Cecily leads us in a hymn

The Flowers and the Bees

Friends for a Lifetime

Tip-toeing through the Tulips

Cousins Cousins Everywhere!

Peyton and Cecily shared a mutual love for Ethan.

Cecily and Peyton BFF

One of our hopes and dreams for 2010 is to get to know and connect with Rory's family. They all live very close to us in Gig Harbor and Tacoma. So far our dreams have been coming true, and I hope that it is only the beginning.

Rory's grandparents have just moved to Gig Harbor and I am hoping to take the girls over for regular visits.

We had the privilege of celebrating Rory's cousin Cade's Graduation with tons of cousins and Aunts at the Spaghetti factory. A good time was had by all! The girls just LOVE their cousins! Cecily also had a great time with her Aunt Penny!

Rosie and Peyton chatting it up! Look how similar their hair is!

A First With Molly!

My wonderful friend Crystal and have a lot in common. We are both married to youth/associate pastors. We both have two adorable little girls. We both run play groups called Sprouts and help to run the Women's Ministries at our churches. She even had to have back surgery earlier this year and I am going to have back surgery this summer (although the types of surgery are different.) Crystal and I try to keep in touch, and sometimes the time gets away from us. But a phone call from Crystal is always a welcome treat! We were fortunate enough to get to come to Molly's first birthday party. This was especially momentous since we had never even met Molly! She is even cuter in person!!! It was so much fun to be part of this day!

As you scroll down you will see Cecily in a chair with Celia Crystal's eldest daughter and her cousin Sydney. They had lots of fun playing together...after they go over their initial shyness.


This is probably my favorite picture of this day. This is Molly's Paparazzi! I had to ask friends to come take pictures at my kid's parties....this family does not have that problem! Such a nice array of really nice cameras. And really, who better to take her close up than doting grandmas?

We Heart Home Flock

Here is a series of pictures of one of our all family Bible Study Dinners. Lots of kids, lots of food, lots of fun! We just love these people!

What is a Home Flock? At WayPoint that is our name for: in home Bible Studies that meet during the week.
After a year or more off we joined one last year that was hosted by the Hedin family. We were blessed beyond measure. The group really brought us comfort and support and we just couldn't get enough of it. We were happy as clams to stay in that group.
However, we felt the nudge on our hearts that it was time for us to start a Home Flock in Palmer Lake. We didn't actually get it going until January. The fall was pretty crazy since we opened the new church building. With the opening of the building it brought many new and wonderful families into our church family. Many of these families were quick to fill up our Bible Study. Next thing we new we out grew our little living room and had to move the group 10 minutes down the road to the Hick's home (lots more space). This group of families have been such a blessing to us. It has been wonderful to get to know each other, build relationships and form a team of support for one another. God is so good! We just wanted to share with you just one of the many blessings in our life. And encourage you, find yourself a small group Bible Study...it's a great place to experience God's word and practice fellowship! And if you live in the area and want to join ours...there is always room for you!



I snapped this next picture in Sunday School. Four of our girls from Home Flock all helping each other find the Bible passage. I thought it was sweet to see the relationships of the parents carry over to the children and vice versa!

Preschool Moments

One of my daily challenges is to keep these active little minds engaged and learning. After much prayer and debate we decided to continue to home school Cecily. She is coming right along and will probably spend this year in the beginning stages of reading. I try to provide some hands on learning activities for her and Rosemary through out the day. Here is a glimpse at some of our adventures. I am really looking forward to teaming up with some good friends who live close by and homeschooling together.
Cecily and Rosemary will continue to take their classes at the YMCA and attend Sprouts and Sunday School. They are getting plenty of interaction with other kids their age and experiencing class room environments.
Rory and I are very excited on this new journey ahead.

Cecily loves to sew. This is one of her sewing activities. She threads the wooden spools together. She has also started making bracelets and necklaces. I am working on getting her sewing cards.

Here she is practicing her letters with the help of Daddy's shaving cream! So much fun!

Employee of the Month

Two of her favorite things...vacuuming and wearing her coat.

Flower Girl

Cecily got to be the flower girl for Drew and Jessica's Wedding. It was a dream come true for her! My mom made this incredibly fluffy dress, and it was everything that Jessica- the bride hoped it would be. Cecily was a walking ball of tulle, and loved it! She did such a good job through the whole day. She made it down the aisle thanks to the handsome ring bearer. And her end goal was to get a piece of cake when it was all over. After going down the aisle she made her way to mommy's lap. She listened to the talking for a bit, and once I explained that Jessica's parents weren't really giving her away, she wanted to go live with Drew... she drifted off to sleep on a cloud of tulle. It was a beautiful day and we were very blessed to be part of something so special. 

Across the miles there are smiles

As many of you know my sister Cara and her wonderful husband Phil live all the way down in San Diego. This has been so hard because they miss out on so many things with the girls. They often worry that the girls won't remember them when they come to visit. So they have done a great job of calling and sending great packages often. Now we get to go one step farther! We now have a web cam and skype! It has been so much fun to sing and show Auntie Cara and Uncle Phil all their great toys. It has really helped to bring a bridge across all those miles.
Here is a pic I snapped of Cara and Phil from our web cam, and the girls putting on a concert for them. The web cam was truly a Christmas present that just keeps on giving. Thanks Darren!

Solace

Part of being a pastor is sharing joys and sorrows with the people you teach and shepherd. A church is a family and in the best cases a place for children to grow up, for people to become family. Lives are intertwined and knit together. 

When Rory first started volunteering at Vaughn/WayPoint he started out with a group of 5th grade boys. He got to work with and mentor them through graduation and beyond. Then this year the unthinkable happened. We had to say good bye to yet another one of our boys- Donald Gene. Rory was honored to do the memorial service, and I definitely prayed for him all the way through. Donald left behind a baby girl. Not only did Rory love Donald but seeing all the pictures of  him with his little girl was a little too close to home. God gave him the composure to speak through his tears. The very next weekend Rory took part in performing the wedding ceremony for Drew another one of the guys from that first group of boys, and child hood friend of Donald's.  We had one weekend where we entered into the sadness of Donald's family, and the next weekend we entered into the joy of Drew's family. 

In between those two major events the girls were sick. However, we treasured some time to just be together and hold our little girls. 

Work of Art

This is a picture of a nice soldier that Cecily drew. (Not one of the soldiers who hurt Jesus). It was one of those moments when Rory and I would totally see a face, complete with curly hair.

Here is our little girl. She got herself dressed all by herself! What a big girl!

Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!

This is Diesel. On a dark and stormy night some friends from church passed this cat over into our care. He is an outdoor cat and lived under our car port in a little living area we made for him. He was a gentle and sweet cat. The girls adored him. Rosemary would just lay on top of him and he would just purr.
Our little kitty was only with us for a short time. We aren't sure what happened to him. But we hope he is living with some other neighbor who let him be an inside cat.
For a few months Rory's dreams were realized...he had the best of both worlds...A cat AND a wife.

Play-A-Latte

Recently the girls and I met up with Rory's first Cousin Megan and her two adorable children at Play-A-Latte. We had lots of fun as you can see. This truely is a genius idea! A place to drink coffee and visit with friends AND a place for the kids to run and play.
However, we did note a few draw backs of the place, #1 Expensive #2 Loud, their inflatable slide has a loud fan. #3 It was a bit smaller space than we imagined from the website.
With all that said we had an awesome time getting together. And a fun time was had by all!

What it's all about!

This picture says it all. Rosemary is a very very busy girl. Before she got her glasses she was too busy to read books. Now that she has her new specs she has developed a love of reading stories!

Preparing our hearts for baby Kern!

We are super excited for cousin Josh and his lovely wife Dorothy to welcome their first little girl into the world! The days are getting close!
Here is a few fun pics from the shower back in March. As you can see the girls "helped" Dorothy a lot with her presents. Rosemary knew just what to do with the quilt my mom made for the baby. She took it for a test run!