Big News

Today, Mike official stepped down as Superintendent of Smyth County Schools to be the new Director of the Linwood Holton Governor School which is a virtual Governor's School serving Southwest Virginia and based at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center. It will be hard to say goodbye to his awesome School Board as he has worked so closely with them for so long.  It will also be hard to say goodbye to the amazing staff at the School Board office and the staff at each school, but after being a Superintendent for ten years, he is excited to start a new chapter in his life, one that will hopefully help him better balance his home and work life. 

We are not moving and our children will stay put in Smyth County Schools.  We love Smyth County and we are invested in our community and will continue to work in the various ministries we have started.  We will continue to support our amazing school system and community, and hope to start some new opportunities for special needs children in our community this Fall.

In the last four years due to David's cancer, we have come to value family and faith even more strongly.  Being a Superintendent is an amazing honor, yet requires many long hours away from us. His job often conflicted with the husband and Dad that he wanted to be.  Mike is a humble guy and is not motivated by personal success, title, or even salary,  He truly has a servant heart and is excited to be back working directly with students in his new role. 

Thank you for all your love and prayers for our family as we start a new chapter in our lives-thankfully one that does not require snow calls!!  Ha!

Sweet summer 2016

Summer is my favorite season of the year.  I love summer and love having my kids home with me even if they wear me out cooking for them and my house is a wreck!  Ha!

This summer at church our middle school youth and I have started a summer Nurture program for little kiddos ages 2-7.  We provide breakfast, lunch and a backpack of food to take home each week.  Our youth read and play educational games with the kids to help with summer reading.  Our youth have blown me away with how sweet, nurturing and all around awesome they are with these kids.  Nothing blesses my heart more than to see the next generation serving our community.  The program started the first Monday of summer break and to see so many youth walking into church at 8 a,m. overwhelmed me. Here is Kyle with one of his little charges!

Our summer always includes many hours with friends at our local pool.  Here is Hope having a blast with her girl friends playing in the pool.

We have also had a few days out on the boat with family.  Lake days are my best days and I am so thankful for all the memories we get to make with family. Cousin Clayton joined our crew for this precious picture.

Days on the lake are pretty perfect!! When did our babies grow up??

This past week we celebrated this little lady turning 7!! She is such a joy and we love her silly giggle and her servant heart. She was so excited to finally get her own Ipad with a pink cover!! No more stealing the boys while they are not looking! HA!

On her actual birthday we went with our church friends to Bristol Caverns.  What a great place to begin our summer study of Creation!  Wow-to think that our amazing God created those gorgeous caverns! WOW! What a fun field trip. Here is Hope with some cute sisters.

Hope loved the caverns but her brother Dave-not so much! He did not care for all the steps in the cave and he was very unsure of himself.  I kept saying "oh Dave look how beautiful"... and he would respond not beautiful, awful!

Hope did not want a fancy party for her birthday, she simply wanted to take a few girlfriends to see the new Disney movie, Finding Dory.  It was such a cute movie and she loved having a cute group of girls to celebrate with her.

This guy has kept us busy this summer with basketball.  He has been participating in summer league for his high school team.  They hosted a camp, they have been practicing, and they attended Emory and Henry team camp this past weekend.  This boy loves basketball and as a mom I love watching him pursue his passions.

After a ton of basketball Friday and Saturday, today we spent the day at the baseball field.

This picture makes me smile.  Here is  a father and son fist bump after Kyle had a nice solid base hit in his game today.  Our kiddos are blessed with such a Godly man who takes his role as a father seriously.  He never takes the easy way out with anything he does and Iam so thankful my kids have Mike as an example.  I am also blessed with a pretty awesome Dad in my life as well!

I wish I could say our day of baseball ended on a great note, but sadly after a wild pitch to Kyle's knee, our day was ended early. Sigh.  Kyle was so thankful and excited he got the oppoirtunity to pitch today and after some pitching lessons with cousin Abram, he looked so confident on the pitching mound.  If you look closely you can see the laces from the ball imprinted in his knee.

Kyle and I have bonded over the NBA Finals.  I never liked basketball until God blessed me with boys and now I love it!  Kyle and I have stayed up for every Finals game cheering for our Cavs.  Tonight I am watching Game 7 without him because he is in Radford with his grandparents to attend Virginia Tech's basketball camp this week.  We hope his bum knee will be better in the morning or he will have to reschedule his camp for a later session this summer,  

Summer 2K16 has so far given us opportunities to serve our community, lots of fun in the sun, and lots of basketball.  I know one of these days I will miss the craziness!  We have some awesomeness on the horion that we are so thankful for and our cruise is coming up soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So thankful for time with my babies even if I am running the dishwasher twice a day and my grocery bill has tripled! 

Gifted Teachers, dances, and recitals

May was a total blur of school funtions, recitals, SOL test studying, and finishing up preschool,  It was all fun stuff, but totally exhausting! 

This little froggy particpated in her dance recital with ballet, tap and jazz dances.  As of now, she says her ballet days are behind her because she loves her swim team, piano, and bssketball.  May she always let her light shine in whatevwr she does.

David had an amazing checkup at UVA last week!!!  His scan was clean and a meeting with the nephrologist (Kidney doctor) showed us that his kidney is handling all the changes he is going through in terms of his growth and puberty and that his kidney has grown with him!!!!!!!!!  Praise God!!! We have prepared ourselves that one day his one kidney will go kerplunk, but this latest appointment gave us the glimmer of hope that perhaps the lone kidney is handling the growth demands and filtration well and that it may last his whole life! Here is David with his awesome oncologist-love this picture!

While he was out for UVA, his amazing teacher and classmates brought out his monkey, to hold his place while he was gone.  I saw this and tears came to my eyes.  This monkey has been with us since first grade, so I guess the monkey will go to middle school as well.  Notice the fudge round and abraham Lincoln book in his lap-they know our boy so well at his school!

Dave's kidney doctor patted us on the back for keeping him well hydrated always and extremely active.  Being overweight and out of shape is hard on kidneys so she encouraged us to keep doing what we have been doing.  To get a little exercise as a family we went on a hike one Saturday night.  We were suppose to do the 1/2 mile hike but I got us confused and we did over two miles!  This view was worth it!

this little love ended her spring developmental swim team this week and now she can swim all four strokes! We have to work on her dive some more, but she loves swimming.

All three of our children have been blessed with Tena Hubble as their first grade teacher.  She is a rockstar veteran teacher and it was hard to say goodbye after having her for all three children.  David also had an awesome teacher!  It was an awesome year at Oak Point Elementary!

Dave hit a big milestone this past week by attending his first ever dance.  He was so excited and had such fun!  When I was getting him ready and gelling his hair back (ha!) I got such a lump in my throat.  God has taken good care of our boy with great friends, no cancer relapses and a healthy kidney... my cup runneth over.

We also ended our Challenger baseball season this past week with pizza and trophies!  Challenger baseball is one of the biggest blessings in my life.  I adore these kids! Here is David with Emily!

These triplets are the funniest dudes around and the LOVE the camera!  They made us all laugh with their poses, fighting amongst themselves, and kissing the ladies.  Kyle worked with these guys mostly during the season and they love their Kyle!  

The last day of school I attended the awards ceremony for Oak Point.  Our baby got several awards including the Silver Presidential Award! He was so proud!  David was blesed with an amazing teacher who created this awesome environment in her classroom where every child feels like her favorite.  I love going in there because you can truly feel the love.  She is such a gifted educator.

This afternoon I was the speaker for the opening ceremony for Relay for Life.  Honestly I do not really remember what I said because I was so sick.  Between my low grade fever and the heat I was not my best.  Here is a bag that Hope made for her brother for the luminary.  Unfortunately the storms ended the event early.  

School is finally out for the summer and we could not be happier!! Welcome summer 2016-we have waited a long time for you!