A Beautiful New Thing

While on the beach trip God revealed another layer of His plan for our family, one that added a deadline for this chapter and a fresh hope for the next.

Isaiah 43:19

¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
   Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
   and streams in the wasteland.

Meet Baby # 5 (if you count present noses), 6 (if you count Lydia) or 7 (if you count Amelia's twin)

I simplify by answering 5th pregnancy!
  

Merry Christmas and a Beachy New Year

The longing for a festive big family gathering had already been met, so it wasn't at all a let down this year for Christmas to be simple. While we didn't quite get through all of our advent stories, I did borrow an inspiration and pulled together 25 candles for the dining room table. (Remember the visitors we almost had in October? They were the push I needed to unearth the living/dining room from the lingering visitation paraphernalia.) We ate the evening meals in there for the bulk of December. The kids loved the change of location and lighting the number of candles to correlate with the date...leading up to the anticipation of the 25th. The center candle holder was purchased from an art shop on our honeymoon, projecting to the cross.

It was a day of worshipful focus, yummy food, family and excited kids with a few gifts.

December: Hide and Seek with Joy

As if November didn't look like plenty of play distractions, December held even more. It worked and it didn't but was a valiant attempt.

First up: Disney on Ice

This was magical, even though most of the pics ended up as blurry as Sophie below. Oops.



I made it through Thanksgiving just fine but this tore me up. Of all things it was the sea of light-up-spinning-toys surrounding us launched the emotional ambush.

Handsomeness

Next up in November, Caleb received a character award at school.

One of these things is not like the other. First day of school Caleb loved reporting that there was a brown Josiah and a brown Caleb in his class.

Moving On to Rock Ranch

I looked back through my pics and quickly added up where the past two months have gone. We've been busy with daily stuff and lots of highlights too. The blogging actually stopped because I got hung up on an entry. Maybe I'll still figure it out and post-date later. This site is taking place of printed pics and scrapbooks though, not just my journal, so let's move on. I'll stick to several post of pics to bridge the silent span and fill in the heart workings at another time. Enjoy, we did!

I left off at Sophie's Birthday. That was followed by a trip to Rock Ranch for the celebration, where everything except food is included in the price of admission, lovely! We even saw the owner, Truett Cathy and his wife riding around on a golf cart checking out the festivities. Then his daughter was the speaker at our Women's Christmas dinner. If you catch me enjoying fast food, it'll most likely be Chick-fil-a.

It started out COLD but sunny.