Nope, I haven't died!

The scoop is.....

(1) we're in Virginia
(2) we have dial-up
(3) God is so good
(4) my laptop died : (
(5) we're visiting grandparents until tomorrow
(6) the weather is nice and warm (well, pretty warm)
(7) we got to see SNOW!
(8) it was freezing cold for a few days
(9) Lord willing, we will be seeing the Kochers in 2 days (not counting today)
(10) and, Lw in 5 days we travel in the northern direction and arrive HOME

There is more to 'the scoop', but I don't have the time to expound on everything we did since last time I posted!

I'm really enjoying spending time with my grandparents. Oh....I think I'd better go help with lunch.

But, jsyk, no pictures this time since a lot of my pictures are gone for the moment and though I have some on Bonnie's laptop it wouldn't be advantageous to post since Corel doesn't work very well on her computer. *sigh* Anyway....pictures to come eventually!

EDIT

Please, please keep praying for my dad. Some things do not seem to be getting better but worse. It’s gonna be tricky if we loose our bus driver, either temporarily or permanently.

“And we know in ALL…”

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It’s been a while. A combination of not being ready to post and no connection is my excuse.

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Friday we left Horseshoe Cove for Sarasota. The church was nestled behind trees covered in Spanish moss. Kinda pretty and creepy at the same time.

The church building was beautiful and the lighting was ‘cool‘. We arrived in plenty of time to set up and run through some new material. Mrs. M requested Jesus is the Sweetest Name I Know, from our cd, but we had not brought the music. We decided on Be Thou My Vision, for a substitute. I hadn’t played flute for ages in concert… (last time was at Mrs. M’s request this summer)





Vincent singing in the trio, ‘No, Not One’.



How many goofy faces can YOU make while playing the fiddle?! LOL

More bluegrass styled hymns….



Nathan on the mouth harp.



The Matthews family came to hear us.



I didn’t realize who they were until they started talking about Brianna and Becky, our cousins. It’s been so loong since I’ve seen them! Thanks for sending them over, Auntie Val!

We had a nice time fellowshipping with people after church over refreshments.

The church had a pancake breakfast Saturday morning and we were invited to stay for that. The M’s and B’s came to too! YAY!



We took a group shot before we said goodbye. :( We miss you all! Thanks again for everything!



Oh and this is hilarious…MR. ED with HAIR!!!!!!!



We traveled up to Brooksville that afternoon and visited with relatives.

Peter up a tree, taking moss down for Uncle Frank.



Group shot. (eh, duh!)



I would list who everyone’s name, relation, etc., but that would get complicated. : P Mom’s brother is the man in the blue shirt, second from the left and Papa’s brother-in-law is the man in the plaid shirt in the center. The rest are cousins and their kids.

We headed over to the Zapadenko’s house for lasagna that evening. We met these folks two years ago when we visited Florida. It was nice to renew our acquaintances with them!

The morning service went fine. We went back to the Zapadenko’s for chicken dinner. Yum! It was pretty cool eating on ‘real’ plates. 8-) Thank you all again!

The service in the afternoon went great. We weren’t packed out for a change but we had a whole row of relatives watching!

No pics of the concert. We miss you Mr. Ed. ;-)

After we went back to the Zap’s house and stayed up late. ;-) We snacked, played games, watched funny commercials, talked, ate more, played music etc., etc.,.

Hey, how many of you can play the piano upside down?



We said goodbye to the Zap’s around noon time after we played more music together, ate, and played outdoors more.

The gals.



The guys.



I have to agree some of the best smiles come when they aren’t posed.



Monday we started traveling west. We were stuck in traffic near Tallahassee for 6 hours for an accident, 7:00pm-1:30am. It must have been bad! (We found out today someone died.) The police were walking around waking people up in their cars to get things moving again. I’m glad we weren’t in a rush to get anywhere.

Dad’s neck is still flaring up it seems. Thank you for all your continued prayers. The B’s gave us a rice bag which he’s been using daily which is helping, though not healed him.

The sound system is working fairly well, we had one ‘pop’ in the morning service. Dad had given the pastor an earful about our whole problem and getting very technical the night before. So the pastor made an announcement about our broken ‘atomic nuclear fiber converter’ during the service and how they weren’t working well. He also called dad ‘brilliant’ : D

Dad’s been feeling quite poorly due to digestive problems and his ‘afib’ heart problem. He’s had it really rough for the past week and today he felt so bad he thought he couldn’t drive. Please keep him in your prayers as the Lord brings him to your memory. Thank you.

We had quite the adventure today when we backed up at the church this afternoon and sunk the bus drive axel into their septic tank cover! LOL. Not exactly what we thought we needed but “we know in all things…”. Amen and amen. Thankfully we were able to drive the bus out of the um, hole, and we should be on our way to Houston sometime tomorrow. Thanks for praying for us! (Yeah, I know a picture would be nice here, but I haven’t uploaded them from the camera, yet.)

God bless and until next time….

I have this wonderful, fast connection, a desk to put the computer, and a nice chair to sit in while typing. I should make use of this. :-)

We’re leaving our nice campground overflow spot tomorrow, this is our last night here. That means, WiFi will again be come intermittent. :-) And, we’ll be leaving behind our friends! Thanks to the B’s and M’s for being so kind to us during our stay in your community! We appreciate you guys so much! There were other people here that made our stay so enjoyable, too. Thanks everyone else at Horseshoe Cove!!

We had a great time today at the nursing home. We had to get up EARLY. We’ve been staying out late with concerts every night this week so that we’re all getting use to getting up late. No, I don’t think I should tell how late late is. Lol

Oh, but, before I do today’s pics, I need to touch on last night. Mrs. M is one of the most talented ladies I know!!!! Mom lost the music for The Holy City right before I was suppose to sing it. Mrs. M got up and played by EAR in d flat for me. She’s amazing!



Thank you!!!

How many of you all have not heard us before??



You yodel, girl!



Da brass.



Matthew after the concert…



Hannah thought some bangs would be nice.



Ok, jumping back to this morning…



Our first time at the Golden Corral. Yummy!


Thank you, friends!

Nathan and Mr. M working hard.




*Warning: if you think more pictures of beach will bother you stop right here. :-P*

The rain started after we got out of the restaurant but it stopped before we got to the beach….





The wind was stiff….and it was chilly. :-P

A good day for a kite!



They had fun with Mr. Ed’s kite. :-)



Bonnie made a banjo this time around. :-)



Bonnie Jean with her guitar.



We have a ‘free’ night tonight. Some of us are out picking in the room by the swimming pool and others hanging out.

Have a great weekend everyone!

What an interesting few days we’ve had here in Florida so far!

Picking up again on Sunday; the concert in the morning went fine. We had some folks who heard about us from a family member who heard us last December in Palmer, MA. They went to our website, found out where we were going to be, and came. They also said they had heard us one other time up north at a church my grandfather used to oversee. (We would go with my grandfather, he’d preach and we’d sing.) They said we were all little then. ;-)

We had just a few hours to cross the state and make to it Bradenton for the evening service. The roads weren’t too congested and it was nice weather to be traveling in. Oh and we hit a WiFi.




This is what we might look like trying to stay in communication with the outside world. :-)

Arriving at the church in plenty of time, our hosts had not yet arrived to let us in the church. The boys thought, let’s try the door. Brilliant, just brilliant. They did and, wouldn’t you know, it was open! Unfortunately, they also set off the bugler alarm at the same time. :-/ They weren’t laughing at the time but it sure was funny in retrospect! : D Betty M. arrived (before the police had a chance to come :-P) and knew how to turn the siren off. Phew! And, thus started our tour of Bradenton. ;-)

They concert was PACKED out. They had to set up extra chairs thanks to Mrs. M’s promoting skills!

Mr. Ed took pictures for us so you all will have a chance to ‘see’ some of the concert.

I though the concert when really well.







We stayed at the church that night which had a WiFi too. Two connections in one day!? I’m going to get spoiled.

We went over to the park where our host’s live and got settled in. No sooner did we do that we headed over to Hungry Howie’s for PIZZA!


Yummy!

The kids got to explore the ‘island’ in the park a bit and some nice person here offered to let them use their golf cart and bikes. And, someone brought us over some chocolate covered peanut cookies. Seriously good stuff. People have been so kind!

The concert Monday went ok, not great. The piano started to noticeably sound like a zither during this concert. Ouch. Our synth is going!

The place was packed again, a couple chairs empty but we had 200+ people. Thanks to Mr. Ed again for the pictures!





Hannah is quite the social butterfly...



Tuesday, January 30th

After the kids worked on school in the morning we had lunch and headed over to the B’s trailer. How many people can you fit in a trailer? :-)



Mom headed out to Wal-Mart and the kids spent time roaming the park on their loaned wheels. The park has WiFi but we have to be close to the main office which is a walk from our spot. The bugs were kind of thick for January I thought. I guess they never die here….

My family is becoming skilled at lip reading and reading my scribbles. :-) My voice felt so worn out after Monday night I thought I needed some total vocal rest. ( I was really not happy with how I sang Monday. Blahness.) I said about 4-5 words in the morning and didn’t say hardly anything until late in the afternoon. I thought perhaps I was getting the cold a lot of us have and started the apple cider vinegar regiment.

My voice felt better last night but still wasn’t exactly like I wanted it. I can’t really ’fix’ congestion, but hopefully staying away from dairy for a little while will solve that problem.

I had this silly headache on Tuesday night, too. Have you ever tried to smile when you’re head’s splitting open? :-/

Enough about my petty problems!

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you are faced with trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” James 1:2&3 NIV

Here are a few more pictures courtesy of Mr. Ed!

Tuesday night’s full house.






To close out I do have a few specific prayer request for the family and concerts….

Dad’s health - he has an awful paralyzing like pain in his neck and has some other issues going on. He’s having a hard time sleeping, too. It’s draining on him.
All our colds - Mom and few others are suffering from a mild cold that feels like an allergy
The sound system - that it works properly, we had a horrible bout of ‘popping’ in the middle of the concert Tuesday and it was very disruptive. We need wisdom to fix that permanently!
Keyboard - that we find out what’s wrong with it or whatever it is that’s causing it to malfunction


This was in my reading this morning.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV

“Therefore we do not loose heart . Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Edit

Woohoo. Two connections in one day. I'll have time to edit in the pics I missed.

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I had time to post!!! Thanks for all the comments on that last one. I'll reply when I can...
I'm missing a few pics....next time!
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January 26th

WARNING: lots of pictures - sorry to all you dial-up folks!

We entered Florida today, I think I mentioned that in my rushed previous post . After a week of traveling we have arrived in the state known for it’s sunshine! We’re cozily parked in our friend’s driveway as I type. Yes, it was trick to back in with the trailer. We all got out and moved the trailer, lifting and dragging it over to make it work. The road was very narrow and that didn’t help. How did all these Kentucky roads get down here?! : p

One of my Florida observations - gators must be only as real as the cartoon gator I’ve seen, since I’ve been to Florida FOUR times and have yet to see any living, breathing alligator. : P jk, *sigh* Of course, I don’t want to look eye to eye with one but from a distance wouldn’t be disagreeable.

As far as road life goes today we saw a trailer lose a tire and flip into our lane. Later we saw a big puff of, what we thought was smoke (turned out to be steam) blowing on the highway ahead. The trouble was what appeared to be a busted radiator hose of a blue van. Probably fried their engine good. Poor folks!

The most excitement we had was at the Flying J this afternoon. We were headed over to Bunnel and stopped off to dump our tanks and fill up with fresh water. We polished up the bus a little too, but, since it’s going to rain it won’t stay like this for long.

The truck next to us had a horse trailer and two horses. It was funny to look over and see their little hoods staring back at us. : D





Oh, you want to hear about the excitement? We were pulling left into the main road from the J with the intention moving over to the truck side of the plaza to purchase fuel. Almost immediately after we are out of the driveway dad says ’the gas pedal is broken, I can’t accelerate!’ The pedal was mashed to the floor and doing absolutely nothing. We glide over to the left turning lane. It took us about 20 seconds to call Vincent up from the back and confirm we indeed had no way of accelerating from the gas pedal. Vincent jumped out and ran to the back of the bus. Thankfully, it was not a busy street and we didn’t hear a bunch of horn honking, nor did anyone plow into us. I didn’t have the presence of mind to jump out and get a picture as it was happening but Vincent stood like this manually connected the accelerator until we were safely in the truck ‘no parking’ zone. Haha.



They had the problem fixed in about 20 minutes, tops. We were thankful this didn’t happen on a busy highway or at intersection where we had to get out of the way in a hurry. PTL for His protection!


January 27th

The weather report last night said today was going to be lovely and it sure was. After mom cooked up a big breakfast we headed over to the beach, Flagler Beach. After seeing a lot of no parking signs we found the state park and for a nominal fee we got to park FAR away from the beach. They supplied a wheelchair for Papa which worked great. I don’t think he would have made it otherwise.

That water was gorgeous! Just beeeeautiful.



The water was cold but some of us didn’t care.



Nathan brought a metal detector.



Daniel was trying out his wet suit.



Being splashed by the waves…



Vincent and Nathan ’riding’ some waves.



Here’s a sand guitar.



Bonnie MacDonald, Sand Sculptor

Peter was out in the waves until he saw jelly fish.



Vincent got the suit back on and grabbed a snack.


Good-bye, beach!



On the long walk back I felt something pinching my back. I reached down my back and pulled off a tick. *shudder* Ick, ick. I saved him in a bag for Vincent to burn. :-D