Southern Adventist University

 Zachary chose to attend Southern Adventist University along with several of his friends.  He is rooming with Jake Everts, one of his best friends, and across the hall is Blake and Cristian.  He isn't yet decided on a major, which is fine as the beginning years are general classes anyway.  

We drove up on Friday - with Zachary driving about halfway and the rest of the way through Atlanta was Karis.  We stayed at the Hick's for the weekend and then moved in on Sunday.

Thank you for your friendship and hospitality!

Lots of Amazon boxes sent directly there to the Hicks - what a huge benefit that was!

On Sabbath afternoon, the Bs were walking around campus and decided to check out Talge Hall, and realized that the boys had all chosen floor "1" thinking it was the ground floor only to realize that indeed it was the basement -- completely with dungeon like rooms and black mold on the ceiling.  Nope - that isn't going to work with kids who have allergies and headaches.  Jennifer talked to the housing dean, and we were so grateful when he worked some magic and got them moved into newly renovated rooms on the 3rd floor.  What a blessing!

The rooms are small, so the beds had to be bunked.  Zachary's room had an odd "kink / jog" in the one wall so it limited things sitting flush against that side, so we put the fridges under the A/C unit.

On Sabbath, we went over to Kathy and Dennis' house for dinner, along with Aunt Marge, Uncle Melvin, and Rick and Millie.  It was a lovely time to catch up

The whole crew

And then just the Syferts

We ran around on Sunday moving Zachary in, getting any last minute items, and then we left him to stay with Jake.  We did a few remaining errands on Monday and then Zachary took us to the airport in Chattanooga.  What an easy airport to navigate, small, nice and no lines!

We love you kiddo - we pray that this is a great experience for you!

In other news, Addison got her 2nd round of braces on - this should be the last set of braces and then she will be finito.  As she has already had them on once, it should be a lot faster this time, possibly only 18 months.

A dear friend of Amy's came into town for a work related trip - Stephanie - she has been a staple in friendship category for 28 years!  She lives in Texas, so we don't get to see each other very often but it is like no time has passed whenever we get together.  We usually close out the restaurant 😂

New Cars, New School, New Reality

In a whirlwind, we got home from Europe on Friday and the very next Friday we left to take Zachary to Southern for his Freshman year in university.  Southern has a Freshman-only session called "Smart Start" which is a free class that kids can come and ease into University life without having 3-4000 kids on campus (it has gotten very large in recent years!)  During that week, we had to fully outfit his room and figure out a new car for him as the 19 year old van just didn't seem reliable enough for a 10 hour drive.  

Furnishing his room ended up being a pretty easy task, as we were able to just ship everything up to our good friends the Hicks house, as they live only 1 mile away from the school.  The car on the other hand was touch-and-go, with us only getting a Honda Pilot that Wednesday!  It was the same car that Karis had been negotiating with the dealership over the past month, and thankfully he ended up getting them down several thousand dollars, so that was a win and Zachary is really happy with it, so whew, sliding into home base but we made it!

Hard to believe that our first kiddo is heading off to University!  He isn't sure yet what he wants to do, but that's ok - apparently the average times someone changes their major is 7 times - so he has lots of time to figure it out.

That week we did some of his favorite suppers and some shopping runs (yay for Mom, boo for Zach!) and of course some late-night packing!

Packing packing packing

Grain and Berry!

A few last things at Target the night before

Because we shipped so much directly up to Southern, we were able to fit into one car with just the back third row down

We left Friday morning, and were able to pop over to Addison's summer camp at Innovus to say good-bye and to Kaleb.

Love you Zach!

Kaleb was heading out to work at the Shaws

The good-bye brigade

We are off!

Zachary - you have been the light of our life since the day you entered our lives.  You have brought us joy, laughter and purpose.  We are praying that God richly blesses you, that you discover a new world out there, and that you ultimately find happiness.  We are here to support you, love you, and are always here as a safe haven for you.  You will be dearly missed!

Wedding Joy!

 Due to our Norse nightmare coming home, we arrived home late Friday instead of Thursday, which we were thankful that we made it home that day as we had the joy of attending the wedding of Luke Wandersleben to his bride Hailey.  Congratulations!

Luke's mom Jennifer and friend Wendy

Jennifer and Eric walking in

It is hard to imagine that our kids are getting to the age where they are starting to get married, but we pray that God richly blesses Luke and Hailey on their life journey together!  Thanks for letting us share in the special day!

European Vacation - Meteora & London

 Tuesday we took a very long bus ride (4 hours each with, with a stop 2 hours in) to Meteora.  Incredible.  It is a definite place to visit if you ever are in Greece!  It is an area with very unique rock formations - like of like spires that just up from the earth near a valley - on top of which monks decided to build monasteries as they sought silence and seclusion.  There used to be 24 of these monasteries, with some being ultimately abandoned and slowly turning to ruin over the years - but there are 6 remaining monasteries that are still inhabited by monks (one only has 1 monk still living in it, while the largest in count has about 30-40). 

Being on the bus was fun, it was air conditioned, comfortable, and you could talk to your friends the whole time - what more could Amy want?

Trying an apricot for the first time - yummy!

So funny to have different angles of this picture

And the girls could hang out and watch shows to pass the time

While Daddy read a book (he read a lot over this vacation, which was fun to see)

Caves in the mountains where the monks used to hide or store goods

Taking a tour inside - there was a room with a HUGE wine vat - I guess they had to drink something....

Looking out the window of one towards another monastery built on the next rock.

There is another one with a red roof directly behind our heads

Our little rock climber

The boys enjoying some shade

Ah, cool shade with friends - lovely!

such a beautiful landscape

A little garden area off the monastery run by the nuns

Look at these old books, this is incredible!

This particular monastery was 70,000 square feet, for about 30-40 people inside.

The original way to get in and out of the monastery was through ropes hauling people and supplies up and down.  Then it morphed into cables (definitely safer!) and then ultimately they built a little pathway from the main land over to where the monasteries are perched on top of these rock formations.

Quite fancy, these monasteries were not humble abodes by any means, which was interesting and a bit surprising.

It looks like it is just floating there

Our group on the local touring mini-bus - a bit hot at times

Some of the monk's ceremonial outfits on display

The Meteora trip is a one of a kind, it was a very long day but thankfully it was relaxing to be on the bus.  We had originally thought about renting a car and driving up there ourselves, but decided that if we took a bus that it would allow Karis to relax the whole trip, and being with our friends along the way together definitely make that the right call - and what a day - it is a definite recommend if you are ever there in Greece.

On Wednesday, we packed ourselves up, said so long to our trip, and started our journey back by flying to London for an overnight before the final leg of our flight back on Thursday.  Wednesday night, the the Bs and Zs, minus the two oldest children who stayed at the airport hotel, and went in to eat and see Harrods.  Wow, Harrods is wild - anything you could want - it is a department store but feels more like a mall with all of these different stores within the store plus food, chocolate, perfumes, watches - whatever you want, there it is.

On the subway to the Athens airport - good-bye lovely trip!

From the restaurant, Kaleb and Evan went with Jennifer/Bruce and took a black taxi (the Zs/London were in a standard Uber)

The food area

The pastry area

Addison's favorite area - makeup

We walked back to the train station along a very charming street in London

The next morning, we got tickets to the Tower of London.  When we went back in 2019, we went there immediately upon landing in London and Addison was so tired that she slept through the entire visit (as she was in a small stroller, she could nap to her hearts content) - and when she woke up, she was very disappointed that she'd missed the Crown Jewels! -- so we decided to be sure that she got to see them this time.  In honor of King Charles, they renovated the Crown Jewel area, and it was truly really neat to see - so Addison was delighted!  No pictures allowed in that area though, so nothing to share here.

We also did the Beefeater tour, which is always very entertaining and informative.  The girls were so engaged they also stood right in front of the guard while he was speaking!

There were ceramic decorative poppies everywhere - they added a very nice touch of color

And no trip can be complete without a picture of the Grenadier guards with the bearskin hats!

Tower Bridge behind us

Now begins the sad tale of our journey - buyer beware.  We flew on a discount airline Norse round-trip from Orlando to London and back.  Flying over was no problem - flying back became a "never again" event in our family.  As mentioned, we stayed at a hotel at the airport.  Thursday morning, we received via the app a message that our flight would be delayed from 2P to 3:40PM, so we happily extended our hotel check-out time to 1P and stayed a little longer at the Tower of London.  We came back to our hotel, got Zach and Blake (who didn't come with us to sight-see), and weighed our luggage to be sure that we weren't over the limits, as things are very strict with Norse, and then went to the check-in desk at 1:07.  Upon arrival, we were told that because we missed being one hour ahead of the original flight time (2P) by 7 minutes, that we were denied boarding - even though it was 2.5 hours before the actual flight time.  Not only would we be denied boarding, they would NOT rebook us any future flights, they had NO customer service on-site or via phone, AND we had to BUY NEW FLIGHTS HOME on our own dime.  Good luck to you all.  Even though their app did not show that we still had to be at the check-in desk no later than 1 hour before the original flight time.  What a disaster.  7 minutes.  Unbelievable, and if you ever fly Norse, just be aware that if anything happens, they aren't going to help you with getting home.  What does one do when trying to get to another continent home - we can't just rent a car and drive, a boat would take too long, and the flights home the next day would have cost 10-11K for a family of 5.    Long story short, we had to scramble and get another hotel that night, Amy eventually figured out a travel hack that we bought round-trip tickets from London to Orlando (discarding the return leg) which "only" cost us 3.5K.  Nightmare, but at least we got home and at least we flew home on a proper airline - British Airways.  Not the way that we'd want to end our amazing trip, but lesson learned for sure!  There were at least 20 people that we could see that had the same thing happen to them - it is thievery.  

The kids patiently waiting while the adults figured it out

Our hotel that night had literally bed to bed

But, regardless of that late-in-the-game wrinkle, we had a lovely time on our vacation and we were so happy that we could share some of the highlights of Europe with the kids.  Zachary doesn't love to travel (the wrinkles are stressful for him, and he doesn't love touring hot museums), so at least we know that even if he never goes to Europe again, he will have seen some of the major places!  Kaleb and Addison enjoy traveling, so they will be over to Europe again in the future for sure.  Kaleb in fact is starting to collect a chain with pendants for all of the countries that he has been to, which is kind of fun!  That's a wrap for our 2025 European vacation - it was full of amazing sites, great food, wonderful memories and we hope to repeat it someday (maybe during cooler months when we are retired! 😂)

Allen always creates a video of the trip - see below - we were scattered a lot, so you won't see the Zs a whole lot but it is still an amazing memory of the trip and all of the beautiful places that we visited!  Thank you Allen for such an incredible souvenier - you are beyond talented!