Canada!

In Front of the Horseshoe Falls


In Front of the U.S. Falls

Somewhere Over the Rainbow


View of the Falls from our Hotel Window!


Brushing Buddies

Another View from our window


David and I just spent four days in Canada. This was my first time ever to this country and it was an answer to many years of prayer to be able to go to the GFA office in Ontario. I have always felt a strong burden for those in the office over there, and it was such a joy to finally get to see it in person and hug all of their Canadian necks :)

The 2 days at Niagara Falls were an unexpected blessing, as David and I really needed a little "down" time with all the busyness going on with the audit and his travelling. It was so cold there and we froze walking to and from the falls....but, it was all worth it!!!!

Friends of ours kept Timmy and Hosea (separate places for both of them), while Josh and Aaron stayed home by themselves. Thankfully, there were no incidents.....well...except for Josh's car getting broken into and having everything in his wallet stolen except for his license. Why do things like this happen when parents are out of town?? Josh handled it quite well and was much calmer about it than his mom was :)

Josh keeps getting phone calls from various baseball coaches around the country. It's quite exciting...but, we are really praying and hoping for God's will to be done regarding future plans. We are already halfway through his Senior year.....wow!!! Where does the time go...

Aaron is really enjoying High School and is looking forward to basketball season ending and baseball season beginning. It was fun for him to try basketball, but baseball is still the sport he loves most.

Hosea is such a helper for me around the house and with Timothy. I'm grateful for his cheerful attitude and creative ideas. :)

Timmy...well...let's just say I hope he's potty trained before age 13! He really doesn't seem to mind wearing pull-ups and has no desire to do anything else at this point. But, we shall see....
He's a cutie pie and is constantly making all of us laugh :) The other night in the van I was talking to him and he took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to say, "Mama, you my friend!" That warmed the cockles of my heart (whatever those are!!)....

We are richly blessed~

Misc. Pictures Part 2

Aaron's First Basketball Season....Man, he's getting tall! 6' 1/2"



Can you tell what Timmy's into? Totally dressing up into one of his favorite characters :)

David gettting into (literally) the bag one of his gifts came in. He called this his "chill" hat :)
Yes, the other boys were with us yesterday morning.....I think I might have some pictures of them! If so, I will put them up in my next post. Needless to say, they aren't at the age where they ask to get their picture taken! I couldn't find my camera so Josh loaned me his...I need to get ahold of it and see what I ended up with. Love to you all! I hope you all had a blessed Christmas celebrating the Lord and His glorious blessings!

Misc. Holiday Pictures

Quick Explanations for the pictures: Hosea and Timmy got to decorate their first gingerbread house at my friend Pam's house :) The other little boy on the left is their buddy Kyle. The next three sort of speak for themselves....let's just say the boys found a new use for the McDonald happy meal boxes :) The last picture...well....apparently, Timothy felt like really getting into the Christmas spirit....well, at least the wrapping paper! We wondered why he was so quiet....we went into our room and he looked up with his big eyes and said, "Mama, I need to do something in here..." How could you get upset at that???

Our First NFL Game!!

A Loyal Fan

David and I travelled to India last year with several staff members and some friends of the ministry, one of whom happens to play for the Green Bay Packers! (that's a football team, for those who don't know :) His name is Aaron Kampman, and he is such a wonderful and godly role model for so many watching his life. He graciouly offered to give us and our friends who travelled to India tickets to the Cowboys/Packers game. Needless to say, we were quite excited, esp. since they both had a tied record at the time (I think it was 10-1).... Our seats were situated amongst many Packer fans....David sat next to a couple of them that had just flown in that morning for the game!! They apparently have some of the most loyal fans around~ Thankfully, we were rooting for the Packers that night...and wouldn't you know it, the Cowboys won...the only time I wasn't really wanting them to win! Anyways, I thought you might enjoy a few pics of our time there. Wow, it was a loud experience!! I'm either getting old, or am just so used to going to quieter baseball games instead :) I have to say, the two biggest highlights of the night were fellowshipping with Beth & Teressa and getting to "catch up" with Aaron after the game. He's such a genuine man who doesn't seem to be caught up in all of the action going on around him. He has a wonderful wife named Linde and two young sons and one in the oven!


Aaron helping this guy up....what a gentleman!!


In the stands


The gang after the game




Hanging out with Aaron after the game

Decorating and Celebrating

Well...we decided to decorate the tree while playing Christmas music even though the temp. was in the high 70's...it was a little hard to get into the mood, but we enjoyed watching Timothy get excited over the lights and ornaments (when we weren't trying to keep him from breaking them!)

Even though we've had an unexpected warm front, it's been nice to spend more time outside enjoying the view of the leaves changing colors....it's quite beautiful, especially for this part of Texas!

Timothy turned 3 on the 30th....it's hard to believe how fast time has flown! I woke up with a very sore neck on that morning, so needless to say, I wasn't able to do much for his birthday. Thankfully, he's still at the age where he doesn't completely understand it all, and he keeps singing happy birthday to his friend Simon who turned 3 in August! I wanted to wait to give him his gifts until everyone was at home, which is quite a challenge with the boy's schedules, so at about 5:00 that evening Timothy said to me, "Mama, it's only going to be my birthday for 5 more minutes, then it will be all done!" Not sure why he said that exactly, but I decided right then and there to break out a few of his gifts and get out the video recorder since it was only the two of us enjoying the experience! He got some cool musical tub toys from Grandpa Larry & Grandma Sheryl and some fun heavy equipment kinds of toys (he's completely into anything that has to do with bulldozers, tractors and excavators!)....he's the only one around here that doesn't mind all of the construction going on in our city right now!!

I'm going to try to download a video or two...not sure how this works exactly....

Pictures for your viewing enjoyment....

The first picture is of my big boys doing what they do best.....eating ~

Timmy is in his posing mood...first, just looking cute, then...his tough, but interesting look :)

Hosea is doing the hook 'em horns sign...yes, I'm a Longhorns fan by default...

David, his Mom and I went with the boys to dinner right before she left.....the picture is fuzzy, but at least you can tell who we are

I've finally arrived to bloggerville!

Today is Dec. 1st and I realized that I needed to do a better job keeping in touch with my friends and family...since time slips by so fast, this blogging stuff seems to be the best way to do it in a short amount of time. And hopefully, I'll keep the grandparents very happy this way as well!

So...here goes!