Fridays

My Friday routine is something I am grateful for ...

Each Friday morning Gina, Stephanie, Kristin and myself gather at one of our homes for 'catching up' and usually some sort of spiritual growth study.  It is something I look forward to every week and these girls and, until this year, our husbands, have been meeting together for the past 6 years (they've been meeting for 7).  Don't worry - the boys are meeting separately, very early in the morning before work on Fridays - we just used to all meet together and have found it challenging to get our schedules together this year so we split into two groups.  We are currently reading "Forgotten God" by Francis Chan and it has been personally, a challenging book for me in this stage of life we are currently living in ... I'm thankful for the fellowship, friendship and for the chance we get to be together.

After our time with 'the girls', E-man and I frequently meet up with a Bethel student.  It's usually Kara Doten.  Kara is someone I met while being the Worship Pastor at Bethel.  She asked me to be her mentor this year through Bethel's Antioch Way program.  It has been an honor to walk along side of her and process life together this year.  Today she came to my house and she played me 3 new songs she has written (beautiful, deep, make-me-think kind of lyrics) and shared a lot of neat life updates with me while we baked chocolate chip cookies.  E-man loves her and they entertained each other with all sorts of animal sounds.  What a blessing she has been to our Fridays this year.

Some Fridays we meet up with my mom for a trip to Costco, lunch outing, etc.  We are also grateful for any time we get to spend with Gamma, too!

The afternoon usually consists of nap time, me doing some cleaning or resting :), some play time and then Ross usually makes it home a little earlier than a normal day.  We often find ourselves watching a Netflix or Redbox ... last week it was "An Education" - tonight it's possibly going to be "Crazy Heart".

After teaching until 9 p.m. on Thursdays, I just really enjoy and look forward to my Fridays!