Friday, July 7, 2006

July 7th 2006

July 7th, 2006

San O' Sunset.


Hi everyone!
Guess what! we have some exciting news to tell you! We are finally updating! (But you could probably tell that from the moment you recieved the update email).I've been having a hard time updating this site because I feel like everything is old news, it's already been told, blogged about and retired into our memories, only problem is most people don't read all of our individual blogs. (We don't even read all of our individual blogs.) And besides, who wants to go searching for pieces of news in 5 or 10 different places when they should be able to just come here and find it all? I'm going to try to be more faithful to our family blog and you can help keep me accountable!
A few weeks ago we kind of got onto a schedule that has been very helpful! We've made Monday a day off since Sundays are so full. We've noticed that we can usually get more work done during the rest of our week when we have at least one day of rest!
We try to get up around 5:30am and go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 on Tuesday throught Friday. It's amazing how much more time we have in our day to do things that we wanted to do, or had to do.
We finished a kitchen last week that you can see pictures of here. Since then we've started and completed another kitchen and hope to start another one in 2 weeks. We also have a few other jobs so we've been occupied with work quite a bit lately.

On Sunday the 25th, we celebrated Mom's birthday. After the morning service our family headed to Villa Colima, (the assisted living home where we do a service every Sunday). We were all shocked when we came home to see the house decked out with streamers and balloons. We tried to convince Mom that we did it for her when really we knew nothing about it! She didn't know what to think! As we walked into the house we were met by the M-V family! We'll let you guess how they got into our locked up house without a key!
On Tuesday we picked up some friends from OK. They spent almost a week with us! Yep, we had 18 people in our house with one bathroom and one shower and nobody complaining too much! (Actually, I don't remember anyone complaining at all!)
Sarah and Anna Naylor arrived at LAX on Tuesday. We had so much fun with them!!!
On Tuesday we went to the beach.

Dad, taking a left.

Chris, doing what he loves best

Charity, Kimmy, Anna and Mikki, playing in the sand.


We discovered that Sarah had never been to an amusement park, and she had just gone on her first ride the night before she came here, so we got up Wednesday morning and decided that it would be a great day for Knott's Berry Farm. The majority of our group got there in the morning when the park opened and we had a fun time which only got better when Tiffany brought the little girls and the boys joined us after work.

The first group.

Trevor and Charity enjoying the airplane ride.

Yahoo!!!!!!!!!

Supreme Scream was a definite favorite of ours. We went on it 5 or 6 times!

Sarah, Alyssa and Anna on the log ride.

This is Merrie's favorite one....to ride with Heidi and Kaylee!


I guess people are curious because we're often asked what it's like living in this little house, and if we're all ready to kill each other, and if we like it here, etc... It may be hard for some people to believe, but we don't think about it much. We're happy to have a place to live, and it doesn't seem much different from any other place we've lived in because in each new dwelling place we see that God has provided all of our needs including space to live and function! We fit in an 1,300 sq ft house, we fit in a 2,500 sq ft house, and we fit in a 900 and something sq ft house!
Tiffany has been keeping busy teaching piano lessons and English lessons. She accepted a part time job teaching English for a Summer school at a nearby church and she seems to be enjoying it a lot. She's also keeping the younger kids busy with school assignments, and piano lessons.
Chris is excited to have some opportunities to practice photography. Somebody recently asked him to take product pictures for him. He's been trying a little of everything with his camera. He's been taking pictures of kitchens for our cabinet manufacturer, and earned a car for that work.
Since we returned from OK our bus hasn't gone anywhwere except for when we limped it over the hill to the church parking lot. I say "limped" because there wasn't enough, if any, air in the suspension so the bus was riding really low, and the speedometer wasn't budging which was interesting... but anyways, Justin has been working diligently towards finding the little problems and big ones and fixing them. Just the other day they took it for a test drive and came back very triumphant. It seems that Justin has been making some good headway which is happy news to us because we're really hoping to take a trip up to OR next week for a family camp. But even if we don't make it to OR it's nice to have an operable bus again!
We could update you on everyone personally but that might take awhile and this update has already been 8 days in the making!
I hope that this update finds you and yours well! We would love to hear from you! (I bet you already know that though because we say it every time!)
Talk to you all later,Mandy and Merrie for the family
P.S. Because of our new schedule I don't think we'll be having beach nights on Thursdays anymore. We'll probably change them to Tuesdays, but this week we're having it on Monday,(today). The best way to find out for sure is to drop us a line.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." 1Corinthians 2:9

No comments: