Bryn's 8th Birthday Party

Our Bryn really wanted a birthday party with friends this year! With her birthday being 3 days after Christmas it makes it really hard to have a birthday party with friends.  But this year we were determined to make it happen!  We decided on a tea party theme and had a lot of fun planning!  It was  a lot of fun celebrating Bryn with some of her friends!

 Waiting on her friends

 We love this girl!

After the tea party we had the girls get in 2 groups and each group was given a theme and dress up clothes and they were given 15 minutes to come up with a skit to perform to the rest of the group and then we gave superlatives for their performances.  It was so fun!

 Planning their skits!

 Team #1 "A Royal Event" theme

 Team #2 "Doctor/Nurse" theme

 Giving their superlatives 

 So thankful for these girls and their families!  

Mexico Anniversary Trip

Hard to believe that we've been married for 15 years!  I love Jeremy more with every year!  It's a joy to do life by his side!  So thankful for our Mexico getaway last week!  We had a great time relaxing, talking, reading, and dining at the resort!  It was a great week!  

Our room was so nice!

The view from our room (a sunrise pic by Jeremy....I was sleeping!)

Our path to the beach

We spent most of our days at the beach on these great beach beds!  So thankful for time to relax and   read! This was our view most days!!!

We enjoyed lots of dates!  It was so nice to have a break from cooking! And so fun to get dressed up and go out every night! 

One day we went bike riding and it was pretty funny!  We had to wear these reflective vests (in the day mind you) and hair nets! But it was fun and we got to hold these macaws!   

So thankful for this time and our 15 years of marriage!  The Lord continues to teach us and grow us in our oneness!  Thankful for His grace in our marriage!  I love you Jeremy and I look forward to more years of marriage with you! 

And thank you mom and dad for taking great care of our kiddos while we were gone!

Glink Mid-Year Retreat

One of our highlights of the year is heading to Gatlinburg for the Glink Mid-year Retreat.  It's always a sweet time of fellowship sharing updates with one another and speaking words of encouragement to  one another.  It's also a time to evaluate and be in the word together and just relax and have fun.  The kids enjoy it too and I'm so thankful we are able to participate with Jeremy and his ministry.  

 We all stopped at Newfound Gap on the way up to Gatlinburg.  Below are the Glink girls/roomies.  

The house was great.  We spent lots of time circled up sharing and praying.  

The house had some arcade games and the kids loved that of course!

The men

 We left for home on our anniversary.  This picture above was 12:01 am of our anniversary;)  I'm blessed to be this man's wife!

A tradition is to head for Ober Gatlinburg for some ice skating.  This may be the first year our whole family attempted ice skating (no babies or strollers this year!!!!)!!!

Amanda & Katelin

 Marie, Megan & Miguel 

 Ryan & Micah

 Emily & Jonathan

 Bryn & Abbey

 Carson loved it (so glad he didn't break any bones...he's crazy!)

 Bryn loved it!

 Josh 

 Alex & Jenna

 Lydia & I

Spencer was hilarious!  He loved it although you basically had to pull hime along on the ice. So thankful for others helping!

 Ryan & Spencer

 Lydia improved SO much!  So proud of her!

The whole group in front of the Pancake Pantry the morning we headed home.

We stopped again at Newfound Gap on our way home and there was snow everywhere!  It was beautiful!

 So good having Abbey there!