New Year's Eve in the south

This year, we went downtown Raleigh to watch the acorn drop! In the picture below, you can see its suspended from a crane, and almost down. They do this at 7pm and again at 12am. We were happy to go to the early one! We marched in a parade too! The kids had a great time! Goodbye 2011!

Last few pics of Christmas

I eagerly handed Caleb and Seth the responsibility of teaching Caden how to tie shoes. Something that I've dreaded for awhile. It took 5 minutes or so. :) The girls celebrate Madelyn's birthday.
Aunt Lynne's story hour.
Kid's table. Sort of.
Entertaining Isaac. I kept trying to encourage him to put the tutu on his head. He repeated, "No, Aunt Sarah do it!"
The trough.

I believe. Help my unbelief.

I don't pretend that my life is hard. It really isn't. However, lately I've been stretched. For a long time we waited for the right time to move to North Carolina. We are now here, and doing well in our church, thankful to finally be near some family, and making friends. These are great steps towards feeling at home.

However, as a woman, a fair part of my identity lies in my home. My house! I feel guilty saying that. I feel like my identity should be almost entirely (maybe 65%?) in the Lord, and maybe, what...35% in my family? I don't know. But at least part of how I feel, lies in my surroundings. How my house looks is how I feel. So lately I've been feeling unsettled. In between. In limbo. We've done pretty well, these last 6 months or so. But recently, we've found out that our house in Pennsylvania won't be closing when we thought. Its back on the market. This is hugely disappointing, when we thought we were finally starting take some spinning plates out of the air.

God asks us to thank him in ALL things. So I've thanked Him for this season in our lives that's hopefully maturing us in our faith and trust. Shann has been very encouraging to me that everything will work out. We've said maybe the Lord will work out the timing in a better way, or we'll get a better lot to put the house on. Everything works together for good, right? But not necessarily for what we think of as good. Maybe we will lose (more) money. Maybe we'll be in our apartment for longer than we thought. "Good" doesn't always mean the way I'd want it to turn out. Good probably means the testing and maturing of our faith. Sigh. :)

So I've thanked the Lord and been alternately quite stressed about the situation. A friend reminded me yesterday that I can be trusting the Lord congruently with feeling sad and frustrated. And this has helped me feel less tugged upon.

But Mark 9:24 will continue floating about me in the days to come. And that's alright.

christmas in Ohio

a little late, but still had to post some pics from present time! Boys in their t-shirts from us. Our gifts from Mindy - awesome bath products that she made!

Caleb bought a cool laser pointer for Caden...showing him how to use it.

Explaining to Grandpa and Uncle Scott what 'squinkies' are.

Dad and his redneck wineglass.

cousins!

caden gets a knight and a dragon from Liptaks that go along with a really neat book!

Aunt Mindy and Lulu. A bag ready to decorate!

And then, could it be?

A mix of tears, shock, joy, and a lot of pent up desire...
Twas the shriek heard 'round the world, when she opened the American Girl Doll from Grandma and Grandpa.

Its Kit Kittredge, from 1934. And so begins the friendship.

Christmas at Aunt Sharra's house

Kids around the tree, inspecting the presents.
Aunt Sharra is ready to start handing them out!
Poppy Davis

Blakey

Lissy in her new dress!

Grammy and Caden

Learning contractions and why boys are special

First lost tooth

Yes, actually lost. She pulled it out herself, and then sadly lost it in the backyard of a friend. We've been promised that our friend will send it to her in the mail when they find it. Luckily, the Tooth Fairy was feeling merciful, and left her a gift even though she had no tooth to take!

Christmas at home

Before we went to Ohio to celebrate with my family and before we celebrated with Shann's family, we had our own little Christmas. We hadn't planned this ahead with the kids. All of a sudden one night, I realized we were running out of time before we left for Ohio, and we really didn't want to haul all the gifts to another state. So we decided we needed to celebrate the next morning. We stuffed stocking and wrapped presents, and in the morning, put in the Evie CD. They figured out very quickly what was happening. "Come on, Ring those Bells" can only mean its time for presents in our house! Very happy to finally have something (a water bottle) with his name on it...not easy to find!
Excited about candy.

Upward, Day 1

Ready? OK!

Caden seems to play basketball with his tongue rolled. I will try very hard to get a picture of this sometime this season! :)

I thought this one was worth including in spite of the focus!