Mark and I met at the School of the Ozarks in Branson, MO. He was employed by the school and I was a graduating senior. He left SofO two weeks after we met (moved to Madison, WI) and we continued a long (might I re-iterate looooonnnngggg) distance relationship and were married the following year. I was a pretty determined feminist running from God. He was a compliant new believer. It made for an interesting combination. Just a few months after we were married and decidedly hating living in the north, we made the move to Murray, KY. This is where we and our children call home. We love the south and southern cooking, the slower way of life (when you are surrounded by cows and tobacco it doesn't get much slower), our family and church home (though not in that order).God decidedly intervened in our lives and began redeeming who we were and our lives have never been the same. We went from never wanting children to having 5 (one of which is a reversal baby). From pre-registering our 1 year old for 3 year old preschool to homeschooling for almost 2 and 1/2 decades now. It has been a journey of God rewriting our history and our future. We praise Him everyday for redeeming our lives, not just in the cross of Jesus Christ, but redeeming every aspect of our lives, walking out our salvation, living His grace and mercy in every arena that we live and breathe, watching Him work in our lives and in the lives of our children. We indeed serve a glorious God.
I'll close this post with a couple pics of our kids as Abby is wanting to watch a movie with me.
(L-R) We have Corrie (she took the picture in Fall of 05). She's currently 23, married and pregnant with our FIRST grandbaby!! Abby is 8 and is our reversal baby. She is a combination of all of the kids' personalities. Caleb, currently is 25 and is seeing/dating/courting a lovely young women in our church. He was hired this year as the computer technician for our local public schools (the very school to which we sent our homeschool letter of intent for years). Hannah is our 21 year old. She is a lovely violin/fiddle-ist and is responsible for introducing us to the children of Liberia when she visited an orphanage fall of 06. She longs for Liberia and the children she met as she has a missionary heart and spirit (rather strong willed and independent too). And then there is Emilie. Em just returned from 2 months in Australia working on an airstrip for a missionary there. She plays a wicked mandolin, loves karate and horses and is definitely a source of much joy in our family.
Another attempt at a family photo happened this last Christmas (06), so there's a couple of faces added to the pic. L-R on the back we have Hannah, Emilie, Caleb, Nick (Corrie's husband--what a great son-in-law). Front row is Abby, Olivia (Nick's daughter--she's 6) and Corrie. You have no idea how many of these poses were taken before we got one that was acceptable. We have alot of clowns in our family and trying to get them to all sit still, smile and not second guess the shutter is tantamount to herding marbles uphill.
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