fall retreat 2016

The first weekend of November was a beautiful one and that was good since we had the fall retreat up in the hills at Camp Judson where it gets super cold at night. 

I wasn't able to attend the first night since we didn't have any babysitter. I spent my day painting the laundry room and packing for the five of us. So much work for just one night! I had Terry send me a picture of what the retreat shirts looked like. Faith does good work.

Terry's mom came for the kids on Saturday morning and after a stop at Starbucks, I arrived at camp just about game time. There were a total of four E-Free churches in attendance - Parkview, Rimrock, Hot Springs, and Gillette. 

Game time was some sort of four way soccer. I just wandered around taking pictures. I had to laugh that Jazmin was being attacked by a middle schooler. She's done plenty to be annoying in her time too ;) Hehehe! 

Terry busting out his moves. 

Two Sarahs with Tenielle, her baby Briella, and her mom. 

Tenielle and Briella. We met Tenielle through Terry's mission trips to Mexico. She got married last year and already they have the most perfect baby girl. 

Jordyn and Debbie 

I loved this shot of Allison, a former soccer player, booting that ball out of her goal area. 

There's a lot going on in this photo but my favorite is David's expression in the top left. Ha! 

David again, this time kicking the ball all sideways. That or missing the incoming ball!

All four churches! 

Terry giving instructions. 

More instructions. 

Silly Natasha. 

Da girls. 

There's Barto, Tenielle's husband! He's from Africa - Burkina Faso. 

Next was lunch. 

Sweet sleeping Briella. 

I went on a walk with these two lovely ladies - Kristen and Alexis. 

Then we swang. 

Denise's small group. 

Aaron brought up something like 25 pizzas. Apparently he and Zeb love their pizza! 

It's become tradition to have a girl sit on the pizza boxes. There were so many this year that we needed two piles and Jazmin and Zoe squished them down. 

Barto and 'Tenielle led worship for us. They were amazing. 

Visiting at like 12:30am. 

The traditional game of Ship to Shore. 

Let by Steven as always. 

Sarah requested a picture with me. So sweet. I wasn't in any except one! 

Our group before the final session. 

After cleaning up, driving to the church, and unloading at the church, we got back in the car and drove all the way to Spearfish! Meghan was getting married and we couldn't miss it! Afterwards we drove back down the interstate to pick up the kids from the ranch. What an intense weekend. I'm getting too old for this! 

Here is the fall retreat video:

painting the laundry room

 It's been two years since we completed work on the school room. We tore out the huge fireplace, added car siding, scraped the ceiling of popcorn texture, carpeted, and painted. But while I was painting the hallway, Ezra (or maybe it was Samuel...) threw a small round Ninja Turtle beanie baby down the stairs where it landed, PLOP, in the paint tray! I quickly grabbed it and wiped off the excess paint on the laundry room wall. Ha! It wasn't a big deal because I had already scraped and painted the laundry room ceiling and planned to do the walls as soon as I was done with the school room.

The only problem with my plan was that there was wall paper attached to the lower portion of the wall next to the washer and dryer! 

I thought it was going to be extremely stuck to the wall like the wall paper border in our Gburg house had been. At that time Terry borrowed a special machine from this aunt that steam softened the glue and still it took a long time to remove. Therefore, I didn't think I was up for this job and put it on Terry's honey-do list. My honey didn't get to it for two years. :D That's okay since I felt so done with projects. But this past fall, two years later, while I was working, Terry randomly texted me this picture at work and said, "I got you some flowers." It was the wallpaper! Hilarious. And better than real flowers ;)

So while Terry was gone for the first night of the Fall Retreat, I decided I wanted to surprise him by having the laundry room paint completed when he got home later that weekend. I had Noah help me tape off the floor - that's what he's doing, not vomiting into the toilet. :D

This was how it looked towards the washing machine. See how I had the ceiling all done? 

Several hours later I was finally done!

Goodbye smiley face! 

I liked the yellow just fine but this is better. It's more grown up and looks so crisp and clean. Now we just need to remove that nasty carpet in there... 

Evie dancing

We have had fabulous fall weather, though now that November is almost over it's finally getting cold. At the beginning of the month when they were rolling brown road over the road in the field behind our house, it was mid-70s. 

Since tractors were so entertaining and it was beautiful outside, I ate lunch out on the deck and the kids had an extended recess. Evie put on a dancing show for me. The boys contributed by hitting stuff with sticks.

Look at that hair fly.

Work it girl. 

"Making the pizza..."

She reminded me of Kevin James' dancing in Hitch. Ha!

fall cleaning

On the last weekend of October after we finished Shari and Jesse's bed, we worked on cleaning up the yard. Our pines trees shed like mad so we had to mow one last time and then rake. Talk about a full trailer load.

How it had looked before:

And after the cleaning. It was all very dead and crispy so this was actually a big improvement. Makes me miss summer though :(

Before...

And after :(

We even tore out the vegetable garden except for the carrots. 

We love having fresh carrots! 

Samuel was so proud. 

We picked these in preparation for our first snow.