NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Jenny has been working very hard at home schooling our children.  The next few posts will relate to what has been going on in that one facet of our lives.   Below are some picture of the kids enjoying doing some coloring on a rainy day. It was such a joy to see them getting creative and enjoying themselves with some spontaneous art projects! They did some great “sculpting,” coloring, and drawing!

You can click on the links below the pictures to browse through the photos we have of this even.  You can also go to our photos page and look at some of the other pictures we have uploaded recently.

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Picture 1 of 7

Jenny and James resting on the couch

I enjoy posting at least one picture per blog post, so I put this picture of Jenny and James.  I suppose that I should have taken a picture of her looking a little more frazzled or something to go along with the theme of her needing a chance to Break Away.

Jenny is away for the weekend spending some time refreshing and getting out with other ladies.  You can checkout the Breakaway event website for more details if you would like.  She was able to ride down with a friend tonight and she will be back with us on Sunday at some point.  We are so blessed that she was able to go to this, much needed, weekend away.  I am at home holding down the fort, but we had a great evening on Friday.  We drank soda with dinner, built a fort in the boys room, read books, played Uno and watched a Tom and Jerry episode in the “Fort”.  The kids are all sleeping in and around the fort, which probably means they are not sleeping too well.

I was telling the kids the plans for the evening and Elena piped up and asked if we could have the neighbor kids over to watch a movie in our fort.  The last time Jenny went away, we had a fort, we invited over John Michael and Lucy at the Missionary Training Center.

Tomorrow afternoon we are headed over to Paul’s to spend time with him and his 4 kids while Dana goes on a shopping extravaganza.  Should be fun, although I suppose we will have two times the number of kids.

Birthday Girl

It is hard to believe that our little Elena is 6 already.  We were blessed to be joined by a number of her biological family members.  It was so good to have them with us and to celebrate Elena. We have posted some pictures of her birthday on our Photos page.  Feel free to check them out and enjoy our celebration a little bit by checking out our pics.  It is incredible how fast she is growing and how much she is learning in school.  Tonight she actually read us a story, WOW!  These days in school Jenny and the kids are charting how many of their reading flash cards they can read in a minute so they can see their progress.

Elena and Grandma Ann looking at a book

Waiting by the track for the races to begin

The kids are really enjoying being involved with the Awana program here in Wisconsin.  It is incredible how quickly they are able to memorize scripture verses.  On weeks when there is no special event Jenny and I go out on a date while the kids are at Awana Clubs.  It is a great opportunity to reconnect while the kids are at Awanas.  It was GREAT to be there for the Grand Prix night and watch the kids enjoy using their cars that we worked on together for the races.

Kids holding their grand prix cars

I think most of the kids dressed themselves this day.  James was determined he needed to wear that sweater because it matched his GREEN pants. hmmmmm….not so sure about that James.  Jada has her shirt on backwards, and they are proudly holding their grand prix cars that are in progress.

We enjoyed our christmas so much together as a family.  It was so fun to have Misty and Andy come over and spend time with our family during this christmas.  Although it actually rained on Christmas day, we did have a white Christmas because of left-over snow.  The kids have really been enjoying the snow a lot.  Hope you enjoy the pictures of our Christmas.

Picture out our front window

The kids sure have enjoyed being able to play in the snow.  It was a really fun for them to have such a nice BIG snow fall after getting here to Wisconsin.  I am not sure how much snow they ate, but they sure had a good time playing in the snow.  You can see some more pictures including a picture of the snowman we built on our photos page.

Emmanuel and I carrying the tree into the house

This year we decided to get a “real” christmas tree since it is one of our last changes before heading overseas to have a “real” tree instead of a “fake” one.  You can look on our photos page and check out some pictures.  We headed out at the end of the day and picked out our christmas tree.  We got it home without it falling off the roof of the van, which is always good.  Emmanuel is getting so big and strong and he helped me cart the tree into the house.  We actually got it setup with a few decorations before bed time for the kids that night.

It seems so hard to remember to water the tree, our fake one just doesn’t need that kind of attention.  We just need to make it until christmas with the needles still green.  Hope you enjoy the pictures on our photos page of the christmas tree extravaganza.

As we were settling into our new place here in Wisconsin, Jenny had a great idea to invite the neighbors who live on our cal du-sac for cookies, cider and coffee.  It was a great time and it was fun to meet some of our new neighbors.  Check out these wonderful cookies we had.  Jenny attended a cookie exchange and that greatly multiplied the types of cookies we had.

Don't they just look soo.... tasty

While we were in Oklahoma James started riding his bike on two wheels too.  Both James and Jada are riding without their training wheels.  Our little “babies” are growing up.

Hope you enjoy the video of James on two wheels and the other kids showing off some more advanced biking skills.

James and Jada in their New Vests ready for AWANA

The kids have been going to AWANA clubs while we are here in Oklahoma.  They are enjoying it so much.  Sometimes it feels like they ask every day if it is the night for AWANA’s to happen.  Here is a picture of James and Jada in their NEW cubbies vests on their way to AWANA clubs.  They are really doing well learning their verses.  It seems like they are often more interested in learning Emmanuel and Elena’s verses than their own.