It's been a while!

Well, this blog has not received attention for a while, so I thought maybe I should add an update!
I will try to hit some highlights over the last couple of months.
One exciting new venture has been the opportunity to work with the teens at UBC. Our youth Pastor and his wife moved to Philadelphia in September, and we have had the teens since that time. You can see the youth blog at ubcyouthgroup.wordpress.com. Dan teaches Sunday School and leads the youth group on Wednesday nights. We have 3 great youth sponsor couples who help us out so much! Our first major activity was Farm Fest on October 13th. You can see pictures on the blog. The girls have had fun with girls' nights and serving together at the Downs. We love our teens!

Dan has had a good semester at school. He has also enjoyed the ministry at UBC. We are so thankful for our Pastor and the opportunities he is giving us to learn and grow. Right now, he is taking a sabbatical as his wife is really struggling physically. Dan is preaching several times over the next few months. We continue to work together in the music ministry which has been a blessing. The Christmas program is about 6 weeks away!

A highlight this fall was our trip to Vermont Oct. 17-20 to see Ryan and Amy. We were able to get a lot of rest and enjoy beautiful scenery, ice cream, and just being with Ryan and Amy!

I have 25 piano students and that has kept me quite busy this semester. I love each one of them. They are so much fun (most of the time :).

This coming weekend we have a campout with our teens. The girls are sleeping inside, for which I am thankful, especially since we are beginning to enjoy such nice cool fall weather!

Well, that's a brief update over the past few months.

School Begins, A New Routine

This week marks the beginning of a new semester. Dan started his classes, and although it will be busy, he is looking forward to them. We begin our work with the teens in just a couple of weeks. I am still working as Dad's administrative assitant which is a lot of fun. I love the business, well at least the customer part! On Mon-Thurs I teach 28 piano students. There are not many teachers in the Clemson area, so keeping a full schedule has not been hard at all. Dan told me I couldn't take anymore students, so I have had to turn a couple away, which I hate to do, but Dan is right! The Lord has been so good to us!

The soccer outreach at church ended last night. There was a great turn out. The Lord showed His hand even in how He controlled the weather. It was cloudy, which made the temperature very nice, but it never did rain! The bad weather missed us. How grateful I am to see God's hand in all the little details. Lordwilling, we will have some good follow-up opportunities with families from our community as a result of this outreach!

The Month of August

This month has flown by! It is hard to believe summer is coming to an end and school is starting again. Since our last post we have been to Alabama for Jonathan and Brooke Millsap's wedding; Carrie traveled to Philadelphia to be in Becky (Cox) Flegal's wedding; and we traveled to Virginia Beach for a mini-vacation.

One of the highlights of this month was a visit from our Smetana parents! They spoiled us. Mom Smetana gave us a hummingbird feeder, and there are some happy hummingbirds around. We saw five different ones this morning.

So, the month of August is coming to a close. Time to move on to fall. We are looking forward to the upcoming transition at UBC and working with the teens! What a wonderful opportunity God has given us to serve Him. We are so grateful for His leading.

Hopefully we will post some pics of our summer travels before the month of September is over. I think that that is a reasonable goal!

Dillard, GA

This past weekend we took a little trip to Dillard, GA, about an hour and a half away! We decided to go ahead this weekend since the next 3 are all full with weddings and a quick trip to Virginia Beach that Pastor Hine would like for us to take! After that, school will be just about here. The summer is flying by so fast! Dan finishes his summer school course on Friday!!!
So, back to the Dillard house...the grounds are beautiful and there is a lot of pasture land around, so it feels "away" (even though it isn't to far away from the great town of Dillard and "bustling metropolis" of Clayton). We enjoyed our stay Friday night and especially enjoyed lunch at the Dillard House Restaurant. They serve everything family style and you get to take leftovers home. It's all you can eat, and we enjoyed every bite!!!

After lunch, we went to Foxfire, which is an educational program that was organized to do research on Appalachian communities and heritage. They have moved several buildings to this property and use it as an educational tool. It reminded us of Cade's Cove (except it wasn't free)! We enjoyed looking around.

It is always nice to get away--sooo refreshing!

4th of July

Tradition on the 4th is to go to the farm and make hash, however this year, we broke tradition....why? Grammie just up and went to Spain--for a wedding of all things, and she had a wonderful trip. We are glad she is home safely and are looking forward to the "rain date" when we make hash!

We did have a wonderful 4th, though. We ate leftover hash from the freezer for lunch with Dad, Mom and Sarah and then spent the evening at the church picnic. We started with an early prayer meeting at 5 and then had a picnic at 6 and enjoyed games after that! We are grateful for a wonderful church family. The Lord is doing great things!

On Tuesday night, Dan and I went and watched Clemson's fireworks...the finale was great, the rest left some to be desired, but the company was wonderful, the weather was tolerable, and we got a great parking spot!

All in all, it was a wonderful day. Grammie, can we have hash soon? Love you!