric for TWO BUCKS at Hobby Lobby, and decided to cover the pressboard backing with some beauty! It's still a work in progress, and Chad's super-crafty, super-sweet sister cutting out some letters for me using her high-tech crafting equipment, which will read: "TASTE and see that the Lord is GOOD!"



Here is the cross that hangs over the stairs leading down from the entryway to the lower floor. At Christmas, I'll probably hang a wreath or something there, but I'm hoping that before then, Chad or the tooth fairy or some rich relative will buy me a vinyl wall decal to place underneath it which reads our family's verse: "...This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes! Psalm 118:23" Wishful thinking, but a girl can hope! :)



And now, for my favorite piece of home decor....this hand-crafted greeting sign is something God laid on my heart to make and set on this entryway shelf long before we moved up here. It says "Shalom," which is the Jewish word for "peace," but not just any old peace--peace that comes from God...wholeness, completeness...peace that passes understanding. The Scripture reference at the bottom is Isaiah 26:3, which says, "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." The "O" is made from 12 smooth stones, which I hot glued down. That's symbolic of the 12 ebenezer stones the Israelites picked up along the riverbed as the crossed into the Promised Land. As they'd get to each stone, they'd pick it up and celebrate, "Thus far, the Lord has helped me." Once they were in the Promised Land, God instructed His people to arrange the stones, so that when people saw them for generations to come, they would ask what they were for, and that would spark a conversation each time about God and His faithfulness to His people. So, we are resting in God's peace here in Kentucky, rejoicing in His faithfulness, and celebrating all the ways He's been so good to us!



Also, on Sunday, we did visit one local church. The kids had a great time in the children's ministry, and the sermon was fabulous! When the congregation was singing, though, I must admit, I cried a little bit...I missed my brothers and sisters on Celebration's worship team, and I missed Eliza Herrin's little arms wrapped around my neck and her voice belting in my ear, "I believe You will come like the RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!!" I missed Robert Lindquist tapping on my leg to show me his newest silly band. I missed Gabby's eyes staring at me, with a big quiet smile on her face, just waiting on me to smile back. I missed Trace telling me about the Seminoles. I missed Payton's squeeze hug! I missed Pastor Jimmy's voice calling, "Krismysis!" down the hallway. I missed the sound of keys jingling and hearing "So-and-so probably wishes we'd scoot on out so he can lock up," at the end. I missed hearing Ethan squeal at Grammy. I missed my Sunday morning hug from Dad. I missed getting onto MaryBeth and Emily for chatting during worship about their plans to get their daddies to take our families to lunch at Masato's. I was homesick, for sure! Celebration Church, please don't take for granted what a wonderful thing God has blessed you with! There is no substitute! God has given you a special role to fill in His Kingdom! We love you guys! Please pray for us as we seek out a church home here.

We've gotten a webcam, and we spent most of the weekend talking to family via Skype, which was lots of fun...Ethan thought it was VERY cool to see his cousins inside the computer screen. Then, on Sunday afternoon, our internet stopped working. There were issues in the lines up the street, but all is working well again today! And therefore, you've been blessed with this SUPER-LONG blog post to enjoy! Thanks for reading! Please stay in touch!

Shalom to YOUR home!
--Kristie

Our Theme Song...for this season of life...

Noah sings it all the time. :) So thankful God IS "constantly here with us!"

"CONSTANT," by Charlie Hall:

Noah with the New Haircut

A little video of Noah with his new haircut (which he can't seem to stop touching--it does feel pretty cool and "buzzy" in the back). He's missing some special folks in Thomasville this morning. :(

How to Sweep a Floor

...just in case you've ever wondered. ;)

Mail Call, Plus a Word (or a million) from Mary Beth

Around 2 this afternoon, our kids were very pleased to discover some wonderful MAIL from Georgia in our mailbox!

First, there was this sweet little sunshiny card from Chad's Aunt Cindy! (It said it was from Tony and Tyler, too, but we know who the real sweetheart is!) Then, there was a card to the kids from their sweet Aunt Rissa, which said (in case you can't read from my blurry photography), "If I could hug you every time I think about you...you'd be SMOOSHED!" Aunt Marissa, we are positive that the kids could smoosh you, too, if they could give you a hug for each thought they think about you! They LOVED the books you sent them along with the card! Thanks for that little blessing in the mail!

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Before we'd checked the mail, I'd already planned to blog a little interview with the kids about how they're settling in. Of course, my kids are NOT camera-shy, and Mary Beth gets her ability to over-share details from her mama (Chad could've blogged all this in 10 words or fewer, I'm quite sure! :) ) This video is fairly long, so move on with the rest of your day, unless you're really bored or you really want to hear Mary Beth talk about her thoughts concerning the move up here. :) Classical Conversations, my, how you've encouraged us in the giving of oral presentations! Thank you, I think! ;)

...Daddy making a LOT of money....hmmmmmmm? Really? :) ....

...And the surprise was a trip to the AMAZING main branch of the Boone County Public Library in Burlington and also a Burlington barber shop for haircuts for the guys (Noah's looks so adorable--I'll try to post pics later)...followed by a trip to Florence to buy a webcam from Best Buy (so we can Skype with our far-away friends and family once I've gotten it set up), followed by dinner at Smoky Bones BBQ! We've already enjoyed Famous Dave's twice since we've been here, so we thought we'd test out Smoky Bones and see if it's as good as the one in Valdosta. I'm not sure the two restaurants are even connected with each other, but the BBQ they served was really good!

This weekend, we hope to visit a local church. The church we're interested in has one small group ministry that meets right here in our neighborhood. We've already spoken with their leaders, and we hope to visit with them soon, too.

Our kids would REALLY like to meet some other kids to play with, so we continue to pray for God to provide them with good friends from Jesus-loving families. So far, they've only met the children from Classical Conversations on that one evening at the Lightners' house. Those kids will become great friends, I'm sure, once school starts again and we're back into our groove of weekly CC meetings. I sort of wonder if God is giving MB and Noah this season to practice getting along with and enjoying EACH OTHER a bit. They've really played well together since we've moved up here, and I'm thankful for the way each has grown to appreciate the other's company.

Well, those sweet kiddos are now in bed, so I'm going to go appreciate my husband's company for a bit.

Good night from the North Bend!

--Kristie

From the City of Roses to the City of Refuge!

And....we're blogging! We pulled out of our home of 30+ years, Thomasville (the City of Roses), on July 6, after about a week's worth of intense fun with family and precious friends; saying "see you laters" and rejoicing together with anticipation over all that will unfold as part of God's great plan. We drove to the Atlanta area that first evening and enjoyed some yummy P.F. Chang's with Chad's cousin Kristy and her family, and then we stayed the night in a hotel room before hitting the road.

On July 7th, Chad and I celebrated 10 years of marriage by driving, with two fabulous kids (and a great DVD player!) in the backseat, to our new home state of Kentucky! We enjoyed a faboulous dinner with the extended Wilkerson family at my Uncle Russ and Aunt Karen Byron's house in Lexington, then we got a good night's sleep at Red Papa and Nannie's house before meeting up with our sweet friend Jean Thomason (a.k.a. "Miss Pattycake") for a late breakfast. God was so good to have Jean in Lexington for a children's ministry expo at the same time we were coming through town! He knew that would do my heart good! After we finished eating, Chad sweetly took our wiggly boy over to Home Depot to "do guy stuff" while Mary Beth and I enjoyed chatting with "The Cake" for another hour or so. I sooooo enjoyed getting to catch up with Jean, and Mary Beth has mentioned, at least once per day, since then that she CAN'T WAIT to go to Nashville and visit Mrs. Jean (so she can introduce her to TobyMac)! :)

That afternoon (July 8, if you're trying to keep up), we drove into Hebron, KY, our new hometown. The Biblical city of Hebron was known as a city of refuge, and we have been encouraged through prophecies prior to this move that the Lord is moving us to a place of refuge--so we think the name of our new town is pretty cool! After go-go-go-go-going, we're excited about a season of rest in God's presence. We drove around to complete some "newcomer errands" (signing up for utilities, local car insurance, library cards, internet, etc.) and quickly began to miss the convenience of Thomasville's one-stop utilities/internet/sanitiation/water sign-up office.

The movers would be delivering our household good on the 11th, so we had a few nights to spend in a hotel. When stopped at the Wendy's to eat a salad and borrow a wireless signal, we learned that ALL the Hebron hotels were packed (something about a NASCAR race in the area), so we chose to go north of Cincinnati, to a hotel we'd stayed in before--Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, OH. We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the hotel, and driving back and forth to/from Florence (Hebron's version of "Tallahassee," but it's only 10 minutes away from our house!) to shop for new bedding, towels, and other stuff.

On the 11th, we met the movers shortly after 8 a.m., and they had everything unloaded from the truck by about 3 p.m. I still had MUCH unpacking to do, but I had managed to put away all the kitchen stuff, so I ran to Kroger for our first load of groceries, threw together some guac with blue corn chips and a berry-mint salad, and took a quick shower before we all piled in the car to head over one exit to Tom and Ann Lightner's house in Burlington. Ann is the director of our Classical Conversations Foundations homeschool group here in the area, and Tom directs a Classical Conversations Challenge (middle school, I think) group. They also happen to be the owners of the wonderful house God has provided for us to rent! They bought the house when it was in foreclosure, and they've pretty much redone the entire thing! It's like living in a new house! We so appreciate all the work they've done!

At the Lightner's house, we shared a yummy potluck dinner and a great time of fellowship with some new friends--the other families in our new Classical Conversations group. Mary Beth and Noah enjoyed swimming with the other CC kids in the Lightner's beautiful pool, and Chad got to know some of the dads while I was able to chat with some of the other CC tutors (I'll be tutoring the "Apprentices"--Noah's class--this year).

Since that fabulous gathering, we have pretty much been doing one of 4 things:

*Picking up more stuff for the house from Garden Ridge or Lowes in Florence,

*Enjoying grocery shopping at the A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Kroger Supermarket a mile from our house (I just THOUGHT shopping was a pleasure @ Publix in Thomasville!--Alton Brown would be so jealous!)

*Checking out area restaurants--we've sampled the goods at about 5 Mexican places so far, and we really like Famous Dave's BBQ in Florence...we've also found that their definition of "good BBQ" north of the Ohio River is pretty disturbing! ;( Kirby Horton needs to move up there--they really need help!

*Unpacking and organizing our new house.


We've taken a few breaks for walks/bike rides around the new neighborhood, and to play the Wii that Papa Ron so generously sent up with us, but otherwise, that's what we've been up to.

I'd been checking internet from my tiny cell phone screen until yesterday, when the Zoomtown guy finally got here to hook up our internet connection--YES, we MISS YOU, Rose.NET!

I knew that several of you had been waiting for a blog post, so I wanted to go ahead and get this up. Now that EVERYTHING's been put away, and we do have "real" internet on the laptops, I hope to take better pictures and give you some decent blog posts in the near future.

We ate out a good bit last week, but since about last Friday, we've eaten at home almost every meal, and I had probably not cooked more than 5 home-cooked meals in the 5 weeks leading up the move...so it's been quite a change! It's been fun, and Chad and the kids said the food actually tasted good (I really tried, Grammy!--we've had grilled chicken, spaghetti, steak, and pot roast)...BUT...Chad just texted me, and he's really in the mood for a "restaurant experience" (we can't call them "dates" anymore--we don't have babysitters up here!). So, I need to get off this computer and go get ready. Hopefully, we'll get a webcam tonight, too, so we can Skype some of you guys tomorrow.

Blessings from the North Bend!
--Kristie