leah walking

brunswick stew

alissa's hat

Here is the hat Alissa made! :)

Frozen Puddingwiches

3/4 C peanut butter
1 1/2 C milk
1 package (3.9oz) instant chocolate pudding mix
1 C whipped topping
16 whole graham crackers

Line a 9x13 pan with foil. using an electric mixer, blend peanut butter and milk until smooth. Slowly beat in chocolate pudding mix until blended. Fold in whipped topping. Pour into prepared pan and freeze until firm. Break graham crackers into squares. Use foil and lift pudding from pan, then cut into squares the size of the graham crackers. Place each pudding square between 2 graham crackers. Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze.

oh the agony....

Leah in her walker

leah scootin' around

leah with bangs

So I was cutting Leah's fingernails and Brianna snapped this picture. It took me a minute to figure out that it was my hair on Leah's head!

h

uh-oh

house

this is us happy cuz we're with you!!


this is me sad/confused/upset cuz we haven't seen you in so long!!


visit us soon!! love you!

boys

shoesies

tutu

here's the cutest little tutu ever!! i just made it, and i made a smaller one that matches. hope you love it! :) can't wait till i can put it on your little peanut!!

pita pockets :)

Leah

darling little thing, huh?

drewie's birthday

Ry's bd

ry ry's birthday

it was fun, of course it would have been better with our little tiny, but that goes without saying!!

riley LOVED his glasses and his pants, and he wanted to put his "warm blanket" around him for the picture, because he said "oh this will be so cute!" haha!!

i said you would want to snuggle buggle with him if you saw it, but you can NEXT WEEKEND!! YAY!!! love you!!!

aj's basketball

my bedroom

dancing sisters :)

~a new year~

"Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is noone to whom you can speak of your need. Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of 26, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for 53 years.) I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo. 'All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey... On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender (a small boat) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long loved lines-And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas.- I couldn't feel frightened then. Praise him for the moonless seas- all the better the opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the El Shaddai, the God who is Enough.'

Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest) , but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light. "

~Elisabeth Elliot

Mel, I read this in a book I have by E.E. and it was encouraging to me. I love to hear testimony from people, like Amy Carmichael and Elisabeth Elliot, who have been through really rough times and have come out stronger for it. Not just "stronger", but stronger in love, joy, peace, faith and in a relationship with Jesus.

I am praying for you and hope that you have lots of all that stuff! I love you so much, Erika