Meredith’s First Valentine’s Banquet

Meredith is growing into such a beautiful young lady, inside and out. She has such a good head on her shoulders and continues to bring us joy as we watch her mature. And with that maturity comes A LOT of youth events!!!
This past weekend she went to her first Valentine’s Banquet with her youth group. To prepare for this event we went on a little mother/daughter dress shopping trip with one of her friends and her mother. We had a great time shopping for just the perfect dress at just the perfect price. We hit the jackpot with this cute little number…


I stepped into the banquet for just a few minutes to grab some shots of Meredith and her friends. These guys love each other and really have become family at school and youth group.

Meredith, HK, Chelsea, and Bonnie

Chelsea and Meredith

Rita, Bonnie and Meredith
She came home a few hours later talking non-stop about how much fun she had. We are so thankful she loves her life here, has such great friends, and has Godly leaders in her life that pour into her!
Here she is with her amazing youth leaders...

Our First Official Date Night....

Matt has been taking the girls on a date for quite a while and he has taken Matthew Ray on "buddy time dates" for a while as well. But Matthew Ray and I had never been on an official mom/son date until just the other night. When I asked him to go on a date with me he was so excited. He told me he wanted to get dressed up really nice even adding in that he would wear his dress shoes that he really doesn't care for. :) Meredith was in the bathroom when he came in to get ready and she said that he pulled off his shirt to change, flexed his arm muscles and said, "Whew! I gotta get my guns ready for my date!" I love this guy!

We ate hamburgers at Johnny Rockets and like any great date would do, he let me shop for a shirt. :)

Special Guests for Dinner

Matt works with Egyptian pastors. With that job comes lots of traveling to churches. We often travel outside of the city to visit these churches and each time we do we are fed tons of delicious food.
A few weeks ago one of our pastor families was able to come into the city to visit our home for a meal. We had such a good time eating together, working hard over Arabic (their Arabic is a little different from what we speak here in the city so this is always a stretch), and watching our kids play and sing together.

Here are a few pics of our time together.