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here it is.

The last couple of weeks have been full of events to keep us busy (as always, it seems), challenges to keep us humble, and community to keep us grounded...and through it all God continues to remain faithful in confirming our call to ministry here in Vienna...

We were able to celebrate Rebecca's birthday at one of our favorite restaurants (one of very few Mexican places). We had a great time...we laughed entirely too much...if that's even possible. It was a bit bittersweet as this restaurant (like so many other places in the city) reminds us of many of our friends who have left Vienna recently...

Rebecca and Tawni enjoying their beverages...

Back to school night was a success...Rebecca and I had the opportunity to explain our vision for student ministries with all the parents in attendance and I was able to share some time with some of my students' parents. As Kailyn's birthday party was the next morning (we decided to host it at school), we enlisted the help of some students and friends to help set up. We went out with some of our friends afterwards and celebrated the conclusion of a successful night by enjoying some delicious ice cream.




As I mentioned, the morning after back to school night we celebrated Kailyn's first birthday...as we were writing up the invitation list we realized how blessed we are to have so many people who love and care for Kailyn and have been a significant part of her first year...we quickly determined  that there was no way to fit all these people in our apartment, so we decided to host the party at school. We enjoyed the company of over 50 people (including Phoo-Phoo via skype!) and really enjoyed the time celebrating our beautiful little girl.

CAKE!

Enjoying her cake under Phoo-Phoo's watchful eye.
All the kids were very excited to help Kailyn open her gifts.
 We have all been struggling with our health over the last couple of weeks...Justin was sick first for a couple of days, I fought a head cold for about two weeks, and Rebecca has not been a 100% for the last month or so and today had a bit of an infection in her eye...It's been a crazy couple of weeks healthwise and a huge portion of our staff has been fighting one kind of illness or another...

soooo, Rebecca stayed home while I took the kids to church...afterwards I took Kailyn to watch some playoff baseball. The top team in the club that Justin and I play for was playing in the deciding game of a 5 game opening series.

Sadly, the Metrostars lost and won't be defending their championship...but Kailyn and I really enjoyed watching the game. It was a beautiful day and the atmosphere was great. It was a inter-Vienna match so the bleachers were packed and the fans were singing, cheering, banging drums, and having a great time...baseball is really not that popular here, so to see a crowd of a couple hundred people was fairly impressive.


beautiful day for baseball


crawling around for a while between innings

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