Breaking Ground...Everybody Serves!

We had a very exciting day last Sunday - it was the ground breaking for our new church home! Our church purchased property years ago in order to be ready for when God told us to build our permanent home and now is the time when we get to do that! There has been work going on for the pad that the church will be built on, but actual construction is beginning this month. We are so thankful and excited to be a part of this time in the life of Brazos Pointe and love that our girls are getting to experience it as well!

Instead of having a formal ceremony out on the land where only a few people got to put shovels in the ground for the ceremonial ground-breaking, our leadership team decided to do something that was more "Brazos Pointe" and have everyone bring shovels that we decorated to help with the ground-breaking! We also had our very first baptism out on the land in an above ground pool that we got just for last Sunday. It was very cool to start this new phase in our church's life with families picniking on the grounds, kids playing in the dirt, everyone turning over some ground, and the representation of lives being changed through baptism. We love our church and had such a fun day of celebrating!
I have a ton of pictures, but we just had such a fun day that we wanted to remember everything!

Here is Kendall before we left church for the ground-breaking. She was excited about having her own shovel!

I tried to have Cooper stand up and let me take a picture with her shovel, but she would not.

Three excited gingers!

We had lunch out on the land and played with friends! This is our new friend Jennifer and her son Ethan. Jennifer and her husband Chris are our new student ministers and Cooper is over the moon about their baby Ethan. She just smiles at him and talks to him, saying, "Bee-bee!! Bee-bee!!" She loves him. :)

Patrick, Lindsey, and Matt sat with us too! It never gets old to us to see Patrick out and about, and the girls love playing with him.

This is the retention pond next to the building site. It's so pretty! Our property really is so nice with tons of trees. Can't wait to be out there!

Our friend Colton took a picture of our whole family standing up on top of the pad. I will add that when I get it from him. This next picture is everyone walking to stand on the side of the pad with their shovels to do the ground-breaking. Love seeing all the families doing this together!

Kendall and her friends Jillian and Jaycie, playing in the dirt.

The Mitterling family!

This was Cooper while we were praying. :) She is just not afraid at all to go explore by herself!

After we all turned over some dirt, we had the baptism. Very, very cool.

If you measure how much fun you have by how dirty you get, then these two girls had a ton of fun! They were a mess!

We went straight from there to our last small group of the semester where we had a pool party. The girls crashed in the car on the way, since we totally missed nap, so I sat out with them in the driveway for a little bit and let them sleep some. They are so precious!

We are thankful for a fun day and that we are a part of an awesome church where everybody serves and we are focused on being a church for the unchurched!

A Day in Galveston!

Saturday our whole family went to Galveston for the day! For Holly and Kristin's birthdays, they wanted to have a beach day and then go out to dinner that night. So I got to spend the day on the beach and Randy took the girls, along with Aaron, Ethan, and Ella, to a bar-b-que cook-off and to Moody Gardens. They had a fun day and so did I!
Randy texted me while they were at the cook-off and said that I wouldn't recognize Kendall. She asked to go inside a petting zoo, she went on a bounce house slide, and she got her arm painted! All things she is typically too scared to try! She's getting so brave. In fact, the other day she wrote her name on a piece of paper and then asked me how to spell "is brave." Then she taped it on her wall next to her bed.

Love how she is reaching for Ella's hand!

Here they are at Moody Gardens in the aquarium! Randy said it was so cool and that the seals were the girls' favorite part.

For dinner, we all got to ride on the Coastal golf carts! Because they don't have a lot of parking around the church, they use these two awesome golf carts to shuttle people from somewhere else. Randy, Aaron, and the kids rode one to where they went to eat, and the 7 of us girls rode one to where we went. It was so fun! We drove them on the actual streets and got to see the Strand and other historic parts of Galveston.

Sunburned and happy! Kristin and I rode on the very back, so we got to see the kids when they would pull up behind us. We had a fun time and I was so thankful for a day by myself with good friends and that Randy and the girls had fun too!

Last day of school!

Last Thursday was Kendall's last day of Wee Place for the year! She has had a great year in Ms Shiloh's 3 year old class - the Orange Giraffes! - and we will miss having her for a teacher. Kendall learned to write her name this year, she can write all her letters and tell you their names and sounds, and she has become more brave and made new friends. We are so proud of her!

For their last day of school, they had splash day! Kendall didn't want to do the big water slide and she said the water in the baby pools was too cold, but she loved the bubbles!

Kendall and Jillian. They were not in the same class this year because Jillian went four days and Kendall only went two, but they are still good friends from church and play dates! They had fun getting to play at splash day together.

Before we went back out for a picnic, we went to their classroom to change into dry clothes. Cooper felt so big and Kendall was so sweet letting her pick books and then "reading" them to her. :)

I love my big four year old! She's just growing up so fast!

Kendall with more of her friends: Annie,

and Gylliana.

Poor Cooper wasn't feeling good on Thursday morning. She had been coughing a bunch and running a low grade fever. We couldn't miss splash day, though, so we just went for a little bit. She was tired easily though!

Kendall with Ms Shiloh!! We are so thankful for her and how she loved our girl this year. It was a great 3 year old year! I can't believe Kendall only has one more year there!

Adoption Garage Sale!

We had a massive garage sale last weekend! We had a smaller one earlier this year, but since then a bunch of families have had stuff they wanted to donate to us for another sale to help raise money for our adoption. We started collecting donations a couple of months ago and set last weekend as the date for our sale. We had so much stuff!! It was really crazy. It started to take over our garage and I wondered how I would ever begin to go through all of it and sort it. Here is a picture of our garage pre-sorting:

Then I sorted it and it was still a lot! When I went through it all, and started to organize, it grew. I had to move a bunch inside the house and then even out onto the back porch!

We have had beautiful weather this spring and then the weekend we were planning on having the sale, there were crazy high rain chances! ugh. We debated on and off what to do and landed on deciding to still have it. It stormed very hard all night Thursday night but by Friday morning it was starting to taper off. We started with only what we had in the garage but were eventually able to pull everything out on the driveway. Thankfully - it was so much!

We had so many sweet friends help us with the sale! Not only did over a dozen families donate items for the sale, but I had help the week of and the two days of the sale! Michelle, Jennifer Watson, and Mary Margaret even came over Friday morning at 6am to help us get set up! Those are good friends! Stephanie came and helped later in the day on Saturday and Michelle was there the whole time both days. We are so thankful for sweet friends who sacrifice so much for us!

The girls did GREAT both days! They slept late in the mornings, then when they woke up they alternated between playing outside and watching movies inside. Kendall felt big that she was able to climb this ladder. Check out her crown, pajamas, and rain boots. She was stylin! :)

Cooper was in heaven. She just wandered around, would find things to play with and was just busy the whole time. We caught this picture of her playing with an elmo toy that was for sale, sitting on a lid to one of the totes of clothes. She is so cute.

They explored the puddles and checked out all the worms.

Molly did well, too. She would find someplace out of the way to curl up and sleep. This was a favorite spot - one of the totes of baby clothes. People would walk by and not realize she was there and then notice her all of the sudden and just laugh!

Check out this good deal! :) She really was such a good girl and had so much fun.

Molly at the end of the day! She was worn out and so were we!

We've never done a two day sale before and it was exhausting. It was very successful, though! We made $1,150!! Totally worth all the hard work. We're so thankful for all the friends who helped and who donated their stuff. Garage sale=success!