Not much news

Well, I don't have a lot to say, but thought it was about time to post again ;-)

We've been busy with school, work, and church activities. I can't even remember what we did this week! :) This week and next my work schedule was changed so that I had Wednesdays off. That was really nice for yesterday since we had nursery duty at church. It can be tiring to be with kids for 9 hours all day then have a dozen or more two year olds for another couple hours!! We do really enjoy the ministry though and love being with all those precious little children! What a difference between the children of the unsaved family I work for and the kids that come to church!

Since I did have yesterday off we had Andrew & Meagan over for dinner. Daniel had a recital so he wasn't able to come. Hopefully we can have all three of them next week.

I'm including pictures of the puzzle David & I have been working on in the evenings the past couple weeks. We finished it on Tuesday night and David proudly displayed it for a picture :)

David is studying here in the library at school. I like to come along and read or blog (as I'm doing now :). Just took these couple pictures to put up along with this note.

Hope you are all doing well. I need to close before my computer dies (I forgot the power supply:( ) No time for editing photos-- you get them as I took them :-)

Weekend

This weekend was a full one for us. We had teen club on Friday night (as usual) then Christy came home with us for the weekend. Mom just gave me some old yarn, needles, and a crochet book. Christy said she had been wanting to learn so we had an exciting time trying to teach ourselves ;) I was trying to learn then teach her what I had figured out, but she is left-handed so I was getting confused. Anyway, she got a good start on a scarf for herself.
Saturday evening was the church's annual WinterFest (used to be winter banquet, but now that the whole family can come it is called WinterFest:). We had a really lovely time of food, fellowship, table games, and a video of Mount Calvary Behind the Scenes. David & I played Quiddler (a word game) with Dad & G'ma Bixby, Jeremy Dion & Caroline Largent. Christy played with some of the teen girls. After games we watched the video. Part 1 of the video was humorous (usher training, bulletin production time, sound issues, what they do with the baptism water, etc.) and part 2 was a more serious look at the heart of those who minister so faithfully week in and week out. It was an encouraging time overall.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. Grandma Jane, I'm sorry your picture with Christy didn't come out so well :( We should try for another one at club on Friday :-)

Family Dinner

We had invited Andrew, Meagan, and Daniel over for dinner before church Wednesday night, but church was cancelled due to so many roads still being covered with ice. We ended up with a whole evening together. We ate dinner, played Phase 10 Dice, then had a nice time of Bible reading, singing, and prayer (in place of the Wed. prayer service). U. Mark had sent an e-mail encouraging the church to gather as families for a time of prayer and had sent along several requests that we could pray for. We were able to use those suggestions as we brought our petitions before the Lord. The church's theme for this year is "in everything by prayer."

The game we played kept everyone thinking hard as there were many decisions to be made. Should I re-roll all the dice and take my chances? Should I play it safe and keep the wilds? Should I live on the edge?? Decisions, decisions, decisions!! So many life lessons can be learned while playing games :) Andrew and Meagan had fun trying to counsel each other and then having to live with the results. :) Andrew claimed Pastor Boyd's saying "Just put your foot down and do what she says." I asked David'd advice, but he steered clear from asking mine (with VERY good reason--I came in last place :). His theme verse for the occasion was taken from Gen. 3:17 "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife . . . cursed is the ground .. . ." :-) And then there's Daniel . . . he is left to his own ways. He did finish the game first!! :) In case you can't tell, we had a great time:)

I shouldn't forget to mention that when Daniel had had enough of the couples, he volunteered to wash all the dinner dishes :) Thanks, Daniel!! :)

I'm also including a picture that you may have seen from the Greenville News Online. Daniel, Esther, and Lydia made a Statue of Liberty with some friends at school. Now that things have gotten a little wetter you can actually build with the snow! :)

A few more Arizona pics :)

Our last night in Arizona we took the family to a restaurant called "Organ Stop Pizza" where a large organ plays music throughout the evening. It was a really large organ that controls all the lights and dozens of other instruments (tambourine, triangle, chimes, piano, trumpet, etc.) as well as some marionette puppets. It was a really fun evening :)

SNOW!! :)

The Lord was so good to answer my request which was snow and a day off work for both David and myself. Since our trip to Arizona took all our days off we weren't going to get any day at home over Christmas break and then the snow came while we were gone. Well, I prayed that the Lord would give us some snow to enjoy together and a day off as well :) We got just that!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are just a few pics of us in the snow. The snow is too dry (can you believe that in SC???) to make a snowman, and we only had an attempt at a snowball fight, but we did play in the snow for a bit anyway :) For those of you who have been to our house you know that there is no possibility of getting out of our driveway in any snow or ice storm, but since we knew it was coming we were prepared. David parked the car at BiLo on Sunday night so that he wouldn't have to walk the whole way to work on Monday. Well, as it was he didn't have to go on Monday, but he did today and would never have been able to get the car out. I also worked today (my house cleaning job), but wasn't brave enough to drive. David took me and picked me up. On the way, all the roads were still covered in ice, but when we came home most of them had been driven on enough that there wasn't too much left. David does GREAT driving in this weather!! :)

David made a big pancake breakfast yesterday morning then we took a pretty relaxing day. Since we had done our "spring cleaning" on Saturday there really wasn't any housework to do. We had some quality couch time, listened to "The Silver Chair", took a walk to BiLo (to get David's gloves out of the car :), played in the snow, did some reading, watched "St. John in Exile", etc. We don't have a fire place, but we had hot chocolate and wrapped up on the couch anyway :) It was really, really, really pleasant to have a whole relaxing day together!

In other news-- the Lord has been gracious to let me sleep close to 8 hours the last two nights. I have woken up sometimes for an hour in the middle, but for the most part it was good sleep (and med-free :). I'm *starting* to feel like maybe my body is getting back to normal. I've been really surprised at how poorly I've felt for some time now. Now that things are starting to change back I realize that I had forgotten what "normal" felt like! :-) God's grace through this time has been abundantly amazing!




Top left: we were trying to get a romantic kissing picture with snow falling around us. We both grabbed a handful of snow and threw it too early. Mine very accidently went right into David's face! That might explain the shocked look on his face! I tried not to laugh, but it wasn't successful. :(

A few pics from Arizona

As you know, we spent our first Christmas together traveling almost 2,000 to Arizona. We left just after 4 AM Christmas Eve and drove until about 8:00 that night. We stopped in Oklahoma City for the night before making another long day of it on Christmas Day. The Lord gave really perfect weather and traffic conditions for traveling and we arrived safely to Jon & Amy's just after 8:00 PM on Christmas Day. When we got there we were greeted with a peace offering-- Zinc lozenges :) Both Jon & Amy had been sick and that week each of the 7 children came down with the same cold/flu. I think a different child had a fever every day we were there. Poor kids! We held them and played with them and so far, so good. Since we left there one week ago today and have had nothing yet I'm *hoping* we're ok. We have lots and lots of pictures from our time there and I hope to be able to upload some more next week, but here is a start anyway. I wanted to at least have a good picture of each of the kids, but some of them don't like having their picture taken. Or at least they pretend not to enjoy it and make a big fuss about it :) I guess every family has to have at least 1 or 2 such people in it ;)

I had some blood work done today to find out my blood type. Apparently if I'm RH - and the baby was RH+ this past pregnancy would have acted as an immunization and my body would attack the baby in future pregnancies. Apparently its pretty simply remedied once they determine my blood type. I HATE having blood work done and in the past I've always fainted when touched with a needle. David was able to use some time he had built up and take me to the appointment. I think his presence made all the difference because this time I didn't faint! :) :) The doctor didn't have much to say about my sleeping problems. He said its because I'm a female and he can't fix that! Apparently a lot of women complain of not being able to sleep so he just recommended that I try changing my sleeping pills to see if another one would work. I did sleep a bit better last night with the pills so who knows. He doesn't seem to think that it is in anyway connected to the pregnancy though. I guess perhaps this is just one of those things the Lord is going to use to try me for a while since there seems to be no solution to the problem. I pray that I will learn and grow through this and come to depend more fully on my Lord for strength.

I guess that's about all our news here for now. Enjoy the pictures :)