Our first retreat as a family!

This weekend was the first time that we got to go on the Jr. High Retreat as a FAMILY! I went last year and Karis Mae stayed with Nana and PawPaw, but this year, we ALL went! At first, Karis didnt really know what to think. I had tried to explain it to her, but it just didnt make sense! Of course, she wanted to ride with all of the girls, so Miss Sonia let her ride in her car with 4 of her favorite girls in the youth group. After a fun filled ride, we arrived at Lake Tomahawk. It is a retreat center out in Livingston, Texas. We got there a little later than planned, so our activities started a little later than planned. We had a great time with our small groups getting to know our girls. Karis jumped right in and wanted to be part of the group. After group time, we had a time of just hanging out in the common room. I was trying to get Karis to start calming down.. HAHA. We ended up not getting to bed until about 1 in the morning. She decided she was ready to get up and start another exciting day at 5am. You would think she would be a little cranky... tired... nope.. not Karis Mae. She was in the best mood and had great fun with all of the kids! She latched on to one of our boys, Tate. He was so sweet to her. All the kids were really. We have the best junior high group! If Karis wanted to play with them, they let her play. If she wanted to go outside, they took her outside. If she wanted to jump up and down and then fall down... they followed. She had kids wanting to play with her ALL WEEKEND! I thought they would've gotten tired of her and just ignored her, but they didnt! These are an amazing group of kids. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was when a group of our boys were playing some sort of tackle football, but not really football. Anways, we have a new sixth grader and he is autistic. AMAZING KID! He wanted to play. The other boys (mainly our "popular" "athletic" group of boys) let him have the ball. They were leaping and pretending to miss tackling him, giving him time with the ball. When they finally did tackle him, it was more just a big bear hug to his knees. It was a very proud moment for Jordan and for me also. I can't brag enough. I have one picture of Karis Mae that one of the mom chaparones took that I am in LOVE with. Its Saturday night at the bonfire. The other picture of her running just captures the fun and joy she had all weekend! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do :)

Saturday night at the bonfire! I think we will make her our Jr. High Mascot!

This is what the whole weekend was about... running and be happy and free!

This is just one of the picture of how the teens included Karis in whatever they were doing! So proud of those kids!

Fun Family Weekend!

What a fun weekend we had! Friday, Karis Mae got to spend some quality time with Nana and Paw-Paw. She just LOVES going to their house! After a nice visit with them, we went home and hung out just the 3 of us. This is the first time in about 3 weeks that we've had Karis Mae for the weekend, so it was so nice to just get to hang out and do some fun things as a family.

Saturday, we all woke up, ate breakfast, and headed out to Kemah for the day. We had so much fun! The first thing Karis wanted to do was ride the HUGE speed boat. I was a little nervous about riding it with her, but she LOVED it. About 1/2 way through the ride, she wanted to go back. I told her we couldn't, and she had the most fun after that! She would dance along with the music, look at all the boats, and she just soaked it all in. After the boat, she wanted to ride the train. So... we rode the train. It took us all over the Kemah Boardwalk. She liked going through the tunnels the best. After the train, we rode a few of the rides that she was tall enough to ride. We rode the carosel, the balloon ride, and the airplanes. She had a blast. We ate lunch at the Aquarium. She was amazed by all the of fish that were swimming around. Jordan would take her over to the tank for a closer look. We headed back to Cypress around 2:30 or so. Traffic was no fun on the way back and we ended up not getting home until about 4. As soon as we got in the car, she crashed. That was our main sign that she had a blast!

We got home, I packed her overnight bag, and we headed up to the church to take our kids to the Seabird/David Crowder concert. Karis stayed with some great friends of ours, the Fasullos. She had a BLAST at their house. Its all I heard about on Sunday! Here are some pictures from our Kemah adventures...

Talking with the Fish...

Telling us about the train...
Windblown and back from the speedboat ride!
About to take off on our airplane ride!

All is well...

Hello! I know its been a while since my last post, but we have been a little pre-occupied at the Ferguson house! Last week, Jordan and I were both sick. My amazing parents took Karis for me to try to keep her from getting sick and to give me and Jordan time to recuperate! Aren't they awesome? Well, even though she wasn't around us, she still got sick. She went to her dad's house for the weekend and came back almost back to 100%! Sunday night, I didn't get to go to my Dave Ramsey class, but I took Karis to my parents and we had a GREAT visit! Jordan called me around 8:30 or so and told me he was going to the hospital... I was just a little confused :) It turns out that one of our high school kids had a seizure and when he fell out of his chair, he hit his head on the concrete floor! He had a concussion. They ran tests on him and the doctors don't really know what caused it... they told him he was allow 'one free seizure' in his life before they started to worry too much. Interesting... Anyways, we had that kiddo over to our house for dinner on Tuesday night. He is really a GREAT kid! Wednesday we all of our junior high kids over to our house for what we like to call "Fast Lane". Its just a time of fellowship and we have a devo. Its really nice having the kids at the house. One big goal of having Wednesday night bible study at our house is to help them feel more comfortable being in our house and letting them know that they are always welcome! Karis LOVES having them all there! Of course, she not really in the mood for bible study, but she loves getting to play and have all the attention! She's not spoiled at all... HA!

I was the bad guy yesterday and took Karis Mae to get her flu shot. We went to 3 different places, but we got it done! I made her an appointment at my doctors office, but apparently, the new shipment of vaccines has a mercury preservative in them and couldn't be given to kids under the age of 4. So, they told me to try Walgreen's... We ventured down to Walgreen's and found out that you have to be 9 years old to get one there. I called a pediatric clinic that I take her to sometimes and they were great and worked us in! Hooray!

This weekend, we are trying to think of something fun to do as a family! We only have her 2 weekends a month, so we try to do something really fun and different on at least 1 of them. We are thinking Kemah or maybe the children's museum or maybe the zoo. Any thoughts? Well, whatever we do, I will be sure to write about it and post some pictures! We got some sad news in the office this week. I don't think that the news is going to be made public for a while, but if you think about it, just say a little prayer for a special person. God will know who and what you are talking about.