The Beach House

Since we have lived in Maryland, we have had the opportunity to occasionally go and stay at a beach house that belongs to some of Luke's family. We love going there! The kids beg and beg to go to the beach house. Sometimes I think that they think we have different places where we live. They will ask me on random occasions,"Where are we going Mommy? To the hotel? To Grandma's house? To the beach house?" Or..."Mommy, I wanna go to the (insert hotel, Grandma's house, or beach house)." And I must confess, we share their excitement! :)

So sweet, she wanted to bring with her the banner she had made as a decoration for the Hoedown focus party just the day before. 

And right after I took this picture, as we were heading in the front door, my arms were so full of bags, and Owen in the car seat over my arm. As I'm struggling through, Casey, who is already inside the front door and is watching me, sticks out his hand in a gesture of, "here, let me help you." My heart absolutely melted. It's a beautiful thing to me when a small child recognizes someone in need of help, and offers to help them. There wasn't much Casey could do, but he wanted to try! 

I think they look so much alike in this picture!

Hailey had such fun picking up sea shells

Casey didn't like the noise of the waves.

He preferred to look at the water from a distance.

They found this sand castle and and fun poking at it, and inspecting it.

Hailey got such a thrill out of running from room to room and finally claimed this one. Unfortunately, I couldn't let her sleep in there by herself. I think she liked it because it was the room with the starfish decor.

I love catching them in moments of sibling sweetness :)

Enjoying a much deserved rest and drink. 

The perfect place for the team to decompress.

When you don't have a lot of toys, you line up multiple cups of water. And it occupied them for a long time! We desperately need to simplify at home!

Our quiet, gentle, pensive daughter.

Family beach walk.

Helping Casey brave the water. 

Pure bliss.

Country Hoedown

I know this is a much belated post, but I don't care :) I so badly want to remember how sweet the kids are at events like these. And this one was especially bittersweet. Since we were leaving staff officially, this was going to be Luke and my last focus event that we would host as missionaries.  It was the end of the year focus part, the theme was a country hoedown, and we had the perfect set up. 

All year the team had referred to our house as 'the ranch'

All Hailey wanted was those dorritos. As soon as she saw them, she put herself in charge of them. She made sure they made it safely on the food table.

Casey was feeling a little timid and shy, I think it was the darkness because he loves people and typically is so social. But Hailey was right there putting her arm around him and telling him, "don't worry Casey, I'm right here, I got you."

Already being such a gentleman

Stomping around in the hay that was scattered all over the back portion of our driveway. It makes me smile how it looks like they are line dancing.

Never far from his pals, Ellen and Jenna

Loving those chips!

The party was a huge success. There were over 100 students that came and many were saying it was the best party they had ever been to. Not pictured is the bonfire, mechanical bull, and stage where instructions for the line dances were given!

Last song of the night, the focus girls singing "Cowboy Take me Away" by the Dixie Chicks. I joined them right after this photo. 

Where I've been

Well, hello! It's been a while! 6 months have flown by and so much has happened. I think I am ready, and able, to start blogging again. I have missed it, because I do like documenting things for the sake of remembering them, but then again I haven't missed it because I'm sanguine. I love people and conversing with them. It's so much easier for me to share my life with people in front of me and share my heart with them. It's actually not as easy for me to do here. But I'm terrible at writing things down and I never have time to scrapbook so this is still a way for me to "store" it all. And, let me just throw in that life is short. And if anything were to ever happen to me, I want my children to be able to see and read this and know how much I cherished every day with them.

So in the next few weeks, expect a major dump of pictures and stories from the wonderful summer we had. And then I hope to blog about life as it currently happens - in all of it's crazy, wonderful, messy chaos. 

But here is a quick update! During my absence from the blog...

- We retired from FOCUS. This was a huge deal, and although we had a great deal of peace leaving staff, it was still difficult. FOCUS changed us, forever, for the better.

-Luke took a new job as Director of Development for Mount St. Mary's Seminary. Also a huge deal, the way it all came about was truly incredible, and was so clear to us this was God's plan.

-Since for the past 3 years, Luke has been the FOCUS team director at Mount St. Mary's University, we got to stay in our house, making this the first summer that we DID NOT MOVE since we have been married, and since 2006 for Luke.  We are pros at moving, and to NOT move felt weird, but SO good!

-I had to wean Owen from nursing at 9 months old and learn how to make rice milk formula. Much much more on all that later though.


So hold me to this ok? I hope to blog at least three times a week. I think that is manageable for this mama :)

Peace,
Megan

This week's recap

So on Sunday, I got mastitis. Again. Which I think means (according to what I've read) that the infection didn't really clear up completely from the first time, which was around Christmas. And yes, I did finish my whole antibiotic. Still, it came back on Sunday and despite my best efforts I wasn't able to pick up the prescription my doc called in for me till Monday morning. We don't have any 24 hour pharmacies very close to us. So that was fun to wait for. Doing much much better now.

Owen rolled over! Stomach to back, which I think is easier than back to stomach but still! He's only 3 and a half months old. And he is close to doing back to stomach. He gets so far on his side, I'm sure it won't be too much longer for that one too. We weighed him yesterday and he's 16lbs. Yup.

Luke came home today and told me that the atheist guy he has been getting to know for the last three years (and debating with over lunch ever now and then) is joining RCIA. So awesome and exciting.

Also incredibly exciting news is that for this semester Luke's lacrosse bible study is going to discuss theology of the body. They are using Dr. Ted Shri's book, "Men, Women and the Mystery of Love." Tonight while I was making dinner I was helping him come up with some good discussion questions to kind of get them thinking and start the conversation before diving into the book. Some of them were: how many of you think you will get married one day? what are some qualities you look for in a wife? what is love? what were you made for?

I'm just waiting for him to come home and tell me how it went!

Yay! I just heard the garage door! Later! :)

Christmas Party Round 2

Friday the 13th we attended the all staff Christmas party the university hosts. It is a highly attended, very popular event and a ton of fun. I started asking around for a babysitter 2 weeks ahead of time because all my usual girls who are students would already be gone, headed home by then. And with everyone wanting to go, I knew the demand for local babysitters would be high! Luckily, my gal was available and I booked her before anyone else :) 

I was the lucky one with two handsome dates :)

It's such a fun time because we get to hang out with all the couples we are friends with. I see my mom friends often during the week, at playgroup and storytime at the library, and Luke will often run into their husbands at work. So for all of us to hang out together is really nice. 

My favorite part of the evening was dancing some salsa with Luke. There is an Argentinian couple who live here and the wife, Cynthia, teaches Spanish and her husband just got a new job teaching at CUA in DC. Anyway, they were complaining how the music was so bad and we agreed it wasn't great, and they just wanted them to play some salsa or merengue. With Luke's help, they looked up a song on Spotify on his phone and asked the DJ to play it. When it came on, they were going to be the only one's on the dance floor. So I grabbed Luke and said, "let's go!" He looked at me like, "we're going to salsa with them?!" I think I surprised him:) It came back to me and I knew what I was doing! He is a natural dancer and caught on in like 1 minute and I'd say we did ok! After it ended, Cynthia thanked me for joining them out there. I would do it again! Maybe we'll practice before next year :)

End of the year Off Site.

At the end of each semester the team goes does an off site meeting. They usually try to go to some type of relaxing retreat type place and take a few days to just rest, decompress, spend time together in fellowship and prayer and have their end of the semester strategic meeting, and one on one evaluations with Luke. If the place is able to accommodate us, the kids and I get to come along too! This past week we spent three days at one of our student's parent's awesome cabin in Virginia. Our family stayed in the finished suite above the garage and the rest of the team staying in the main house. It was really big and super cozy. And had lots of wildlife decor, haha. There was a pool table, full bar, several massive flat screen tv's....I mean it doesn't get much better than watching Thomas the Train on a 60 inch TV when your two years old.

She looked so grown up, eating her cereal with an adult size bowl and spoon on this big ol bar stool.

caught in the act of giggling :)

 I had made cut out sugar cookies with the kids at home the day before to bring with us and frost with the team. I brought everything with me to make the frosting there and I know I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record but I just can't get over what a difference a year makes. Last year they couldn't figure out how to frost really, this year they were all about it, and did a great job.

The last day we were there, before driving back to Maryland, we all stopped at a vineyard to do some wine tasting. It was my first time, (I'm so embarrassed to admit that. How can I be 29 and just went on first wine tasting?? Pathetic.) The wine was delicious and we ending up buying a bottle and ordering a cheese platter and relaxed by this huge fireplace that had a wonderful fire going.

All I can say is, sometimes I'm so thankful for smart phones and Netflix. Otherwise we would have left with the wine bottle and not stuck around! So glad we did :)

Focus Christmas Party

This year we hosted the student leader Christmas party at our house. I LOVE hosting it. We put up some decorations a little early to make it more festive. We hosted it our first year here at our old house and it was fun but everyone felt a little stiff. Last year our place was too small so I think they did it on campus and the turn out was terrible. I was super happy to be having it at our place again. 25 out of our 30 student leaders came. And the atmosphere was so fun. Christmas music was playing, our first snow was falling outside (perfect, big, soft, fluffy snow), and there was hot chocolate, coffee cake, french toast. And everyone was so relaxed and having a good time. It felt like one big family! They have all gotten so close! I noticed a huge difference this year. There was so much unity and camaraderie between all of them. They did a secret santa gift exchange, with a $5 limit and you could tell people put thought into their gifts! Some of them would even say, "I know you really like these" as they were handing it to them. These students do not necessarily mix in the same crowds on campus either. But you can tell they have gotten to know one another, care for each other, and have a single mission to reach out to their peers on this campus. It was so exciting to see.

I love Casey in this picture; sprawled out in the middle of everyone playing with his train.

Everyone was holding Owen, which I didn't mind at all, but I had them all using hand sanitizer first. Yep, I'm "that" mom. I have a huge bottle of it that sits in our entry way. These kids are coming from dorms that I'm sure are just crawling with germs. I was not ashamed to protect my 2 month old!

 Hailey, our observer, was so sweet and pulled up a chair for herself and sat on the outskirts of everyone. She eventually joined in when Casey was playing London Bridges with some students. Casey was such a ham and running under the "bridge" (two students with their arms out in front of them) and then high fiving everyone in sight.

our wonderful student leaders.

Luke's discipleship chain. From L-R: Zac, John Paul, Luke, Brian and Nate. 

 

Later that day, Hailey and Casey went out to play in the snow. It was so neat to see the difference in Hailey this year. Way more confident and excited! Every day since she has asked to go out and play in the snow. I love it. I send them out in the fenced in back yard and they play for about 20 minutes.

First steps out in the snow and she's strutting across our front yard like she's been waiting to do this.

Looking thug-like. His glove had a hole and his poor finger was sticking out, getting cold :(

Can you believe it's only 9 days till Christmas? I can not!!