A year ago...

A year ago we moved to Front Royal, VA...how could a year have passed by so quickly?

The other day I was thinking about all of the challenges that we had moving into this house, and how it seemed like it would never feel like "home."

What a change God has made in my heart! Even though I feel like I miss my friends and church from NC more deeply than ever, I am also enjoying this town and our home and our church family in such a sweet way.

Every time I turn onto our street, I see the view of pine trees and mountains and I cannot believe how beautiful it is...how it is like a dream come true, and I think, "how could I have not seen this before? Thank you Lord!"

The other day we went to Lowes and I took a picture of Mac & Corrie in the cart. It is amazing to compare it to a picture I took of them a year ago, soon after we had moved here. How they have grown!

What does a mountain church do for a good time?

They go camping! 

Yep, for us that meant two toddlers in a tent for the first time...sounds like a recipe for an exciting night, huh?

When we heard about the big church campout and realized Ellis had the weekend off, we thought, "hey, let's do it, should be great!" I (Amanda) had a small inkling that perhaps we should just plan on staying one night, being that it would be the first time tenting with the little guys.

First of all, we didn't even have a tent big enough to fit our family, but the whole church pretty much pitched in and made sure we had everything we needed...even a little toddler-size blow up mattress for Mac!

And as for the food, well, we were a little unprepared on that end too. When we arrived, we saw grills, steaks, coolers, coffee makers...

When my friend Heidi asked us what we were having for dinner, I kind of hemmed and hawed a bit...(we brought a bag of ramen noodles and a cup to boil water). She immediately invited us to join in with their feast, which began the long string of mooching from various families that lasted the whole weekend. We have never eaten better!

When we arrived, Mac and Corrie jumped up on the hammock with Kaylie. I don't know what she was reading to them, but the book definitely did not have any pictures! They are so interested! How funny.

Soon after arriving, we were introduced to everyone's favorite annual tradition: Blue Hole Creek. There is a shallow section for little kids and a deep section where teens and adults jump off of high rocks into the water. Basically, it was Mac and Corrie's dream come true. (Ellis wanted to jump off of the rocks, but seeing as I used to teach my health students NOT to jump off of things just because everyone else was doing it, I asked him refrain).

Mac had a blast throwing rocks into the river and touching the tails of crawfish

 

Corrie loved saying "Hat!" And playing with the water using sticks and rocks

Since we played in the creek all afternoon, both kids missed their naps and were completely exhausted by bedtime. "Great!," I thought, "they will be tired and go right to sleep!"...Ha! 

Things started off well: we read our story and then I put them in their nice little beds. Unfortunately, it was still really bright outside, and since it was so hot, we had to leave the tent flaps open. No matter where I went, I kept seeing their little heads through the windows looking at me and yelling, "Mommy, Mommy!" 
And do you see how close Mac's bed is to Corrie's crib? That was a big mistake. Every time she would lay down to try and sleep, he would stand up and annoy her and try to tickle her. Eventually, it got dark, and I am assuming they went to sleep then.  And that's when the real adventures started!

First, someone came to find me (eating some peach cobbler at someone's campsite, of course) and told me "one of your kids is really screaming loud!" Oh man! It was Mac. He was so exhausted, he was half asleep and crying and crying...inconsolable and drenched in sweat. Eventually, he calmed down, and I decided to stay in the tent from then on. I remember thinking, "At the least the rest of the night will be peaceful now!" Again...Ha!

Around 1am, Corrie woke up crying and inconsolable...and she was crying LOUD! No matter what I did, she just could not get comfortable. I took her out of her crib to lay between me and Ellis, and then I smelled something..."Oh man! We gotta change a poopy diaper on a screaming baby with a flashlight in a tent in the middle of the night?" Turns out she had some serious diarrhea, which caused a fierce diaper rash. Once we got her changed, she calmed down and went to sleep snuggled up on me...but she still woke up at least every hour or so to cry some more. 

Not only did everyone have to hear our kids crying all night, but when I went out of the tent to throw away Corrie's diaper, I tripped on someone's tent cord and practically pulled their whole tent over!

After such a tough night, it was very sweet to see how cute the little ones looked sleeping :)

Somehow, both kids managed to wake up happy. I am not sure that Ellis and I are even fully recovered now, but Mac and Corrie were up at the crack of dawn ready for more fun!

Since it was now Sunday morning, our camping crew decided to have a service up on a nearby mountain. "Just a 20-minute hike? No problem!" Ha! When will learn not to make statements like that? Normally, Mac would be running the whole time, having a blast. Apparently though, the combination of new sandals and playing in water all day gave him some blisters...he made it about 3 steps on the hike. And of course, both kids were crying for mommy to hold them. Thankfully, Ellis was able to carry him for a while, and then after we traded kids, our pastor came and took Mac for me during the steep hiking. 

All you have to do is look at our pastor and you will know that he is a mountain man!

When we finally got to the spot for our service, we saw that the view and beauty was well worth the effort. We sang together and listened to a great message on Psalm 103 - the special psalm that Mommy and Mac love to say together before bed! 

While sitting there together, with just God's beauty and our own voices to worship Him and fellowship, I could not help but think about our many Christian brothers and sisters all around the world who gather like this because they are either persecuted and must meet secretly, or because they simply cannot afford a church building. There was something very sweet about thinking about them and feeling connected to them like that.

The kids were all-around pretty great throughout the service. Ellis said, "wow, they were so quiet and good the whole time! How can we get them to be like this at church at home?" And I said, "yeah, all we need is tons of sticks, dirt and leaves for them to play around in." 

Mac and Corrie kept themselves busy making dirt piles on Ellis' leg and poking bugs with sticks.

Another great perk of the scenic church service was a rare opportunity for family pictures!

Sorry for making your hat look silly Ellis! I was just trying to get your face out of the shadow for the picture.

Good Memorial Day

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches...

At the Park! Can't beat that :)

Another reason to wear socks

See that butter-covered salt shaker? Yeah, that is totally empty. And so is the pepper. And that was a brand new stick of butter.

I thought I had sufficiently cleared the table after dinner last night...I was wrong. I heard a coughing sound coming from the kitchen, and it turns out it was Mac, who was in the act of dumping all of the salt in his mouth. I looked at Corrie and saw her pounding the butter dish with the NEWLY-filled pepper shaker.

The whole table was white, the floor and chairs were white, and both kids were crusted in wet, buttery salt.

They were having a blast.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not seem to get all of the salt off the floor, out of the cracks in the table, etc.

So, I guess it's back to wearing socks again for a while around here.

Sunday Adventure

This morning we finally did it: we finally strapped the kids in the trailer and set off for church...on our bikes. 

This has been one of those things that we have talked about for years saying, "how great would it be to ride our bikes to church?" But for one reason or another, it has never really worked out. 

Well, this morning we peddled off with what we thought was plenty of time to spare (ha!)  Yeah...we forgot about a few things, like how we live in the mountains now (is it possible that the entire ride could be uphill?) And I forgot that my bike didn't even have peddles on it, but I didn't want to take all of the time to put peddles on, so I just peddled on the stubs (I should have thought about the hills). And what happened to Mac and Corrie? How did they get so heavy? And then there's always the minor detail of the route...we thought we could just kind of "wing it" on that detail. 

Amazingly, we did actually arrive with a couple minutes to spare before the service started, but we were seriously exhausted and seriously sweaty! In fact, I don't think I have ever seen Ellis so tired, even after biking over 470 miles up and down mountains on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

And we didn't think about how hungry all of that peddling would make us. Talk about having a rumbling tummy during the sermon. All I can say is, I attacked the donut table that they put out after the service. 

All in all, it was a regular Johns' family outing. It started off with us thinking, "Hey, we totally got this. What a nice little ride...what can go wrong?" And when it was all said and done, we had a lot to laugh at ourselves for, and a really wonderful memory to thank our God for.

Here are the kiddos, strapped in and ready to ride!

After church we were so hungry that we decided to stop and get some food when we got back into town. Here, Mac is saying, "The walls of Jericho FALL DOWN!"

And here, Corrie is doing what she does best: looking cute.

And here she is dipping her straw wrapper in my water. Hey, whatever it takes to keep things from getting hostile until the food arrives.

And lastly, I had to document Corrie's first real knee scrape. It was an ugly one, but she handled it like a champ. After she fell, she said "boo-boo" and pointed to her knee. Then she went on playing and laughing like nothing happened!

Brother and sister

Thanks for the great present Grandpa and Grandma Belding!

Mud Magnet

With all her girly ways and love for shoes and accessories, Corrie has still got a side to her that loves adventure. She can hang in there with a very rough-and-tumble big brother, and if there is mud within a mile radius...she will find it. 

The other day I let the kids outside after we had a little rain. I think there was a tiny mud puddle on one side of the yard somewhere. Judging by how covered in mud she was, you would think there was a giant mudslide by our house.

Corrie, we love seeing all the parts of your personality! (I am thankful this house came with a washer and dryer too).

Mac

For a while there, Mac didn't really have any words to say to us. Then he eventually developed a sort of Asian-like babble that he would use continuously...we just wondered when we would ever understand a word he was saying.

Well, he has finally broken through the language barrier, and all of this waiting has not disappointed us!

Some of the phrases he uses are so funny and sweet...where does he hear these things? Here are a few things I heard him say recently:

When he woke up to find a house full of guests eating breakfast with us this weekend, he ran in the kitchen with a huge excited smile and yelled "This is SO CRAZY guys!"

Today he fell down on the walkway and said, in a matter-of-fact way: "That's the biggest fall I ever seen."

When I need to leave him with a babysitter for any length of time, he always comes up to me with a giant hug and says very sweetly, "mommy, I lost you."

Sometimes when I get him out of his carseat, he lays his head on my shoulder and says, "that's my mommy."

And the kicker of the quotes came this afternoon at the grocery store. I looked up from surveying the cheeses to see Mac standing up in cart and proudly holding out his finger saying (quite loudly), "Mommy! I have a wonderful booger for you!"

Good Morning, Crazy Hair!

Buddies Day

Thursday was a very special day for four little buddies. Jack, Cal, Mac and Corrie got to spend the whole day together in the beautiful sweltering heat of North Carolina. 

They started off the day with a little jaunt outside in the front yard...the classic activity of choice for this group. This picture captures each of their unique personalities and interests perfectly!

As usual, Mac was happily pushing something the entire time. In the picture below he is saying "I going round and round, faster and faster!"

Calvin spent his time running around an imaginary cross-country course that wound down around the tree on the side of the yard, up through the various driveway obstacles, and around the tree on the other side of the yard (all in his blue sandals, which somehow always ended up on the wrong feet). He would always stop and pose for me in the grass after each lap :-)

   

Corrie split her time between posing on the green bike and pushing the lawnmower. She insisted on wearing the hat and backpack outside: accessories are non-negotiables! 

And Jack enjoyed maneuvering the green bike around curves and playing with the blue "baa-aa" (ball). One plus of Jack's lack of volume control when talking: I can always hear him, even with a deaf ear! As you can see, he is very cute :-).

    

By the time we got back inside, we were all ready for watching a little Thomas & Friends before lunch.

After naps, it seemed like a great time to enjoy the other side of the yard: the side with the water hose. Transporting water from various containers to other containers just never seems to get old. What does get old is wildly shaking the little orange watering can so that water splashes in other buddies' eyes (*cough* Mac). In the end though, no one seemed to mind getting a little refreshing shower :-).

                       

The next morning, Mac and I were up earlier than everyone else, and when we got downstairs, he looked around and said, "Mommy, where's my friends?" Guess he's gotten used to his buddies :).  It will be fun to see how the "buddies" group grows over the years. 

And, on another note:

Remember what I said about Corrie and accessories? On the drive back up to VA, we stopped at a Mall for lunch in the food court. We walked around a bit to stretch our legs, and Corrie did an awesome job of holding my hand and staying with me the whole time. That is, until she saw this display!