McKean Family Happenings: August 2012

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Brian's first time playing bass at New Life

Brian loves to play his bass to worship God and has now gotten the opportunity to do it at our new church. He misses playing with Nino Elliott, but still enjoyed himself. He is in the back in between the 2 ds.

Virginia Beach

Brian has been working a lot lately and working late night. His project is finally over and he took a week off of work. We celebrated 13 years together at cheesecake factory with the kids and introduced them to the cheesecake. We always have cheesecake on our anniversary since we had different kinds of cheesecake at our wedding not cake. We also got to use some of Brian's hotel points and go to Virginia Beach for a couple of days. We rolled into Virginia Beach and Piper and I saw a Sonic and it was happy hour so we had to get something. The closest Sonic to our house is 42 miles away so it was a great treat. The kids had a great time on the beach and had a lot of fun riding the waves especially the day a storm was blowing in. It was a great and relaxing vacation. I tried to take some really good pictures at the beach, but no one was cooperating so I will post those later.

Got Sonic!!!

Playing games at Cracker Barrel-their first time we can remember

The view from our balcony

How much can we carry

Breakfast on the balcony

Christian kept writing his name all over the beach in probably 10 different places.

We rented a family bike and went up the boardwalk

Piper paid her own money to go down the giant slide once

Serving our community

The church we are going to each Saturday in August helps Fairfax county to put on a Drive-In movie. New Life owns some bounce houses and many carnival games. So before the movie, New Life has games, crafts, face painting, bounce house for the kids for a few hours before the movie starts. Our small group was volunteering on a Saturday and we went out to help. Our kids had fun doing some of the activities, but we were every excited to see them serving. Piper helped Brian hand out balloons to the kids and Christian helped me do giant tic-tac-toe. It was a great night to help our kids have fun serving the community.

Camp Create

One week in August I decided to volunteer for a camp at our church and thought the kids would enjoy going and meeting some new friends. It was a camp to learn drama, music, dancing, a craft each day and sign language. It was the first time they had done this camp and it was a lot of fun. I was a leader in the youngest group-these kids were a little young for a 4 hour camp and a lot of info was being put into them. Some of the kids had not even been to kinder yet so a little overwhelming for them. The kids learned a dance, a drama, learned to sign language a song, and keep time with a song. They had a performance on Friday. It was not the best, but very good for a week worth of work. The kids got to meet a few new friends and I made a few friends. They really enjoyed all my input and it was a great learning experience for the kids, but it was a long week. Here are some pictures from the performance:

Masks they had made during the craft time one day

Doing sign language to "You are so good to me" by Third Day

Piper danced while Christian kept time with the triangle.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

A Great Birthday for Piper

Well, Piper had a great 9th birthday. She got pancakes and bacon for breakfast. In the morning she opened her presents and received the Friends legos she wanted. We spent the next 3 hours all together helping her build Olivia's house and a Beauty Shop-it was a lot of fun. We had lunch at Olive Garden and ice cream at Baskin Robbins. We came home and the kids played for hours upstairs. She got to Facetime with her friend, Baylee, and with the Bleodows too. Then she went to the neighbor's house, Vivian, and played. We had tacos for dinner and ice cream cake for the birthday girl. She got tons of stuff in the mail from our amazing Texas friends that made it even a better day. I can't believe she is 9!! How did that happen??