Fall Fun!

Fall is beautiful here in Michiana.  The colors of the trees are breathtaking, and it's impossible to get a good photo that captures the glory of the season.  It's a wonderful time of year - everything is cool and crisp.  But then the leaves start to fall, and fall, and fall some more.  Until there is a massive sea of leaves in the yard. Thankfully, our house came with a leaf blower, and the city comes by a few times with this really cool truck that sucks up the leaves you have raked to the curb into this giant vacuum thing.  We had lots of fun watching that.

Our area is known for the apples grown here.  Because of the unusually hot summer and drought, the crops weren't as plentiful this year, but the Niles Apple Festival was just as fun! A large fair ground with arts and crafts, carnival rides, face painting, food, and free fudge samples? Yes, please!

First taste of cotton candy

First carousel ride - she had a blast!

And no festival is complete without a parade - Maryn's first! Here we are waiting under the awesome shady trees where we watched the fun.

Where else can a toddler enjoy the sights of military vehicles, beauty queens, McGruff the crime fighting dog, loud firetrucks, marching drum lines, tractors, horses, and Maryn's favorite, a man dressed like a trash can?! All the while chasing after candy thrown right to you!  Maryn was in heaven.

We had a fall surprise a couple of weeks ago - my Gramps and Grammy came to visit! They were driving home from a vacation on the east coast and decided to stop by.  We enjoyed spending the evening with them and eating at our favorite Mexican restaurant!

The clinic I work for hosted a fall family festival for employees and their families.  There were all kinds of fun games, pony rides, pumpkin painting and other crafts, and of course good food. Maryn's favorite was the little puppy she got to chase after.

Another fall favorite in the Smith household is football, of course.  We love cheering on our Sooners.  It's been fun to try to pass on this tradition to Maryn - she loves yelling OU! and Boomer Sooner!  Unfortunately, our latest game against Notre Dame didn't go so well.  But it has been fun to be here at Notre Dame when they are doing so well. Gotta love college football in a college town.  And we hope that ND goes all the way!

Our season zoo pass got us free entrance to their annual Zoo Boo, which was a lot of fun.  Maryn loved getting to dress up - Minnie Mouse was her costume choice.  They had a huge area to walk through and get candy from local vendors.  Although getting candy directly from the animals would have been more fun, haha.

Trick or treat, Lion! 

Our friends the Esteps joined us.  The next two pics of Maryn and Elliott crack me up.  Classic.  I could totally make up about 20 different conversations to go along with their facial expressions.

And finally, we enjoyed Halloween evening at home.  Maryn was quite pleased to be able to dress up a second time.  And I must say she was the cutest Minnie that ever there was.  We trick-or-treated at the 6 houses surrounding ours, and then came back home to greet the other neighborhood kids.  I think Maryn thought answering the door and passing out candy was just as fun as going door to door herself.  This is the first time that Billy and I have lived in a neighborhood rather than an apartment since we have been married.  It was lots of fun to have trick-or-treaters, but we were shocked at how much candy we went through! We thought we had more than enough but those kiddos cleaned us out!  It was lots of fun!

Whew! Sorry for so many pictures! But we've had such a fun fall so far! Now if Hudson would just decide to let us have a birthday party for our fall finale!  We'll keep you updated, of course!  Happy Fall to our family and friends!

The Great Tree Incident of 2012

I have not totally given up on blogging.  I'm just...tired.  35 weeks pregnant and counting! I'll do a pregnancy update soon, but suffice to say all is well.  And we've been a little distracted with what Billy calls "The Great Tree Incident."  On August 1st, we had been home from a big trip to Oklahoma for less than 48 hrs when a very large tree from our neighbors yard fell onto our house.  Maryn and I were home and it was quite terrifying!  I guess the tree was old and had been affected by the drought.  Here are some shots of the damage:

The tree went through the ceiling of our bedroom on the second floor:

This is what it looked like once the tree was removed.  We had some nice natural light :)

 Maryn's bedroom is below ours, and because there was some sort of exhaust pipe that went from above her ceiling to the roof, her ceiling was damaged as well:

We were very thankful no one was hurt (so glad we weren't in bed!).  We are also thankful that we don't own the home and that we have fantastic landlords, our friends Adrian and Nora, who worked diligently from Colorado to make arrangements.  We were also very blessed by our dear friends the Esteps who immediately came over to help us and who let us crash at their place for a couple of nights while the tree was being removed.  Afterward, the roof was professionally tarped, we closed off the upstairs portion of the house, and we moved into the guest room on the main floor next to Maryn's room.  Then we had to wait a month for insurance and contractor red tape to go through before work could be started on the house.  But despite the stress of the wait, the timing couldn't have been better.  Some friends from church, the Harveys (I also work with Chris, and he's our pediatrician), left for Africa on a 3 week long medical missions trip a couple of days before the contractor started work on our house.  They graciously allowed us to stay in their home and it was wonderful!  They live in Niles about 40 minutes from our house.  They also have 3 daughters and Maryn was delighted to play with all of their toys.

Maryn got to see her first rainbow at the Harvey's house!

 Billy and Maryn took the opportunity to explore some of the historical sites in Niles:

Here's how they fixed Maryn's room:

And here's our room:

After 10 days away, we are so glad to be back in our home and sleeping in our own beds! Stay tuned for more Smith family updates coming soon!

Church

So, as I mentioned recently, I have yet to write a post on our church.  Which just seems so ridiculous to me for so many reasons, but I think it's because I just have too much to say.  When we were planning on moving, we knew that the most important thing we needed to do was find a church, a body of believers that would be our family.  We found Fulkerson Baptist Church in Niles, Michigan on the Nine Marks website, and began reading everything from the church website, following the pastor's blog, and listening to sermons.  From what we could tell, it seemed like everything we prayed to find.  Of course, you never know until you actually visit a place, and meet the people.  After 2 or 3 visits, we knew we were home.  Here is a picture of us on the Sunday we joined, along with several other families; we are on the very far left, with Maryn:

We absolutely love our church.  It's on the smaller side, which means there are plenty of opportunities to serve.  There are lots of young families like us, but younger and older generations are also well represented, and worship alongside one another.  The preaching/teaching is seriously amazing - we can't get enough.  We love the pastor, the other elders, the music, the rest of the leadership; we love the people.  We love the theology, the mission, the vision, the passion of this church.  

In the last couple of months, we have begun to transition from getting to know people and enjoying being blessed by the service of others, to beginning to get more involved and serve in various areas, which has been such a joy.  We have had opportunities to help on the worship team and in the nursery.  Billy recently became a deacon, and is very excited to be a servant within the church's ministry to the widows, orphans, and the poor.  I recently formed a new communications team to figure out ways to better inform the body about church events and announcements - I love the people I get to work with on this!  We also have recently joined a newly formed small group (our first small group was getting too big) and are really enjoying getting to know the people in our group.  Maybe our small group deserves its own blog post!  :)  

I recently read the book Radical by David Platt.  In it he says: "We need community in order to follow Christ radically.  I am convinced that one reason many of us have not taken radical steps in our giving, for example, may not be so much because we love our possessions as it is because we fear isolation.  If the radical, simple living we see Jesus talking about were more common in the church, it would be much easier for us to live simply as well.  But we look around, and everyone else has nice cars, nice homes, and lifestyles characterized by luxuries, so we accept that this must be the norm for Christians.  We may get convicted about our way of living when we look at the Bible, but then when we look at one another, we assume it must be okay because everyone else lives this way.  If we are going to live in radical obedience to Christ, we will need the church to do it.  We will need to show one another how to give liberally, go urgently, and live dangerously....In the process we will learn to depend on one another according to God's design."

We are very blessed, because Fulkerson Park does not fall into the category described above.  It is full of individuals and families who are living radically for the gospel of Christ.  People who give their time and money abundantly, who adopt orphans, who fight for the weak and the unborn, who selflessly love their neighbors, who work hard and sell possessions so they can go overseas to a dangerous place to reach the lost, who use their intellect to write books and go to school and teach for the glory of God, who use their trade skills to serve others and show God's love, who live very simply on small budgets so they can dedicate their lives to ministry, who drive beat up mini vans because they love kids more than luxury and status, who give up Sunday afternoons to care for those in nursing homes, who sacrifice and give when someone in the body or someone they know is in need, who pay for books for seminary students in Africa, who regularly and hospitably open up their homes to others, who spend hours planning and organizing ways for children to have gospel-hearing opportunites as well as their care so parents can have those opportunities also, who give up the American dream for the sake of a better Kingdom.  I could go on.  We are not worthy to be named among them.  In this environment, Billy and I are doing lots of growing, we are challenged, and we feel loved.  Isn't it amazing the way God works through local faith families?  We didn't even know these people existed just over a year ago, and now we feel one with them.

Curious to hear our pastor, Brian Hedges?  Here he is answering a question on Christianity.com.  

And here's our church website: www.fulkersonpark.com