College Visits

How can it be that time again?  My sweet daughter is in her final year of high school.  She has worked really hard and I'm so proud of her.  I loved the sweet girl that she was and and I love the beautiful young woman that she has become and I am excited to see what God is going to continue to do in her life.

After pondering and praying about what she might like to do after high school, she has decided to look at 2 colleges.  Each of them for different reasons.

She is interested in majoring in theatre.  She feels that it would be best for her to learn this in a Christian environment.  For that reason, she has applied to Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.  Its a beautiful school!  We drove up for a 3 day visit called College for a Week-end.  There were a lot of other people visiting then too!

Rebecca stayed with some students on campus and went to classes of her choice.  (She went to theatre classes.)  She also had the opportunity to eat on campus, tour buildings and attend a variety of seminars.  One of the highlights was attending convocation which was packed!  The parents visiting were seated on the floor.

 Music at convocation was David Crowder.

 And the speaker?  Willie Robertson.   You know, from Duck Dynasty!  He was a great speaker and I enjoyed hearing him share with us.

 While we were there, we had an opportunity to see a student production of Les Miserables.  Wow!  It was amazing.  All of it.  The acting, the singing, the stage work.  I know this was exciting for Rebecca to see and consider being a part of in the future.  We were both very impressed and excited.

 I didn't take a lot of photos while I was there (surprise!), but did enjoy a lot of the artwork around campus that was done by students.  Aren't these saran wrap sculptures amazing?

We also saw work done by a comic book artist.  I know that I have some boys that would have loved to see this too!

 Rebecca had a great visit and completed her application soon after the visit.  And she heard back quickly too that she has been accepted!!!

Her second college visit came just a month later.  This time to a school that is familiar to us because her oldest brother goes there.  NC State!  We visited during the Open  House which was a great day to be there.

We were able to walk around campus, learn about several different majors, eat in the dining hall (with Christopher!) and learn about some of the campus activities.

 A running list of tweets about the Open House was playing in several of the meeting rooms.  This is fuzzy, but Rebecca has a tweet on the list.

 We spot a familiar face on the Cru poster in the Brickyard.

 Loved meeting Christopher for lunch and hanging out with him for a little while too.

 He gave us a tour of the new library.  Can I just say that it is amazing!

 And a beautiful view from the deck on the top floor.

 We had to get some of the delicious NCSU ice cream before leaving.  Well, two of us did.

She is still waiting to hear back from State, but should hear before Christmas.

And now it is time to wait, pray and begin to make decisions.  In the meantime she is being recruited by some other colleges to come and visit and a couple have offered her some scholarships.  Its a lot to take in and is a huge decision.  We would love you to pray along with us as she chooses where she will be going next year.

We will share the news once there is something to share.  :)

Blessings
Leslie

Field trip to Harris Lake County Park!

Do you recognize the name?  Yes, its the same park that we visited for Isaiah's birthday and we went again for a field trip with our FIAR group.  I really do like this park.  Its about 30 minutes from our house, so we don't go too often, but enjoy it whenever we do.

For this outing, our group was split into two groups.  The younger group (prek-5) learned about Reptiles.

What a reptile is and what makes them special.  (Eastern Box Turtle)

And how they are different from amphibians.

Great visuals and hands-on learning too.

Just loved this shot of my two youngest!  Aren't they cute?!

So much to see and learn about in this beautiful world that God has made.

Can you just see the fascination?

And delight.

And not sure what she is thinking here, but it made me smile.

While the younger kids were learning about reptiles, the older ones were learning about Orienteering.  They were split into several groups and we occasionally saw them walking by our shelter.

 Park staff had set up an orienteering course including basic compass instruction, map orientation and course layout and safety instruction.  

Some of the hands on items were easier to touch than others.

No fear of the Corn snake here.  This reminds me of a sweet memory.  I remember when Christopher was much younger and he saw a corn snake.  He liked it and asked me what my favorite snake was.  I told him that I didn't really have one, but asked which one he liked.  He told me that he liked the corn snake ... and all of the other vegetable snakes too.  :-)

The older ones had to work together to try to figure out where each marker was located.

And then set out to find them all.

It was fun to be able to see some of what they were doing too.

We all had a great day.  The weather was gorgeous too!

Rebecca and I left shortly after the programs ended to make a college visit.  I'll post more on that in my next blog post.

Blessings
Leslie

Isaiah's Birthday ... 12 years old!

My two middle boys have birthdays just 6 days apart.  2 years and 6 days.  For many years they have had joint parties and that worked well.  This year though, we just let them choose what they wanted to do for their birthday and this was fun too!

We have done this in the past for Isaiah - and he really enjoyed it.  It wasn't a surprise then though (I wanted a photo).  This year was!  What fun to wake up and find something you didn't expect - and really enjoy!

I loved being able to start off his day in this fun way!  And green is his favorite color.  :-)

Food is always the choice of the birthday person.  Isaiah wanted pancakes with blueberry syrup and sausage cheese balls.  Oh, and chocolate milk.  Yum!

One of the first activities was a treasure hunt.  I have a great book from Klutz with already designed hunts that I use often.  It is a great resource with some hunts good for pre-readers and other more challenging ones for older children.  I love that it tells you where to hide each clue on the back of the clue!  Super easy and I highly recommend The Treasure Hunt Book.

One of his gifts was a fishing box filled with all sorts of things and a new pole.  He had asked to go fishing on his birthday and this seemed an appropriate gift for him.

It was a gorgeous day and we headed out to Harris Lake County Park to go fishing.

Ready to fish!

They first tried fishing on the pier.

Eliana became quickly tired of it all and we took a walk.

There is a great playground here and we headed over there.

Love seeing the sweet smiles!

After no luck on the pier, they headed out to fish near the woods.  Only one person caught a fish ... the birthday boy!  I was so glad it was him.  :-)

Christopher met us for lunch.  Isaiah picked take-out Chinese.

More gifts.  Slim jims are a huge hit.

And a fun movie too!

For dinner, Isaiah wanted to have a cooking contest.  We gathered ingredients for nachos and then split into 3 teams.  Each team had time to make their food and prepare something to say about the food.

Some of the presentations were very creative.

Both the words.

The gestures.

And the food.  (Can you tell that this one is an I?  For the one judge - Isaiah!)

The foods were judged on appearance, presentation and taste.  A few had secret ingredients (such as bacon and ranch dressing).

After sampling all of them and learning who the winning team was (the all girl team), everyone took time to make their own plate of nachos to their liking.  It was a lot of fun and yummy too!

Happy 12th birthday Isaiah!  You are a delight to our whole family!  We love your creativity, wit and humor.  I'm thankful for your willingness to serve and help others.  I love that you are a hugger and am so very thankful you are my son!  I love you so very much!

Blessings
Leslie