Back to School

Our kids started school in August - Kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 5th grade. Drew joined the crew this year and they get one year together at the same school!

A new year of MOPS began and I had a great time at a MOPS leadership retreat to prepare for it!

I have tried to occasionally go up to the school and have lunch with them as a special treat. Their lunch schedules work out so that I get most of my time with just Anna and then right when she starts to leave...

...I get the other 2!

I also have had my share of baby showers this fall! This one was super fun with my amazing neighbors!

Anna decided to run for 5th grade Student Council Representative. This was her poster that she made. Sadly, she didn't win, but she had a great attitude about it! I ran for Student Council President in the 5th grade so it was fun to remember my experience too.

Kate is a future teacher in the making! She organized "The Sticker Club" and invites several of the neighbors over to our house. She puts a lot of planning into it and it's very cute! Drew also joins in!

I continue to organize a monthly ladies night with my church. It has been a great way to get more connected to friends at church!

Kate started her second season of soccer on a new team, the Orcas. This time she did it without Anna. She loved it!

I also have had the privilege to chaperone for Anna at Sweet Pete's. I have plans to hopefully chaperone upcoming field trips for Kate and Drew also.

MOPS had a unique scavenger hunt at the local Target. This was one of the many funny pictures I took in the store!

The kids' school had a Fun Run to raise money for their school. Drew took it very seriously. He barely stopped for water and he would high-five my mom every time he took a lap. 

Kate was usually holding several friends' hands. I'm actually surprised she's not in this pic.

Anna is hard to see in this mass of 5th graders, but she's on the middle left with her hair up. They all raised quite a bit of money for their school!

I also went to my first high school reunion since I'm living so close to my hometown. It was fun to see familiar faces from so long ago! I can't believe it's been 20 years.

We also had some family friends come visit us from Indiana for a weekend. We had so much fun with them in Lafayette and it was great to pick back up where we left off!

We even celebrated their daughter's 10th birthday with them! I love Drew's face in the background, haha!

Drew learned how to log in on the computer at school so he was rewarded with a special teddy bear.

I dressed up as a Ghostbuster with my MOPS table for our Halloween meeting!

Anna has been selling baked goods to cover the costs of her Washington DC trip with the safety patrols. It's been really cool to see so many local people support her in this!

We've had fun baking together. Kate helped us out too!

There was a Book Character Parade at the kids' school so I made sure to cheer on the kids. The parade was pretty close to Halloween so it wasn't a surprise to see most people wearing their Halloween costumes!

Speaking of Halloween, here's some of our pictures: Ty Rux from Dinotrux, Mal from Descendants, and Little Red Riding Hood

Curtis and I dressed up this year too! A pirate and a butterfly.

What wasn't pictured throughout the last 3 months was a lot of illnesses in our family!! We had 2 bouts of covid and several colds. We're hoping that we have a season of wellness as we move into the holiday season! Thankfully, the Lord has sustained us through it all and we still had a lot of fun!

Summer Summarized

Our summer was filled with fun! Our family went to Vacation Bible School, the Jacksonville Zoo, and the beach. I even went to a concert with an old friend! However, most of our summer could be summarized by our trips! My last post was about our trip to Hawaii, but then we had 3 more. 

The next one was a quick trip to Asheville, North Carolina to meet our newest niece/cousin. Curtis's sister, Heather, had a baby last December and we were so excited to meet her! This is the entire McDaniel side of the family:

We explored the Botanical Gardens at Asheville.

Drew was especially excited to find a big train track!

We also surprised Megan (Curtis's other sister) and Jonas with a Zoom baby celebration in honor of their baby boy on the way! We had family on both sides giving them advice and blessings as they prepared to become parents for the first time. (Since I'm posting this later, I'll say that he arrived safely in August!)

Our next trip was to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with my parents. It started off on the wrong foot when a nail was lodged in our rental car's tire!

Thankfully, we got there safely after switching out for another rental car in Greenville, SC. We did a lot of putt-putt with this beautiful view right where my parents' timeshare was located.

We stopped at a festival on the 4th of July and posed with Smokey!

We recreated the picture from 4 years ago at the Three Bears General Store. They are all growing up so fast!

My parents brought these cool colorful smoke bombs for the kids to enjoy. This pic made me think it could be a cover on an album, haha.

We took a hike in the rain at the Sugarlands Visitor Center.

Here we are at Cataract Falls!

We also explored downtown Gatlinburg and did some shopping.

We spent 2 days at Dollywood! We learned which of our kids are risk-takers (Kate) and which aren't (the other 2).

Grandma and Grandad bought them matching firefly shirts! It was exciting to see fireflies while we were there.

We enjoyed the fireworks and the drone show. We'd never seen anything like it before!

We also went to the Stampede!

The kids got to pet one of the horses after the show was over. It was a great time in Tennessee!

Curtis had to go to Denver for RUF staff training. I tagged along so that I could meet with some of the RUF campus minister wives and actually do a little bit of ministry together with Curtis. It's much harder to minister together now that he travels so much. It also allowed us to have a little bit of kid-free time together! Last year I hiked Mount Sanitas with wives, but this time I hiked it with Curtis. It seemed much easier after all of our hiking in Hawaii! Here's our picture at the top:

The next day I hiked a portion of the Flatirons with some of the campus minister wives. We had lots of great conversations and took lots of amazing shots!

When Curtis travels, these are most of the people that he visits to shepherd, coach, and consult. We are missing several wives and all the interns, but it's a good representation of the Florida/Georgia area that he serves:

Most of the trip was spent in conference rooms, but we did some more exploring after the training was over. We went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. It seems like a really cool place to have a concert! Maybe we'll go to one in the future!

We also took a tour at Stranahan's Whiskey Distillery. 

It was a nice ending to our last trip of the summer!