Camp was great!!

Hi everyone,

We sent Nicholas, Joshua and Samuel to their boy scout camp last Sunday. Brian, Charlotte, Andrew, Ethan, and Rosa stayed back home Sunday and Monday.

Brian worked Monday, Ethan rode along and played. Charlotte, Rosa, Andrew, Brandi and Jade shopped and ordered flower girl and miniature bride dresses.

We took Ethan to Minneapolis to Shriners Hospital on Tuesday for his annual checkup regarding his club foot. We are excited to give a praise report that his recovery/treatment continues to be a virtually textbook recovery. The doctors are thrilled with everything. It was fun particularly spending a few minutes with one of his doctors named Chas. At the time of the treatments
Chas was only a technician, having personally done most of Ethan's castings. He has since become a regular doctor. Praise be to God for his healing and for these wonderful people!!

After traveling to Minneapolis we finished packing for family camp. The scout camp has a separate little campground near the main camp. We stayed there. We enjoyed normal camping activities in addition to watching and participating in some of the scout activities. Brian earned many Daddy points with Rosa, having time to bike ride, push a stroller, and 
push a tire swing.
Samuel earned his archery,pioneering and enviromental science merit badges. Joshua earned forestry, camping ,enviromental science, and worked toward personal fitness. Nicholas earned oceanography, computer, finger printing and space exploration. Nicholas gave a speech on oceanography. There were fun activities associated with these things. They shot rockets, bow and arrow, and tons of fun things.

Camp Tesomas is a 1100 acre facility with a completely private fresh water lake. It is very highly rated in the boy scout system. Nicholas and Joshua are expressing interest in becoming program counselers for the future.  We were expecially thrilled that Samuel earned the troop's scout spirit award for the second time and our other boys were considered. In these situations it is so obvious what a blessing this whole home schooling thing has been. Their ability to lead, cooperate, listen to instruction and good attitude seems to shine every time. They make us very proud many times over.

The weather was great all week, yes Susan, the weather in July in WI is delicious!

Once again, Peggy, Amanda, Joshua, and I did the worship set for church. We had fun and seem to be making progress in leading the fellowship into a great worship experience.

This week will be a bit crazy. Our new church is doing a huge kickoff to introduce ourselves more to the community. It will be Sunday afternoon and evening including free food, a free concert by Interface from Fort Myers Fl. This will be outdoors in front of our new multipurpose facility "The Gathering Place". We also will be doing a family fun time with huge rented inflatable toys for children and adults. All the fun will end by having an outdoor movie "Over the Hedge" on our high school football field. All of these functions will be unusually noticable in our normally quiet little city. We are trusting that many will be introduced to the wonderful ministry
coming from this new church.

On Friday, good friends Mike and Karen will be getting married. Peggy, Amanda, and I will be providing live music for this event.

On Saturday and Sunday, we will be housing 2 of the Interface band members. This should provide us incentive to get the house a little bit more in order than usual.

Thanks for checking the blog, enjoy the pics. I will be adding in some pics to recent entries, scroll down and enjoy.

The Haines Family

Time for Boy Scout camp

Hi everyone,

It has been a usual but very busy week at the Haines household this week.
Leaving home for 6 months can definitely set you back on your to do list.

After last weekend festivities we buckled down and worked hard this week. For Brian, it was off to a nearby community to remodel a bathroom for a past customer. Our customer trusted Brian's recommendation for ceramic tile, including all custom ceramic tile shower. The bathroom is almost complete, and Rick and Jean will be having him doing some more projects including adding on to their deck.

Early this week, a demolition crew came to our Kwik Trip. To our suprise, they removed the fuel island and not the destroyed store at the present time. The store is corporate owned and they have not announced their plan on whether to rebuild, where to rebuild or when to rebuild. Our small city does not have a grocery store, and we really hope they rebuild here on their old site.
They have a very good grocery program including most of the basics at less cost than regular grocery stores.


Charlotte and the boys worked hard on household duties including sorting clothes and setting up Rosa's larger bed. We all got measured for the wedding this week.

Brian and Joshua have joined Peggy, Amanda, and others each week at church for worship. We are so excited that Joshua has had the opportunity to experience this. The church has been so responsive to the worship and it is so exciting to see what God is doing in this small city.

At 10:00 this morning we sent Nicholas, Joshua, and Samuel to their boy scout camp. It is in a beatiful camp called camp Tesomas in Rhinelander, WI. We will leave our big house once again to spend most of the week in our humble camper at the same camp  in a day or two.

Sorry that there is nothing too exciting this week, but we wanted to update all of you. 

For those of you in MS, you would have liked our weather this week. It was like your March. We had lows in the 40's and highs in the 70's most days. Yes, this is our summer, but it is usually a bit warmer than this. The days have been pleasant with reasonable humidity.

Keep in touch. Call, E-mail, or respond to the blog anytime. We love hearing from our friends. God Bless each of you today!!

Brian, Charlotte, and the boys

Exciting weekend-Kwik Trip Fire

Hi everyone,
 
It has certainly not been a boring weekend here in the small city of Colby.
We enjoyed a beautiful outdoor wedding of Charlotte's cousin Katrina at a local county park on Saturday. We have been serving at our local Colby Cheese Days for both the Cub Scouts and North Ridge Church.

 I was woke up on Sunday morning to unusual explosion sounds. These sounds were followed by numerous sirens stopping nearby. I decided to check out what was going on and got up and stepped outside. I was amazed to see our local gas station/convenience store engulfed in flames.
This business is 2 city blocks from our home. The station sustained serious damage and will no doubt be a total loss.


Hi everyone,
 Once again this week both Joshua and I played in the worship band along with Charlotte's sisters Amanda and Peggy singing. Everything went great and it was a lot of fun.

We had our local parade today. Our home is on the parade route and we always enjoy the locals coming over to view the parade from our front lawn.



Sorry for the short update, but keep in touch, we love hearing from everyone.

Brian, Charlotte, the boys and Rosa

Cold in July??

Hi everyone,

Wow, almost a week since we updated everyone!

Things have been really busy getting caught up on life here.  We have been busy working on all of our various tasks. For Brian, it has been sprucing up the house we are selling. Projects have included refinishing a 100+ year old wood floor, ceramic tile work and a new front door.

For Charlotte and her sisters, planning for Amanda's shower seems to be keeping them very busy.

On our first Sunday here, Brian played guitar and Joshua played drums for worship. We will also play this weekend. The pastor's son Ben has move 80 miles from here and it is now difficult for him to play for this service. He has graciously been helping out in our absence.

Our new church has rented a space in our town's strip mall. We have all been involved in the painting and light remodeling. The space will be pleasant and offer some amenities such as office space, internet access, a coffee bar, a music stage and a comfortable atmosphere.
It will be used for small groups, youth meetings, counseling appointments, community events and much more.

Our comminity has it's annual Colby Cheese Days this weekend. Festivities include a tractor pull, a parade, D.J. music a carnival and of course, food and beer.
North Ridge Church (Our new Assembly of God church here in Colby) is selling Itty Bits ice cream in the food court for our fund raiser this year.

Our family is also involved in the Cub Scouts annual french fry stand. It is usually  a busy place.

We seem to be having a unusually cool July. (Maybe it is just us??)  Our high temp has not hit 70 degrees in the last 2 days!

Next week I will be renovating a bathroom for a past customer.
In 2 weeks we plan to take a week off and join the boys
for a beautiful week of camping at our regional Boy Scout camping facility at 
Rhinelander WI called Camp Tesomas.

We are sorry for the lack of pics at this point, but some have been shot and will be posted soon. We promise.

Thanks for reading our page. We love you all!
Keep in touch.

Brian, Charlotte, the boys and Rosa

Home Sweet Home

Hi everyone,

Welcome to our new viewers from MS.
We will be including pics and stories for your benefit. We really do miss you all.

As we shared last time, we really did have a nice journey this time. We had good experiences even at our stops finding the services we needed and had a good hotel experience at Perryville MO.

We arrived home Tue evening about 8:30 P.M. Since we have had some roaches in our camper in recent weeks, we drove past our home and went straight to our town laundromat. We filled every washer and dryer in the place and washed every item of clothing and bedding in our camper. We also discarded all cardboard. We fogged our camper for the third time as we went to bed for the night. We really do not want these rascals finding our house as they are not normal here.

We had a wonderful 4th of July. We spent the morning unpacking and folding that mountain of clothes and bedding.
My parents stopped in for a visit in the afternoon. We had a nice visit with them. We spent the late afternoon and evening at a rural site with Charlotte's younger sisters Peggy and Amanda, Nathan and Charlotte's parents. We enjoyed a cookout, paddle boating, and fellowship. We all went to our nearby town Abbotsford for the local fireworks display.

We celebrated our 21st anniversary on the 5th.
I spent time organizing my business by moving back into our jobsite trailer.
Charlotte and I enjoyed a nice picnic in a new park in our town.
We are thankful for 21 very great years that God has given us. We are so blessed.

We recently had a vacancy on a small house that we own here. We planned on putting it up for sale. Since Amanda and Nathan are getting married, they need a home. It seemed to make sense for them to consider the option of buying this modest house as it is very affordable. It seems at this time that this is what will happen.
We pulled out carpets and vinyl today and began sanding the original hardwood floors. This process will continue into early next week. We will be able to spruce up the place and make it look very nice for them.

Charlotte and Peggy are already very much involved in planning the shower and wedding for Amanda. Time is going fast for this event.

Amanda has asked me to help with the worship team at our church plant in Colby. I will be playing the guitar even at our first service back. We are so excited about the great things going on at this new church. It is growing in both numbers and spiritual growth. We are anticipating the great things that God has for this fellowship in the near and long term future.

We love your comments on the blog. It is very easy to respond. Just click on the link and set up a simple google account. It is free. We also welcome your phone calls or e-mails at any time.
This page helps us keep in touch. We try hard to let you know what is going on in our lives.
We desire knowing what is going on in yours.

God bless each of you.
Brian and Charlotte and the boys and Rosa

We're Home!

Well,

We are back in Wisconsin.  Thank you everyone for your prayers. The trip was very good.          
We could feel your support.  

We'll update soon.  In the meantime have a Happy 4th of July! 
 Thank you Jesus for America.

The Haines

On schedule

It is 7:00 A.M. We are in Perryville,MO. It is about 1 hour south of St. Louis.

We made 625 of 1200 miles. We had great weather, minimal wind and sunshine most of the way. Traffic was not too bad. We will hit the road by 8:30. See you soon.

We miss all of you in MS. Six months will go by soon. Try to stay cool. You guys are all awesome!!!!!

Thank you for your prayers.

Brian and Charlotte and boys and Rosa

Coming HOME!

Well Everyone,

It is 6:30 in the morning when I am posting this and we have a very little to pack up in the camper yet.  Brian is ready to go and will be dragging the children out of bed soon.  
We were able to get farther on the house than expected, we are excited about that.
We have pics to post, but will patch them in to these pages when we have more time.
Please pray for safe travel and reliable equipment. See you soon.

Brian and Charlotte