New Adventures and New Friends

I love the start of a new school year because there are new friends to meet and new adventures to begin.  Because David is now missing a kidney, sports will not be much of an option for him.  Contact sports are out of the question now as well as anything too crazy dangerous.  We are usually so focused on cancer that we forget that he had a major operation back in November and now his life will be different.  He must drink 50 ounces of fluid daily to keep his kidney nice and flushed. It is okay to live with only one kidney, but we must work hard to protect it to last a lifetime.  

So to help David make new friends and have fun, we have decided to sign him up for boy scouts!!!!!  I cannot wait to see him in that cute little uniform!!  We do not know much about scouting, but we are eager to learn and help David grow.  I love the focus on community service that is part of scouts and David went to his first scout event yesterday.  They did a critter crawl with a local naturalist and he had tons of fun!!  Mike went with him and this will be their Daddy/son bonding time:)

David with two of the pack leaders finding some critters to identify!! Sweet Stephanie Warren took these pictures and sent them to me via email today.  I was so excited to see them because Mike forgot the camera!

Our sweet sweet boy!  This picture does not do his peach fuzz justice, but he is really getting lots of blonde hair in!!!  It is so fun to rub his head that we joke that we will pay him $1 if we can rub it.  Sometimes he likes for us to rub it and others times NOT!!

Stephanie got this sweet, tender picture of Daddy and Son.  It looks like Daddy is providing a little reassurance that it is okay to get in the creek!!  Mike is really a great hands-on Daddy with our kids.  Scouting is a new adventure for all of us and we are excited to learn with David. 

This silly girl is really lovin her new preschool friends and she is having fun in her own shy way.  She is so shy when she first meets new friends, but she will warm up.  Here she is eating her fruit loops off of her friendship bracelet!!

Oh this picture makes me belly laugh because this is Sydney.  Her Mommy works with me and Sydney is a tag-a-long student like Hope was last year.  Today I gave the preschoolers a little cardboard person to color to hang in our room.  I told the students to color their eyes and mouth and Sydney obeyed perfectly!!!  Instead of coloring her cardboard creation; however,  she colored her own eyes and mouth!! I love how literal children are:)  We all got a good laugh and thankfully we use washable markers at school. 

This past Sunday David and I visited my parents church, Calvary Baptist in Radford.  Their pastor did a wonderful sermon on friendship and I have been pondering this topic all week.  No matter our age we all need christian friends that encourage us in life and in our walk with the Lord.  I pray that I can be a christian friend to those in my life because I have certainly been blessed with some Godly women who have encouraged me. 

Life is so busy and crazy that we so often get self-absorbed in our own corner of the world.  I was encouraged this past Sunday to reach out to those that need an encouraging hug or prayer and to keep steady in the good fight of faith. 

I am thankful for all the new friends that God has put into our life and all the friends that have been so faithful to us over the past year. I pray that my children will also learn the importance of Godly friends and the need to choose friends wisely.  This week we are thankful for David's new scouting adventure, all our new preschool families, and all the children that my own kiddos are in class with this year. 

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
John 15:12