May 2019

Hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa...

I caught our friend Robby talking to Caleb on the front stoop.😍

I took the kids to go see our friends the Thompsons in a play, and afterward they had an ice cream party.  There were SO MANY people though and the line was so long that I was like, "I'll get you ice cream on the way home.  Come on, let's go."  So we went to Freddy's instead!  Funny story about that night... Caleb had brought his wallet, but did not tell me he had brought it because he knew I would have said not to.  As we were leaving Freddy's, he suddenly had this look of panic on his face and was like, "Um.  I lost... something."  Me: "Caleb, what did you lose?"  Him, sheepishly: "My wallet."  Me: "How much money was in that wallet?"  Him: "$130."  Me: 😠  In the meantime, Freddy's was calling me because they found his wallet laying on the floor and it evidently had a card in it with my phone number on it.  Lucky kid, we just went to the register and asked for it.  He's a little more careful about taking a bunch of money with him now!

I just wanted to get a picture of the natural ringlets in the back of her hair...

When you're pooped, but your family wants Mexican food after church...

I took the boys to their First Tee lesson one day, and while they were at golf, I took Abby to the peach stand.  They had the most amazing strawberry ice cream I've ever tasted!  (I just had a tiny lick of hers, of course.)

CC Field Day at Cherry Park...

Everything was an "Ancient Olympics" theme.  This was "chariot races!" 😃

Trivia and discus..

Cheering on the Challenge kids as they competed in the "chariot races":

"Family dinner" after church at the Y to talk about next steps.  We felt like the Lord was saying we are done at the YMCA , possibly as soon as June. Also contemplating moving to more of a house church model.  As a confirmation, as we were cleaning up afterward, one of the staff members at the Y came in and was talking to Ben.  He mentioned in passing that they would be moving a bunch of exercise equipment into the room that we were currently using for kids.  Ben asked him when, and he said, "Looks like sometime in June."  Karl and Lindsey also announced at the beginning of May (maybe at the end of April?) that they are stepping down from leading worship.  Not sure where the Lord would be leading them, but they knew transition was coming for them as well.

Without any school to do in May, the kids played a lot of games together!

Karl gave Micah their lawn mower that wasn't working to see if he could fix it.  He took things apart, cleaned the carburetor, replaced spark plugs, and got it running fairly decently.  Then he offered to try to fix our neighbor's mower.  That one didn't go so well. 😬  But he learned a lot!  (Like: "Hire a professional!") 😂

In the long line of "Crazy Expenses that Keep Popping Up", our air conditioner was struggling and we found out we had to replace it totally.  (Other things in that list over the past few months: rebuilding the transmission in the van, several thousand dollars of work on the car AND the van in addition to the transmission, losing two renters at the end of 2018 in the same month and not being able to replace one of those for several months, doing major plumbing replacements in our rental house in Ohio (hence, why we couldn't replace a renter right away), paying for all sorts of other weird jobs at our Ohio house, weird and unusual tax situations that we never had before partially because of the sale of the Limestone house in 2018... and more!  My friend said, "Wow, you must be getting close to that adoption referral because God is seriously whittling down your finances!"  Even though Ben started working 30 hours at Carroll Financial in April (instead of 20 hours), our bank account took some major hits from the end of 2018 through 2019.  On the bright side, we got a FANTASTIC air conditioner/ furnace unit with a really good warranty and maintenance plan and we have three years to pay it off at 0% interest.  Our electric bill did so much better in the summer.  So there's the silver lining!  

They had to call for extra guys to come help get the big unit up the hill and to the back of our house...

As they worked on the ducts and vents under the crawl space of our house, we saw this huge black snake come slithering out and through our yard into the neighbor's yard.  If it wasn't for the fact that black snakes eat poisonous copperhead snakes, I would have freaked out even more than what I did.  I hate snakes!!

Abby is in heaven anytime we visit the bookstore...

How most days look.  Wrestle mania!

We went to the BMX track on the last day of May for a birthday party. This would have been great except that it was literally almost 100 degrees that day!  (It was a freak thing that it was so hot the end of May.)  

One scary-looking biker gang!

Beth started working at Sweet Frog!!!  We went on her first day to... ahem... support her. :)

Trying to salvage the neighbor's mower.  It didn't work.😆

One big perk of doing the First Tee classes is that the boys each get a free bucket of balls at the driving range in Charlotte!

Caleb was very concerned about Abby not being too loud. :)

Other happenings in the month of May: We started the process of renewing our home study (again!)  We had people over for dinner who WEREN'T part of our church but whom we just wanted to enjoy (which is so fun!), we continued to serve a meal once a month of House of Agape (dinner for homeless and impoverished), baby showers for friends, and I attended a practicum in Charlotte 3 afternoons a week for Essentials training.