These precious envelopes are notes from the girls in my high school bible study for ME!  They gave me an envelope for each day that I’m away in Ethiopia to help pass the time, to remember them, and to remind me of home.  *sniff sniff*  They are so sweet!  When I arrived at bible study this evening they had these notes, a poster saying “We’ll miss you Mandy” and yummy homemade cupcakes!  Girls, you make me cry!  You are so sweet & thoughtful & teach me more than I could ever hope to pass on to you!  Thank you for thinking of me & for your constant prayers!  I love you all!

I took my camera to the high school girls bible study that I help lead last night, hoping to get my photo of the day.  I see these girls every Wednesday night and hadn’t blogged about them yet, so I thought I’d give it a try.  While we were waiting to start, I had Kelsey help me with trying to capture motion.  Kelsey takes photography in high school, so between the two of us we thought we could make it work.  We tried with this little jet plane.  First we tried having Kelsey roll the jet across the counter.  I couldn’t get the settings just right, so next we tried having the jet stay still & me moving the camera from left to right.  The above photo is what we came up with.  Pretty fun I think, even if it is out of focus.

And this next photo is a bonus!  Last night was also Trish’s birthday (she helps lead the study too) so the girls made her a birthday cake.  As you can see I didn’t expose for the cake, just the sweet faces that made it….

Photo:  John Waire Photo.  John is another local photographer…Baltimore I think…that I found through Twitter.  I really enjoyed his post today about his daughter Mady’s puddle jumping adventures.  Not too many words, but the photos spoke volumes.  I can totally relate.  And one of my girls has the same Hello Kitty rain boots!  Great work, John!

It’s snowmaggedon!  The snowpocalypse!  And whatever creative “snow” terms you can think of.  We’re averaging on 30″ of snow here in Arnold, Maryland.  And before the biggest snow hit, Josh had 6 boys from his high school bible study come over to spend the night.  We took on these extra six kids knowing we’d probably have them for a day or two.  And when I went shopping on Thursday, I accounted for that too.  Well, last night, after consuming a LOT of energy drinks, the boys had some energy to burn.  So they went out until 1:30am and built a massive snowman, threw snowballs at each other, & began the biggest igloo I’ve ever seen (in Maryland, that is).  We are guessing the snowman tops 7 feet.  It’s hard to measure since there’s so much snow piled up around it now.  But it is above Josh’s head and he’s 6′4″.

So the above photo  – which I snapped VERY quickly in my t-shirt & jeans – features:  Josh, Dan, Chris, Jake, Brian, Teddy, & Steve.  Thanks for coming over guys, and thanks for eating half a bag of wings, one bag of pizza rolls, 2 batches of pancakes, one pack of bacon, 1 dozen eggs, half a gallon of orange juice, & half a gallon of milk.  We loved having you!

Photos:  I’ve been reviewing Mark & Lindsey’s photos.  They got married back in October & I was working on their wedding album before I go to Ethiopia.  I’ll share that a little later.  Now I’m off to put kids to bed & work on perfecting our igloo!  We’re thinking chimney & fire!

Last night I had these girls over to my house for a sleepover.  They are some of the girls in the bible study that I help lead & we were celebrating them finishing their finals!  “Finals” has been a constant prayer request over the last few weeks & we decided to have a sleepover to just relax, be silly, & enjoy not studying.  We rocked out to some LIPS on the XBox (my lip gloss be poppin’), made some indoor s’mores, gabbed & gabbed, and finally fell asleep to a movie.  It was a great night & I enjoyed staying up til about 2 in the morning with them!  I promised them that if the weather was nice today, we’d go out for a mini photo session before they had to head home.  The photos below are just a few of my favorites that we got.  The rest will be on Facebook shortly.  Thanks girls for letting me in on your fun! (any many thanks to Rachel, our youth intern, for helping me out!)

Each one of them is so gorgeous.  And they have equally gorgeous hearts.  I feel like a proud momma!