July in Review

July has proven to be our busiest month yet! We started off with a fun Fourth of July weekend. When it comes to holidays, we are a bit homesick for old friends and past traditions. But I must say, watching fireworks over the Chesapeake Bay sure beats Fouts Field. After church on the Fourth, we went to a party where we were surrounded by some of our new friends from our church family. We all had a great time, especially Emorie who we had to pull out of the pool when her lips turned blue. She had been swimming for 3 hours straight!


West Virginia

A few days later, Thursday, we headed to Lewisburg, West Virginia to visit my family. We had a couple of relaxing days in the mountains, but were sad to find out that this would not only be our first drive there, but our last! My family will be moving from their WV home back to Texas mid-August. On Saturday night, we left the kids there and headed back to Annapolis to prepare for our mission trip to Boston, MA!


Boston Mission Trip
On Monday, July 12th our group of mostly youth and college students began a tiring week of working with Grace Church Boston. We spent our time there cleaning, canvassing neighborhoods with service invitations, cleaning, passing out free granola bars at T stops, cooking, cleaning, smuggling 18 boys through 2 hotel showers each day, touring the city and of course cleaning. The church building was unbelievably dirty! We also did A LOT of walking! Although at times this trip was frustrating to my OCD nature, we were able to reach thousands of homes in the Boston area and lead a worship service our last night there. Boston was a great place to VISIT. So rich with American history! I would love to go back and finish the Freedom Trail.


Cake Boss
On our way back to Maryland we stopped in Hoboken, NJ to visit the home of the Cake Boss! We waited in line and braved the crowds inside Carlo's Bakery. It was nuts. We made it out with some very yummy sweet treats! I think that pit stop was fun and enjoyed by many in our group. A good end to our mission trip. At this point, I was counting down the minutes until I could see and hold my sweet babies! We had never been away from them that long before and we missed them like crazy.

Birthday Girl
It felt so good to get home on Saturday night. In the past week we had driven through Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts (in probably the same amount of time it would take to drive across Texas). I was exhausted. Was it time to settle down? Nope. I still had a birthday party to throw and Vacation Bible School to prepare for! Emorie had a blast at her Build-a-Bear party and we are so grateful for everyone who came to celebrate with us! On July 20th Emorie turned 3 years old. I can hardly believe it! Our baby girl is growing up so fast!! Emorie and Ryland make me love being a mom even more every day.

Vacation Bible School

The next weekend was eventful to say the least. First, we had a couple of the hottest days of the year so far and our air conditioner decided to break. It's a misconception that it's cooler up here. It can get just as hot in Annapolis as it does in Denton. Plus the humidity is insane here. Yuck! We then had a freak storm which caused tens of thousands of houses and businesses in our area to be without power for hours. For some, days. This was last Sunday, the day we were supposed to start Vacation Bible School. Needless to say, we had a bit of a rough start to VBS. Eventually, our air conditioner was fixed and power was restored to our church and friends. After having to cancel one night of activities and having a shortened night without lights and air, we finished up with a great week, never losing sight of the reason for VBS. Our church is so blessed with wonderful volunteers who made it all happen! It was all in His plan!

So that brings us to July 31st. Whew!