Middle School Awake Weekend

We hosted a group of middle school girls for a discipleship weekend called Awake. We had a super sweet group of 8 girls.  They spent the night here and we drove them around to their various events.

We had a funny story about our transportation for the weekend. We originally had 10 girls in our group plus their leader that we needed to transport.  We were set up to drive one of the church vans for the weekend and Marc was super excited about it. Unfortunately it wouldn't shift into drive so we ended up scrambling for a way to get these girls around town. One of the youth ministers and his wife brought kids to our house, and then Marc arranged to get his parent's van.  He strung up some Christmas lights and this became quite the swagger wagon.  The jokes that came out of this ride were hilarious. They laughed at the sound of the horn, and the fact that it was the Sport Edition among many things. It was affectionately named "The Green Machine."

The girls had a great time we loved opening our home to them.  They slept in the basement, although I'm not sure how much sleep they actually got.  Sunday afternoon Kayla crashed and took a nap for a couple of hours.  That never happens so I know she was exhausted!

Pumpkin Patch

Every year it seems we are just squeezing in a visit to the pumpkin patch.

Corn maze fun.

Until you hit another dead end.

The girls love going to this little family owned farm down the street from our house, and I love that it doesn't take an entire afternoon from our already busy fall.  I love the fall season, and I wish we weren't so busy, but I cherish every moment we have as a family.

Sleeping

I just love going in each night after the girls have gone to sleep.  My night routine doesn't feel complete unless I sneak in and kiss each of my sleeping babies. These days Kayla is often still awake, Macy is sometimes awake and sometimes not, but Brooke is always out cold. That's probably why I have many more pictures of her sleeping than the others.

So tired she couldn't even put her book on the nightstand.

She came into our room early one morning.  Once Marc got up he couldn't have come back even if he wanted to.

Every so often we will wake up in the morning to see that this one has moved to the couch in the middle of the night.

Or sometimes she comes to the chair in our room to finish sleeping the night away.

A Beautiful Fall Day

Last Friday we enjoyed a visit to Gibbs Gardens.  This was our second visit and the girls, my mom, and I enjoyed walking around and taking in the ever-changing beauty here.