Life in Denver!

I don't even know where to begin when I haven't written anything on here for almost six months now! I've wanted to sit down and write something on here for forever and every kind of excuse - mostly forgetfulness - kept getting in the way... Goodness! I know there aren't tons of people who read my blogs, but I really did have good intentions to write more once we moved over here to Denver and began this new stage of life... Yeah. That didn't happen at all! :( I just read my last blog post and all of that seems like SO long ago! We are still sad and still talk about baby Kalen up in heaven especially with Daniel who will bring "him" up to us... We are still so excited to see baby one day! Since losing our sweet little one, though, we have also lost another nephew, Kamani Kai, the son of my sister and brother-in-law, Lelia and Wayne. He was born and passed away on Oct. 25th over here in Denver after a long last few weeks of the pregnancy. So much to say but I'll just say that we miss him, too, and we are so looking forward to our reunion in heaven one day with all these little babies! Then, on January 11th Scott's oldest brother, Geoffrey, went to heaven after just under a month of the leukemia returning to his body. Yeah, things have been crazy and sad and so full of hard times but through it all God has brought such joy to our family and our life. It's so great seeing His love and comfort with every step we take and we are learning more and more that we can never go through life alone without Him! 

The top highlight of the past six months is that right around the time I wrote last we found out that I was pregnant again! Everything has been going great and I am now seven months (30 weeks) along with our active, sweet little girl growing inside me! My due date is April 28th (just a week after Daniel's 4th birthday!) and as the date gets closer I'm getting more and more excited to meet baby Joanna Beth, but more and more nervous for the labor and delivery... I think it's a good nervousness in some ways because I feel like I need to prepare more for it, but it's also been so hard with all the little babies going up to heaven in the past few years between my sister, us, and so many friends that I think I'm still worried in some ways that something might go wrong. :( This little girl has been covered with prayer since we found out about her, though, so that has been so encouraging to us! So far everything looks like it's going great. Other than having to take the "lovely" glucose test twice (the 1 hour one I didn't pass so I took the 3 hour one, also - but then I passed that with total normal results!), I haven't had other big issues come up. She's measuring 1 to 2 weeks bigger than "average", but that makes sense with our bigger babies! I'm still hoping she ends up being closer to her sister, Lydia's, birth weight of 8 lbs. 5 oz. than to her brother's 9 lbs. 9 oz. but I guess we'll see in a few months! :) We are hoping to have a birthday center hospital tour soon so we can check out the hospital, but I've heard many great things about the Lutheran Hospital near us so I think it'll work out great! And, my mom is planning to be here for the delivery if at all possible and for a few weeks afterwards to help out with stuff, so that is SO nice and such a blessing! I can't believe we'll have three little kiddos in our house! CRAZY and SO amazing! :)

College ministry with Master Plan Ministries has been going awesome! Our first semester was so great but also very full learning everything about being staff with college ministry and getting used to the schedule of everything. This semester has been going great, though, and I am loving every bit of it! Our schedule is very much the same, but Scott and I are meeting with other guys and girls now for one-on-one discipleship and we have been able to help with other staff team stuff as we learn more about doing various things. Austin and Laura just switched over officially to their new positions with MPM (helping our President do much of his work in all the inner details of the ministry) and Jesse and Rhonda are officially our new directors which has been exciting! We have an amazing servant team of student leaders and our spring retreat is coming up this weekend! Be praying because we have around 30 students coming right now with more possibly signing up tomorrow! I'm so excited to get to know all the students better and to see God work in awesome ways through the talks and discussions this weekend. 

We still really enjoy the location of where we are living even though our house is getting a bit small for our growing family. I'm sure that has to do with the amount of stuff we seem to accumulate, but right now we are trying to make it work! We are so thankful for the sun room because that has allowed me to set up a school room area for the kids to do preschool in! It's so much fun having posters hung up and calendars, clocks, etc all on the wall. Both Daniel and Lydia LOVE preschool time! We have been doing Beyond Five in a Row all year which has been so great, easy, and fun and I love all the new books we have been able to read and do activities for! Lydia wasn't that interested in a lot of it this past fall but since Christmas she loves preschool just as much as Daniel! It is seriously one of the biggest highlights of their week and it has been for me, also! We try to do the reading and activities in somewhat of a structured time-frame (because that works SO well with all of us) on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings and I'm so amazed by how quickly they are both learning new things! In the past month we also decided on our plan of action for homeschool for at least the next year and hopefully their entire school years! We are going to sign up Daniel into a group called Classical Conversations which is a Christian classical program for homeschoolers that has a lot of support through a co-op community which meets for a day each week... We tried out one of the communities near us last week and loved it and them and Daniel loved having the structure of being in a classroom doing activities with other kids while also having me there helping with whatever I could. I think it'll be a perfect balance between the social life and having a tutor to help with ideas and teaching and homeschooling which I'm really excited about, too! Plus I LOVE what and how they teach the classical education! 

There are so many other things I could talk about, but I guess that means that I really should try to write on here more often so each of my blog posts are not novels about our life. :) Thank you for reading this if you made it through! Next time I write I really want to have an update about Daniel and Lydia and how they are doing! :) I love those kiddos and every day I'm amazed more and more by how much they have blessed our lives in so many ways! But for now I've got to go! Night!

Valleys and Mountains of Life

Hi everyone!

Isn't life crazy?! Crazy busy, crazy amazing, crazy ups and downs... so much craziness! It has been beyond crazy for us these past few months, especially since I last wrote on here! I don't hardly know where to begin with this update, but I do know I probably should have started at not quite so late an hour... This might have to be something I work on for a few days, but we will see!

I think I wrote my last blog post at the very beginning of June. Since then we have definitely gone through both valleys and mountains in our life. I guess I'll share somewhat in order of how everything went...

On June 16th, we spend Father's Day with my family in Delta (playing croquet in my parents' front yard and then driving to Montrose for a family Frisbee golf game and picnic). On the way home we drove by Walgreens in Fruita to pick up a pregnancy test! Before heading over to Scott's parents' for dinner, I took the test and found out that we were pregnant with Baby #3! It was so awesome to get on the phone and call my parents and to tell the kids and see that even though they didn't fully understand how that could happen so suddenly (lol), they were still full of excitement and Daniel started talking about his new baby "brother" right away! We celebrated more that evening with Scott's family and overall it was an amazing Father's Day! :)

That next week I got sick with something and had some of the worst days of sickness I had ever had... :( I remember we had a few of our really good friends come into town that week and I could barely make it over to see them because of being so weak and just plain exhausted! I didn't think that anything was really wrong with the pregnancy because along with being sick I was having some pregnancy type symptoms, so I just figured this pregnancy might be a little tougher than the previous two... On Sunday, June 23rd, a week after we took the positive pregnancy test, I began feeling SO much better and had the energy to go to church and hang out with friends that evening. Then, at the end of a wonderful evening with some friends, I noticed that I was bleeding and instantly began crying. I don't even know why I went straight to assuming a miscarriage in that minute, but I was so scared... Everyone was amazing and began praying for me and the little baby inside of me and I was actually able to sleep well overall throughout the night. The next morning I got ahold of my midwife after the bleeding was progressively getting worse and not better. She had me go in for a hormone test. I took that which came back lower than they wanted it to be, and after hearing those results and researching as much as I possibly could online, I was losing most of my hope that everything would be okay.

Gosh it was hard to make it through those days up until Wednesday morning when I could head back over to take the second round of hormone tests. The whole time I was thinking of my sister, Lelia, and others I know who had gone through miscarriages and the loss of babies and I was realizing that as much as I had wanted to be there for them before, there was no way I knew what they had and were still going through... I seriously had never pictured myself in that position of going through a miscarriage of my own, but it totally changed my view of babies and pregnancies forever. First of all, as I got the call Wednesday afternoon from my midwife who said that my numbers had dropped and that I was for sure going through a miscarriage, I remember just crying and crying and then opening up my journal and writing. It's so amazing to me how much love a mom can have for her baby even when that little one was only around for a few short weeks inside her! I'm so thankful that God allows us to have that much love for our little ones, though... They are such a miracle even from the very beginning of conception and I am beyond thankful that I KNOW that one day I'll be able to meet our sweet baby up in heaven!

One of the most difficult times after the miscarriage was having to tell Daniel and Lydia what happened. I mean, they are only 3 and 1 and so at first I didn't think they'd really understand, but Daniel understood so much more than I thought he would! He was the first one I actually told because he climbed up on my bed right after I talked to my midwife... He asked me what was the matter as I was crying and crying. I told him that our sweet little baby had gone up to heaven to be with Jesus. He asked why and I didn't really know what to say... I just said that Jesus must have really wanted baby up there. Then Daniel started coloring next to me while I was journaling and I thought that was the end of that and then like 10 minutes later he started bursting into tears! I've never seen him so sad! :( He cried and cried leaning against me and kept asking why God took the baby away and he kept saying that he thought he was supposed to be 4 when the baby came... It was so sad! :( He has gotten much better with it all since then, but he still talks about his baby "brother" (he's convinced it was a brother) and talks about how God can't have anymore of our babies because he has cousin Makaio and cousin Kanoa (my sister's two babies - a still-born and a miscarriage) and our little one... It's hard knowing what to tell him about it all, so we just make sure we listen and try to answer whatever questions he has.

In the few weeks after losing our little one, Scott and I took time to read through baby names trying to find a name for it. The hardest part of losing a baby so young to me is not knowing if it was a boy or a girl! :( Although we end up calling the baby "him" most of the time (probably because of Daniel being so certain :), we still ended up going through gender neutral names and ended up choosing the name Kalen which means pure. It was so nice finally having a name and we love it! It's so nice knowing our little Kalen is up in heaven and one day we can finally hold him! :)

So, going on to the next part of our busy past few months... As we were still grieving over our sweet baby's loss, we also began trying to make decisions on what to do about our house which was STILL on the market and which had STILL not had a single offer in the almost year we had had it on the market! We were getting ready to go to Lake City, CO for 4th of July weekend so finally decided to go ahead and put the house up for rent after we got back if we didn't get an offer beforehand. Then... on the 4th of July as we were driving down to Delta to meet up with my parents as they were going camping with us, we got our very first offer and our house was under contract in a few hours! It was amazing seeing God's timing through it all! Our house closed on July 31st, and we ended up moving out the weekend before to head down to Durango for our staff conference with Master Plan.

The other exciting news at this point was that as we headed down to the staff conference we were right around 73% received and like 91% committed support which was awesome! We had a wonderful time down in Durango with everyone. I just LOVE all the staff we work with and it was such a great time to rest, focus, and hear the vision for where we are praying MPM is heading towards!

We left Durango and went to stay with my parents for a week which was fun. We celebrated Scott's birthday with family on the 5th and then came back up to GJ the next night for a wonderful going away party with many of our amazing friends and family! Gosh we have such great friends over there! I miss them all so much, but I'm really praying that many of the friendships stay strong even over the coming years!

I helped Scott and some of our friends load the moving truck on the 9th and then we all left early Saturday morning, August 10th, to drive over to Denver. Scott's brothers and sister-in-law and mom came and then my parents came over so it was awesome having all their help unloading the moving truck! My parents stayed until the next afternoon which was amazing help to somewhat rearrange furniture, unpack the kitchen and bathroom, and get some of the other stuff unpacked. It was sad seeing them leave with Lydia crying and crying because she wanted to go with them :( but it was nice knowing we'd see them in just three weeks and that we'd be talking to them a lot!

By that point we were right around 98% committed in support and I think around 90% received so after much discussion with our campus director over here he decided that we could go ahead and step on campus doing most everything except for leading a Bible Study or starting any discipleship (any longer term things) and then we will re-evaluate the beginning of Sept to see if we were almost at 100%. It was SO nice knowing we could go onto campus and very encouraging as we were able to get ahold of many of those who had made commitments to see when they were sending in their first gifts!

SOOOO, we started our first week of Master Plan Ministry campus work on Tuesday, August 12th, with a great staff planning day getting ready for the upcoming semester. It was great getting together with the Denisons (Jesse and Rhonda) and Austin and Laura to plan, pray, and eat together. :) Then, on Friday that week we went back over to Austin and Laura's house for the Servant Team planning day which was also great! It was so nice meeting and getting to know everyone on the servant team. I'm so excited to see this team reach out to the new students on campus and see them grow in their walks with God!

August 19th was the first day of the school year here at the Auraria Campus. Mondays are our very busy day because we have staff meetings in the morning and then Servant Team dinner and meetings that evening and then we have a student Bible study at 7 p.m. It's so much fun, though, because I love being around the students and hearing how they are doing! Tuesdays at least for now will be my campus day, so I've been going onto campus with Laura doing information tables and surveys the past two weeks. It's been a great time meeting students, inviting them to our events, doing the Soularium surveys with them (an awesome picture survey that they choose a picture to answer each question), and getting into some great conversations about God and the gospel with them! Starting next week I will be meeting girls for coffee during the day and then I'm hoping to start up a Bible study over the lunch hour if I find much interest from girls! As soon as I get home on Tuesdays Scott is off to campus to go to the weekly AMP meeting which he has really enjoyed. As much as I'd love to be there with the students, I also enjoy having an evening off with just the kiddos and then by myself once they are in bed. :) Wednesdays and Thursdays are Scott's days on campus so he is usually gone from 8:30 to 5, and then Fridays are our ADMIN day to get stuff done! I'm excited for Dinner and Discussion evenings with the students to start up on Friday evenings soon! There is a possibility we might do those here or we might wait until next semester for that... we'll know soon. :)

Well, that's a very short outline of what our weeks have been like on campus these past two weeks. I have been loving it! Trying to get a bit better at balancing stuff, but overall it's been awesome and Scott LOVES it! :) He has gotten to know some great guys and is already excited to start meeting guys for coffee this next week.

I just got our sun room mostly unpacked yesterday which was our biggest amount of work still to be done. We now just have about a day's worth of rearranging and unpacking boxes of stuff we need to find a place for and then we should be DONE! :) I love our home and I'm so excited to get these last boxes unpacked so I can take pics and let you all see what it looks like! I love the neighborhood too and all the great shopping areas although I haven't seen everything yet! All the nice parts of being in a big city! :)

Well there is so much more I could say but I think I'll go ahead and post this considering it took me a week to write it. Hopefully I can write on here more frequently!

Somewhat of an update...

So we are still in Fruita at our home that hasn't sold so far! :( Sometimes it is really hard to fully trust God that He will sell our home in just the perfect timing and that He will help us get to full support by August, but then again, it is amazing how much less stressed out I get when I do trust Him with all this! Seriously, life would be a big stressed out case if I tried to take everything on myself to figure out... SO thankful that God has it all taken care of! :)

I know it's been awhile, again, since last writing, but I wanted to somewhat update everyone on our life... :) We are currently at 67% committed monthly support which is super amazing and we are so excited to see God bring that to full support, praying that'll happen by August! Things have been crazy as we have been wrapping up support raising around this area and we are getting ready to head to Texas in a few weeks to visit friends and family in many areas to share what God's been doing in our lives and what we'll be doing with Master Plan Ministries, and once we get back from Texas near the end of June we will be heading almost directly down to Durango for our yearly staff conference! I'm excited for that week of relaxation, focusing on God and ministry, and just for the time with all the other awesome staff members! :) Then we will probably head back home for a little while before going over to Denver to hopefully get things figured out with either renting or buying a new home!!! You can't say living for God isn't an adventure because wow, it's been crazy amazing! :) School starts on the Auraria Campus around August 19th!!! Praying we'll be over there by then!

A few weeks ago we went over to Denver for two weeks which was such a great time! We had lots of ministry appointments with friends and other contacts/churches and also had time to tour the campus and spend time with students at weekly events! God definitely knew what I needed to regain vision and excitement for Denver, because after that trip we have been even more pumped up and excited to serve God and the students on the Auraria Campus in full-time ministry!

Right before heading to Denver we had Daniel's 3rd birthday party which was so much fun! :) He had many of his friends over and we had fun hanging out with all of the families and our family. I can't believe our big boy is 3 now! He tells us about it all the time especially because he is doing so many big boy things now... Which of course is explained because he is 3 now! :) Number one on that list is that he is almost fully potty trained now!!! We have been working on potty training for almost two weeks now and it has been amazing! I know we might have other things happen down the road, especially with our future plans of traveling with support raising and moving, but I'm so glad that it's gone as easy as it has! It was something that I was greatly nervous about... mainly because most of the moms I had talked to hated potty training or had a lot of bad experience with it. We decided to go with the approach that several moms who enjoyed the process told me about, though... First of all, we waited until Daniel was around 3 because we heard that for boys that is like the magical age to where they just figure things out! And, we waited until he was ready! He was a little excited about it although even up to the day before we began when he picked out some super awesome underwear, he was still not that thrilled about it. But, after breakfast one morning we put him in his underwear and started the timer that went off every 10 minutes for almost two straight days other than nap and night... In the entire past two weeks he's only had 3 or 4 peeing accidents and has kept his pull-up dry for the past three days or so during nap, which is awesome! (He is still in diapers at night time which we'll do for awhile before switching to pull-ups.) It wasn't until about a week in that he pooped for the first time in the toilet (don't worry - he was still pooping, just in his diaper at night!), and now he is a trooper letting us know when he has to go even while watching a movie, playing with friends, or playing at the park! So proud of my big boy! :)

Daniel is also getting very excited about moving to Denver! He loved it there while we were visiting and talks about it a lot. He also is excited because we told him when we move he gets to transition into a big twin bed instead of his toddler bed! :) I'm getting really excited to be at our new home too so I can get out all of his preschool stuff and start doing preschool work with him each day! I haven't decided if we'll get a type of preschool curriculum or just do some random activities that I'll put together... I just know that whatever we do, it'll be so much fun!

Lydia has been growing and growing in leaps and bounds! I really noticed such a difference in her during our two weeks in Denver! I don't know if it was because she was around our friends' kids who we stayed with or what, but she started talking up a storm and now says stuff all the time! She is pretty easy to understand for her age and she does great at everyone's names! She is adorable! :) We have been trying to work on saying colors over and over to her but so far she only gets blue correct consistently. That would be because it is Daniel's favorite color and she thinks it's hers too. ;) Lol. She loves dancing and singing with Daniel still... They both have quite the dance moves! And she would play outside all day long if Daniel played with her. She still will not sit and watch any TV but she sits through books that we read to her more and more each time, which is nice. She loves playing all of Daniel's new games with him - Hungry, Hungry Hippos, Don't Break the Ice, and Memory especially! :) I love that they enjoy playing together more and more now. And for the most part, they really take care of each other too, which is such a great thing for us to see! :) I love those two kiddos so much! Makes me want another baby... :)

Well, I would say lots more but I figure this is good for now... Sorry I've been so inconsistent writing this blog... No promises on when I will write again, but hopefully the next time will be full of our adventures in Denver! :)

Our growing kiddos... :)

So it has been two months since I last wrote on here... Crazy! I've decided I'm really bad at keeping up with this, although I know once I get to Denver I'm sure I'll keep up with things much better than before considering all our family will want to hear all my rambling thoughts of life and family! :)

But, since I have a bit of time right now I figured I would try to update a bit about life and especially the updates on our kiddos!

Daniel will be 3 in just a month and 5 days which is crazy! He is such a joy of a son to have! He runs into our room in the mornings with a big smile on his face and usually runs to us right away saying how much he loves us again and again! I love his hugs and kisses and sweet words and how excited he gets when he talks to us all about what he loves doing. Tonight in the car on the way home from our friends' home (Drew and Andrea's) he shared all about how much he loves to share with his sister and how he loves sharing his teddies and balloons and how much he loves watching his TV shows - Dora and Go Go Diego - and how much he loves us! (Then he said lots more but I can't remember it all right now... he has hit that very talkative stage! Lol.) He really has been SO sweet, though! The other day he dropped one of Lydia's plastic Minnie Mouse plates on the ground and it cracked and broke and right away he said she could have his Toy Story one and he made sure I put her food for lunch in that one! So sweet of him! He's been doing that over and over! And he loves giving her big hugs and saying "I love you SO much, sister!" Awww... :) He definitely has his interesting, throwing fits times. He is very much on the fussy side right now and is very emotional at times, but I'm loving seeing his personality show more and more! I can't believe he's almost 3! Considering it's only a month away I know that I need to start figuring out some type of birthday party for him. We weren't sure last year if we'd be here still by this birthday so I'm excited that we'll be able to celebrate it with all his friends and our family before moving to Denver! And, I'm excited because he can actually help me with ideas of what type of theme and all now that he can carry on conversations more than last year! It'll be so much fun! He's been full of hilarious sayings lately... We've called his a silly goose pretty much since birth but in the last month of so he starting saying that he wasn't a silly goose... he was a funny goose! So now everything is funny and not silly! ;) His favorite things to do lately are still watching any TV show or movie (he seriously asks about it almost all day some days unless we sidetrack him with something else - it's ridiculous so it's quite the power struggle on some days considering we do NOT let him watch TV all day no matter what!) and he LOVES doing any type of educational or artistic activity! The other day I cut out 11 different shapes from different construction papers with him helping me with ideas! He loved watching me cut them out and then he helped me number them from 2 to 12... actually writing the numbers which was crazy! (HOW is he getting to be such a big boy so fast?!?!) Then we did an activity where he rolled two dice and I helped him count the dots to figure out what number he rolled. (He loves counting but definitely needs the help keeping track of the dots!) Then he'd run over to the number on the shape and tell me what the shape is called. The funniest is a parallelogram - he says that SO great! ;) And the octagon! I figured I'd throw some random shapes in since there's only so many of the more "simple" shapes!

Lydia is our 18 month busy girl who is so cute, adorable, funny, and such a light in our lives! She is getting so big and her hair is so long, but it's been fun seeing it finally grow out enough that it is filling in and looking so beautiful! I'm trying to let her bangs grow out that I have cut 3 or 4 times already, but most of the time she won't keep any pony-tails or barrettes in so she walks around with her bangs going almost to her nose! Lol. She's so funny looking around through her hair! :) Silly girl! She has been talking up a storm lately which has been so much fun seeing! Some of the words/phrases she has been saying are "No", "Ouch", "Daniel", "You okay?", "Outside", "Bear", "Milky", "Water", "Water bottle", "Sorry", "Princess" and lots of others! It is absolutely adorable whenever one of us gets hurt or says "ouch" (which I am now realizing I say a lot every day!) because she will dash over to the freezer, try to open it (usually Daniel has to run over to help her), grabs her Princess ice pack, and then she'll run back to the "hurt" person, give a big hug and say "You okay?" in just the cutest little voice! Awww, love this girl! She has been VERY attached to her teddy bear and NEVER goes anywhere without it lately which has been a little hard at times. Like, it really needs a bath! ;) And in the past few days she started swinging all by herself in the big swings! Daniel said she is now a big girl just because of that! Lol. :) She loves babies which is so cute... Our friends, David and Jessica, just had their first little girl, Lillie, and Lydia loves seeing her and points out her nose and eyes and tries to give her big hugs while waving hi to her over and over! It's so cute! :)

So I feel like I could go on and on with updates about the kids but I'll stop there. We have been really busy lately with ministry appointments and are preparing to go on a few different support trips in the next month or so and although it's a little crazy thinking of taking the kids on the road trips and to stay in new places for them, I'm getting really excited to have this time together as a family! We are right around 45% committed support which is so awesome! I'm so excited to see God bring the rest of the support in and praying that we'll be able to move over to Denver this summer! So many changes coming up in our life, but I'm so thankful that I have an awesome husband and two wonderful children and an AMAZING God to serve in ministry together!

Hopefully I'll write more soon!

Busy Days Just Flying By!

I can hardly believe it is already close to the end of January! The days have been flying by and some days I can't seem to catch up! My long list of things I want to do is definitely never ending, but occasionally I just have to stop and breath and enjoy the moments! I wanted to write a blog because I haven't in way too long... I think I'll share some of the wonderful highlights with y'all!

Daniel, our almost 3 year old (in only 3 months - can you believe it?!), is full of wonderful moments again and again! That boy makes us laugh and laugh every day! His facial expressions are awesome... Whenever he thinks something is weird or he is looking intently at something, he totally arches his eyebrows. Lol. Sometimes it's hard to believe he's only 2! He has also been extra cute lately when people ask him questions. If he doesn't know the answer right away he says "Hmmm..." and puts his index finger up to his chin like he's thinking about it. He's also expanded his vocabulary quite a lot... He loves repeating most of what he hears now. This afternoon and evening the kids were helping me clean our house for a house showing tomorrow morning and afterwards I told them thank you so much for their help. Daniel then gave me the biggest smile and said "Did you appreciate it really much, Mommy?!" How cute is that?! I told him that I definitely did appreciate it really much! He is also very caring and if one of us ever gets hurt he asks right away what he can do (usually offering to get an ice pack for the hurt one - because you know that makes everything all better)! He still loves reading... I don't think that'll go away for a lifetime! He could seriously have people read to him all day and be good with that, even if it is the same five books over and over! He has now memorized so many books that he will sit down and "read" to Lydia, which is the cutest thing ever! I'm getting very excited to start teaching him preschool things in the next month or so - he and I will love it! We'll just see how much Lydia enjoys doing some activities when I get started with Daniel... :)

Lydia, our 16 1/2 month old, is also growing up a storm! She has been learning so many new words every day! And she is so adorable when she talks! One of the cutest things she says are "No, No!" which she mainly says to Daniel when he's doing something she doesn't think he should be doing... This happens quite frequently. Lol. ;) She has been a big cuddler lately and loves giving me big, long hugs which is amazing! She also puckers up and gives kisses quite frequently, although her older brother is already saying no to kisses most of the time from almost everyone. :( One of the cutest things lately that Lydia enjoys doing is singing and dancing with Daniel up in front of our fireplace, on their "stage"! She loves doing almost everything with Daniel (if she wakes up before him she will rush over to his door and say "knock, knock, knock, knock" (yes she just says it... doesn't really do the knocking) until he wakes up and comes out! Lol. Her favorite book lately has been "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", which she loves to bring to us constantly to read to her! Sometimes I forget that Lydia is now the age Daniel was when I had her... It's so weird at times because whereas I definitely saw him as a big boy when she was born, I still see her as my little baby, but definitely a growing one! :) I love when she lets me just rock and rock her at night! She is such a wonderful, dear daughter!

We are still busy, busy with support raising. We have been praying a lot lately that our full 100% will come in by May, and we are excited to see God continue bringing together our support team! I am getting SO excited to head over to Denver and get to know the students on the Auraria campus! I'm excited to be able to start looking at homes (once this home sells!) to rent, and just to start the next chapter of our lives! We are currently at 39% committed monthly support, which is super exciting and it is also awesome to know that there are so many others who have told us they want to start giving! Our God is so mighty and it's been so great seeing Him work through all of this!

Scott and I have also been doing great! I just started back on Weight Watchers this past week and have been doing the Couch to 5K program  for my exercising. I feel great already and I'm excited to get healthier! Scott and I are looking forward to two weekends from now because we are going to Glenwood Springs for the weekend for some us time! My parents volunteered to watch the kiddos for us, and we are SO excited to have this time together to talk, rest, pray, and get ready for these upcoming months! We haven't planned out exactly what we'll be doing yet, but we'll be staying in some Hilton Hotel because we have points from our credit card which is pretty awesome! :)

Well, I wanted to say much more but this'll have to do for now. Scott is in Denver this afternoon until Thursday so that's why I had time to sit down and right a blog! He is seeing his brother, Geoffrey, tomorrow, which will be so nice since we haven't seen him since Thanksgiving! I have to wake up early to get the rest of the house ready, kids fed, and out of the house by 8:40 before our house showing! And I think I'm going to go make a fruit salad for me to eat before bed... I just worked out an hour ago so I'm starving! :(

Have a wonderful week!

My 15 Month Old

Dear Lydia,

You are 15 months and 1 week old today! Crazy to see how big you are getting every day! You and your brother are definitely getting closer and it is so much fun seeing you spend more and more time together during the day. Daniel loves holding your hand and walking you out to the car when we go anywhere, and he also gives you big hugs and kisses at various times of the day. I love watching you two together!

You have been on the sicky side for the past few weeks... still have a runny nose and a bit on the sleepy side. Mommy keeps thinking you will be getting more teeth in, but nope, you still only have seven or eight teeth so we'll see when the others come in!

We put up our Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving and you love it! You and Daniel spent one evening playing with Christmas lights that were brightly lit while we turned off the other lights around the house and you thought that was awesome! Both you and your big brother think that our village set is the best play thing ever, and we have had to work a lot training y'all not to play with all the village people! I think you are going to have an amazing Christmas in a few weeks! Daddy is making you a kitchen which you will LOVE! We are getting SO excited to watch you play with it!

Lydia, you are FINALLY enjoying people reading to you! At least somewhat... Daniel still loves it much more than you, but Mommy is so glad that you enjoy it when we read even just one book at a time... You still don't quite know how to take good care of the books, so occasionally we see you sitting with a ripped page in your hands... not knowing quite what to do about it! The other morning Daddy and I got out of bed to find Daniel in your room with you. You had waken up and he decided you wanted to read so he brought in at least 15 of his books and dumped them into your crib with you! Lol. :) See, he takes good care of you!

You still have no interest in watching TV or movies, which I guess is a good thing although that means you just want to go, go, go or have me hold you when Daniel watches one of his shows so that is always fun! :) You are enjoying doing more fine motor things lately... it'll be fun to get out some of Daniel's older activities maybe after Christmas so that you can do some activities with Mommy!

You are still cruising everywhere and in your adorable 24 M coat that we got you this past month, you look like a little, big girl walking everywhere with your coat that goes down to almost your ankles! So cute! :) You still don't like keeping your hair pony-tails or bows in, though, which makes Mommy very sad... :( You have no clue how happy I would be to make your hair oh so cute every day especially since your hair seriously goes to your mid-back now!

We love you SO much and are loving seeing you grow and grow! Excited to see you experience the Christmas season ahead of us!

Love,
Mommy

Lydia Grace - already 14 months old!

Dear Lydia,

Hello my big girl! You are 14 months and 5 days old today... This past month was such a big month for you! The biggest "step" you took was walking! Probably three or four weeks ago you took your first three steps without holding onto anything over at Grandpa and Grandma's house with your grandparents, Daddy, and Daniel. I was so sad to hear that I missed your first steps, but I was also super excited to see you walk some more! You took your time, though, and waited almost an entire week before you took a few more across our living room while playing with Mommy... Once that happened, you began walking a few more steps each day and we knew it was about to be a constant action for you! Your daddy and I went to Denver last week to spend most of the week with your Uncle Geoffrey who is in the hospital :o( and when we got back you walked all the way across the front yard to tell Maw-Maw bye bye and continued walking everywhere else! SO cute! I love watching you walk each step very carefully... usually falling or stumbling after every few steps, but then you stand back up and try again. And, it's also really funny when your brother notices what you are doing every few days and he exclaims "Look! Sister walking!" Lol. He thinks it is awesome! 

Another thing you've been doing a lot more is dancing with your big brother! You both love dancing together and will hold onto each other's hands and spin around and around... It usually results in Daniel dragging you around which means you fall over and then Daniel falls on top of you and instead of crying, you laugh and laugh! Lol. Mommy loves y'all SO much and are SO happy when you love hanging out together! 

After Daddy and I got back from Denver we were very excited to see you and Daniel and it was so cute watching how excited you were to see us, too! You just wanted me to hold you for quite awhile afterwards and you kept saying "Hi" and gave me big hugs and kisses! :o) So sweet!

Lydia, you love tickling our feet and it makes us laugh not always because it actually tickles, but because you say the funniest noises while you are doing it! You will seriously say things that sound like "gitchie gitchie gitchie" while you tickle. :o) You also make some great car noises when you play with Daniel's cars... It's so funny seeing how early you learned all those noises! 

 You love climbing everywhere and I already know I'll have to watch you as you grow up before you break your leg or something! You are a little risk taker who loves heights and anything adventurous even at such a young age. We went to the pumpkin patch this past month and they had a big bump-n-jump there that we took Daniel on. He was a little scared of it at first but soon warmed up to it and really enjoyed it. And you? You saw Daniel having fun and knew that you needed to have fun too! So we took you up there and jumped and jumped and you had SO much fun!

Every day while I watch you and Daniel play I am reminded how different you both are and how much you love doing different things! I love how much you add to our lives, Miss Lydia! God has blessed us in many ways! Sometimes I think about when God will add another little one into our family... It's crazy thinking back to when Daniel was your age and how you were about to join us in just two months! So crazy! I know you will love having a little brother or sister eventually and I'm already excited to see what you'll be like as a big sister! But that'll have to wait for awhile longer... :o) Right now I'm going to enjoy every minute we have with my 14 month old! AND I'm excited to see how much fun you'll have for your second holiday season!!! Thanksgiving is just two weeks away! 

Love you sweet girl!

~Mommy