Christmas letter 2008

Greetings of love at a very special time of year.

We are grateful to the Lord for a great year. He has blessed us in many ways.

Maynard and I have had several church-related trips this year. We were privileged to attend the BMA Minsters’ Enrichment weekend in February in Sarasota, Florida.

We flew from Baltimore to Tampa and spent the nights at Maynard’s Uncle Floyd’s place in Sarasota. We also got to see some of the other aunts and uncles who live there.

That was my first time that far south. It was neat to see the palm trees and other tropical plants and to enjoy warm weather while it was cold back home.

In August we went to the BMA summer convention in Due West, South Carolina. It was a privilege to stop in at Leon and Ida’s on the way down and to spend a night there.

In June, Maynard and I took Marlene to JFK airport in New York, and she flew from there to Kunming, China. She was able to get into language school almost right away and also found a nice place to live with two Chinese young women. We are hoping that we can go visit her this next summer.

I’ve been working in our school as supervisor this year again. It has been going quite well. Maynard has to take more responsibility with the chickens.

In April I went along as a sponsor to Student Convention. That was a new experience for me. I signed up to be a judge for sewing projects. It was an interesting week. We had five students who went.

This year we have a total of 11 students: they range in age from 9 - 18. We have three who are trying to finish up this year. Also, Christy is homeschooling Tasha for first-grade, and brings her to school on the days that she monitors.

We were very glad to have Angela around for the first couple months of school. She helped two days at school and the rest of the time was with Maynard’s parents.

We are looking forward to Mark coming in from Colorado for a week. We did have the privilege of having him home in May for several days as he came for a wedding. We enjoyed our time together as a family.

Phil & Holly and the children will be in Illinois with Holly’s family for about a week, coming back on the 26th. So we plan to have our family get-together on Saturday, the 27th.

Renee and Ryan are both growing up so fast. Ryan was a year old in July and Renee 3 in Aug.

Another Post

It has been a looooong time since I've posted. A lot has happened between then and now. We already have seven weeks behind us in the new school year. Time just keeps going.

We have 11 students at the present - one new high schooler started this fall. I am very grateful for the good help I have in the school - Angela, Judi, and Carol.

In September we had a field trip to the one room schoolhouse in Snow Hill. That was interesting.

Then on October 3, some of us staff went to ACE Educators' Convention at Timonium, MD. That was a good day.

I don't have pictures from school, but I do have pictures of Renee and Ryan from about 2 weeks ago on a Saturday, when Phil & Holly went out for the evening.

Can you find Renee in this picture? This is one of the things she likes to do when she comes to Bama's (Gma's)  house.

Until next time...

continued

Ok, Xanga didn't let me continue loading pics. So here goes. They are on now.

After Maynard measured and some calls to Krista at work about what was expected and where to find the key to this minivan, we went to Home Depot for materials. We didn't know if the sheets of plywood would fit in, but they did, but nowhere for Maynard to sit. But we got back safe and sound. Maynard had to sit right down in the middle kind of on the end of the boards.

We put in a long day on Wednesday. Maynard had me helping right along about all day. We ran pieces through the table saw, which Maynard had brought along and set up outside the basement door. Then we started putting panels together in the basement.  We had to glue and tack the triangle shaped pieces on a piece of luaun.

On Thursday we (Gretna, Maynard, & I) took the Metro from Silver Spring to Union Station in DC. There we got a tourmobile bus and rode around town and got off at the places we had decided to go to. The first stop we made was at the Holocaust museum. That was a very sad place.

It was 1:00 by the time we got out of there and we had brought our lunch with us. So we sat at the bus stop and ate that while waiting for the next tourmobile.

After that we stopped at the Lincoln Memorial.

This picture of us is taken on the steps there.

From there we went to the White House visitors center. Then on to the mall area where we visited the new American Indian museum. We got out of there about 5:30, which was closing time for most of those museums. The air & space museum was going to be open until 7:30, so we went in there to see which Imax film was showing. Just as we got in the building, the clouds let loose with a downpour. Since we decided not to take in the Imax, and we were hungry, we looked around until the sun came back out and went out to a bench and ate our supper. Here we were sitting and the Washington monument is off in the distance, but I thought the sun behind the cloud was neat.

We took the metro from the Smithsonian area back to Silver Spring and got there about 9:00 that evening. It was a full day.

The next morning we were up and at work fairly early. Here is Gretna doing the staining on the panels. She was our gopher - and would run to Home Depot several times for Maynard.

This is where we did our cutting.

Friday evening about 8:30, Chris came and said that he was going to order in Chinese food. So these are the dishes that they ordered. Just to let you know, our evening meals tended to get later each night.

Here are Krista and Chris and of course, Maynard.

That night we worked until 12:30. It was after supper before Maynard started installing any of the panels. Then Saturday morning he was up early and finished the rest. Actually we only did six of the seven, because we didn't have time. The one going down the stairway to the basement was on an angle and will be more difficult, so he will do that here at home and send it back with Gretna and her husband the next time they go to visit.

Here are the finished panels. They will still need to be varnished. But Gretna will do that also. You should be able to count six of them here.

Well, so much for our week. It was very different, but interesting.

Our Working Vacation

Maynard and I had an interesting week. On Tuesday we went with Gretna, one of Maynard's clients from Marion Station. She has a daughter and son-in-law in Silver Spring, MD who have lived in this house three years and decided it is time to do something about this metal stair railing. They were thinking to take it all out and get regular stair railings. But then they called in an interior decorator who said that they should cover the mesh with oak panels. So that's what we did. As you'll see on the finished pic - it got quite involved.

First Maynard had to measure each panel - there were 7 total and we had to make one for each side.

Pics from sewing

Yesterday at sewing some of the girls helped tie one comforter. Here are Jenna and Tasha. Jalissa also helped.

Jenna reading to Tasha and Renee.

We were working on this Irish Chain quilt for Jalissa. Gma H had made quilts for most of her grandchildren, but wasn't able to quilt at home any more. So this was a donated top which is going to be for Jalissa.

Left to right: Christy, Jane, Sara, Jalissa, Nadine

Jane, Jalissa, Mackenzie, Pauline, Nadine

We finished the quilt!