Clay Lady

On Monday (Mary Carter's Birthday) we had a field trip to see the Clay Lady!
It was so much fun!! All the kids got to make and glaze their own plate.. she
even let the moms do it too! The last people at the painting stations were all
of the moms.. we could not get our plates just right...haha. After the kids finished
their plates, she sat at the wheel and made a beautiful vase ( i did not see this as
I was still at the painting station perfecting my plate) Then she let each child
come up and feel the vase as she spun it around.. They all looked amazed as the
touched the spinning vase!
We had a great time and I look forward to seeing how our plates turned out :)

Finally a few pics of MC

As promised... a few pics of Mary Carter!

Yay!!! New camera!

I got my new camera a couple of days ago and I am in LOVE!
It is such a great camera!!! It does not have any of the preset icons
ie.. portrait, landscape, sports That will require me to do a little
or a whole lot of studying to get up to speed with doing all of
the settings by myself! So far I love it! I also am doing a trial of
Adobe Lightroom.. wow how did i ever take a picture without it?
It is so fun to play around with all of the pics.. sam thinks i am crazy!
But what is new :)
Here are a couple of pics of the kids from the last couple of days..(Hopefully
I will get a shot of MC tomorrow!

Wow..

Just saw this on one of my friends blogs and it was really powerful! Take a look!

more snow pics

First Snow of 2011

We had our first snow of 2011 Sunday night! We were ready!! I had hot chocolate, smores galore, chicken soup, jambalya, quiche and much more!! We woke up Monday morning and were not dissappointed! We had gotten about 4 inches thru the night! Charlie did not know what to think!!! He had so much fun playing with the girls in the snow! ( he did not last long)
After a day of fun in the snow and watching movies, we has some friends over to watch the BCS Championship game! It
was a good day!

UGANDA

I finally feel as this week life is starting to get back to some since of normality! It has been a bit of a rollercoaster since
mid November! As we made preparations throughout November to leave on our trip Dec 6th.. I really did not know what to expect! We left Dec. 6th and headed to Chicago... had a brief layover and then it was on to Brussels.. it was on overnight flight but I definitely did not get good sleep! I not a huge fan of flying (especially over water for hours!) But all went well and it was a pretty smooth flight! Got to Brussels and had another brief layover (enough to grab a starbucks and a croissant) and then on to Entebbe! The flight was packed.. and there were SO many kids! It was only after takeoff did we wonder why it kept saying our destination was Kigali on the inflight movie screen! Well someone forgot to mention to us that we had a stopover in Rwanda! So after a long flight.. we made it to Kigali.. had to wait on the plane about an hour to refuel and clean and then we were on our way to Entebbe. As the flight was filling with the new passengers a friendly american face sat next to me.. She ended up knowing Gwen and Suzanne from some of the Orphan Summits that she had been to! She was really great and enjoyed talking to
her and hearing about the ministry she worked for( will post it later for you to check out).
We finally landed in Entebbe. I really did not know what to expect and could NOT believe that I was half way around the world! We got to the luggage carousel and were waiting for our luggage when the electricity went out! Complete darkness.. this would be the one time were everyone except Kim and Emma were seperated! Drew looked a little panicked looking for Emma and Tara when the lights came on.)only took about 30 seconds) After we got our luggage we headed out the door.. We were lucky and got out before they started scanning all of the luggage one piece at a time on ONE scanner! Wow... we heard the line was forever long!! So we made it to the next room where I have never seen so many faces looking in windows and standing waiting with signs for people.. we found our sign from the Gately Inn and headed out to the car.. with 3 carts of luggage! Ended up taking two cars because we could not get everything to fit in and on top of the land cruiser.. (most of the luggage was just thrown on top of the car with no straps to hold it down) about two minutes from leaving the airport the bottom fell out of the sky.. keep in mind everything except our backpacks were on top.. so we stopped under a gas station to wait out the rain.. Drew went on to the Inn and they sent the car back for us!
Got the The Gately and the Inn was great!! Went straight to the room and got ready for bed! Was able to get online for a few minutes and sent an email to Sam to let him know we made it! Really long two days but did not feel like it at all.. gotta love adrenaline! Was so excited to head to Kampala to meet Patrick and Nicholas! They would have court the next day at 2 and then we would head to Jinja!

BEACH!!!!

We had such a wonderful time at the beach this summer!! It was a great time spent with family!!
The girls loved the beach this time... and charlie is warming up to it all!
So blessed to have such a wonderful family!

more beach....

Beach