One Sunday we had three ladies from our church over for dinner. Bonnie Orcutt, Rachel Hill, and Jenny Paytes. We are having fun getting acquainted with everybody at church!
Elizabeth invited her Tuesday night Missions class over for supper right before Thanksgiving. Some in the class had already gone home for Thanksgiving break, but we were happy to have nine of the students plus Dr. Glick for the evening.
Esther and Dan Mendez (Rowen's sister and husband) stayed with us both coming and going from Greeley to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving with their daughter's family.
It was great to get to visit with them on their journey!
We had planned for eight guests for Thanksgiving Day, but seven ended up being sick and not coming. We started a puzzle of Rocky Mountain National Park, which we bought on our last mountain outing July 4 up on Trail Ridge Gift Shop. It was the hardest puzzle we have ever done.
Karen ended up being our only guest, so she got all the cranberry salad she wanted! :)
We had fun playing Taboo
when we took a break from the very hard puzzle.
Emily did a family photo shoot for a special family after church one Sunday. Tim and Pam Wilson and their adorable children.
Karen took this picture of our family the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
We completed painting our family room in two shades of gray before Thanksgiving, and early December we painted the kitchen and downstairs stairway. They are the same color as the living room Natural Linen.
On December 6, we finally got the puzzle completed. We have glued it together so we never have to do it again!
Our friend, Kimberly Dickinson played her violin at Emily's Chick-fil-A restaurant two different evenings. She was raising money for the school in Colombia, S.A. where her family were missionaries.
Emily got to give Kimberly a behind the scenes tour of her workplace!
Our church does a Christmas outreach called Christmas Drive Through. It is two evenings long. Our youth pastor's wife wrote a story of Christmas through the eyes of Mary and recorded the story and songs on a CD, which were duplicated and given to each vehicle to use as they drove through. Each track told a different part of the story. Rowen was part of the traffic control crew. The vehicles were directed to park at different stations and listen to the appropriate CD track as the actors acted out the story.
Emily is in the middle of the picture below. She is in the scene with Old Mary telling the young girls about Jesus' life, death on the cross, and resurrection, and encouraging them to follow God's plans for their lives.
Before the people in the cars started the story, they were given cookies and hot cocoa that they could enjoy while they listened. I was one of the hot cocoa persons who filled many cups and had them ready for the ones who served each vehicle.
Our next Christmas event was the choir and play performance at God's Bible School and College. Elizabeth was in the Christmas choir. We went to the performance as well as watched it online. It was given three times in one weekend of December.
Emily provided tickets for some of her co-workers. Below is her manager and team lead and another GBS student who works at Chick-fil-A.
Picture of Emily and Elizabeth after the performance.
Emily and the Chick-fil-A employees who were there that night.
Because Randy and Joy were not able to come to Kentucky for Christmas, Rowen, Janet and Emily made the trip to Mitchell, South Dakota to see them and have some Christmas with them. On our way, we went to an Amish community in Iowa to buy wheat flour. We enjoyed seeing the horses and buggies and sharing the road with them.
The grandkids were happy to see us and catch up on reading and playing games together.
We had an enjoyable time together with them.
We were so glad Jewelyn and Jonathan remembered us well and there was no strangeness.
Jewelyn loves to do dishes. She is quite a helper girl!
Just a picture to represent the MANY games we played...
How about another? This is the Interstate Game we are play-testing for our friend Mathew Hinkle.
And another...Quil and Micah have gotten pretty good at playing Chess. They even have a 4-way Chess game that Rowen played with Randy, Quil, and Micah.
Jonathan loves his baby brother!
Aunt Emily loved getting to be with her niece and nephews again!
We have really missed them!
Mishael was trying to say something to Grandma.
We got to spend some time with Joanna too. That was special!
We went caroling with their church people at a nursing home, then we opened some presents.
Jonathan always had a pile of books for someone to read to him, and Jewelyn followed his example to choose books to read.
Emily and Mishael
Randy and Joy had Paul and Sarah Koerner and their family over for a meal so we could visit. It had been 6 years since I had seen Paul and Sarah, and longer for Rowen and Emily.
Randy and Joy dedicated Mishael to the Lord in the Wednesday evening service.
We got the boys these matching shirts for Christmas, and they kind of matched the shirt Rowen was wearing.
Jewelyn is also wearing the top we gave her.
We found out it is a long way to SD from KY! And it was soooooo very cold there that week!
On our way home, we stopped for a late lunch at Panera Bread and visited with our friend Lori Owens in Davenport, Iowa. It was so nice to see her again!
Right after we got back from our trip, God's Bible School had an Art and Music night at the Flexon Library that we went to. There were different artists displaying their masterpieces, cookies, coffee, and hot chocolate, and musicians playing.
This is a cute picture of the school photographer, Rachel Pohl.
Looking down from the second floor to the art displays below.
After getting the kitchen painted, we got the plates up on the kitchen walls. Now it seems more like home.
We bought three plates on Ebay. We couldn't find a blue one for Kentucky, but we got one with a cardinal on it because we have cardinals in our yard everyday. We also got Ohio, as we are so close and that's where GBS is, and Tennessee, since my sister Sherry lives there now.
On December 18, the junior church had a Christmas program and the kids all did so well. Elizabeth helps with Junior Church every Sunday and rides the bus to pick kids up and take them home.
Well, that catches us up to December 18. Next post, Christmas in Kentucky...
