the February bulletin

Happy Birthday Brooke and Granny!
Congrats to Rach for winning the Best Advocate Award in the 58th annual National Moot Court Competition — out of 400 students, competing in 189 teams representing 129 U.S. law schools. whoop!

Matt and I have been quite busy this February. Here are some of the highlights:

- We have enjoyed attending our church soul care groups which have given us an opportunity to connect more with some of our fellow church-goers. If you're interested in knowing more about our church, visit http://sevenmileroad.org/

-Matt has been busy with baseball practices- this past week his practices were at the glorious hour of 6am. :)

-This past weekend Matt and I traveled back to Utica to visit our old church, Calvary Gospel. Pastor George invited Matt to preach and me to lead the congregation in some worship. It was a very nice time of reuniting with the church body, seeing our youth group kids again and spending time with the Hertlines, Pastor George, Sister Barbara, Debbie and Richard. And...my parents surprised us and came up from PA for the service! It was wonderful! (they are wonderful!) They had gotten up at 3am something and drove the whole 5 hours up to Utica. YAY! So the weekend was full of happy reunions. Here are some pics from our time in Utica- some are blurry and some are very candid... :)

-On the way back from Utica we stopped in at Ben and Laura's home in Western MA. We met their new son Jasper, had fun reading to/playing with their two daughters- Susanna and Cassia, and had good catching up time with Ben and Laura. Now we can picture them in their new home!


-We have also been busy watching Syracuse basketball games and we had a nice time celebrating a late Valentine's Day at VinnyT's- a local Italian place.

-We had another snow storm (6+ inches) much to my delight and to the horror of the local community. These people really have no appreciation for a great snow storm!

Eighteen wins and one GIANT LOSS!!!

As a Bills fan, I have despised the Patriots, since the late '80s - when Doug Flutie was a Pat, Tom Brady was in elementary school, and Bill Belichick was a young punk picking fights with Marv Levy. So it is hard to put into words exactly how I felt when the Patriots lost last Sunday's Super Bowl. But the phrase that comes to mind is "joy unspeakable and full of glory."

Yep, seeing the Patriots dynasty crumble gave me about XLII reasons to be happy. I won't list all of them, but being in New England did make it that much more enjoyable.

Now that the offseason has begun I thought it would be appropriate to offer a few words of wisdom to the losers.

Clearly, this is a team that has a hard time when they are Facing the Giants.













If they really want to get better, it's time to tap into their inner strength. I think Coach Hoodie needs to blindfold Tom Brady, climb on his back, and see just how far Tom can take him.

Better luck next year Pats! :-)