We were so excited for September to arrive! Clint and I had planned to surprise the kids and head to Destin for Labor Day weekend. We left school a little early and made it to Destin in time for dinner at The Back Porch…our very favorite restaurant! It was a great way to kick off a really fun weekend! Emma and Eli were right in the middle of everything and Clint and I had a blast watching them have fun. We visited all of our favorite Destin spots and just enjoyed being all together for a few days.
Once we got back home, we jumped right back into all of our fun activities with Emma’s first cross country season, dinners with friends, and a chance to see the first ever Kennesaw State University home football game! We loved the game and had a lot of fun! We started that day at a friend’s birthday party, spent the afternoon at the game, and ended the night at The Taste of Kennesaw watching our friend Amy’s band The Mustangs. Definitely a perfect Saturday as far as the Strange crew is concerned!
The next week was a busy one as we had a lot going on and I was packing to leave on a mission trip to Haiti the following week. That Friday night was Lower School cheer night at the NCCS football game and Emma loved it! It was also Eli’s first official Varsity football game. Our sweet friend Chloe is in 5th grade this year and she kept up with Eli at the game…they had a great time together and made big plans to hang out again soon! I flew out Saturday morning for the week in Haiti. Clint, Emma, and Eli headed over to spend the day with Clint’s dad and then were going to spend the next day at Six Flags with our sweet friends the Wallaces.
The next morning we received the tragic news that our dear friend John-Michael Ritchey had passed away. I quickly made my way home from Haiti to be with my family and my NCCS family. I wrote more about that here, but I wanted to include it in our family blog as well due to the fact that JM meant so much to our family. It’s been almost a month since he passed away, but just the mention of his name still brings a huge smile and sadness for what we miss. God is good and we have seen that displayed SO many times this past month!
Emma had her first cross country meet of the season at NCCS the first week of September and then her second meet was the last weekend in September up at Darlington in Rome. The Darlington meet was wet and cold, but it was so fun to see Emma and her friends having so much fun! They have the sweetest coaches and Emma really has enjoyed learning about running!
Eli has really grown up so much these past several weeks. He is almost completely potty trained wearing a diaper only to bed at night. He talks all the time and is making sentences…he mostly loves to make people laugh. He does that by laughing all the time and inviting you to join in! He has become a little snuggler lately and keeps asking if he can lay down with me. I figure this stage might not last long, so we snuggle with him every chance we get!
We also celebrated our sweet cousin Sarah’s birthday in September. That is always a fun day as we get to catch up with most of Clint’s family. His cousins are so nice and we love getting to have all of our kids growing up together!
As we head into October, we look forward to continuing to see the way that the Lord is growing and shaping us to be more of who He created us to be. We are grateful for this time in the life of our family and excited about what the future holds. God is good!
