Fun and busy days

I'm back! Did anybody miss me? Actually I didn't go anywhere, I just didn't blog for a few days because we had a lot going on!

 This weekend we had a retreat at our church. We invited people from all over to come and we have fun hosting them in our homes. Besides getting ready for company we also all work together to prepare the meals, practice music and a skit, get the church building ready, plan kids classes and so forth. It is a busy time of year for the church family but we very much enjoy getting to spend time with Christians from other places.

The guest speaker this year was our friend Jason Corder from Louisiana (well he lives there now but he and his wife used to live in our town). We were privileged to have Jason and Michelle and their two girls stay with us and they even came early for the retreat (arriving on Tuesday- the retreat started on Friday) so we had extra time with them. That has been the tradition for many years and we always enjoy the time we have with them. Jason and Michelle were great friends from our college years (and actually I went to bible camp with both of them in Iowa as well). When they arrived on Tuesday night they brought a surprise with them. Another college friend, Rosella, who also lives in Louisiana got to come along as well and they kept her coming a secret. I was quite delighted to get to spend time with Rosella, we hadn't seen each other for about 7 years.



My friend Rosella -enjoying the snow.



God blessed us with some beautiful weather last week. We had a blast having a snowball fight and making a snowman. We don't have sticky snow that often, so we made good use of it.

The retreat went very well. We had a very nice group of people that came (including my good friend Carrie and her kids who joined us at our house, so we had a nice houseful- I love that!) and we had wonderful times of worship, fellowship and learning. Jason did a great job preaching out of the book of Acts. He focused on things that the early church did that we can do now too. About how we can be useful to God. I really enjoyed his sermons on prayer and being an encourager like Barnabas.

The Retreat ended Sunday and our company all left. The house always feels a bit empty afterwards and we feel a bit lot tired!



Games were a fun addition to the retreat during the free time.



We played games at home too.



We also put together a world puzzle. We are totally up on our geography now. :-)



I started this post yesterday but then didn't get it finished. Jonathan got sick yesterday and now the other 3 kids don't feel so great. There was sickness going around so it isn't a shock that we caught it. Thankfully Jonathan is feeling good again already today and Mara isn't too bad so we went to our Homeschool Get-together (I would have stayed home if I weren't the one leading it and unlocking the building) and the younger two got to hang out at my parents. We did have fun at our homeschool get-together- doing science experiments. I will have to blog about all the cool projects people brought later.