Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Wow how 2012 flown by!
What a blessed year it has been too! I was able to send out Christmas cards this year for the first time on my own.  I would have liked  to have had a letter inside all of them to give everyone a year update, but it just didn't happen.  Feel free to scroll down and read other posts to see other happenings from the year.  I'm going to pick up from my last post.

Since my last post we harvested our garden several months ago and have several quart size bags of peppers and glass jars of tomatoes in our freezer that we are slowly enjoying.
September we started a new year of Royal Rangers and Girls Club.  I started teaching my first year and Chris is teaching his second full year.  Our wednesday night activities were quickly out growing our down town facility so God blessed us with a new FREE facility.  It's actually the church building Chris and I were married in and is two doors down from my parents house.

we now have plenty of grass to enjoy, our class room space is still a challenge, but nothing compared to before.  We are all very thankful and have had a terrific semester already!  I am teaching girls grades 3-5. I currently only have two 3rd graders and 1 4th grader. Next year I will gain more girls.  Chris is teaching 5th-8th graders right now.

Looking back over this past year Chris and I did a lot of traveling. In march we took a last minute trip to Colorado Springs for a weekend getaway.  June we took a week long trip up to Minnesota to see Chris' grandparents.  Here are pictures from that trip.

We spent about a week up there.  While up north since we were only 2 hours from the Canadian boarder and both Chris and I have passports we decided we'd like to go see Canada.  We also learned that when touring a country and going through customs when asked the question, "What is your reason for visiting Canada?" the answer, "We just want to see Canada, we've never been there before." is one that will keep you in customs for 30 minutes or longer.  We did get through after being asked the same question by 3 different boarder patrol officers! We did a little shopping had lunch and left.  It was great fun.  I enjoyed being up in Minnesota.  It was the first time for me that I could remember most of the visit. I knew I had been up there when I was really little, but I didn't remember much.  Since we drove through 3 states to get there, and we also drove through all 3 state's capitols we of corse stopped at those, along with seeing Lake Superior and wow was it cold! 

The first part of october the whole Dinkel family was able to travel to Branson, MO for the annual Foursquare Conference.  We also took some leaders from Liberty, but it was such a blast to be able to have some quality time outside of Hays.  The conference was in the middle of the week, and since it was a 10+ hour drive to Branson we arrived a day early which allowed for more family time, in addition to the drive out to Branson.  Matt was only able to stay for one day, but the rest of us enjoyed meetings and on the last day Chris Amanda and I went to Silver Dollar City for the day.  Amanda has finally met her match for thrill rides. They both had a blast! and I enjoyed a leisure day in the park.  I did ride all of the roller coasters at least once which was huge entertainment for Chris and Amanda because I screamed....loudly!

Then later that month we traveled to Tulsa to see family and friends and to Celebrate Chris' 30th birthday.

Tulsa was a blast, just like it always is. The year always flies by way too fast it had been a year since the last time we had been down there.  We were able to make it to a Victory service while we were there and it was fun to go back and for it to feel like we had never been gone, and just like we were at home.  

God really had blessed us this year! I probably could keep going and going with more stories like how we also built our deck for 1/2 what it would have cost to buy a kit or to hire someone else to do it for us, and that we also put in a carport 100% paid for, and both projects were around $1000 or more. We are still loving our new home, funny at lunch today we had a whole discussion on the fact that we live in a "Manufactured Home" not a "Trailer" and I'm learning that there really is a difference! Not much but there is. (To me anyway).  If we want to at some point we could very easily move our house onto a real foundation and add onto it with no problems and possibly without anyone knowing that it used to be a mobile home. *sigh* some day.....

Anyway that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for reading!