Miscellany and lots of pictures

Our unit was featured in the Service Adventure News for April. This is distributed to each of the units and I'm not sure to who else, besides Facebook. Every unit got a month to tell about themselves in the newsletter. Here's a link to see it.

The other week, our little city of Philippi drew in some rather big names in Christian music for a concert at the city gym: Big Daddy Weave and Chris Sligh. We got tickets from friends at World Vision.

We also had a blast painting pottery at the Wow Factory in Morgantown. 

Christina and Ranita singing at the church sunrise service.

Easter Weekend

We had a busy Easter weekend made extra special by family visitors. Tara's sister and brother-in-law came from Illinois and Heidi's parents came from Indiana.

We had an Easter egg hunt at the house for everyone under 20 :) And friends from church came over for a nice meal which included something prepared by everyone in the house (except those under 5!)

This Weeks Challenge
Our challenge this week is to do yard work for someone else. That's not a task for every day, so it shouldn't be difficult, we just have to set the time to do it! Especially since we are heading to Washington DC this weekend, it needs to be done on a week night. You can pray for us, for safety and joyful spirits as we go to the big city!

And since we didn't post last week, in case you are wondering, our challenge was to use only food in the house for preparing meals, buying only staples like bread, milk and eggs. Christina did a great job using what we have, and it worked out well having that challenge right before Easter since we splurged a little and bought a ham and other goodies for our Sunday meal!

Baseball, juggling, and no chocolate!

Friday night we drove (yes drove, it was necessary!) to Pittsburgh for a Pirates baseball game. We'd talked about going to a game sometime and about a month ago we found while browsing their schedule that April 8th was "buc night" and free t-shirt Friday. Tickets, hot dogs, and popcorn were all $1 each. Of course, with all the ticket convenience fees, the final cost for all our tickets was a convenient $11.50. Weather was looking a little iffy as Friday approached, but we took our chances and lucked out! It was a little chilly, and we had to park several blocks away but it was a pretty exciting game. We stayed until the 11th inning and listened to the last two innings on the drive home when the Pirates finally made the winning run in the bottom of the 13th (around 12:30 am). We were glad we left when we did!

We also got free posters!

Sunday was beautiful so we went to Audra Park to play. The water in the river was high and cold, but that didn't stop some from getting in! Mike also did his learning component and taught everyone how to juggle devil sticks. Enjoy the video :)

This weeks challenge
Saturday began our new challenge of not eating sweets and desserts. It began rather rough, especially when brownies were brought to our house and we all had to resist! We don't keep much of those foods around, except what comes in care packages! But many realized that our workplaces pose even more temptations. Even though it can be difficult, it can also be easier to not eat such foods when available when you're just not supposed to as a group.

Oh deer!

On Saturday, Tara's learning component happened to be something that is illegal in several surrounding states! She took us to a local deer farm belonging to a World Vision Storehouse customer. Deer farming is a surprisingly lucrative business, let's just say that many deer cost more than alpacas. There are about 40 farms in West Virginia and there is an official association. The deer are bred and raised to sell to other people for breeding or to sell to forest preserves for hunting. We were hoping to buy some meat for a meal this week but they aren't allowed to sell any meat.

In about a month, the does will start giving birth and everyone wants to go back because the fawns will be bottle-fed, and we just can't pass up that opportunity! Plus the Roses (the farm owners) were really nice and hospitable.





We had a family from church over for supper one night this week. Since Justina just celebrated her 15th birthday they brought her birthday cake along to help finish. We did pretty well! And of course when there's birthday cake, the hats come out.


This weeks challenge
This week we will not be driving unless absolutely necessary, finding alternate modes of transportation. Christina, Mike and Heidi already walk or ride bike to work so it won't affect them much in that way. Ranita will be taking the transit and getting rides to and from the clinic, and if it's nice she'd like to walk home one day just to do it; it's a pretty long walk and all up hill going from home. Tara lucks out on school days because McHugh's will still take Ian (he will not be riding the bus for the week) so she still gets a ride. She also had an offer to be picked up for work one day at World Vision but will have to get out her bike for the other! We also walked to church, though we'd like to do that more often if we could just plan ahead to get ourselves ready early enough.

McHugh's are cooking this week so alternate travel for getting groceries had to be arranged. Since Monday and Tuesday were supposed to have rain, we decided to load up our bike trailer and get them Sunday afternoon while it was still nice (we don't usually like to shop Sunday's, but Heidi didn't particularly want to get stuck at the grocery store with the trailer and Ella and a bunch of groceries!) So here's how we looked getting back, with the trailer packed, the kids holding bags, and Heidi carried a bag on her shoulder (though she still had the easier haul)! But we made it with nothing broken or too smushed!