There's Treasure Everywhere
When Andy's parents are in town, we hang our at their house after church on Sundays. The Meisters usually join us as well.
We got to watch our sweet friend, Sammy, again.
This time we had him for about two weeks.
We love him, but even the kids realized how much work dogs are!
The kittens, on the other hand, are SO easy! Ellie's friend Gianna came over to play, and the girls dressed up as fancy ladies going to a spa with their cats.
To thank us for watching Sammy, his owner gave us a gift card to Coldstone's. The kids decided that all of the walks and picking up poop was worth it!
Joey got his driver's permit! He was very determined to get it as soon as he turned 15 1/2.
Sometimes the kids have "sleepovers" together and sleep downstairs. Ellie randomly wanted to sleep downstairs, but no one wanted to join her, so Andy did.
The women's retreat for our OPC presbytery in 2020 was supposed to have Valerie Elliot Shepard, the only daughter of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, as the speaker. Covid delayed things by a couple of years, but this year we finally had the retreat and Mrs. Shepard was finally the speaker. My good friend Kelly, who lives in LA, was also able to go. The only other time I've ever gone to a women's retreat for my church was eleven years ago, the last time Kelly lived in LA and went to the retreat.
Andy wanted to take the kids to a professional basketball game so he got tickets for the four of them to watch the Clippers play the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The game was a blow out, but they still had a good time!
After getting to see Kelly at the women's retreat, we met back up with our families a few days later because her brother-in-law, John, was in town visiting. We knew John back from our Albuquerque days, but we hadn't seen him since his surprise birthday party in 2008. It was great getting to see him and to meet his two kids. Unfortunately his wife was feeling a little under the weather, so she didn't come to hang out that day.
We met up with the whole Spear clan at a park in Irvine. It had this great rock that the kids all climbed.
Hannah had her first middle school dance this year. It was decades themed so we cobbled together a hippie outfit.
She had a great time! The weeks leading up to the dance, the kids had dance lessons at school to teach them fun group dances like "The Electric Slide," "The Hustle," and other dances like that. It made it fun to have the whole school dancing together. Leave it to the Classical Academy to figure out how to make middle school dances fun.
Andy turned 43 this year, and we had a fun time celebrating him.
We had a little birthday dinner with the Meisters.
As a joke, the Meisters gave him a bunch of cat toys for his birthday. The cats and kids loved the new
toys!
A week after Joey got his permit, he had his first behind the wheel driving lesson. The company we used encouraged me to come along. I really didn't want to, but Joey said it would make him feel more comfortable if I was there, so of course I went. It was equal parts boring and stressful, but I did learn some good things to remind Joey when he is driving.
As soon as Joey had his first driving lesson, he was cleared to go driving with us. It's scary, but it's going well so far.
Hannah and Chloe had a movie night, and of course the kitties joined them. I love these girls and their sweet friendship!
