Another busy week...

Here is a small portion of the shells we collected last week while on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. Note the cupcake in the upper corner for scale...

Well, it's Saturday night, and we've survived yet another busy week. Hope and the kids are in the other room watching a movie, I'm popping some popcorn, and we're looking forward to a slow day tomorrow. I was gone from Wednesday to late Friday on a business trip to northwestern Arkansas, and while up there, I managed to catch a cold. Hope busied herself with running kids to their activities, such as Cub Scouts, CCD, and Beth's dance lessons. She also helped with getting the plants for the landscape around our new church. On Thursday, she accompanied Beth's preschool to a visit to the local fire station (that's Beth on the right in the light blue hat):

On Friday afternoon, after she took her Cub Scout pack for a quick nature hike around a pond on the UAM campus, she then held a birthday party for Kenny, who didn't have one the weekend of his birthday because it was right after Thanksgiving and we'd been traveling:

I arrived about 8 p.m., after all but a couple of kids had left. Kenny had his friends Beau and Maclean stay for a sleep-over, which went surprisingly well. They stayed until about mid-morning today, when their parents picked them up. I then watched the kids while Hope went to a funeral for a friend of ours at church who passed away recently. After she returned, we sat down to write the annual Christmas letter. This meant getting the kids to pose for a nice picture, which is always harder than it seems:

This was actually one of the better pictures--with the exception of Kenny, who was looking at a football game on the television rather than watching the camera! Hopefully, our Christmas cards will be sent out by early next week. We then ran back into town so Hope could drop off a relish tray for the post-confirmation meal our church was having. We weren't going to that event, though--Kenny and Beth had been invited to a cooking-themed birthday party for a couple of little friends of theirs:

Here the kids are posed with their cooking outfits (the big knife in the back is a symbol of the National Guard unit armory this was held in--the girls' father is in the National Guard). At this party, the kids may their own mini pizzas and rolled out the dough for cookies, which they stamped (when they weren't eating the raw dough):

Stephen was too little to participate, but he wasn't very happy, either, when Hope held the young baby of our hosts:

Beth and Kenny had fun, and seemed to enjoy eating the fruits of their labors:

Next week should be less hectic for us. Still plenty to do, but I'll be in town the next couple of weeks before we head up north for Christmas. I have been summoned for jury duty for the next couple of weeks, however, and so I may not get as much work done as I'd like to...