Fall Updates

A lot has been going on this month.  I always heard mothers speak about how crazy September was and how busy they were as school started, but I never shared in the beginning of school craziness until this year.  Now I have a better understanding...I've got you!

Due to Limaris' health, treatment, and appointments, we have had the kids staying with us for a good portion of the month.  We are SO grateful for our mini-van!  Emily got a part-time job that allows her to work from home for an organization that she loves (more to come on that soon!) and that has been a big blessing in many ways as well.

Through A LOT of answered prayers, the kids are attending the schools we were hoping for (ok our first hope was to get them into a good charter school, but that wasn't realistic for this year).  Gigi is in a headstart program M-F (it's growing on her).  Dante, Bubba, and Damian are at the schools they attended last year (2 different elementary schools close to us) and Lymary...

is enrolled in PA Cyber!

If you are not familiar with PA Cyber, they give you all the supplies you need (and more) for FREE including a computer and printer.  She has 4 virtual classes with real teachers and classmates as well as two self-paced classes.  She is loving it so far!

We decided to pursue this for her after a lot of prayer and we are excited about how it is working out.  She is in 7th grade this year and we wanted to offer her an alternative to the public middle school that she attended last year.

As crazy as this process has been we consider it a huge privilege to have the kids with us.  We would obviously choose full health for Jonerik's sister and for the kids to be with her all the time, but this is the plan God has laid out for us as of today and we choose to be joyful.  I heard a quote this past week that says:

"When you go through something hard

it will either make you better or it will make you bitter."

We are praying that God will continue to make us better through this.



Exciting News!

Great news!!!  For all of you who have been following our updates and emails you know that we have been asking the Lord for some specific things this summer.  One of our desires was to make our home more kid-friendly and a welcome space for our nieces and nephews that are here frequently.  God blessed us in a big way and we are so thankful.

Another request that we've had is to buy a minivan that would better suit our families needs.  When we were transporting 5 kids, our Ford Focus just didn't make the cut.  To safely and legally take the kids places we had to get creative.  God provided money for us to buy a minivan and this week we found one that fit our needs!  Here she is:

This is not the actual van we bought, but it is a picture of the same model.  I don't have a picture of the outside of our van yet, so this is as close as I could get.  Here is a picture of the inside:

That's right, we broke her in this past weekend when our family went to Camp Greenlane with our church for a retreat!  We had a blast all weekend out in nature with another partner church.  From what I heard there were over 100 people from Cornerstone at the retreat for at least part of the weekend!!

There were a lot of outdoor activities!

This was our cabin (there were two more sets of bunk beds)

There was lots of down time to just catch up.

And Dante's birthday was on Sunday!!  Of course we had to embarrass him with a cake an loud singing!

For more pictures go to:

Camp Greenlane