New Year News

Sorry, It's been so long, but life has been quite busy till now. We had a blast seeing all our family over the holidays. Emery's first Christmas was fun! God really scaled down our gift giving this year. Apparently we are learning a lot about finances lately. This is such a blessing, although very trying. Most of you know we are hoping to work in ministry soon. Patience, patience, and wait...oh yeah.. more patience. Not my strongest quality as most of you know. God has been amazingly gracious with us reminding us to perservere, especially in prayer. Oh yeah, the contract fell through on our house back in Oct/Nov, so it is still for sale. We have had no bad feedback, so it is definitly God's timing. Trusting God for our future is one thing, trusting him to pay the bills next week is a whole new level for us. We are so grateful for His presence during this time. Atleast it isn't a dry desert experience without His presence. He is giving us hope and a future, we're just not sure what it looks like yet. Enough about us, lets move on to the real reason most of you are reading this... the girls.

Bella is awesome! She is growing up so much. She truly delights in helping do things with Jamie or me. She has that little mommy personality that makes her think she knows exactly where everything and everyone should be at all times and isn't timid to say the least about letting you know. She's definitely got the 2's going on with her share of testing us with obedience, control, and dealing with frustration. She is still our sunshine, with such a sweet spirit about her! One more funny thing. She enjoys watching Toy Story 2, Fox and the Hound 2, and Dora of course. She has the Buzz, Woody, and Bullseye the Horse dolls that she plays with constantly. But she call them Bullseye, SherrWoody, and Buzz LightBeer, ha! Innocence is bliss and quite hilarious at times. Also there is an episode of "D.D.D.D.Dora" where they save a baby parrot, she"ll say, "Look mom, there's the baby carrot!" When you ask her about it, she is very insistant it is the baby carrot. She can be heard in her room while she's playing with her toys saying "Ayuda me! Ayuda me!" (Help me! Help me!) It's so fun. She does great with Emery Kate, or Emery Cake as she refers to her often. They are having to work more on sharing now that Em is able to pull her weight a little more.

Speaking of Em, she has gone through so many changes over the past month. She's walking, trying to say so much, eating more big people food, she has 4 teeth with 2 top front and 2 bottom front. Her favorite food so far is cinnamon muffins! She would eat 2 whole muffins if I would let her. She is full of personality. I am amazed at how much this child knows and how she thinks. She is very opinionated and leaves no room for misinterpretation. We are working on that!. When we are in restaurants she hears everyone else talking so she starts screaming, not crying or fussing, just making loud noise trying to talk too. It is so very common for people to say "wow she has some lungs", in fact, I've lost count how many random people have said that to me. Jamie and I are just hoping she can sing and put it to better use! She also likes to growl, yes, growl at random people. I credit that to her daddy's teaching. She thinks it's hilarious. It does catch pepole off guard, but luckily she has a sweet face and beautiful blue eyes to soften the startling impression. When I catch her about to touch something she shouldn't, my first reaction is to say "nnnt!", and without skipping a beat she "nnnnt's" right back at me. It is so hard not to laugh, really! She will definitely be a tester and I'm afraid will challenge our authority to the last word. But I'm am praying we can teach her early on and with watching what we do with Bella, she'll learn quickly. She has a silky that she dearly loves and still a pacy. She loves reading her "Pat the Bunny" book before bed each night too! Highly recommend this book for a first book! She gets so excite to do each activity on each page and she is so proud of herself when she does it!

Santa took Bella's pacys and gave them to kids who don't have one! She's done awesome with the transition, we are very proud of her! I love watching the girls play together. There is the occasional, o.k. daily, occurance where Bella come running to me "Mommy, Mommy, Emery's in the trash can!" or Emery is crying b/c Bella pushed her down, but they are priceless when they are making each other laugh. Nothings cuter than belly laughs between these 2 little girls.

I've written enough for now, hope I didn't disappoint you. We pray you all are growing in your walk with God, experiencing His love for you and know that we love you all too! I think my life lessons up till now can be summed up with 2 scriptures Proverbs 3:5-6 and Jeremiah 29:11 so I just pray that you all would know the love God has for you, plans to give you a hope and a future! Be blessed! Peace out!