April 2012 (Post Disney)-July 2012

We are WAY behind on this blog, so I will get everyone up to speed quickly. 

April

After we returned from Disney World we headed to Lansing, MI for the Katie Conference. The Katie Conference is when all the pastors' wives (PWs) of Michigan get together. It is so nice to hang out with people who are in the same boat as you. Joshua was asked to preach at the closing service of the conference, so he got to go, too. 

Here are some of us eating dinner on Saturday night. 

May

Our travels continued to Gaylord for the North and East Pastors' Conference. By this time we were done living out of suitcase.

Stefani became an "aunt" again. Her dear friend, Katie (Carolyn's sister), had a baby girl named Emily on Mother's Day. She is super sweet and Stefani can't wait to spoil her rotten.

June

On the 5th we witnessed the Transit of Venus. Basically, if you had a super cool telescope you could see a tiny black dot (Venus) pass in front of the Sun. It was actually pretty cool. The weather was amazing and there wasn't a cloud in the sky to block the view. 

Joshua officiated his 3rd wedding in June. Everything went well and the wedding was beautiful.

We celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary. We didn't do anything too special. We just spent the day together. 

Joshua and Stefani headed to the Michigan District Convention. It was the first convention for both of us. It wasn't as boring as we thought it would be. They did a great job at keeping everything moving in a timely manner. We heard some great speakers and learned more about our District.

July

We  found a dog friend lurking around our house. Stefani noticed how malnourished he was and had to take action. She lured him with some food. She then called Mary Kay and Don to see if they could bring over dog food and help transport him to the Humane Society. Since Joshua is highly allergic to dogs we didn't want to take him ourselves. 

Doesn't this just break your heart? Classic puppy dog eyes.

We survived the "Greatest 4th in the North", but it wasn't easy. We ordered these awesome custom labeled waters with our Vacation Bible School information to hand out at the parade and the order did not arrive on time. So, we had to scramble to buy water to hand out. We ended up getting the original order for free and had members pass them out at their kids' sporting events. I have zero pictures for this since we walked in the parade.

At the end of July we attended the Junior High Youth Gathering at Concordia University Ann Arbor. We took 8 kids: 7 girls and 1 boy. The theme was "In His Image" Ephesians 5:1-2. The kids had a great time and so did the adults. We went on a Servant Event at The Hope Clinic. We washed walls to be prepared for paint. All the usual folks were there: Swen and Dean, The LivingStones, and Pastor Bill Yonker.

Our kids with The LivingStones. We invited them to our Family Time and they put on a mini acoustic concert for us. They are some fine young gentlemen.

Everyone being silly. Our girls just fawned over these guys.

The banner! We make one every year. Stefani did he cross, because we didn't quite trust the kids to do it. 

Hard at work washing walls.

We hope you enjoyed the quick overview of what has been going. We have been quite busy as you can see.

God's Blessings,

Joshua and Stefani