Missing: Pooh ***Found***

One of our bed time buddies - Winnie the Pooh - has gone missing. Last seen, in our rental car on Saturday, December 20th.

If you know where he may be, please let us know!

He was found today! Not sure how he managed to hide under the bed during fervent searches. Nevertheless, we have a happy guy though Pooh's companionship has not been as necessary in the past few months.

So I did write a Christmas Letter (de-personalized for posting)

Luke 2:10-11 "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

2008 Family News…

It's time to celebrate! We celebrate the birth of Jesus and fulfillment of God's promises of a Savior and celebrate our year's accomplishments. We have much in our family to celebrate and be thankful for this season. I know that there will be those reading this who are looking back on their year and not liking what they see. Our hope for you specifically is that 2009 will be a year filled with hope and love!

Before we jump into our year…here's a quick review of the last few years:

·        January 2006 – We were a happy family living in Kansas City. Hubby was a stay at home dad and part-time student.  Mommy was a product manager at Cerner.

·        July 2006 – Mommy resigns from her job; we sell the house; and move to Iowa City. Hubby begins working at CramerIT.  Mommy ends up staying at Cerner working 2 days/week from home.

·        May 2007 – We move to Rolla, Missouri. Hubby enrolls in University of Missouri – Rolla.  Mommy continues to work 2 days a week and soon after begins to home school the boys.

·        December 2008 –

Hubby has graduated with a Civil Engineering degree from Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly University of Missouri – Rolla)! We are waiting and trusting that God has a great job waiting, hopefully here in the Rolla area, for him soon. With his limited spare time lately, he enjoyed playing volleyball and doing jobs around the house.

Mommy is finally only a stay-at-home home school mom! She said good-bye to Cerner, again, in October after 15 years with great memories of a fruitful career. She is now focusing on her husband and boys and serving those around here where she can. Running in the mornings is her favorite "me" time activity. She also is enjoying baking and cooking more "from scratch".

Our number one son is now seven and has holes in his smile! He continues to love reading and spends hours doing that most days. When he's not reading, he's involved in Cub Scouts, AWANA, Home School PE, Soccer, T-ball, Odyssey of the Mind and taking Mandarin lessons. When we find time, we do get some school in where he likes history and hates writing anything. (After proofing the letter, he says he no longer hates writing.)

The second "prodogy" managed to make it to his fifth birthday this summer full of song and smiles. He loves his math book and is quickly closing in on his brother. Second to his math book, he loves to play with friends at the park! He gets to do all of the activities as his brother mostly participating and sometimes watching. He did get to do his own soccer and T-ball this year.

As a family, we are involved with a house church, Church Without Walls. We have made great friends who want to serve the Lord and others with their lives. As a church without a building or staff, everyone pulls together to make a service happen on Sunday and other service projects through the week.  Our house is a common meeting place and we enjoy being hospitable even though boys don't like having to clean all of the time!

May you have a very Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year!

and then there was one

Last September on this date I wrote a post about four people connected to me who were battling against cancer. In these last 15 months, three of them have went to be with the Lord. The fourth person unfortunately is in the hospital as I write this.

Cancer sucks. I hate that it takes away people from this earth too soon with such a physical assault on the body. Brittney was so young barely able to live any type of adult life, Gary wasn't able to see his first grandchild and Stef has left three young children with his wife to mourn him every Christmas. For each of these people, I was not close enough to be on the day to day details and progress of the disease. With Lisa, I have the privilege of being one of the many people to help serve her family. This Christmas will be really rough for them as well and who knows how many more will bring back these memories.

Our hope is in the Lord. I am comforted in knowing that all of these people did profess that Jesus was their savior and I will meet them in heaven one day! We can celebrate Christmas because He is the reason for the season! Jesus came to earth to be our savior for those who believe in him.

The end is here!

Yippee! The semester is concluding tomorrow and my husband will be finished with his degree. Congratulations to my budding civil engineer! I'm very proud of you in how hard you have worked on your studies as well as how hard you have worked to balance family time into the mix.

Your family has very much enjoyed the adventure that you have taken them on for the last year and a half. We are looking forward to where you take us next and also being very patient as you try and figure that out.

No, there isn't a great job offer waiting on the table. I appreciate that you spent time with us and serving your church family and finding the perfect job didn't fit into all of that. You made very wise choices for us a decade ago that puts us in a place where we don't need to stress about how the bills will be paid right now.

I'm so very proud of you! You went out on a limb and pursued something that you weren't able to accomplish 15 years ago. You are now here with a full-fledged engineering degree and on your way to being a professional engineer! Think of all of those experiences that you have under your belt now to take into your next career! We're with you all the way.

To write a Christmas Letter or not to write one

It's that time of the year for Christmas cards! I really like to receive them and enjoy reading the letters that people write about their year. I'm not a snob about the impersonality of these at all, I can't imagine writing or pretending to write a personal letter to everyone. It's fun to revisit the highlights of the year and figure out how to creatively put it together in print.

Last year we didn't send out Christmas cards. I did write a letter but it never made it beyond some e-mail forwards. (Maybe to a grandparent if they were lucky.) This year, I want to send out cards with a letter, but I feel like we have so much unknown in our lives that maybe I should wait before sending news to all of our friends and relatives.

Any thoughts? Do you want a review of our last 12 or 24 months with a paragraph about where we don't know we are going or should I just wait until we know more about where we may be living past January?

My son's lovely creation...

Many of my friends blog about the beautiful food that they create and I love to read those posts. This is not beautiful food in my opinion, but wanted to share my son's creation for breakfast no less from a few days ago...

Let me dissect this for you. It's the bottom half of a whole wheat hot dog bun (made by mom). On top is left-over cold cheese ravioli, Parmesan cheese and dill pickle relish.

The good thing about his creations is that he actually does eat them!

This creation was reproduced the following day for lunch with an additional ingredient - cold pinto beans! Yummy...aren't we all ready for this guy to be a chef? The boy can spot an onion a mile away and won't touch it, but he'll eat this!

Child number 1 had a sensible breakfast of cereal and toast.