Sunday, August 31, 2008

Summer's over?




I can't believe it's Labor Day weekend already and that summer is officially over! I thought I would share a few pictures and comments about what we've been up to for the past three months...

In June Erik was able to participate in a youth mission trip to Kingston, Jamaica, along with my mom, our friend Andrew, another female adult and 10 students from our church. They stayed on the campus of the Salvation Army and did various maintenance jobs around there and played with the students from a school for the blind. Over all they had a great time, until the last night. While they were sleeping, three Jamaican men jumped the wall that surrounded the complex, broke into the house where they were staying (along with about 25 other Americans), and robbed them all at gunpoint. After two hours or so the men left with a lot of money and various small electronics. Thankfully no one was hurt and no passports were stolen. I can't include a picture from the trip because Erik didn't take a camera and Mom's was stolen!


A few weeks later we headed south to the beach. My sister (Megan), brother and sister-in-law (Blake and Kim), Malachi, Erik and I drove together and stopped by Erik's parents' house on the way. We started our vacation with a fun evening on the lake, including some water-skiing demos by Erik, Blake and Kim.

We had a great time in Kiawah with our whole family, my Aunt Denise, Uncle Mark, their daughter-in-law Shannon, Aunt Tweed and Uncle Art. We rented two houses that were connected by a porch (kinda like a duplex) that were a very short bike ride from the beach. We also had a community pool in front of our house. Malachi still talks about our "other house, the one with the pool and all the bikes". Wouldn't that be nice?

On the way home we stopped by Kevin and Becky's again and left Malachi to spend a week with YaYa, 'Buelo and his cousins, Austin and Whitney. He had a great time at "Cousin Camp" and is already excited about going back next summer.

The first weekend in August we went to Drummond Island, MI, with seven of our friends from church. We went for a leadership retreat and stayed at Heather's family's lake house. We were able to get a lot accomplished concerning the church service, but we were also able to hang out, relax and have a lot of fun. I even water-skiied for the first time since high school!

In the midst of all this traveling and fun, we have been busy at home, too. Erik has been training hard for a marathon, hopefully in Akron at the end of September. I've created many cakes, including four wedding cakes. And Malachi is getting smarter and funnier all the time. He especially likes to tell jokes now. His favorite is, "What are you eating under there?" "Under where?" "Underwear! Yuck!" He always laughs at himself, anyway.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

So here we are.

I've finally decided to start a blog, and while I can't promise that I'll update as regularly as I should, I do promise to do the best I can. We don't have a computer at home so I have to drag Malachi all the way to my parents' house (which he loves, of course) or to Daddy's store (which he loves almost as much) just to get a few precious minutes to check email, update the Cake Kitchen website, read Heather's and Kari's blogs (part of my inspiration here) and do anything else that requires the use of the Internet.

I hope you all will visit to hear all about what's going on in Bainbridge and will comment as often as possible. I'll try to update at least once a week. We love to hear from you all and hope you'll enjoy the stories of our lives!