Givensmeabreak....

Well, we are back. It has been slow-going at the Givens' house! Well, for me(Ashleigh) at least. I think the jet lag really hit me pretty hard. Kraig says he was fine and seems to be so that is good. But other than that, we have been trying to get into a regular schedule. I got my coupons this past week and I am pretty excited about getting started on that again. I really missed shopping. haha I guess every girl does when she can't for a time. I know I did. I missed the thrill of getting the best deals, going to the grocery stores for just things on my lists with coupons and just organizing my coupons and setting out to have the best strategy for getting the best deals. I have missed it. I think I may have a problem. :) O well, I should be able to budget this week in order to go out to see what I can find and I am so excited about that. Kraig is back to work and so excited. He has been in inservice and meetings and getting everything ready mode so he is so r...

Well, we are almost done. We are wrapping things up and getting things ready for our last Sunday service. The week started out rough when I woke up with a migraine Monday morning. So, Kraig and Hunter stained the porches all around the house. The house has turned out beautiful. I would have gotten pictures today, however it is rainy once again. So, the finished product pictures will have to wait once again. But yesterday was very productive. Today, was a lot better. We got up and went over to the church and started printing more Sunday school materials and the boys worked on some odds and ends. The church might have to move locations if the theater is sold so we have been preparing for that all summer as well as just cleaning the building up so Kraig took the conduit that was lining the ground up and Hunter worked on the sound system thing. Then, we went down to Anchorage to pick up more paper in order to finish printing things for Sunday school, Celebrate Recovery and for...

I thought I would post some scenery pictures of us being tourists this week. This is Summit Lake. It is fed fully by snow and rain. It is very beautiful and clear. We were on top of the mountains and surrounded by ice capped mountains. This is from the glacier cruise we went on yesterday. It was a 5 hour tour. We saw 26 glaciers in one day. Well, not really b/c it was rainy and very, VERY cloudy but the ones we saw were beautiful! We saw Surprise Glacier which calved (where the ice fell from the side of the glacier) about 4 or 5 times. We saw many sea otters and sea lions and about 5 bald eagles. It was a sight to see! :) We had a great time in the cold, rainy weather. One of our waiters was from Chattanooga, which was really cool and we got to talk about home. :) This is Surprise Glacier. It had a lot of action the past few days, so a lot of the ice had fallen off and we were surrounded by mini icebergs. It was really cool. This picture should be first :) hahah O wel...

We have been a tad busy that last few days. We are all pretty exhausted. But we have accomplished so much for the Balos'. Sunday, we had the 4th of July parade where we passed out over 1500 flyers talking about the different ministries with the church and also the carnival for Monday. So, Monday we had the carnival for the kids. We have over 50 families represented so that was a blessing. It was a great success. We were all very pleased with the outcome. In between all of these, we painted the Balos' house and passed out more flyers for the Backyard Bible club that the mission group that is here did on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, we walked the neighborhoods and put flyers on cars at Wal-Mart and Sears...we put them everywhere, or so it felt like it!!! But the house is about done being painted...all the is left is trim and touching up on areas which is a huge blessing to the family b/c it was a rough winter on their house. So, since we have worked so hard....we went out...

The last few days have been interesting to say the least. It all started Thursday night, with a mission team coming in from Brownsville, TN. There are about 15 altogether and so far, they have been a huge HELP! I'm getting ahead of myself. First off, the beginning of the week Kraig and Michael got to weed-eat the theater parking lot for the carnival next week! It looks a lot better. We also got the flyers, over 2200, printed and folded, and we got the banners ready for the parade. So, once the group got here on Thursday, the plan was to paint the Balos' house. Well, it won't stop raining. Right now, we have about half the house scraped and half of it painted. It looks good. It's 2-tone. We are thinking of leaving it. 4th of July is big here, since it is a military town, so Wasilla does a big parade through town. Since it is on Sunday this year, we have moved our church service up an hour so we could go participate in the parade. We are going to decorate the van real ni...