My second family

Rise up, O men of God!

Have done with lesser things;

Give heart and soul and mind and strength

To serve the King of kings.

(there are so many "lesser things" we do in life that we need to put away to serve God with a fuller heart.)

Rise up, O men of God!

His Kingdom tarries long;

Bring in the day of brother-hood

And end the night of wrong.

Rise up, O men of God!

The Church for you doth wait,

Her strength unequal to her task;

Rise up, and make her great!

Lift high the cross of Christ!

Tread where His feet have trod;

As brothers of the Son of Man,

Rise up, O men of God!

(Can you believe we are brothers/sisters of the Son of God?!  He truly has loved us.)

The hymn Rise up, O men of God made me think of our amazing friends, the Thiemes.  They are all such real people, if you know what I mean.  It is such a blessing to have like-minded friends who are passionate about their walk with God.  They have challenged and cared for me and my family, and we've been through many laughs, serious conversations, and even tears together.  I'm really thankful for their faithfulness and unending love in our friendship.

A couple weeks ago they got to come up to visit just for fun!  Our times together are too few now that we are 2 hours apart.  Getting time together makes us all a little excited and crazy.  Even still, it's hard to feel like we've gotten enough of each other when it comes time to part ways again.  We have been friends for at least 10 years now and are basically all just family.  (Scary, right?)  

Around this time last year, Tirzah and I did a photo-shoot with Abigail, Isarai, and Shoshannah Thieme.  We thought it would be fun to get special pictures together at least once a year.  They sure do make for special memories, both in the moment and in the future.  I also recently downloaded photo-shop on my computer and have been very excited about that!  It's been fun playing around with it and having these recent pictures to work with.  But I'm afraid I don't deserve credit for most of these pictures...It was nice to not have to work with the timer the whole time, though.

Not even a tree can hide you from the photographer for long, I'm afraid.

Isarai, Shoshannah, me, Tirzah, and Abigail

And the timer is going....Oops.  Didn't end up as planned, but made for laughs.

Their excuse was that I was the photographer and should therefore be in the middle.
The problem was that I didn't take most of the pictures...

Hosanna is SO cute!

Tirzah, Yael, and Shoshannah braved the mountainous rock.

But getting down was a slightly trickier matter.

Cold toes on a February morning!

She's amazing for laughs and just about anything else.

Flip-flops create great friends...and feet.

How many shades of orange can we wear?

The sun was very bright.

"Oh, was that a practice count off for jumping?"

It took about 3 practice count-offs before getting it right.

"Look, there's a puddle to jump in!" ...everyone else missed out on that fun.