A Bowling First!

During the week between Christmas and New Year we had some fun family time. As well as getting things done around the house, we spent a day shopping in Columbus and took a trip up into Amish Country as it's been quite a while since we've been up there.

Another fun outing we had was to the local bowling alley. We realised recently that the only time Abigail had ever bowled was on the Wii!! We invited some friends, the Fishers, to join us and it seems that Jonas who is just 2 months younger than Abigail had only ever bowled on a Wii too!! Here they are posing in their bowling shoes ... the smallest size at the alley!

Abigail, Jonas and his little sister Lucy (who is 1) had a lot of fun ... and Caroline, Ben and both of us us enjoyed having the bumpers up the sides to give us a greater chance of scoring well too! Naomi just thought it was fun to slide around the floor and watch everything that was going on!

We passed the littlest munchkins around between us ... and the older two were just too eager to help and play regardless of who's turn it was to bowl! They also decided that sometimes it would be fun to just roll the ball rather than use the ramp to push off from ... the slowest moving bowling balls in history but they still scored some points!

Once the kiddos got the hang of the bowling thing ... they switched their attention to the blower at the end of the ball return ... as you can see it was lots of fun too!

We had lots of fun together and will definitely be returning sometime soon. Abigail will be able to teach Naomi in a year or two. In the meantime she will just give her lots of cuddles!! 

A Look Back at 2011

 2011 has been another big year for us as a family. 

At the beginning of the year we prepared for and welcomed the littlest member of the family, Naomi Grace. She made it a good, Good Friday (April 22nd) for us and has been lots of fun ever since. Naomi was dedicated here in Coshocton in June and has two very crazy American 'fairy' godmothers to keep her a little bit American, seeing as she was born here!

At the end of October we said goodbye to another special member of the family. Jenny's Nan got 'promoted' ... to Heaven. We were really luck to be able to see her one last time before she died when we arrived in the UK for our home leave and she got to meet Naomi too.

Here in Coshocton we've experienced all kinds of extreme weather this year that we're not used to back in England. From the long snowy winter (which as you can see below Abigail loved!), including ice storms, to flooding, severe thunderstorms, tornado warnings ... to the hot and humid summer with a heat index of 110+ degrees a lot of the time. It certainly kept us on our toes!

At home we had lots of family visiting us this year which was really helpful while we adjusted to our newest member. We were also able welcome three baby birds into the hanging basket on our front porch. It was a big excitement for most of June to check it every day and see new eggs, watch them hatch and see the  little robins grow. We wonder whether they will revisit in 2012!

Another event that happened this year that we won't forget in a hurry was our first pumpkin patch adventure when Mark lost his wedding ring ... and the successful return trip several days later when amazingly we found it again, just lying on the ground!

In the hangar at MMS Aviation, we welcomed several new families and said good bye to a couple of others. Paul Jones and Andy Porter both qualified and got their A&P licences making Mark the senior apprentice and the next in line to take his exams next year.

Mark was also able to see one of the planes he worked on a lot during his first year here, a Cessna 206 now on floats, return to service with Asas de Socorro in Brazil just last month. This year here, amongst other things, he has spent a lot of time working on a Cessna 402 which has been in the hangar for a couple of years and is now very close to completion. It belongs to the pastor of a baptist church in Maine.

These are just a few of the many things we've got up to. As we look forward to 2012 ... we can already foresee quite a few more adventures just around the corner. Including a rapid response trip for Mark to Papua New Guinea in the New Year, Mark's final exams in the early summer and then us preparing to leave Ohio and move again to another continent to an MAF project (probably somewhere in Africa) later on in the year.

As this year comes to a close we just wanted to say thank you to all those of you have been supporting and encouraging us on this adventure ... making it possible for us to be here and for Mark to be able to work on these aircraft enabling missions around the world to serve the people where they are based more effectively.