Home Again

We took an unintentional break from blogging the past two weeks. I guess we have just been busy getting used to being back home. I have made many trips to the grocery store and feel stocked up on food. One of our first few days back, we were able to visit with one of our supporters. Rebekah, from Clinton, SC, was visiting her sister in Minnesota and stopped by to visit. It was fun to introduce her to Callie.


We had a play date today with "Nee" and "Ma-ux", also known as Annie and Maddux. We had fun playing in the house and then went to the park. It has still been summer weather up here, so we are soaking in every minute of being able to be outside.



And, we finished off our day today with a big "owwee" as Callie calls them. We have had lots of owwees lately on hands and knees, but this one tops it all. She was running in the driveway with Charlie and apparently just face planted, hard. He didn't actually see the fall, but it must have been pretty bad. It's hard to get the full effect in a picture, but basically, the whole left side of her face is scratched or bruised. And, she re-opened a scab on her knee. Bless her heart, we had to give her tylenol for the pain tonight. Hope she feels better in the morning because we are going to the State Fair. I'm sure we'll have pictures from that event!

Clock Shop and Mighty Jumps

I just realized that we never put these pictures up on the blog from our time in Atlanta. Since retiring, my dad has been helping out at a clock shop in the Atlanta area repairing and building clocks. We took Callie by there and took a few pictures:


She also liked sitting on Papa's bike and saying "Vroom Vroom"


We took her to a place called Mighty Jumps. It costs about $5 and your kid can play on all kinds of inflatable bouncy things for as long as they want. We highly recommend it to anyone with kids in the Atlanta area. Callie had a blast climbing around and going down some of the slides. We have some video footage that we will try to put up sometime soon.

Atlanta Videos

Here are a couple of videos from our time in Atlanta. These are things pictures wouldn't always do justice.

Random Pictures from my phone

As our trip in the south came to a close, I ran across a bunch of pictures that i had on my phone that I thought might be worthy of a blog post.
I thought this was a good shot of Callie and Goldie

We went blackberry picking a lot at Gami and Papa Phil's house in Roebuck. Callie loved saying "black" every time she saw a blackberry.

When we were in Roebuck, she got her first wasp sting. It got her on the foot (right by her pinky toe) and she cried a lot. We did find out that she is not allergic to wasp stings though.

We took Callie to Lovett (my old school). She seemed to enjoy running around the campus.

This was a playhouse that they had on the playground.

Callie swinging in a hammock swing at Papa and BeBe's house

One night after Callie had a bath and before we put clothes on her, we let her play with Kaboodle on top of the cabinets at the top of the stairs. Callie started lying down on him. It was cute. We later learned that this was a mistake because she started trying to lie down on him every time she saw him after that. And he was not too pleased about this new activity and started to try to bite her when she did this.

One of our big activities in Atlanta was playing lots of tennis. Jennifer, Bebe, Callie, and I would go over to the courts to hit. Two of us would hit while the other one would watch Callie. It was a good was to give one of us a rest and get out of the heat for a little bit. Callie really likes carrying these rackets around whenever she can.

Callie eating her first dumdum sucker. She had a blast with this and we found that it keeps her occupied on long car rides.

Her first dinner at Miyabi Japanese steakhouse. She liked the chopsticks.

Falcons Training Camp

On Monday we took a trip to Flowery Branch, GA to catch one of the Falcons' training camp practices. Callie didn't seem too interested in what was going on. Her favorite parts were the stuffed football we got her, the frozen strawberry lemonade, and every time they blew the whistle. When they would blow the whistle, she would look up and yell "wheesle! wheesle!" and then try to whistle with her mouth. It was really cute. Here are some of the shots from our day:

This is her stuffed football. When she got hot standing in the sun, Bebe took her to the shade and she ran around throwing and kicking her ball for a while. She was highly entertained. We also got her to yell "touchdown"

Callie next to the practice field.


Eating her frozen lemonade. This kept her occupied for a while. And she managed to get her hands incredibly sticky.

And I had to throw a shot of some of the players in here. This is the team lined up getting to run a play. My favorite player, Michael Turner, is lined up in the backfield (farthest on the left for those of you that dont know football terms). He had some good runs while we were there.

The Fountains at Centennial Park

When we got back to Atlanta, we took a trip to Centennial Olympic Park in downtown for Callie to play in the olympic ring fountain. She was a little cautious at first, but after a few minutes she started running through fountains and having a great time playing in the water.


Just lounging around. Every now and then she would feel the need to lie down on the ground for a bit.


She liked to try to drink the water from the fountain also.

Towards the end, she would try to sit on each individual stream of water.

Taking in the scenary.

She also mage friends with this pigeon. I was surprised at how close the pigeon let her get.

We also went and found my brick in the park. Callie didn't know what she was looking at, but maybe she will think this picture is cool later.

Mama, Callie, and Bebe walking through the park.


And some videos:
Callie's first impression of the fountain


A quick shot of her trying to drink from the fountain


And this is just a good picture of what it looks like when she runs. She loves running places when we ask her to "Run. Run."

2 more Dewees Pics

Another thing I forgot to mention is that you can only drive golf carts on the island. We had fun driving around each morning exploring the island in a golf cart. Also, on this trip Callie saw some crabs. She even held one after the crab had been on ice for a while so it couldn't move. She tasted some after we cooked it, but she was not a huge fan of crab. Here are some pictures from one of our morning golf cart rides with our friends the Henleys.

Dewees Island

After the project, we went to Dewees Island (off the coast of Charleston) to a friend's parents' house. It was super nice and a lot of fun to spend 3 days with 10 of my good friends from college. It is an island only accessible by ferry, so there was no one else on the beach. It was a welcome change from Myrtle Beach.

This is a good shot of the huge beach with no one else on it.

She still likes playing in the sand.

There were a lot of shells and sanddollars for her to collect. She had fun picking them up from the sand.

This is the collection that we ended up with by the end of the weekend.

End of STP 2010

We just returned home from our Summer Training Project. We had a full week there with the students, closing out the summer and hearing all about what God did in their lives while we were away throughout the month of July. We really thought that this is one of the healthiest projects that we had ever been a part of. Students were still excited about learning new things and studying their Bible all the way until the end of project. Many students we talked to were confronted with their own sin like they never had been before. They learned what true authenticity in relationships really looks like. Here are some pictures of students at the end of project:
All of the Northwestern guys at project.

Matt Bell and Levi Peterson. Two of the upcoming seniors in our ministry. I discipled Levi all of last year. He had a great time leading a room of 3 other guys this summer and enjoyed participating in their growth for the summer.

Some of the NWC girls from project.

Chris and Kyle are two students from University of Sioux Falls, SD. There is no CO ministry on their campus, but they came on our project and are both real excited about taking the vision of Campus Outreach back to USF.


And of course, Callie had a good time going back to project:
We went out to the end of the pier and saw a shark, 2 dolphins, and 3 jelly fish. We are not sure if Callie really knew what we were looking at, but she enjoyed her time on the pier any way.

Callie's friend Maddux was the only one that returned for the end of project. The rest of her friends were with their mom's back in Minnesota.

We took her to the arcade at the pier for an afternoon of entertainment

She also threw the skee-ball up the ramp in the arcade...

But she didn't quite get it far enough up there. However Jennifer and I got her a bouncy ball, some bracelets, and little army men from the prize counter with our winning tickets.