So I’m hearing rumblings that Xanga might be shutting down and I really, really don’t want to lose my posts….they are like my journal!! I would appreciate any help on how to save my archives to my computer or to transfer them to another blog!?? Thanks!!

3 New posts on our family blog~

I was playing catch up!!  

http://danhenryfamily.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

Well, I haven’t updated Xanga in a long while and I know most of you follow my blog, but I decided to do a post tonight just for old times sake. Okay, technically I came back here to look at some pics on my site from a few years back and decided to update….

 

 There’s been some big stuff going on in our lives the past month that I wanted to celebrate here!

6 years ago, in October 2006, Dan began the journey of getting a degree through Liberty University Online. It looked like a huge undertaking at the time and there were many days along the way that I wondered if we would ever see the end. If you or your spouse have went through any amount of schooling, you know the commitment, sacrifices and time it takes! I remember thinking that my kids would be 12 and 14 till he would graduate and I just couldn’t fathom that…..they were only 5 and 7 at the time {and if you do the math and it doesn’t hold out, it’s because he finished a year earlier than we estimated!!} 

 

This is what our family looked like in 2006…..

And what we look like now!! 

I love this photo taken in the first month of Dan’s schooling….the kids were waiting to see what his score was on one big assignment he had to do….

 

And he got a 100%!! 

 

On May 12, we were able to attend the graduation ceremony at Liberty University and Dan walked the stage!! He graduated summa cum laude and we are very proud of him!

It was a long stressful journey. While doing school he also worked 40 hours a week, was an elder at our church, preached many Sunday sermons at church and the prison (and sermons don’t come without study) took time to do fun things with the kids and I, and so much more. He was a busy man. There were times that he got discouraged, but with lots of prayer and encouragement, he kept going. After taking two more classes this coming Fall, he will officially be done and will have earned a double major…a Bachelor’s degree is Phsychology and also in Religion! Someday he would like to go on to get his Master’s in Christian Counseling, but that won’t happen right away!

 

 He says that sometimes, working with inmates can be as much training for counseling as going to school and doing book studies is!! 

Last evening I hosted a Graduation Party for him at church. We had about 85 people attend and we enjoyed visiting with friends!!

Carmen, Tamara and Heidi
{Carmen is Tamara’s best friend and Heidi is her cousin}  

Ben and Carol Yoder visiting with Ben’s sister Marilou and her husband, Paul Wesselhoeft.

The older kids ate on the carport.

Danny with his friends, To’Anh, Dylan, and his cousin Cody.

Dan eating at the table with Roy Pickron and Eric Miller.

Probably two of the most influential men/friends in his life in the past few years.
{There were others as well, but these are definitely worth mentioning!!} 

I made sure the food dishes stayed filled and Kay made sure we got at least one picture with me in it! 

We had pasta salad, tortilla wraps, pickles and olives, crackers, cheese, chips, blueberry delight and ice cream~

 We had ice water with lemons, limes and blueberries floating in the ice cubes and a Hawaiian Limeade Punch mix.

Leah Smith and Ashley Hunter chatting

Display table….

Dan’s stole, honor cord, mortarboard, pictures, textbooks {only 4 of the many!!} and a slideshow of pics from 2006 to now.
I also had a mat for a 5X7 photo for people to sign. 

 

So, we are enjoying a different kind of summer….Dan comes home from work and we have free evenings….and free weekends!!! WOOT!  

Well, free from school work…..somehow we still stay busy with other things!! 

 

Pray for us as we seek God’s direction in our lives….we could use wisdom!

 On Blogger….

 

http://danhenryfamily.blogspot.com/

 

 

 I had given up using blogger and came back to Xanga for one BIG reason. My family blog and school blog were set up with two different emails and I had to log out of one to get into the other. Then I had to log out again to get into my email! It was a pain! 

 Finally this weekend, my dear hubby sat down to figure out how to change my family blog to my main email, which is the email our school blog is set up under. After quite some time, we realized we needed to “import” the whole site to a new address. SO, my family blog address has changed and I can blog on both accounts without the hassle!! I’m loving it!!

 Now, I just have to get back to the different way of uploading pics!

 

So, here are the two links to my blogs…..I will try to remember to update here when I do a new post! Come visit me~

 

http://danhenryfamily.blogspot.com/

http://henryschooldayz.blogspot.com/

 I got my wonderful husband to help me move my family blog to a new site. I have two blogs. One for family/ministry stuff and one for homeschool stuff and both fell by the wayside because I was constantly having to log into one and out of the other and it was a real pain….Xanga was just easier! So now, both my blogs are linked to my gmail account and I have easy access to both!

 At this point I plan to do my blogging on those sites, but want to see if I can copy and paste or somehow publish them here too so my faithful followers don’t miss out! Haha!!

 My new blog site is: http://danhenryfamily.blogspot.com/ Come visit me there and follow if you wish!

 I hope to start with updates soon….. 

 

~Happy Easter~

Praise God for His sacrifice and New Life in HIM!!

Tuesday was the final TaeKwon Do class for the kids. A big thank you to Ashleigh Mount for teaching them for 6 weeks. I had started taking the classes with them, but then when I wasn’t feeling so good with my gallbladder issues, I decided to sit out a few weeks. I ended up not joining in the rest of the time. I probably could have, but by that time I had missed a lot of what they were learning.

Ashleigh had a little surprise for them the last day….a sparring match with a fellow black belt. It was very interesting to watch! 

Afterwards the kids went swimming at the Pickron’s. The water was still kind of cold, but they didn’t mind!! 

L to R- Darren, Danny, Kayla, Victoria, Lydia, Dylan, Kirsten, Preston, Bailee and Tamara

Danny and Preston fighting to see who could knock the other off the shoulders of their teammate first.

Lydia and Lego trying to warm up in the sunshine….

Science…..

 Know how this egg can float in the middle of the water?? 

Well, first we put tap water in the cup, about half way full. The egg sunk to the bottom. Then we added about 2 T. of salt and stirred it good. The egg then rose to the surface. THEN, we slowly added more tap water and the egg stayed on the “top” of the salt water!! Interesting…..we also tried an experiment with layering colored water using salt and that one didn’t work quite as well. It is tricky trying to keep two waters from blending!! Science was fun today, again!!

 I had been considering doing something else for science next year because I didn’t think we were learning that much, but part of the problem was the earlier experiments took supplies I don’t have on hand and are hard to get unless I drive an hour or more. But lately the experiments have been using things I have on hand…simple kitchen ingredients! That makes it more fun!!

 

 Tonight Dan and I took another walk and I took my camera along. The little creek bank down the road is covered in wild roses! It’s harder to see on this picture, so I also took a close-up.

 I have been trying to walk as many days as possible again. Since I first went to my family Dr. and she guessed I was having gall bladder trouble, she encouraged me to change my eating habits to give some relief. Doing so helped me lose another 13 lbs. I have been at a standstill for a few days so I am hoping soon the scales will start dropping again….I feel so much better. I DID make myself a goal till our anniversary in July so I want to keep chugging away! 

Everything smells so good outside right now. Not sure what those white flowers are called two pics up, but they are blooming everywhere and wreaking havoc on my poor hubby’s sinus’!!

 

 We “kid-sat” some friends of our children tonight while their parents had a “date night”!!

 Danny and Sam…..they played croquet, kicked a football, watched a movie, played with cars and who knows what all else. All kinds of fun~ 

Tamara and Anna on the other hand played almost in this exact same spot ALL night!!  

 I finally got most of Tamara’s wall decor up today! Still waiting on one or two finishing touches. I am so glad to have that project done!!

 Well, it’s bed time. I thoroughly enjoyed my day! Looking forward to another, tomorrow!! Good night~

 

A little over a week ago, we had some strong storms one night. We were under a tornado watch and the weather alert went off during the night that we were under a tornado WARNING for a half hour. I think it was one of those cases where a storm coming through had a very high potential for tornado’s. So Dan woke me up and asked if I think we should get the kids up. About that quick our electric went off. It was already storming pretty hard. Since it was the middle of the night and we couldn’t see outside, we decided rather be safe than sorry, so we all bunked out in the walk in closet for about 20 minutes. It hailed for a little while and since our roof is tin, it sounded quite nasty outside…the wind and sheets of rain coming down didn’t help any!! 

 We were all happy to return back to our beds safely and continue our night of sleep! Thankful for no damage. But not everyone was so fortunate. There were quite a few trees down in the area and our neighbors down the road lost some tin off the roof of their barn…..

and part of the back part of the barn collapsed. The barn used to go the whole way to that little piece of equipment and the tree on the left side of the picture! 

I don’t especially care for the stormy spring time weather, but am thankful we have been safe so far!!

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Tuesday was the kids second to last TaeKwonDo class. Ashleigh is doing a great job teaching them the basics. And they are having fun learning….despite the pain! 

Tamara throws a punch…

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The men/boys from church had a father-son campout Friday night at Ben’s pond. Sounds like they had a great time, despite the storms during the night. A few people got wet, a few ended up sleeping in their vehicles, but guys don’t let that bother them!! They just deal with it!  A few of us ladies spent Friday evening at Heidi’s house just visiting. When Tamara and I got home, we watched a few episodes of the Cosby Show before going to bed at midnight. We had planned to get up the next morning at 8 to go shopping to the Outlets. Well, the storms had me awake for over an hour during the night, so when I woke up at 8 and tried to wake Tamara, we both decided to keep sleeping!  We woke up at 9:40!!!  Till we got ready to leave, the guys were already home!

 We took our little shopping trip and it was successful! Even stopped at a big yard sale on the way (or a junk sale, might describe it better!) While we were gone, Samuel Drawbond (a youth from church) called and invited the kids to go with him and his sisters to a rodeo in town that evening. We gave them permission to go. 

 So, that meant a night out?? for Dan and I!!???   We were thrilled, but what were we going to do? This doesn’t happen to us!!  Dan suggested we go to town and take a walk on the bike trail and then get some ice cream. So, that’s what we did!! 

It wasn’t as dark as it looks in this picture! (on the trail)

The moon was shining brightly…it looked much bigger in real life!!

We had so much fun just being alone, together!! 

 When we got into town, we decided to jump off the trail and walk the streets instead. This is a big tree by the courthouse….

A cute little ice cream/sandwich shop in town. The sign says open, but it was very dark and closed up!! 

 I love this little nook between two of the shops….there is a pavilion and flowerbeds and lamps….but it needs a little help. Cute anyway!

The park in the center of town…Magnolia Square.

We walked by Helping Hands- a thrift store I shop at once in a while, Connies Kitchen-a restaurant where all the old men in town hang out, and El Jalisco’s- our favorite Mexican restaurant. Then we came back to our starting point…..

Across the street is Main St. Station and that is where we went for ice cream and coffee. Dan had Butter Pecan and I had Choc. Chip Cookie Dough. Mmmm! After fueling up the Jeep, we headed back home and just relaxed till the kids got home. They had great fun and so did we!