Where did November go?

To our joy, we discovered this late fall that we have a Burning Bush in the back yard!!  We have wanted one for over 30 years, as we enjoyed them so much in Colorado.  They are very prolific here too, and the Lord gave us one for our own!!

We decided to have it in our "Christmas" picture, which Danette took for us on Sunday, November 3.

 We had Kashleigh over for the afternoon and her dress matched the tree.  She is one of the "bus kids" at church.  She loves to come to our house to spend Sunday afternoons now that we have moved closer to church.  She also comes to church with us on Sunday evenings most of the time.

 In this picture, Kashleigh is standing on our porch in front of the Jane Magnolia tree.  We didn't know about Jane Magnolia trees until we moved to Kentucky.  It has beautiful pink blossoms in the spring.  We decided we wanted one as soon as we came across them in our other neighborhood.  Now the Lord has given us two of our plant heart desires!

 Kashleigh wanted to be in the family picture.

 We tried to get a family picture with Danette with us, but somehow Kashleigh pushed the wrong button and we didn't get the picture.  But Danette is in the picture below, at dinner time.  Danette and Elizabeth are on the bus every Sunday, so Kashleigh loves them.

That night, the GBSC choir came to our church for a concert.

 We enjoyed the wonderful singing and testimonies.

 November 8-10 we had the Manners, missionaries in Taiwan with us.  They took us out to eat at Cracker Barrel on Saturday evening.

 We had time to play some Chickenfoot dominoes with them.  We played downstairs because it was warmer down there.  Byron and Missy are more used to warm winters and it is hard on them to come to the US when it is cold.  They were the ones who taught us to play Chickenfoot version of dominoes.  We had a good time with them. 

On Sunday, we had Caleb, Danette, and Rebecca with us to enjoy time with the Manners.

 We sat around visiting in the living room before Missy and Byron had to leave to continue on their journey to Florida.  

The next Sunday, we had Jimmy and Danette, and Eli and Eli Albring.  Mrs. Albring's name is said like "Ellie."  We call them Eli Squared or Eli to the 2nd power.  They are newly married last summer and are in our Care and Connect group at church this quarter.  We had fun visiting and getting better acquainted with them.

Eli has been teaching at Aldersgate Christian Academy and Eli is on staff in recruitment at GBS.

The next Sunday, we had Rebecca, Jimmy, and Danette for dinner.

I taught Rebecca how to play Mancala before she had to go back to the school to work in the kitchen that evening.  Danette and Emily practiced for playing the offertory on Sunday night.  They played God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen so well.  They both "plucked" one of the verses and every child in the audience sat spellbound!

After church that night, the pastors treated the laymen with milk and homemade donuts.  They were yummy!

 Regina and Sherilyn-sweeter ladies you will never meet! 

 Darrell with Kari

 The Harms kiddos picking out their donuts.

We couldn't put the Christmas quilt on the quilt rack, since the quilt rack is installed in the laundry/sewing room.  We want it in a room where we can all see and enjoy it. So we used push pins to hang it on the wall.

After the wall is "Christmas-fied."

Natalie came to see us Nov. 26-27 before flying home to Colorado for Thanksgiving.  We loved the opportunity to see her again.

We played Mancala together, while Emily and Elizabeth did some studying.

This picture shows the other side of our wonderful basement room.

               After the girls got enough studying done, we girls played Chickenfoot with Natalie.

 Emily and Natalie wearing their school logo-wear before heading to the airport! 

 The next day was Thanksgiving.  We started out with Abi and Gaby Montero from Mexico and Tsion (pronouned C-own) from Ethiopia coming over in the morning.  They didn't get to go home from GBS over Thanksgiving break.  We called them our GBS orphans.  Tsion had never put together an interlocking puzzle before.  

 We had eleven guests for dinner.  Besides the girls, we had Jeffery General, another GBS orphan, Chris McCain, a GBS Master's student who goes to our church, Retha Elger, Marvin and Joyce Cooper, and Gary, Denise, and Wesley Mitchell.  Gary works in Maintenance and Denise runs the Commons and the Resource room at GBS.  They are wonderful friends.

 Jeffery and Wesley helped put the puzzle together.

 The GBS student table

 The "adult" table.

 We played Things, and then played Chickenfoot.

 The kids played several games, including Apples to Apples.

 Later the girls played Monopoly.  That was a totally new game for Tsion.

The girls stayed the night with us and the next day, Tsion helped me decorate the "pencil" Christmas tree and Gaby arranged the Nativity on the piano.

 We haven't had a tree for many years, so it was fun to put one up again.

The finished product

The girls went back to GBS in the afternoon, and Jason and Karen came over for the evening.  After supper, we played Things and enjoyed their company.

 During the dark part of the year, we really enjoy having lights on our house.  On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we made  a lot of pumpkin bread and then took a loaf to eight of our neighbors.  We met several we had never met before.  One of them told us that we won the "prize" for getting our house lit up first in the neighborhood.  We pray that our "lights" will shine for Jesus in this dark world we live in.