Potts Family...

Potts Family...

Saturday, January 5, 2013

The Twelve Days of Christmas...

What a fun Christmas we are wrapping up - for years we have been wanting to do a 12 days of Christmas celebration with the boys.  I even made Christmas bags right after Noah's first Christmas.  The intention was we would have a Christmas celebration with a family devotion and a gift for each of the kids everyday for 12 days starting on Christmas day and ending on the day before Epiphany (January 5).  The very next Christmas  (Seth's 1st Christmas) began our season of traveling over the holidays.  We left Hawaii and went home to Wisconsin to see our family that year - the next Chad was deployed to Iraq - the next year we were in seminary and Christmas break was spent traveling...  Now that Chad has graduated from seminary and we are serving a church where this is not the best time for traveling, we decided it was time to finally try for our 12 days of Christmas celebration...

Christmas Eve we got ready for church and gave gifts to each other (we exchanged names and went to the store together)... Then it was off to church.  It was a joyful celebration and we were blessed by the family that we have at Peace!

Christmas morning we began with opening our first present...  The boys read a devotion and opened their Christmas coal - attached was a note reminding them that, while we may like to think that we receive gifts based on whether we are naughty or nice, we are sinful and the gifts we receive come because of what Christ did for us.  They unwrapped their coal and a box with baby Jesus.  They placed the wrappers from the chocolate coal on Jesus and enjoyed the sweetness that was left over!
A bag of Coal
Seth opening the baby Jesus present!


Climbing into their bags to find their presents.  





Christmas day we also opened all the gifts from grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  There were lots of games!!!  
Then we had Christmas lunch and watched a Christmas movie on the new television that Grandma Potts gave us for Christmas! And Played lots of games!

Each day of Christmas had a devotion with a reading from the Old and New Testaments and a description of the 12 days of Christmas song.  When the devotion was over we would say "Dig in"  and Seth would say, "but be careful it might be breakable..."  Gifts this year included many little Cars from the Disney movie (thanks to Grandma Potts for cleaning out her collection), Baseball gloves (courtesy of a family from our church who found them on a great deal and couldn't pass them up - so they gave them to us for our boys), and lots of Legos.
 















 The 2nd day of Christmas brought snow and that brought lots of sledding over the week!

















Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas 2012


In honor of our new home on the golf course we thought we would share the happenings of our year in golf terms. 

The Front Nine – Our year began in Fort Wayne, Indiana where Chad was completing his seminary studies.  He worked diligently and graduated in May! 

Ace (Better known as a Hole-in-one) – Call night is a night we waited for (sometimes anxiously) and prayed for and thought about (often with more questions than answers)… Call night is the night when a seminary student is given their first congregation – the place where they are placed to serve in their first Pastoral role and the place where they will make their new home.  For us call night brought the news, “Peace Lutheran Church, Fremont, Indiana”.  With this news we definitely scored a hole-in-one.  The church and community have been a great fit for our family and we look forward to many years in this community!

Drive- Is what Chad spent most of his summer doing.   Our home in Fort Wayne was for sale and we were looking for a place in the Fremont/ Angola area.  The Drive was about 50 minutes one way and so we waited and we prayed and we looked and we prayed some more.  Finally in June we decided we would rent our home to an incoming seminary family that had wanted to buy but couldn’t work out financing.  They were moving in mid-August and so Chad’s drive came to an end.  Our house did eventually sell to this family and they are now keeping our old neighbors company!

Fairway – Meanwhile we had continued to search for a home in Angola, and found a beautiful fairway shot in between the town of Angola and Fremont.  Our home sits on the 18th hole of a golf course which provided hours of family fun as we took evening walks on the golf course and came home with buckets full of golf balls.  Stop in and see us some time – we have lots of room for visitors.  

Water Hazard – Angola and Fremont are located in Indiana’s Lake Country.  We are about 5 minutes from the Michigan border and 10 minutes from the Ohio border.  Our summer was spent swimming, boating (with church members), and other lake fun! 

Dogleg – Our year wasn’t all fun and we had some twists and turns that made it difficult to see the pin.  Chad’s dad passed away 5 days after graduation and a week later we also lost a dear uncle and friend.  They will be missed on our visits to Wisconsin and we thank God for the memories we have. 

Par – Some things continue on just as they have and should – Zeke continues to love football.  He is in the 5th grade this year and played his first season of tackle football.  Joshua is in 4th grade and keeps himself busy with his buildings (legos, forts, and everything in between).  Noah is our music boy and is learning to play the drums.  He is in 3rd grade this year.  Seth is in 1st/2nd grade (when you are homeschooled the boundaries sometimes get fuzzy).   While he is often trying to keep up with his brothers, he also has his own unique interests and this year is learning to play the harmonica.  Give him a chance and he will also bend your ear with an animated story or two about the goings on in the Potts’ house!  Michelle continues to homeschool all 4 boys and teach online high school.  Chad is learning a new job and enjoying the variety of activities that being a Pastor entails. 

Out-of-Bounds – This is what we all were.  Sin had separated us from our Creator and Father.  He didn’t leave us there though, He stepped down to our world to walk with us, and take the penalty that our sin deserved.  This Christmas will you take a moment to stop at the stable and witness again the wonder of “God made flesh” in the person of Jesus Christ!  
Potts Family 2012 (Left to Right) Seth (7), Noah (8), Joshua (9), Ezekiel (10), Chad and Michelle


Thursday, November 1, 2012

New Beginnings

So much has changed in our lives since the last time I visited this blog - I decided it was time to start my online scrapbook again as time flies by and the kids get older!

A few things of the major things that have happened since April of 2011 (the last time I blogged on here):
Visiting Mount Rushmore - Summer 2011
Moving From Colorado Back to Fort Wayne, Summer 2011


  •  We returned to seminary


Chad Graduating Seminary - Spring 2012

Chad's Ordination - Summer 2012
  • We bought a home in Angola, IN
  • We sold our home in Fort Wayne, IN
Just to name a few of the highlights.  It is now November 1, 2012 - It is my hope that I will be able to share more about the everyday (and the sometimes not so everyday) things happening in our family! 

Here's to joy in this journey!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Vacation - part 2






Our primary destination on this trip was the Grand Canyon. What an amazing sight greeted us... You see it in pictures, but until you are there, the grandeur and immensity of it just can't be fathomed... (OK, I think I used my big word quota for the year). Our first day was spent hiking along the rim...

There were some pretty amazing sights to behold!

It was also neat that Grandma and Grandpa Breeden were also visiting Arizona at the same time and we got to spend some time with them!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Vacation - part 1

One of the neat parts about being out west this year was the opportunity to see some places we had not had the opportunity to visit before. In early February we had the opportunity for a family vacation. While on the road we had the opportunity to stop at many locations and enjoyed many new sights... Here is a sampling of some of the trip...

Of course we started on Sunday after church and arrived at our first destination - Glenwood Springs, CO in time to set up for the Packer's Superbowl Win in our hotel room! Woot! Woot! What an awesome year to be a Packer fan!

The next morning we went to the Glenwood Caverns... Included in this all day event were -
A cave tour

Laser Tag

And a few rides on the Alpine Slide

That night we got in the car and we headed west for a bit. The next day our primary destination was the 4 corners, but along the way we found this Gem...

The Canyonlands and Arches National Parks... Wish we had more time for those, but we did get out and see the following views for a little bit!

Then we continued on the road to the 4 corners... The only place in our country where 4 states meet. The boys thought it was great to run from Colorado to New Mexico into Arizona and Utah and back again!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Time for another Fast Forward...

Well, I just can't seem to find (or is it I don't seem to take the time) to update this... Looking backward, it would appear that the last time I posted was around the beginning of October, so here is a fast forward look at the end of 2010...

We celebrated Zeke's Birthday early by taking in an Air Force Academy Football game...
Grandma and Grandpa Breeden and Jeff, Jess, Carter and Ali came to visit us in October... We did a bunch of tourist type things and enjoyed the time with family.

The boys dressed in a robotic super-hero theme for the Fall Festivals we attended.
They also took Archery lessons through the Community Rec Program.

We also spent time taking in New Views around the area...

Rocky Mountain Nation Park...
Independence Pass...

Ice Caverns. ...

Ghost Towns...


Ok... More to come in the next post...