My baby is in Middle School and...

Brittany is a Senior! Where did the time go? Today was the first day of school here. Poor Brandon has Brady breathing down his neck at his new school though. I hope and pray Brady has a better year. They all seemed to do real well. They are having a difficult time getting up this morning though. haha Now the only one left to get into the routine is Eric. He should report in a few weeks. THANK GOODNESS!!! He's been hanging around in the woods too much with scouts these past few days and he's got those chigars AGAIN!! He kept me up all night rubbing alcohol, calamine, cursing, etc. Oh well......they like him for some reason!

I got an A+ on my first project for my EDU131 class. I should, I spent 4 days working on it!! I really am enjoying the classes that I am taking and have some pretty wise instructors. It's sad that they know me by first name already and it's only the second week. Especially in my Monday night class where there is 23 other students! LOL Well, I'm off to take the kids to school today and then going into preschool to do some teacher organization for the upcoming open house on Thursday...then to class. Have a blessed day!!!

My little girl is 4 years old today!!

My little Mia Sue turned four today! It seems like it was just yesterday when we got her. She is such a sweet little thing. She loves laying on top of my head on the pillow at night and sleeping. She spends most of her day hiding from Meadow and Pugsley underneath the bed. LOL She is something else!!! She loves to play with her soccer ball, so today, she'll have to get extra time with it. She has a habit of tossing it inside of the garbage can, my purse, anything that makes me have to get it for her!!! We will celebrate tonight with Frosty Paws for the dogs and maybe a few Sun Chips or Cheez-it's!

Happy Birthday my sweet and precious Mia Sue! I'm sure Roxy is wishing you a wonderful birthday as well. I still remember two years ago when I baked Mia a peanut butter cake and her and Roxy ate the whole thing! I was up all night with that girl sick! LOL Of course, Eric went to Atlanta that night........hmmm.....I bet my mom will remember that one! LOL

A dark night.....

Boy, did we every have fun last night! My friend Debbie's daughter Michelle spent the night with us and the power was out from 6:30 until after 11!!! It didn't even storm that bad. I swear, it drives me crazy not having power for so long living out here. The sad thing is the power company is less than a mile from us!!!!

School is going good so far. I have 5 projects for one class to do, a term paper for another, and many articles and lesson plans for the third class. So I will be pretty busy. I'm not the oldest one in my classes thank goodness! LOL My first class was a little uneasy (I have that one again this morning) but the rest were good.

Tomorrow night we go for the boys school orientation. I just can't believe Brandon will be in Middle school.......poor child has to go to the same school as his brother. Last time they did, they talked about one another constantly! Sibling rivalry I guess. haha

Well, I better get some homework done. I didn't get to do much last night because.....you guessed it.....no power!!! I thought I'd share this group picture from Caswell. It's just the kids that we had there. Big group, huh?

Off to school we go....

Well, this is it! I'm off for my first class here in about a half hour. I just feel awful though! I guess I have gotten a cold over the w/e or else the paint and dust finally got my allergies kicked into high gear!!!

We had an incredible baptism service at church last night. NINE were baptized!!! Eight of those were children. I was thrilled to have four of my VBS students be among them.

Well, pray for me this week as I try to get a solid schedule going so that I can manage everything. Plus add time to blog and scrap!!! The kids start school on Monday and I go back to work on Wednesday. But I can't wait!! I'll have 3 students that I had when they were in the one's class a few years ago. Hope everyone has a great day and remember to pray for the miner's families and all of those on the coast where Dean may hit!

More Caswell photos

I just don't think it can get any scarier for this mother!!!

Here was the BIG Caswell event for this family. UGH!!

A late night game......of course, this was outside of MY bedroom! haha

Brittany and a few of the great girls there!

And of course, me and my friend Debbie's daughter, Michelle.

The Adventures of Camp Caswell

(Here is our youth group banner that we hung outside the cottage. It has all the youth's names along with the chaperones names and the theme for the summer.)

Here is the lighthouse on Oak Island from our porch

Wow! What a week!!! I have never experienced anything like it....literally!! We had 38 kids and 5 chaperones (three men and two women). I ended up having the young girls group which was fine. There were five in my room plus me and we had some pretty long nights! Here is our daily schedule for the week and what we experienced.

Breakfast was served at 7:30 a.m. That meant that I had to get up at 6:30.....let's just say by the last day it was more like 7:15!!! LOL At that point no one cared what you looked like!! After breakfast, we had a group devotional with 5 or 6 kids and then we broke off into our quiet time. It was so beautiful to be sitting there facing the beach and watching the birds fly above and thinking about all the wonderful things God has created and done for us.

After we finished our quiet time, we all had to be at the hatch for Wake up! Celebration. This consisted of a few praise songs and then we divided into larger small groups by high school or middle school. Danny and I were actually small group leaders for a high school class together and they were an excellent group of kids. We had 23 students. Now keep in mind there are over 973 kids at Caswell during this one week. Once we finished up our small group sessions, we returned to hatch for our Morning Worship session. This was so much fun! They had the drama team doing skits and the praise & worship band was amazing. Our speaker for the week was Allen Jackson (no, not the country music singer!). He is from New Orleans. He was a terrific speaker.

Our theme for the week Personal Evangelism and how we should learn to mirror Christ based on the verse 1 Peter 3:15. I have to say that I saw MANY, MANY of our own youth make some major breakthroughs and changes so that can be that mirror and help reflect Christ in their daily lives.

At noon we had lunch and then for the rest of the day they offered trak times for the kids. They could participate in basketball games, kayaking, crafts, etc. Dinner was served at 5:30 and then we returned to hatch at 7 pm for our Evening Worship. This is when it all came out. The praise & worship was so intense and God really spoke to some of our young people. One young man who is new to Pittsboro and our youth group accepted Christ on Thursday night. It was wonderful. After hatch, we had free time but had our own youth group devotional time at 10 pm. This was just a moment when Jon shared a lesson based on what we learned that day in our small groups and worship services and made them more personal for us to reflect on. Of course, lites out was suppose to be by 11:45........do you think that happened????

On Friday night, we had a special candle light devotional. Everyone sat around a circle with a candle lite and said a prayer for the youth group, themselves and the person on their right. They also shared anything on their heart that they may have felt they needed to express to make things right with someone or heal broken hearts. This took us over 2 hours! I have never seen teenage boys break down and cry like I did during this devotion. It was touching and moving. These kids had all of us adults in tears and taught us many life-changing lessons this week as well.

Along with all the great bible studies that we experienced, we also had three shaved heads, one extreme pillow fight in which one of our boys suffered a mild concussion, two girls got stung by jelly fish, one boy caught a shark (hehe), one cat fight, hundred of paper cups sitting around with everyone's name on it, tons of great food, death by chocolate milkshakes and smoothies every night, five stink bombs let off (that's not counting the REAL ones), all of the toilets overflowed except for one, and all the chaperones basically did one thing for the majority of their day.......looked for Luke!!!

It was a phenomenal experience and one that I hope to be a part of again in the upcoming years. Maybe even next year. It's all worth the craziness of putting up with those many teenagers!

Happy, Happy Birthday

Happy Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday you!

Happy Happy Birthday

And a great big hug to you!

Happy Birthday Mom!!! Wish I was there with ya!!! LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy 5 Molly!!!

Okay, so it's been a while. You would not believe how hard it was to adjust being back home! And my computer has been acting up BIG TIME! I think the boys have been messing with it. Pray that Eric relinquishes his laptop to me soon! I'm going to be taking three college classes beginning Monday the 20th, so I definitely need a reliable computer. And I miss my internet!

Happy Birthday to Molly today! Maybe mom will take her to starbucks to get her some whip cream and let her play with her soccer ball. Mia Sue, Meadow and Pugs send a big birthday hug to their "Aunt Molly."

Caswell was AWESOME!!! I can't put it all into words it was that great of an experience. There were some very bizarre instances such as crabs being put in other peoples beds, riding down the stairs in suitcases and Brady was hiding in trees at night jumping out and scaring girls but getting phone numbers from them at the same time!!! Now what does that tell you about kids knowledge today??!!!! All in all, it was well worth the lack of sleep. Danny Braswell and I taught a small group of high schoolers (if you call 23 kids a small group) each day and it really went smoothly. God performed some major break throughs there and the youth are on fire right now. Heck, I am too!!! I just pray that it will last.

Well, I hope that I will get back into the swing of posting each day again. I am painting the dining room right now so that I can finish it up before school starts, then preschool again. I'll just have to get into a different routine so be patient and bear with me.

Have a Starbucks for me Good Golly Miss Molly!!!