Well, I guess the summer is over already. I noticed that our last post was from the end of May and we've sure had a lot happen since then. We visited MI at the end of June for almost 2 weeks. While there, we enjoyed a lot of time with family including a memoriable fishing trip with Joel where I caught an 11 pound salmon. It was taller than Dakota! We also had a wonderful experience at Grace Adventures family camp over the 4th of July. It was a time of spiritual refreshment for us as a family and also an awesome opportunity to connect with some of our close friends.
The girls actually spent close to a month in MI with mom and dad. They spent a lot of time on the beach and are loving the water and sand. We are grateful for the opportunities they have had and they are at an enjoyable time in life to do family vacations.
We wrapped our summer break with a trip out to CO with the Boersma family. We stayed at a beautiful place outside of Breckenridge. We spent quite a bit of time hiking and hanging out together as a family. I think we are one of the only families to almost complete the seemingly impossible task of sinking a pontoon boat (there is a good story here that needs to be told in person).
Anyway, on the way back from CO we were able to stop in NE and see many of our friends and former co-workers. We dearly miss the sandhills and it was a huge encouragement to visit and pick up relationships right where we left off. They are in a severe drought and constantly on the lookout for wildfires. There was a fire on the ranch we used to work at that burned over 15,000 acres.
In the above picture, Daraby is holding a kitten from Alice Cotton's place. Many of you who visited us in NE know Alice and have seen her "diversified" ranch (she has many different types of animals). The girls also loved riding some of her goats and catching them. Dakota led one young goat around by his horns and wouldn't let him go.
The hiking and scenery in CO was beautiful and the girls were good troopers!
Here's a picture of this year's residence life team at SBA. They have been a wonderful crew to work with so far. We picked up two new staff from Grace Adventures (where we went to family camp-Darcy says that I had alterior motives) and they have jumped in with both feet. They are getting accustomed to life out in SD and we spent an evening playing games on horseback.
Darcy had the chance to go flying last week and she took some great photos of the campus. The big building with the brown roof is the new multi-purpose building that has new classrooms up and running for this school year. We praise the Lord for his faithfulness and pray that he would provide the remaining funds to finish the gym part.
Speaking of God's faithfulness, we rejoice in sharing that we have recieved 2 adoption grants totaling $7500 to go towards our adoption! These letters have brought tears of joy as we marvel at how God provides in his way in his time. There is not any new news as far as a potential child, however, we feel like we are making small steps while "waiting". We have Daraby sleeping in the top bunk of her bed and will soon be moving Dakota to the bottom bunk to free up the other bedroom.
Another big milestone is that Daraby is starting preschool tomorrow. She is very excited. We'll see how mom and dad do tomorrow as we take her to her first day.
This is a very short recap of the last 3 months and we are so glad that we were able to see many of you over the summer. Pray for us as we enter the busy school year and if the school year goes as fast as the summer break has gone, we will soon be writing about next summers adventures! Thanks for staying tuned into our lives even when we only update every quarter!
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