Buckroe Beach

We headed out to Buckroe Beach during our visit with my mom.  Buckroe beach seems much more "beachy" then Yorktown beach, which is 5 minutes from my mom.  (Yorktown beach being on the York River, while Buckroe Beach is on the bay.)  It takes about 20 minutes to get out to Buckroe, less then half the time it would take to get to Virginia Beach.  The kids enjoyed using their new shovels and playing in the sand.  I always loved how entertained the kids are when they first get to a beach!  It was a great day, and it really didn't seem that crowded while we were there.

Aedan:)

Mercy digging with her pick shovel.

Josiah and Gigi building a sand castle.

upclose of Mercy Cate

Josiah and Gigi

Mercy Cate

Aedan and Mercy digging in the sand and building a sand castle. 

playing!

Aedan and I

Mercy cate with her Gigi

  

Mercy in the water

Josiah and Aedan

Gigi and the kids

Me and the kids

Mercy and Gigi

This girl loves the water!  Mercy the Mermaid!  Or, she says she is Ariel. 

Aedan:)

Samaria Project 2012

Wow!  Another Samaria Project has come and gone!  This time we went to Clarksville, Virginia to Water's Edge Community Church.  Our friends, Ryan and Christie, have been a part of their church for years, so they were our connection to that church and area.  (We met Ryan and Christie while in seminary just after we were married, well, actually Ryan met them before we were married while I was still in Clemson.)  It was so fun to be there and to serve with them.  It was amazing how everything worked out for us to go there this summer!

So, we headed to Clarksville on Father's day.  (Which is the reason for my absence of a Father's Day post.)  I left a little earlier then the group and got there around dinner time.  I stayed until Wednesday after lunch and then headed to Yorktown to visit my mom.  We did some community service, helped out their church, and did some outreach at Newton Trailer Park.  It was a great week!  It is so hard to believe that we are in the third cycle of the Acts 1:8 mission plan.  Here are some pictures from the week~

Go Mercy!  Helping the big girls:)

Paige packing lunches for Newton



Ryan and Coleman.  I took this picture so we can prove that we know him when he becomes Govenor.  Also, If he ever becomes President, he has promised the McGanns his second home.  SWEET!  Vote Coleman!

Tired (and overwhelmed) Mercy.  Mission trips are hard.

This is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE picture of the week!  Josiah and Aedan are loading the trailer with lunches.  This is not a set up picture. (meaning that no one asked them to pick up this crate of food)  They did it on their own and I grabbed my camara soooo fast and got this shot!  woot!

Christie and I at Newton
This is a "wet" picture because it started pouring down rain.  (Mercy made it into a van:)

Aedan and I
I turned this picture the right way, but this is how it came out.
Aedan didn't want to take a picture, but momma wins this battle!

At Newton (the day it rained)  The kids piled up into Sherry's vechile!

Ryan and I

Here are some more pictures (mostly Paige's pictures) after I left for Newport News.

Not sure what Ryan Russell is doing here.  haha!  Maybe he is taking my place, or something.

Go Garrett!

Look, Ryan and Christie are even standing the same way.  Surely, they are related!

Some of the group!

Games!

Paige is an amazing face painter!  Woot!

Here are Ryan and Ryan with Dan the animal man!  So sad our boys had to miss this day and seeing the huge alligator!

EOE  2013 here we (well, maybe not me-we'll see)...but, here they come:)

my little fish

Amazing Wonders Aviation

Whew! VBS is over!  What a busy and fun week!  Our kids adore VBS week.  They have such a blast, and LOVE it!  Aedan said one day during the week, "I wish VBS was 3,000 days!"  Oh my, I don't think I could handle that. :)  Josiah had Mrs. Sherry for his teacher, and Aedan had Mrs. Cindy (with Vivian).  They both had great teachers and we are VERY thankful to them all!  

I taught the 5th and 6th grade girls with Teresa and Sharon.  I love working with both of them.  They are both so laid-back, and easy to work with.  Our thoughts are often on the same page, and that always makes things easier.  We had 20 girls!  Wow!  I've been a teacher of this age group for 3 years, and this is the most we've had.  It made it a little interesting on our field trips, but all the logistics worked out fine and we were able to get where we needed to be.  On Monday, we went to Burgess Falls, on Tuesday-Cookeville Pregnancy Center, Wednesday-around town for the video scavenger hunt, Thursday-pool day, and Friday-some of our group went to the hospital and some went to a nursing home.



Here are the girls!  All 20 of them!

Family night

Mercy with some girls at family night.  Mercy loves her girl time!

Our room was Sutherland Falls.  (in New Zealand)  Our neighbor, Evan, let me borrow his boat!  It looked great in the room:)

another shot

Our sign above the door of our room.  On a side note, when hanging this sign (on a ladder), I burned my arm with hot glue! (I won't show a picture-kind of gross.) A third degree burn...I kind of froze when it happened, and I was on a ladder.  So, I went to satellite med that Friday afternoon.  The burn is healing on my arm, but it is slow going.  Last year, the Friday before VBS, I went to Satellite Med for strep!  Satellite Med is the place for me to be before VBS!  Who knows what will happen next year?!

We had this big globe that Teresa got for our room.  We are letting the air out of it here...quite the task!

Check out Aedan in the background digging for the candy in his bag-typical.  (not sure where he got his sweet tooth)

Mercy Cate on top of the world!

More air being let out.  It took forever, seriously, later the Gaspard girls came to help me! 

Trip to Hayesville

We headed to Hayesville, NC to visit Ryan's parents on Friday.  We were supposed to leave Thursday, but I came down with strep throat on Wednesday.  I caught it really early, before I even had a fever.  Ryan came home for lunch and I told him that I thought I might have strep.  I wanted to go ahead and go to the doctor, and he agreed that was best.  Sure, enough the test was positive.  I started antobiotics, and felt worse later that day and had a fever that night.  I didn't feel well enough on Thursday to travel, so we decided to wait until Friday.  I felt a lot better Friday, so we left around 10:00.  The trip is just about 4 hours away, and it is a really pretty drive, too.  We spent most of our time in the creek behind his parent's house.  The water was sooooooo cold!  The kids got in anyway (and therefore, us) and had a blast.  They loved being in the creek and playing with rocks.  Most of my pictures are creek pictures, and there are lots of them:

wading through the water

There they go!

don't fall

Mercy in the water.  A little cold didn't bother her!

Mercy and I

Aedan in the deeper part.

Looking for rocks

We found a couple crawdaddys.

Ryan and Mercy

Mercy and I

We headed into town one evening for a Memorial Day concert.

The kids with Grammy and Grampy.  Josiah isn't as bored as he looks in this picutre.  haha!

On the corner was a tribute to war heros.

Mercy found her favorite car.  It's pink...no surprise!

The "blue grass" band.

We went to get ice cream afterwards!  It was in an old-timey shop.  I felt like I was in a movie, or something.

yummy ice cream

Aedan on the horse.

Josiah on the horse.

Mercy on the horse.

ready for bed!

asleep

Day 2~ started with the creek again, of course!

Love these log pictures!

Josiah, Mercy Cate, and Aedan

Looking down the creek.

Our usual McGann shot!  We do it at the beach, so why not in a creek.

Ryan is teaching Aedan how to skip rocks in the water.

walking

Josiah

Mercy in the water.  It seems crazy to me that she actually wanted to sit in the freezing water.

Mercy

Josiah and I

Ryan decided to pull a chair down into the creek:)  smart idea!

Ryan with Mercy

Josiah and Aedan hiked back up the creek to the log upstream. 

working together

Aedan

the creek

Grammy and Mercy Cate

Aedan wanted to cross this log!

Ryan met him halfway.

planting a tree

more planting

Mercy with the tree

Go Mercy!

Mercy and I played this game where she would run around me and I would try to snap a picture of her.  It was pretty fun!

got her!

and again!

and again!

The next morning (our last morning there) the kids wanted to go into the creek again!  So, we did.  Most of the time, I felt pretty unstable on the rocks...trying to manuever my feet onto safe places, but it was still fun.  We left just after lunch.  We had plans to stop at the Occoee River, but Mercy had already fallen asleep!  (That was unexpected...she must have been really tired from the weekend.)  Maybe next time!