October 28th-Nov. 15th

We had spent the last part of October and the first week of November all sick with strep throat and so Emma had to wait to have her birthday party until Nov. 6th.  We did do a family party on her birthday and she opened all her presents from us and grandparents!  On the 30th of October we got our first snow, and it really did not stop snowing until the following weekend.  The trees were all covered in a blanket of snow which made for beautiful scenery, and then we had a big wind storm that blew down a few trees in our yard thankfully missing our house and the swingset!  It snowed some more, and then we had 40mph winds with gusts up to 60mph that lasted for over 24 hours.  We had several trees blown down all over camp and several power outages that lasted about 9 hours overall, and for some people around our community 24 hours!

Then the trees were snowless, which always makes me sad.  We have been playing catch up in school due to all the the sickness....The girls have also gone back to swimming practice every night, and Heidi and Mason are in swim lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The have Awanas on Wednesday evenings and every other Thursday is Kids Club, put on by a few staff here at camp.  We have been doing lots of Bible memorization and the kids are all doing a great job at it. 

To add to all of this crazy comotion at our house we have also taken in an exchange student whos family that she was staying with was having family issues and needed her to find a new place to stay.  So we got to take her in!  Her name is Cecile and she is from Belgium.  She has actually already graduated highschool in Belgium, but came here to work on her English.  It has been fun and challenging, and interesting to have a teenager and having to adjust our parenting to fit that.  She will be staying with us until the end of May!

early morning fog

moose in our back yard

Our new kitten "Sir Crush"  LOL  or OC (orange crush)

It's snowing!!

Emma and her friends out playing in the first snow!

Emma's new MP3 player that she has been wanting for forever! :)

Her horse stuff from Aunt Leah and Uncle Dave, and Grandma and Grandpa Fishbaugh!

Sunset through the trees

More Snow!!!!

The day to build snowmen!

Emma's birthday cake and birthday celebration on Nov. 6th.....complete with sleepover!

Lots of snow falling from the sky!

Our Carved Pumpkins

Just to show you our carved pumkins for this year!  Top to bottom is Madisons, Emma's, and Heidi and Mason's and on the right is the one James carved.  Emma's is hard to see, but she did one with drilled holes in the pattern of flowers.  My mom also sent up lots of pumpkins for us to carve, but we have left them whole so that we can make them into soups or other such things.....maybe even a pie for my husband!

The Sickness and Other Tidbits of Life

There comes a time in your life where you are just ready to give up and let the house run itself (into the ground), and I have reached that point (although Emma and Madison do try to help with the cleaning).  Nothing much has been getting done around here since I have been sick for the last 8 weeks with a horrible cough that has kept me up most nights.  I finally went to the doctor on Monday to see if they could do something for the cough, and they gave me an inhaler and another med, but so far it has not seemed to keep me from coughing.  So because of all this coughing, I am not sleeping, and becasue I am not sleeping I am exhausted.  It is all I can do to keep the house in some kind of order (still mostly messy) and get the kids to and from their repective activities.  While all this was happening, Chad has been to Fairbanks twice making up for 11 of those days, and very very busy trying to get projects finished up before the snow falls here. Chad is also helping a guy fix up a building that will serve as his Jujitsu studio rewiring and making two changing rooms along with a few other things.  Chad is really excited about his friend Isaac (studio owner) opening this up for kids and all ages.  One of his friends (George) who has been training with Isaac, took first place in one of the top competitions for Jujitsu down in CA.  Anyway when the studio opens in Nov. we will be signing up the three girls, and possibly Mason if he is old enough. 
Heidi and Emma this week have been very sick with strep throat and rashes and vomiting (aka Scarlet Fever), and Mason has my cough, so we have been taking naps most days.  With the pennicillan they are getting much better thankfully, and hopefully by next week they will be back to normal!  Somehow Madison has managed to skate through unscathed.....we are keeping our fingers crossed.
Unfortunately for Emma this has ment postponing her birthday party until next weekend because most of her friends have "it" to.
A more exciting tidbit of news is that I am going to have my photography hanging in our local coffee shop for the month of July, which could be anywhere between 20-40 photos depending on how big or small I make them.  The hard part is choosing which ones, and then sizes, and last but not least the frames for them all.  I am hoping to drag Chad into my little project and have him make me a lot of the frames so it will not cost as much. 
In my next post, we finally have the pictures that were taken of all the projects that the two work teams did when the were here in Aug. and Sept. so I will be able to show you all that was accomplished. God is good all the time, and we are so blessed by the people who come to work at camp, support camp, pray for camp and for us, and  those who support us.  Without people like you none of this would be here and we thank you for all that you do.

September 25th-October 4th

The Week of 17-24th of September

Bings Landing Sterling AK

Chad and the kids went to the beach while I ran my 5k on Saturday the 17th

Lake at camp

The month of September

So I just realized that I have not posted anything for over 10 days!  We have been so very busy.  After two very large work teams that were 2 weeks apart, which I will share more about in a later post, and took up over 30 days of work time for Chad and James, there was another blessing for camp in the package of an indoor riding arena, that just happened to be all the way in Fairbanks.  So 4 people + Chad went to Fairbanks for 7 days and took it down bundled it all up and got it ready to be loaded onto a semi so it can be delivered to camp a little later this fall.  The kids have been doing school, even though we were off to a slow start it is starting to pick up now and we are getting in the swing of things.  Emma and Madison also are involved with their swim team 2 times a week, riding lessons 2 times a week, and Awana's on Wednesday.  On top of all that we have managed to slip in a 5k race for me, a bike ride up by Hope, and a berry picking hiking adventure in the rain.  The fall colors have been amazing, but yesterday only 65 miles from us up in the pass they got snow, so we know it is coming.....most of us are not quite ready!!!!  Chad, who has so much to do to get camp ready for the winter, managed to put his hip out of place by 1/2 an inch and so he has been laid up in bed for the last 4 days recovering from the pain of having to put it back in etc.  He is very ready for James to be home to help lighten the load and maybe get caught up! 

Celebrating #11 (9/9/00-9/9/11)

Two weekends ago Chad and I celebrated our 11th anniversary!  I am not sure how we could possibly have been married for that long, but it has been a great journey nonetheless.  After what has been one of the busiest and craziest summers here at camp, especially the last 7 weeks, it was so very good for the two of us to get away for the weekend.  We are also very lucky to have good friends that are willing to take on an extra four kids for the weekend! 

We both had so much fun and enjoyed talking without being interrupted :),  going on a drive to places we had not been before, and staying at a hotel that we hadn't been to in almost 10 years.