Brumbaugh Visit

We had a visit from a very dear family, the Brumbaughs. Melissa is also one of my closest friends on this planet. They live in Wyoming and came for a week the first part of May. They lived in Custer, SD when we did. Sweet sweet family. We started off by meeting them at my folks house near Mtn Home. Papa took Dave and Martin fishing. Then we went to Silver Dollar City. It was a great time because there was hardly anyone there! You could literally stay on a ride to ride it again. The roller coasters were a hit. I even hopped on one because litte Abby (age 6) needed someone to ride with her. I figured if a 6 year old could do it I could too. What was I thinking?!?!? My eyes were closed the entire ride and I was praying that God would not allow me to die on that thing. The roller coaster was called PowderKeg. You go from 0-53 mph in 2.8 seconds. We also went to Pea Ridge National Park. What a fun week. We also let the Brumbaughs in on a secret that we were going to South Dakota at the end of the month. We knew Nicholas would not be able to get any school done if he knew about it so we waited to tell him until the week before we left. More about that in the next post.

Garden

We finished getting the garden in this past weekend. We are planting onions, cabbage, collard greens (by accident, I thought they were cabbage plants!) bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, green beans, corn and tomatoes! Nicholas and Rachel did most of the planting while Dad supervised and I kept my eye on Rebekah!

More pictures from Robinette visit

Rebekah

Jake & Nicholas
Samantha, Rachel, Alaina

Papa, Michele, Kyle

The Robinette Visit

Well, again I have let months pass with no update. I have good intentions to update. I knew I would blog about Christmas, about our trip to Silver Dollar City, about Spring Break at Nanny's (to include the flood!), and about all of Rebekah's milestones, but all of that seems so long ago!

So, I will blog about our visit from the Robinette's last week. Do you have a friend that you just know God personally delivered? That's how I feel about the Robinettes. Let me tell you the story. Well, wouldn't you know two minutes into typing up this post, Rebekah is awake!! I suppose I will save for now and hope to finish this tonight when I put Rebekah to bed.

Maybe I can get the story in before I hear her again. That is life ~ getting things done between Rebekah's nap and bedtime. Back to the Robinettes! When we left Plattsburg, NY we moved to Cabot, AR. While stationed there at Little Rock AFB, we attended The Bible Church of Cabot. We loved that church and fellowshipped with some terrific families. One family was Mike and Norene Bennett.

Fast forward three years ~ we get orders to RAF Lakenheath, UK. We move to England and found a house to rent in Swaffham which was about 40 minutes north of the base. We lived there for a year before we finally got into base housing. The base housing was about 30 minutes south of RAF Lakenheath in Ely, Cambridgeshire. A few weeks after moving in to base housing (it was actually a newly built subdivision of contracted out housing) a neighbor invited me to her DK book party. It was nice to meet other ladies who lived in this housing area. One particular red haired lady was introduced to me and it went like this: "Michele, this is Melissa." I'm sure I said something like, "It's nice to meet you" and she looks very inquisitively at me and said, "What is your last name?". I replied, "Hauch." She then smiled and had this look on her face, like, I finally found you!! And she said, "Do you know Mike and Norene Bennett?" To which I, still a bit confused, I'm sure, said, "Yes." This lady was making me a little nervous with her enthusiasm. Then she proclaimed, "That is my dad and step-mother!"

Here we are in another country and I meet this sweet, yet wacky! girl who is telling me that I knew her parents from our previous church. It was a pretty wild introduction!

The rest of the background is that Norene had told Michele when they got orders to England (they arrived a couple of months after we did) that she knew of a family from her church that had just gone to England. She told her that our kids were about the same age and that she thought we would be good friends. She told Michele our names and so for the next year in England, every Melissa she would meet, she would ask her what her last name was. A year later we finally meet at the DK book party. Michele lived about 2 blocks down one way and I lived 1 block the other. So, we finally met and live just 3 blocks away from each other for our remaining 3 years in England. Norene was right, Michele and I were just about inseparable. We walked our kids to school together, we scrapbooked at Michele's house with other friends every Tuesday, we went shopping in Cambridge...lots! and we also worshipped at the same church together. Thank you Lord for this dear sweet friend.

Did I mention that Michele is also from Arkansas!? We have seen the Robinettes throughout the years and email (ok, I email!! ha) regularly. They just came through AR on their way from FL to Ohio. They will be in Ohio for 4 years before, Lord willing, they retire back to AR!

We went over to nanny and papa's and papa took Michele, Kyle and Martin on a fishing trip. And we had our signature Friday night pizza. That's another thing we did quite a bit was to get together and have Friday night pizza and game night.

We sure enjoyed our visit with the Robinette's ~ here are some photos. Good timing, Rebekah is awake again.

Until next time....

Fun in the Fall

Nicholas and Rachel enjoyed covering Rebekah with leaves.

Sisters

Rebekah already has the love of books that Big Sister has!

Update

It's bad when your children tell you you need to update your blog! So, here goes.

Since I last posted, Rachel turned 11, Thanksgiving came, Rebekah has lots more teeth, Nicholas seems to be growing before our eyes and now Christmas is just around the corner! Whew!

Rachel wanted to go to Cracker Barrel for her birthday. We took her out to lunch and gave her money. She was very happy. She is such an easy going girl, I think she would have been happy no matter what we did or didn't do! We then stopped by a game store where she bought a game for her Nintendo DS and to Target where she bought a watch. She is also at an age where I dare not pick her something out. Again she is a quiet girl, so she wouldn't make much fuss, but she would say something like, "hmm" and I'd never see her wear it/use it. I'll let you know how Christmas goes!

Rebekah has 16 teeth now!! They really give her a time too. She gets congested and just doesn't feel too good. She started getting her teeth at 3 months ~ she got her first 4 altogether and these last 8 (her first molars and bicuspids) all came in within a couple of weeks ~ which could be why they give her a time! Rebekah has added quite a few new words to her vocabulary. A funny one is when we put our hands on her when they are cold and she'll say "brrr" which actually sounds like "booo". It's so cute!! She will also scrunch up her nose, squint her eyes and smile hugely when you ask her to give you a smile. (You can see this on the top photo) She's such a little ham and we just enjoy her so very much!

Nicholas will be 14 this month! Did I say he was growing? He is getting taller and is wearing a size 13 shoe!! He shot another deer this fall. His Uncle Mike (my brother) took him hunting. They also took a break and went fishing. They hunt on a fella's property in Mountain Home and after meeting Nicholas he told my brother he could bring Nicholas over anytime he wanted. That was nice! Nicholas is our talker, so he usually befriends most people he talks to! We also got a nice email from Nick's guitar teacher. He said "It is a blessing to get to teach Nicholas. He is an outstanding young Christian man." Wow ~ that's so nice to hear as a parent! We do think Nicholas is a pretty terrific young man!

Martin also shot a deer this fall! It was his first ever. He killed an 8 point buck (a 4 x 4 for those out west). Now Nicholas and Dad like to chide each other about who's deer was bigger.

We went to mom and Papa's for Thanksgiving. We had a terrific time. We had ham and turkey and all the fixings. Then some of us played Mexican Train Dominoes, while some watched football (or was it actually napping while the football game was on?). Then the kids and Uncle Mike and Martin went outside and played football. It was a fun day!

We will be staying home for Christmas Day ~ a request from the kids and then we'll head over to mom's the day after Christmas. Martin has the week off so we'll stay the rest of the week. Seeing my history of updating ~ it will probably be after Christmas before I update again.

So, have a Merry Christmas and May God Bless each of you in the upcoming year. In our Thursday night Bible study we are going through Tozer's book "The Knowledge of the Holy" ~ it is a terrific book and boy does it just show what a MIGHTY God we serve. I don't think any of us can truly comprehend the love He has for His children. That was the attribute we read about last night and it truly is incomprehensible and amazing. This little book would make a great stocking stuffer! :o)

Melissa