Thursday morning heralded the beginning of another windy day. It was snowing most of the day, but because of the wind, the snow was often traveling horizontally and at times even slightly upwards.
Yet despite the cold and wind, inside it was nice and warm. Austin and Isaac were still on Christmas break, so they were trying to get some position papers done on topics such as music, boundaries, the Church, and marriage. During the morning I sat with them at the kitchen table and we talked about many different aspects of music. As we quickly saw, it is much easier to come up with questions than to answer them!
At lunch time, I had the treat of getting to meet some friends of the Adams. Though not official missionaries, the couple carries on what many would consider missionary outreach. Over lunch, they gave me advice on what steps to take as I prepare for a future in missions and also gave us all a hearty laugh through stories (accompanied by many humorous facial expressions) about some of their recent experiences.
Later in the day, we again headed down to the beach for another attempt at reaching the furthest point on the beach.
Unfortunately, we were only able to get past the second of four points due to the size of the waves, but it was still a challenge to keep our footing on the frozen rocks.
We also had fun scaling some of the cliff walls, though we were only able to get up a short way.
After returning to the house, we did one of the Adam’s favorite inside activities: puzzled over some puzzles. In one day we did almost five puzzles.
Friday morning, Austin and Isaac let me help them with a project they’ve been working on: a recumbent bike. It’s very interesting and I was glad I was able to help out a little bit on it.
The afternoon activity was a hike through a nearby forest and the weather had cleared up so much that we were sweating by the time we got back to the house.
Though there wasn’t much snow on the ground, we still managed to scrape together enough for a small snowball war.
On Saturday, Austin, Isaac, and I all headed back to where we had hiked the day before and rode bikes down the trails. Curtis unfortunately had some schoolwork to do, so he had to stay home.
When we returned, we sat down to a wonderful lunch that the girls had prepared.
Once justice was done to the goodies, Mr. Adams led the whole group of us out on a special New Year’s Eve hike. Here there was more snow so we had a lot of fun throwing snowballs, though Ibby seemed to take a lot of hits since she was often in the middle of the pack. Emily had to stop several times to fix her shoes because they were hurting her feet, so even though we all felt sorry for her, I have to admit, a still target is easier than a running one.
Throughout the week, Austin and I had camera wars. 
Mealtimes are times of bustling activity in the kitchen and the meals are always delicious.
Sometimes, however, we had leftovers, so someone had the brilliant idea of tying a biscuit to a string and seeing if any of the nearby crows would attempt to grab it. Though no crows did, a cat that is often around the house took a go at it and succeeded in pulling the biscuit to pieces.
Sunday was spent in prayer, discussions, puzzles, Scripture recitation, and a hike. We headed towards the beach once again and headed towards what is fondly called the monkey head.
Some of the favorite activities on these hikes were skipping rocks, jumping on rocks, and cracking icicles.
The Adams are all excellent musicians and so I’ll leave you with these last pictures and video.
Well hopefully you were able to wade through that long post! I’ll try to get the next up sooner than I did this one.
In Christ,
Corey
