Amanda's Blog

We had the privilege this past Sunday night to help with the teen devotional after church.  Our teens have a devotional 2 Sunday nights a month in the home of one of our members.  They typically have singing, a short devotional thought, and then food prepared by the host/hostess (and let me tell you it is like ants on honey when they are released to the food!).  We don’t go very often, but this week Josh filled in for Ryan (our youth/associate minister) since he had surgery on Wednesday.

I sure do love being around the youth of the church to feel their energy and excitement for Jesus!  We have a great group of kiddos at Seven Oaks (yes, I am officially old enough to refer to teenagers as kiddos:).  I have watched several of them grow up in the 9 years we have been at Seven Oaks. (Ok, that just made me feel really old! Ha!!)

I had to take two pictures of the group to get them all in!!

Our teen group loves to sing, and boy did I enjoy singing with them (even though we had to bail on the song that I requested because it was WAY TOO HIGH! Ha!).  I also really enjoyed seeing my kids sit in the middle of the circle singing along and getting to soak up the influence of so many giving their time to attend the devo!

We love our youth and look forward to seeing what God has in store for them as they choose to put Him first in their lives!

Here’s what Caleb did the whole time…he’s such a difficult baby:)

Tonight, I wanted to share a few highlights from our fun weekend.  It started on Friday night with a progressive dinner with the young adult group from church.  (A progressive dinner is where you go to one house for appetizer, a second house for the main course, and a third house for dessert.)  This was the first time that Caleb has had a babysitter.  We are so grateful to Ms. Ann (who is like a grandmother to our children) and Brenda who kept all the kids for us!!  It was so nice to be out without any kids!!  The kids also had a great time and it was nice to have adult conversation and eat without fixing three other plates:)

After the dinner, we came home and prepared our home for company.  Mark, Lori, and their three kids spent the night with us on Friday night (yes, it was a crowded house with 11 people in the house but it was FUN!).  The kids got to stay up until 11:00 p.m. (which never happens unless they are with Papa and Nana:) and us adults stayed up until 3 a.m. talking!  What. where. we. thinking???  Josh is still not recovered (but he is 4 years older than me)! Ha! (It also helps that caffeine gets me through a sleepy day, but does nothing for him:)  If I had it to do over…I DO IT AGAIN!!  I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with Mark and Lori and love and appreciate their Christ-like attitude and example.  It was good for us to share with another minister and his wife.

On Saturday, we enjoyed spending a little more time with Mark’s family and then prepared for more company.  We had made plans to have our homeschool families over for a little Christmas party Saturday night.  We were sad that one of the families couldn’t join us because of sickness, but we still had a fun time.  Josh made a ton of smoked chicken leg quarters that were so yummy! (I now look forward to having them in the freezer to pull out and heat up on days when I don’t feel like cooking.)  The kids loved playing and us adults enjoyed visiting.

Today, we were able to have a great day of worship with our family at Seven Oaks and topped it off with a trip to the local Mexican restaurant with some friends from our young adult group after worship tonight.

We have been so blessed to have quality time this weekend with people we love and admire.  I hope your weekend was enjoyable for you, too!

 (I didn’t take pictures this weekend…guess I was too busy enjoying the company, so I just inserted some of my favorite from the last couple of weeks.)