Christmas Update -- December 25, 2007

It has been quite the year of transition for us as a family, moving from West Michigan back to David's hometown... Marion, Indiana. We're now living in a rental home next to Indiana Wesleyan University near College Wesleyan Church where David works now as the Executive Pastor. We're building a home in nearby Gas City and expect to move in around February. Thanks for stopping by to see this once-a-year update on our family. Feel free to leave a comment to let us know you came by.

-The Drury Family

Lauren 2007 Update

• Went from not talking at all to talking all the time
• Went from serious to goof ball
• Started to love all things Mickey Mouse and Disney
• Wear play high heals around the house every moment of the day
• Loves her Dora blankie
• Hugs and kisses her brother and sister every day when they come home from school
• Thinks her mother is the queen of the universe
• Thinks her father exists to wrestle her daily

Karina 2007 Update

• Loved going to "Art-itude" -- her amazing art school in Michigan.
• Started pre-school at Lakeview, her Dad's old school in Indiana.
• Had a 4-Year Old "Princess Party" in March. Loved it!
• Draws and does amazing crafts on her own every day.
• Started Ballet classes in Marion from 2 IWU students.
• Had her first Ballet recital in November.
• Getting pretty good at "Finding People" game on the family Wii (the "Druii")
• LOVED going to the cottage in July.
• Has worn a dress on 330 of 365 days in 2007.

Maxim 2007 Update

• In two Spring Lake chess clubs: large one at school and smaller one at the library
• Finished Soccer season in Tri-Cities.
• Fun Star Wars Birthday party in June.
• Started at Northview school in Gas City after moving--loves school.
• Made a great new best friend: Silas Vermilya
• Increases his Wii Tennis ranking every week.
• Loves the new CWC building--like a little Samuel

Kathy 2007 Update

• Sold her house in Michigan in less than 4 months. (Her 3rd success at selling by owner)
• Made plans for a house with Jim D and began building in Indiana.
• A great Tulip Time with all three kids in the street scrubbing parade
• Colts win the Super Bowl... family featured as Tri-Cities Colts Fans in paper!
• Joined MOPS at CWC... an amazing group!
• Helped lead the women's ministry at SLWC
• Her friend Shelly took her on an amazing trip to Disney celebrating her 35th birthday.
• Fun family trip to parents cottage over 4th of July.
• Trip to New York City with Mandy (Sister-in-Law) & Sharon (Mother-in-Law)
• Two sad deaths in the family in January & February: Grandfather Henry & longtime family friend Hazel.

David 2007 Update

Things Dave remembers that were great from 2007:

• The Colts Win! NFL Champs!
• Feeling more and more strongly led to search for an Executive Pastor role in the spring.
• The really special way the staff and people of SLWC sent us off as we were leaving that church. Amazing people there!
• Steve DeNeff hiring me on to join the team at CWC as Executive Pastor--great fit!
• Trip to Turkey with Dad & brother John.
• Six week summer break with tons of family time.
• Researching on the doctrine of Heaven for Max Lucado's message series and book.
• Going to an all-expenses paid night watching the 2007 Colts Season opener--including the unveiling of the Super Bowl Banner!!!
• Excitement of first Sunday in our new CWC building--and enjoying the amazing facilities since then.

Things Dave is blocking out of his mind from 2007:

• The amount of boxes he packed
• The number of times he has moved major appliances around
• The endless trips between Indiana & Michigan in moving trucks
• The times he lost in Settlers of Catan to Rob P & Steve T
• The 4 weeks of transition between our old CWC building and the new CWC building
• Trying to project when a 10 million dollar church building will be completed
• Being sick so much--like never before in his life this year

Merry Christmas 2006 from the Drury Family

Welcome to the 2006 Update for the Drury Family. This blog is updated just once a year at Christmas time... sort of like a Christmas card letter, sans postage and paper.

Scroll down for pics and updates on each of us.

____________________________________

We hope you’re having a great Christmas season.

This year has been full of some great vacations and travel as a family and for just Dave & Kathy as a couple. Ministry is going great at Spring Lake Wesleyan, Max is loving Kindergarten, Karina is excelling at art school and Lauren is just beginning to talk.

We’re having a ball and enjoying life--from our small group to our neighborhood to our marriage. It’s all good. Check out our yearly update blogs below on each person in the family for the scoop on our lives if you‘re out of the loop.

-Merry Christmas from David & Kathy

as well as Maxim (6), Karina (3) & Lauren (1)

Drury Kids at Halloween:

Drury kids at "Thanksmas":

Dave & Kathy on the Cruise:

Lauren 2006 Update

[Update given by Kathy]

Learned to crawl at in the summer and walk in the fall. She says a few words. She got her first haircut. Her mouth is full of teeth. She was a honeypot for Halloween with her brother and sister being bees. She likes Baby Einstien, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and Elmo. She sleeps great and has been thankfully very healthy. She loves getting into everything!

[Pictured here: some of Lauren's first steps]

Karina 2006 Update

[As told to Dad as he typed it for her]

“I went to art school and did pictures. I painted and colored with crayons and chalk. I played dolls and books with Lauren this year. I met Mickey Mouse and Minny Mouse and Goofy and Donald Duck at Disney World. My favorite toy is Barbies. I went to the lobby and watched daddy play the drum. My favorite food is watermelon. My favorite DVD is the Sing-a-long Songs at Disney video. I also went to the cottage this year and played with Max and Lauren."

-Karina Drury

[Editor’s note: Karina loves ballet now as well. Pictured above: Karina dressing up. Pictured below: Karina at a Disney world dinner.]

Maxim 2006 Update

[As told to Dad as he typed it for him]

“I did young 5’s year at Jeffers school. I went to the bus to go to school every day. I played at the cottage with Taylor and Jackson (cousins) in the summer. When I was playing soccer I learned a lot of cool moves. I went to Disney World and got a new umbrella—Oh and I rided the Thunder Mountain ride. The first time I went to kindergarten with Mrs. Taylor I got a cookie, and I saw a few new friends. I learned to play tennis at tennis lessons too. I like Scooby Doo, Star Wars, Legos, videogames and my sisters. That’s all.”

-Max Drury

[Editors note: Max lost 4 teeth this year so far]

Kathy 2006 Update

2006 was a wonderful year for me. I started the year by joining weight watchers in January. By May I had reached the goal I had hoped and in less than one year I
lost 85 pounds!

We had a great time in February taking the kids to Walt Disney World in Orlando for a week. In May Dave and I headed to Costa Rica for a great long weekend seeing a friend and Dave speaking at her retreat.

We spent a lot of time this summer at my parents new cottage on a lake about 80 minutes north of us. July 6 was our 10th anniversary and we went to a remote island called North Manitou. The ferry comes only once a day and there are NO provisions on the island and the only people who live there are the rangers when on duty. Beautiful and quiet nonetheless.

In October we went to IN for Dave's 10 year college homecoming. Nice to see Mom and Dad Drury and old friends from back in the day.

In November Dave and I went on a cruise to celebrate our anniversary. For those interested here are the details about that:

• 5 nights
• Royal Caribbean: Enchantment of the Seas
• Port: Ft. Lauderdale
• Stopped at Key West, Cozumel and Cococay (private
  Bahama Island)
• Met some great people from all over the USA
• Had a PERFECT week in all ways!

Thanksmas was celebrated in Marion IN with the Drury clan Thanksgiving weekend. As far as ministry goes I served on the Womens minisry team, served as the Lobby childrens teacher and small group leader with Dave. I still cut hair for friends and family at home and still work when I can marketing The Fruitful Life. I still love being a stay home mom and am thankful to be able to do that. Christmas will be here in West MI and not too busy.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

-Kathy Drury

[Pictured above: Kathy at Mayan ruins in Cozumel. Pictured below: Kathy at Hemmingway's house in Key West.]

David 2006 Update

David Drury had a great year of fun with family and friends. He did some of the following things in 2006:

• David is now the venue pastor for the lobby, the third worship venue at SLWC, which is an interactive “coffee shop” style gathering that meets on Sunday nights. [launched weekly in May]
• Because of staffing shortages David also helped out as the Interim Junior High youth pastor at SLWC in the summer transition which he really loved doing. [Summer]
• David has been leading a retooling of the small group ministry at Spring Lake Wesleyan Church, focusing on deeper Bible study and teaching in the groups.
• David decided to keep up with the rest of the emergent church crowd and had his hair tipped, so now he looks like he’s from California. [September]
• He taught the class "Power, Change and Conflict Management" three times for the Masters in Ministry program at IWU.
• He taught the class "Leadership in a Vacuum" for Asbury Seminary which was an intensive one week course. [September]
• He taught the class "Methods of Bible Study" for the BBC extension program for the West Michigan district. [Summer]
• Dave’s continues to write frequently for his website, www.drurywriting.com/david, which was nominated for the Page One Herchzel Award for excellence in rising above the blog fray in 2006. Though nominated he lost the award to www.drurywriting.com/keith.
• David and Kathy took a long awaited Caribbean cruise which they both absolutely loved! [November]
• Dave finished writing a new emerging church spirituality manuscript titled Mahogany Messiah: Nonreligious Reflections on the Religious Life. It’s been picked up by a publisher and should be out within a year.
• He traveled with his father, Keith, to climb Mt. Elbert in Colorado which had the deepest snow he had ever seen on its slopes. [January]
• David took up martial arts a few years ago and just this October he passed his test in Konigun Ninjutsu to earn the rank of Kagebushi (Black sash and gold tiger with red medallion).
• He traveled to Costa Rica with Kathy to speak for the Unidos Por Christo parachurch leaders retreat and to see family friend Andrea Bermudez. [May]
• Dave and Kathy now plan a late December trip to Russia to catch up with his great-uncle, Mikhail Gorbachev, after they learned of his declining health in November.
• He started in June as Max Lucado's researcher as he works on his upcoming book about John 3:16. He took about 10 days off from work to complete the research. [June]

[This has been a pseudo-fictional account of Dave's life in 2006 written in the traditional third person form used for such. Every other one of these bullet points is true, and the others are false. Do you know which is which?]

[Pictured above: A pretty darn good day in Coco Cay. Pictured below: too much caffeine that day]

Christmas Update

This is the Drury Family yearly update blog. It will likely only be updated once a year. It's sorta like those long bragging letters many of us send out for Christmas... only it's online, and with more pictures, and it's funnier, and we didn't have to cut down any trees or purchase any stamps to make it.

Come here each year around or shortly after Christmas to see an update on what the family did in the prior year. We'll still send a simple Christmas card or e-mail out to some people notifying people that this is updated.

Make comments on this post here to let us know you stopped by.

-David & Kathy Drury

Lauren 2005 Update

Lauren Elizabeth is our 3rd beautiful baby and so far she has learned how to eat and spit-up, look around, laugh and even roll over! Okay, we'll stop already with the baby details.

Highlights:

• Born on July 14th in same hospital Kathy was born in (Holland, MI) - for baby pics click here
  
• Dedicated on November 6th at Spring Lake Wesleyan Church
  
• Made her first out of state trip (to Indiana) in December and travelled pretty well
• At 5 months is already wearing 12 month-old clothes (95th percentile in height and weight)
• Knows whenever Daddy picks her up and promptly pukes all over him to show him her love (don't worry, that link is not really of Dave & Lauren).
  

Karina 2005 Update

Karina is now in her "terrible two's" which we don't agree with because she's such a little angel that never gets in trouble at all. :-( Actually, we call them two other names: the "tornado two's" or the "terrifying two's." We call Karina "Little Diva" when she's trying to get her way and order everyone about the house (including Max, which is actually a little funny to us.) We though Max was bossy!

Highlights:

• Karina turned two this year and had a strawberry shortcake party.
• In April she went to Grand Rapids to see Disney on Ice -- one of her favorite things are the Disney princesses -- so this was just short of heaven for her.
  
• In the summer she loved to be outside and ride her toy bikes and try to keep up with all the older neighbor kids.
  
• Karina loves going to church (God's Greenhouse).
• Had fun at the cottage we went to on Labor Day and aslo visitng Uncle Tom and Aunt Becky's cabin up north.

Max 2005 Update

Max is getting all grown up on us now. He's getting taller by the second and still loves to run and play with his Thomas trains and build amazing inventions with his Legos and assorted parts, junk and strings he finds around the house.

Highlights:

• He finished preschool at Kinderkirk in Spring Lake.
• He had an Incredibles movie birthday theme (he had a bunch of kids over for the first time for his b-day). He LOVES the Incredibles.
• As a family we got into Geo-Caching and Max loves to run the GPS unit.
• He attended the J-Force VBS at our church and loved it and took swimming lessons again this summer.
  
• Max started the Jeffers Elementary School young 5's class and now rides the bus each day like a big kid (half-day of school).
• He was sick a lot in the fall.
• He started Chess club in the fall as well and knows how to move all the pieces.
• At Thanksgiving he was proud of the fact that he could already count up to 120!
• Max even did his own Christmas shopping at the school shop for his imediate family this year.
  

Kathy 2005 Update

Other than being pregnant for 9 months and having a baby and then taking care of the baby (which in and of itself is quite a lot) Kathy had a lot going on this year with the family and some trips. As usual, the highlights of her year are again the places she went on vacation.

Highlights:

• Traveled to West Palm Beach for pastor's wives conference in January with three other pastor's wives.
• Began work on promoting and manging the distribution of David's book. It's been a fun challenge to market a book as a stay-at-home mom and a good chance to do something with David.
  
• Went to Bay Harbor in Petoskey, MI for a vacation with whole family before the baby came.
• Went to Cedarly Retreat Center with Dave in Wisconsin -- a fun, relaxing time without the kids.
• Went to Chicago in June for a Magnificent Mile shopping trip with Dave's Mom and Amanda (sister-in-law).
• Lauren Elizabeth Drury was born on July 14th. See above.
  
• Did a fantasy football team this fall (name: the Powder Puff Girls). Record: 6-6 so far.
• Served on the women's ministry team this year -- helped plan and run several events.
• Got into walking after the baby was born.
• Still cutting hair quite a bit and now has a nice new floor in her little hair styling shop in the basement (curtesy of Uncle Tom!)
  

David 2005 Update

Overall David had a great year of ministry at Spring Lake Wesleyan Church. He did some writing and teaching on the side and had a lot of fun at home with the kids and some fun with Kathy out on dates and on vacation (admitted less of this once Lauren was born, but things are getting back to normal now.)

Highlights:

• Hiked in the High Sierras of California with Dad, Keith, and brother, John.
• Taught a few classes (a FLAME class for ministers-in-training, a Call to the Ministry forum, and an online Masters class for IWU.)
• He led the church in it's 40 Days 2005 as the church went through the book he wrote in 2004.
  
• He spoke at a few churches and retreats about The Fruitful Life book which has sold more copies than he ever planned on in the first year.
• He began writing more regularly (about once a week) at his web-site on spiritual life and ministry issues.
• Built a treehouse (mostly done) and sandbox (totally done) in the backyard with some help from Max and Karnina