Happy Mother's Day & School Year Starts to Wrap Up!

May is always busy with lots of fun activities, and we enjoyed a new restaurant for this year's Mother Day breakfast!  We went out to the Peach Valley Cafe, which was pretty good.  Grandma, we love you very much - you are a blessing to us and we are so happy that you live in town with us and that we can see you often!

Happy Mother's Day!

Waiting for our table inside where it is cool and not humid!

The church always does a nice set-up for pictures on Mother's Day Sabbath so we took the opportunity with at least one of our children who was in the vicinity!

We hung out with the Js for a bit and the boys were able to go out on the jet ski which was neat for them to be able to experience that.

May finds the end of the FLEC school year and therefore the flag football also came to an end.  Addison was on the co-ed varsity team and they had a fantastic season and won the finale!  Congratulations team!

Catching the ball

One very sad farewell that we said in May was to Ms Esther - the choir director for Una Voce.  She has been amazing but made the decision that it was time to retire and move up to Tennessee in order to take care of her aging parents.  We will miss her greatly - what an amazing experience to be able to participate in the musical plays and the trips over the years with both Kaleb and Addison.

Aletha, Ms Esther, Laura the choreographer and Eric the AV expert!

The final concert at Apopka SDA, what a pretty church with the glass windows behind!

The 7th grade culminates in the science class with the pig dissection.  Karis always helps volunteer so it was his chance now this year with Addison!

She got the pig brain out intact for extra points!

2026 FLC Church Retreat & Sports Banquet

With the arrival of May comes the arrival of the Forest Lake SDA church retreat at Kulaqua.  This year it was just Karis, Amy and Addison as Kaleb was taking the ACT that Sunday so wanted to not have to do so much driving in the prior 24 hours.  The weather was drippy wet all Sabbath, but it cleared enough that we could enjoy the grounds and the boardwalk around the springs.

Speaking of the springs, the water was extremely low - apparently the lack of rain this year has really made an impact.  The kids were able to still do the blog on Friday afternoon, but the dock had to be shifted over onto the other side of the springs area.  Addison went up with the Bergherms so that she could have more time on the blob which was perfect!

Addi is on the blob, but you can see in this picture how long the water is, it isn't even up to the stairs on the right-hand side and the dock is over on the left-hand side.

This year we were able to get one of the new Villas - quite lovely and new.  There is a king bed, two murphy twin beds and then two twin beds in the loft.

The villas were definitely a do-over!

Sabbath afternoon we walked around the boardwalk with the Js in between the rain showers.  

 That evening we held the annual potluck - this year a lot of families weren't able to come as kids start to age out as well as other commitments, so it was a smaller group - maybe 40-50 instead of the 90 that we've had in the past.  Still very fun to visit with a wide group of people.

The kids enjoyed playing some board ball - a new game that is similar to Spike ball but has a larger ball, similar to volleyball.

Folks from the potluck stayed around to play cards -- it was CHILLY that evening as you can see with all of the jackets and towels being used to warm up!

On Sunday morning, Addison went horseback riding.  Amy and Addison didn't sleep that great - we both had a cold and the pollen over the course of Sabbath outside really did a number on us.  It was about 1A as Amy tried to figure out what to give her and finally dug through everything in our backpack and found Amy's inhaler that was from YEARS ago, but it still did the trick to let Addison's lungs relax from the pollen coughing spasms, so it was about 2A when we were finally able to drift to sleep.

That Sunday afternoon FLEC held its annual sports banquet in which certain athletes received awards and the coaches received a thank-you trophy.  Karis coached flag football so went ad received a thank-you.

Addison was exhausted from the fun....and from definitely not getting enough sleep Saturday night so she conked out on the couch when we got home for a nice rest

Una Voce Trip to Tennessee

 April ended with another favorite event that Addison now had the chance to experience - the Una Voce FLEC trip to Tennessee.  Kaleb went on the trip twice, and had such amazing memories that we were excited to be able to see Addison with the same experience.  The trip left the school on Friday and came back on Tuesday - and as it was only the choir (vs choir and orchestra), the FLA bus was able to accommodate the chaperones as well.

Karis was able to take us to FLEC seeing as we had to be there by 5:30AM (ouch!) on his way to work, so that worked out perfectly!

One of Addison's besties Lily - funny hat girls!

Before we headed out, Miss Esther always does a worship as the weekend is very focused on how to grow deeper with God and each other.  Pastor Alex was the spiritual leader on this trip and did a fantastic job!

With such an early morning departure, lots of the kids slept so it was a quiet bus for much of the morning.

Fast asleep

A little brighter eyed later in the day!

On Sabbath, we headed over to the Whitaker family SDA church (Kingsport maybe?) for the service and then a lovely potluck.

After lunch, we went to a nearby park for a devotional time - the rain held off thankfully until we left - it was a quite a drizzly day on and off!  Part of the devotion the kids were split up in groups of 4 and blindfolded, and then two adults were assigned to help "guide" them - one voice was correct and one voice was to guide them into bumping into things.  How long did it take for them to catch on to which voice to listen to?  Longer than one would have liked, although Addison in her group apparently caught on very quickly, so good for her!

Addison, Shane, Lily and Addison

Listening to Pastor Alex

Impromptu chaperone picture

Heather and Amy's group - there was a fourth but she scampered off after it was done so no picture

Playing afterwards

Sunday we went to a local state park and enjoyed perfect sunny weather, lunch, and then play time in the creek. 

Helping with the hot dogs

And here are the real chefs - thank you so much!

The water was refreshing so the kids quickly started to walk around in the creek exploring

And standing around playing their hand games

Monday it was off to Dollywood for a day of fun, roller coasters and then the show about the life of Dolly Parton - always a fun day for the kids

The umbrellas are so pretty!

Ready to get wet?

Love their screaming faces!

Alison, Alexa and Addison

Love that she will still hold Amy's hand!

The cabin was huge (4 floors, 16 bedrooms) so plenty of space for all of us to be sure.  Hollands were the ones in charge of cooking and did a fantastic job of feeding all of the group - and thankfully there were lots of helping hands from other chaperones this year.  We also had a lovely time playing cards, enjoying the porches, pool table and more.

Even Addison was helping out with food prep - thank you sweet girl!

Dutch Blitz

7 Up

Worship time

Tracy and Brandon Holland, Melli Ellis and Amy

The 7th grade girls were in a room together, and soon Alexa and Taylor migrated over as well.  They enjoyed staying up chatting until we parents shooed them to bed - in this picture they had put up blankets on the sides of the bunk bed like a cave and were all piled in there like puppies together!

The ride back was uneventful thankfully, we were grateful for safe travels for the entire trip with no mechanical problems!

Amaya and Addison

Amy's roommate for the trip was Catherine Ottati - it was lovely to get to know her more.  We had the worst room in the cabin, no windows, flies in the bathroom (scores of them!), a bed that loudly squeaked with every movement and tiny - but it was still fun.

The whole group pictures - thanks Miss Esther for a lovely time in which the kids grew closer to God and to each other.  Wonderful memories!

Kids plus the leaders

and now all the chaperones too!

The ride back was uneventful thankfully - so lovely to be at home!  There was a chaperone on the trip that we had a fun "schtick" where we'd take a picture every day as Amy is very close friends with his boss Stephanie and so we'd send her a picture of Jonathan and Amy every day!

Thanks for a fun trip!

In other news, while Amy was on the trip, Karis was hard at work getting a new vehicle.  Our Expedition has been a car that he has enjoyed very much over the 8 years but the warranty ran out, and there were enough electronics and transmission issues that we decided it would not be wise to run "bare".  He researched and looked at different options but in the end decided to stay with the Ford.  He got a 1 year old version so that we didn't have to pay for the upfront depreciation and negotiated a great deal - good job!

It is like a twin of the first Expedition we had!

Amy had a work event in which she went to the Orlando City Soccer game.  It has been a while, so it was really fun to watch the game.

Thanks to AdventHealth for allowing us to host finance managers as a thank-you for their hard work on the Workday go-live!