WE TRAVELED TO HOUSTON, TX FOR A LOVELY WEDDING

I thought I had posted this back in June when we got home, but it was still in my drafts file. It was fun to look again at all the pictures. And I think Matt and Belinda are still smiling!
We enjoyed the touching and joyful wedding ceremony.

The Bride and Groom were delightfully elated. We expect Matt and Belinda to establish a very successful (God-honoring) home and family. They are a lovely couple, inside and out.

Belinda's mother made the amazing wedding cake.

The Lake Jackson Church of Christ could hire themselves out as caterers. They put together a splendid sit down meal, prepared by the friends of the family. I was so impressed.

Adam and Donna look for birding "hot spots" in Scotland for their trip -- which they chronicle with wit and creativity (and great photography) at the Forth Degree

I highly recommend a trip to their blog. It's the next best thing to going to Scotland yourself.

TRIP TO TEXAS = LOTS-O-FUN

In June, we traveled down to Texas for Matthew Nisbett's wedding (Craig and Ann's 3rd son). We first took care of very important business. We stopped at Donna, Margie, and Rhonda's and Donna accepted and documented all of our recent lighters for the BUB

Then we played the ever-popular "Junk-Box Bingo", a highly competitive game with extremely valuable prizes.

Glory specifically requested this game.

Josiah got artistic with the Bingo Pictures.

SNOOPY ! ! ! THE STATE COLLEGE PA VERSION

We traveled in October to State College, PA to see Amy's theatre group - Class Act Production - perform Snoopy !! the Musical.
It was great fun and they did a terrific job.

Nate graced the stage with his delightfully enthusiastic performance of Snoopy. Also playing Snoopy were Stephen and Josh Bourne.

They performed with three divisions: an adult cast, a teen-age cast, and an elementary cast. Pictured here are the three Linuses, including Andrew Bourne left and David Bourne, center.

Lucy times three, with Mary Bourne in the center.

THE BOURNE FRIENDSHIP

And three Sallys, with Abby Bourne (on the left)(Amy's co-founder of Class Act Productions).

And if you noticed a Bourne theme going, you were right. We have an alter-ego, or kindred spirit, or similarly strange friendly family in Pennsylvania. They have adopted Amy and Nate so successfully that I'm not sure they even miss us. The Bournes are delightful to be around and we enjoy our time together greatly. They have eight sons and 3 daughters, which may explain why they share a similar "uniqueness" with our family. Here are some of their children, in age order, with some of ours. (Both families are missing two).

A few of their kids have an uncanny resemblance to ours. It doesn't really show so much in pictures, but out of the corner of my eye I keep getting them mixed up; especially John and Stephen.

And David and Josiah (David's hair is much lighter without gel :-).

IT WAS A DELIGHTFUL WEEKEND

Amy and Nate were extremely hospitable and made us feel very welcome. We played games, sports, watched plays and visited. It was delightful.

Joel and Josiah also appropriated hats, made "Press" badges, and had a fierce photography contest.

. . . . For this reason, we will not be posting all 700 photos of the weekend in PA and will end now.

AND IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER . . .

This summer we had so much fun that I never got around to posting about our fun. And now, rather than methodically catching up, I am going to just post whatever in no particular chronological order. This post isn't even in order within itself, but I feel free and unburdened, so we'll go with slight disorder (much like my laundry room.)


These lovely young ladies are riding sheep, yep, sheep -- at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which is where a group of us (about 60 or so homeschoolers) went after our delightful morning at the St. Louis Symphony listening to Camille Saint Saens' Carnvial of the the Animals, which unfortuately didn't have a song about sheep (or we would have had a theme going.)


This is an epiphyte, better known as an orchid. We saw many beautiful examples of these and other rainforest plant in the Climatron. This fit in perfectly with the Exploring Countries and Cultures Curriculumn that several of us are using, since we had just started studying South America and Rainforests.

Some of the hardy explorers before we invaded the gardens.

Even though we divided by age groups, everyone's favorite part of the garden was the maze, and several rather intense games of tag occured here. It was a perfect day all the way around, . . . great friends, fabulous music, beautiful gardens, enlightening education, and delightful weather!