Michigan Living: Winter Week 27

Welcome to the Third trimester...

... wait, hang on- nobody's pregnant (well, somebody's pregnant somewhere, but it's not one of us!), we've just entered our 27th week of Michigan Living and we're still alive! Not only are we still living but we're still LOVING it as well!


~Weather Update~

If you're following the national weather trends you probably keep hearing about how it's unseasonably warm on much of this end of the country. We'd like to say "you're welcome" for bringing a little CA sunshine with us, and invite you to freely participate in God's sparing us from a bone freezing first winter. Please don't feel any obligation, but financial gifts are always welcome!



~The Big Event~

So the big deal this week: we are the parents of a teen and a tween. Danielle turned 11 on Sunday and that means that she has entered the world of tweendom. Danielle chose to go to a local paint-your-own pottery place (you might remember it from Rebekah's 13th b-day party!), which meant 3 hours of pottery painting for the Carter ladies and 3 hours of Texas Hold-Em on the Blackberry for Chris.








Then all hell broke loose! You see, since the dawn of time we've had this agreement that we don't tell restaurant employees that it's our birthday-- that way nobody is embarrassed by loud, obnoxious birthday songs sung to you by total strangers. Well, Danielle's a different beast (at this point the DNA tests are inconclusive...) and all she wanted was for the Red Robin employees to sing to her... of course the free hot fudge Sunday might have been more what she was after, but she was totally willing to take the birthday song abuse in order to get to the dessert. Go figure!














~What's Up With the Youth Group?~




I don't typically put a ton of stuff about Student Life at Northpointe on here because we're really tracking our Michigan adventure, but since a number of you have been asking here's a taste of what Chris has been up to:





New name/Wednesday::group/Sunday Morning Middle School::group/
Sunday Night High School::group/Fall Bash/lessons series/two bands/1
intern/drama/phone calls/developing relationship/parents/wrist bands/
new set up/building project/broken stuff/free air hockey table/small
groups/High School LIFE::groups/intern leaves/Youth Team/new Creative
Arts Team/recruit volunteers/teaching training/tech nightmares/computer
crash/systems galore/Cafe/networking/Elder meetings/parent meetings/
light construction/serious destruction/encouraging people/
loving people/being with people/getting to know people/Jesus


~Oldie But Goodie~

I know this is a little old, but I just found this video of something we went to in early December. It's filmed over the Capitol building in Lansing and was actually pretty awesome (PS: That's not us talking in the video, but the folks standing next to us... sooooo, yaaaahhh...)