Fast Forward 12 Years!

Last Weekend at the Harper Hullabaloo

Late last Thursday night, Granbob and Grankaki came to spend the night with us. They stayed for a little while on Friday and visited with us. Here is a picture of Grankaki and the kids. She can really multi-task! She had a game of Dinosaur Monopoly going on with Beckett as she played baby dolls with Helen!

On Friday night we went to the Kirkland's home for our Homeschool Family Connection barbecue dinner. It was a fun night and a great time to connect and get to visit with other families in our church and community who are homeschooling their children! No pictures, but we had a great time! On Saturday night, our friends the Campions came over for dinner. They lived here and were in our Growth Group until last June when they moved back to south Florida. They were in town for a few days and spent some time with us on Saturday night. It was our first time to meet baby Caitlin and it was fun to catch up with JT, Stephanie and Jeff!

The next two pictures are from Sunday night. We have nine families who come to our home on Sunday evenings for Growth Group. If all nine families are present and they bring all of their children, we would have 22 kids ranging from 12 months old to 12 years old! (and a 4 month old, too!) I don't think all of the kids have been here at once, but this past Sunday night, we had 18 here! The first picture shows several of the kids eating some snacks. Every Sunday, each family brings some food to share and we spend our first few minutes of the evening eating and fellowshipping!
This second pic shows 14 children in our bedroom. Now that it is too cold to go outside, the kids stay in our three bedrooms and play or watch a movie while the adults have our discussion time. (We follow our sermon series at church and enjoy discussing ways to apply the the truths from our pastor's sermons to our lives.) It is hard to see them all, but here are 14 of the kids (and 2 that you can't see) getting ready to watch a movie! That doesn't always last for long. Ususally the younger ones end up in Helen and Beckett's rooms playing. Amazingly, this past Sunday night went pretty smoothly!
It is a blessing to have so many families in our home each Sunday night!

(I know that cross over our bed looks a little lonely! That is an "Uppercase Living" expression gone bad! If you aren't familiar with Uppercase Living, google it! They are really neat. I bought one at a party and when I put it on my wall, it didn't apply as neatly as they said it would. I had to remove part of it and now my cross looks really lonely! I have a plan to fix it and make the wall look better, just haven't gotten around to it yet!)

Beckett and Helen have been waiting for over a week for the "Elf Yourself" website to be ready! They discovered that it was up and running so we HAD to create our elves for Christmas 2008! Enjoy!

The Harper Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Veterans Day Parade

On Tuesday, I took Beckett and Helen to the Veterans Day parade in Knoxville. We had a great time. It was a good opportunity for all of us to learn a little more about branches of the military, heroes of war, what it means to serve our country and why we do it! Check out Beckett's blog to read what he learned that day!

D A D

I know a little girl who is SO excited that she can write her daddy's name! Tonight she learned how to make an "A" and a "D"! Put those together....and she can write DAD! We even learned a "Y" so she could make "daddy"! She absolutely cannot wait for Daddy and Beckett to get home from BSF so she can show them! She keeps writing it over and over and over. In between writing it each time she jumps up and down and grins from ear to ear! It has been so precious! What a sweet memory!

Every year when the leaves begin to turn colors, I have taken pictures of the kids under some pretty trees in our neighbors backyard. So, this year I tried to be like my friend Olivia and "think outside the box" when I took the pictures! I love the pictures that she takes! They might be off center or a little crooked, but they always look so great! I'm guessing that she also has a really cool camera! Anyway, here are some pictures of my attempt to not make everything line up perfectly and be symmetrical! That is a real stretch for me! Ha! Anyway, I don't really understand the flash on my camera either, so this was the best I could do! I did have some pretty cute subjects if I do say so myself!