Helloooooo out there,

Wow, It's been all summer without saying much. Haven't really kept up with much of my online stuff since our schedules have been pretty much on the go and life with three kids is busier than ever.

We found ourselves doing a balancing act through the summer and now on into the fall as well. Soon after this weekend we'll get a a bit of a repreive as one sport season ends.

Through the summer we had KT in recreational gymnastics on Mondays. Tuesdays was the family night of taking American Sign Sign Language class, taken with Dad, Sue, Sue's parents, my Aunt, Katie's teacher from last year, and our good friend Karen. Wednesday and Fridays, MD was at gymnastics and Thursdays, Mike volunteered at church with the IT dept. Saturday evenings is church and then we have our small group bible study on Sunday evenings.

So this summer ended up in two trips to Chicago for our family, as Rei and I went up in June, KT spent the week at Camp Allendale and had a blast in spite of a serious viral bug going through and taking out 30% of the campers and staff there. Then in July, Rei and I were thoroughly blessed to serve on the Indy West Great Banquet Womens Weekend #18 team as a speaker. The Lord worked in such amazing ways that weekend and at the end of the weekend there were 5 ladies that were baptized and 13 all together that either came to Christ or re-dedicated themselves to him. :)

August saw Mike making a trip up to Ms. Pearl's, as he was roped in by Yours Truly to set up and fix a lot of computer issues for her. She was working on two VERY old systems and through generous donations, we were able to set her up with an updated system and get her in really good working shape, both for her and the moms that she serves. He spent the entire weekend working on puter stuff while there. So it was good. :)

August was also busy with school starting up- MD starting 1st grade and going school all week. KT moved into Mrs. Chadd's 4/5 High Ability class. Another project over the summer and ongoing is we have been working with Mrs. Chadd and the Laney project. See below for more details on that! AC started up with Flag football, which he turned out to be quite a fast runner for his team. He's good at it- he does it all the time! LOL! MD is also doing her gymnastics on the pre-team. When she moves up the next level- she'll then start competing. KT has started with travel basketball, which she's improving by leaps and bounds, though we are committed every other Sunday afternoon pretty much solely to basketball.

The Laney Project:
Last year- the Pup Putt Project was a HUGE success and you can read more here:

WTHR Pup Putt Article

Laney came out of the Pup Putt project in hopes to train her as a therapy dog for the school. So this summer, we started meeting on a weekly basis, holding training sessios for both Laney and Pippa, her littermate whom the Wassens purchased to train as service dog for them. So we were busy working with the dogs and have been working on a continual basis in different things to train Laney to be the dog she's expected to be.

There has been a couple of articles and a story about Laney, which are here:

Indy Star News article

Laney came into our lives through Mrs. Chadd this summer as we met each week to begin training Laney as a Therapy dog for the school. We've worked with both Laney and Pippa, Laney's littermate that the Wassens brought home to be a service dog for Mr. Wassen. There has been an article and a news story about the amazing impact that Laney has made so far.

Indy star article:

Fox 50 News story:

Since school has started we've Rei and I have visited KT's class to help with Laney, MD has continued on in her gymnastics, and KT in Basketball. AC is having his last football game this weekend. I've been involved in a moving bible study by Kay Warren called Dangerous Surrender. Mike and I have been taking the second level of ASL class with family too, as we continue to try to learn together.

The kids are excited as we embark onto October and fall and the decorations we do for Halloween.

Time to call it a night, as it took me a couple of hours to type this post as we watched the movie, Road to Perdition and was pretty good. :)

Hugs to all and will try not to be such a stranger in the near future.