Back to School

I haven't blogged about much ministry stuff lately. Part of that is because of the normal January lull. Not much happens in church life between Christmas and Carnaval. The other main reason is that I'm the mother of a very active toddler. My time is truly no longer my own. I don't get to sit and blog and I don't get to get out of the house to do much else these days. But I'm not the first person to ever have a toddler, so I'm not asking for sympathy, I'm just explaining what's up.

That said, back in January Russ and I took over the children's ministry.  Since Heather, intern extraordinaire, is here for a few more months we're not responsible for quite everything just yet but we've been working on some big organizational stuff and some of the week-to-week stuff too.

Last Sunday we had our first event. February is back-to-school month, so we had a party instead of Sunday School last week. We started handing out invitations in December and we ended up with 20 kids, which is about double our average weekly attendance.

We played games like "stick the pencil on the desk".


We wanted all the kids to know that their schooling is important to us and that we support them so we took the time during our worship service to pray over them.


And at the end of the morning (after church) we handed out goody bags to everyone with school supplies.


I hope this becomes a yearly event for our church family. More importantly, I hope that these children truly are blessed in their studies. Most of them have so much to overcome when it comes to schooling yet we know that with proper schooling they will be able to overcome so much! Please take a moment to pray for the kids of ICOS!

We were tired but we were only halfway done.

We flew to Dallas to meet up with R's side of the family. We had a mini-family reunion at the Holiday Inn Express, with the East Bernard Quireys coming to be with the Blackwell Quireys and, of course, the Brazil Quireys. So we had just about all the Quireys we know in one place. Jackson got to meet his great-aunt Melissa and her family for the first time, and his great-grandparents were thrilled to see him again. We had a great couple of days with the Quireys.

Then we loaded up in the car and went to Oklahoma City. We got to have a few hours with my brother Mike, sis-in-law Jacque and MY NIECE TESSA!!! I was so excited to meet her and she is even more adorable in person. (Jackson may not feel the same way about her. Not yet, anyway.)

We headed up to Blackwell for a few days with Russ's family.

(Not shown: Mike (R's dad) and Nana (R's grandma). Also, I'm not quite ready to consider Matt's mustache a family member yet.)

It was nice to be with the fam for Christmas but by far the most exciting part of this leg of our trip was the SNOW!!

I haven't been that cold in a long time! We bundled Jackson up in layers and layers of clothes and we took him outside. He wasn't too impressed.

He liked it much better this way:


(I DID IT! I finally finished posting about vacation! Good thing, too, since furlough is just around the corner!)

Still More Vacation

We were in California for a wedding. Sort of. It was the celebration of a wedding that had already happened but it looked just like a "real" wedding. My brother Dave and his wife Liz decided to have a small private ceremony a few months ago but they had a big shindig for the rest of us to enjoy.

It was a little odd for me because I had never met my new sister-in-law, but I have to say that I love her! Liz is a great girl and a wonderful match for Dave. Here they are at the wedding:

It's one of my favorite pics of the day because of the look on Liz's face. I think every bride should look that carefree and happy.



















Jackson was the ring bearer. He did an okay job for someone his age. He loved the Christmas lights all around the stage and tried to blow them all out.

























And here is the lovely Quirey family. Russ spent hours on his hair!