Bon Voyage, Birthday, and Bittersweet Goodbyes

We are so thankful to have family and friends that love us so dearly. My parents housed us and fed us for months while we waited out our paper work getting straight. They helped us packed and got up at 3:30 in the morning with us to drive us to the airport. The night before we left was filled with lots of laughs, definitely some tears, and a lot of good time with family and friends.

Both of Tim's sisters came to Raleigh to say goodbye. Tim is a little blurry because, well, he was just being himself-silly.

Thanks to the junior and senior Cordell families for housing us, feeding us, and providing a lot of entertainment our last night in Raleigh. We were also very blessed to get see our good friends the Williams family!

Try as I may, keeping a surprise 40th birthday party a surprise was not very successful. The party itself, however was a huge success. Lots of family and friends came down to SC to the River for a fun celebration. Thank you to every one who drove so far to be a part of my wonderful husband's big day. The day was filled with eating, skeet shooting, skeet catching, and lots of good laughs and memories.

Our sweet friends, the Thompson family, came to celebrate and say goodbye as well. We miss you guys!

Can't wait to see what our next picture will look like in a few years?

40 candles and the smoke detector did not go off!

Sweet family time. Uncle Darrell and Ezekiel.

Tim and his good, college buddy Shane. He drove a LONG way just to spend the day with Tim. This was about the only surprise I managed to pull off. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you from our family! We hope you are treasure Christ this Christmas. He is the long-awaited Savior, the Prince of Peace, Mighty God, our Advocate, the seed of Abraham, and so much more. We have been studying some of the names of God together during advent. A dear friend stamped these names on coins and gave them to us as a gift before we left. We have all enjoyed learning more about God and hanging each name during our family worship in the evenings.

Cousins in their Christmas jammies. We were heading out to see the Christmas lights in our PJs.

Tim and I laugh so hard at the Holderness family videos. If you need a good laugh check our Christmas Jammies here or another one of their videos.

All our family with us celebrating our commissioning.

Month in Review

The past month has been very busy as we wrapped up our time in Virginia and have been traveling around visiting family for Christmas. It's been almost a month since we celebrated Ezekiel's birthday. He turned 9 the week of Thanksgiving. We were blessed to be able to celebrate his birthday over Thanksgiving with ALL of our family. Our sweet friends at training also threw him an amazing party in our quad. Enjoy the pictures of our celebrations.

Ezekiel with one of his birthday gifts. He's really in to The Hobbit right now even though he has never seen it. He and Tim are reading the book.

He requested breakfast in bed. We had to make him get back in bed because he gets up so early.

9 birthday spankings, and one to grow on.

There's always a birthday call from Papa, aka The Birthday Bandit.

BJ Bear helped us celebrate. This amazing R2-D2 was made by one of our very talented quadmates. Thank you so much Stephanie.

Mei Mei enjoyed the party with her cheesy fingers.

The boys sword fighting with balloon swords. They had a wild and crazy time.

Is that K with her ears plugged in the background?

My family graciously drove to NC so we could celebrate Thanksgiving and Ezekiel's birthday with Tim's family too. Aunt Emmy and Damaris always take such good pictures together.

The birthday boy with his Lego Movie cake that Emmy and Dustin made for him. It looked great and tasted amazing. How did 9 years pass so quickly? I love the boy he is becoming. He has his struggles but he is very caring and loving of others. He really enjoys reading Bible stories and Awana books. Sometime the house is quiet and I go looking for him and find him reading the Bible. His heart is very sensitive to the things of the Lord and he says he loves God and believes Jesus took his punishment on the cross. We pray God will continue to mold his heart and mind and grow him into a man who loves God with all his heart and finds his joy in Him. Happy Birthday again big guy!

Sweet Didi enjoyed the party and these great hats Emmy and Dustin made.

Cousin Jason! Doesn't he look like the kid off The Christmas Story?

Damaris sporting Wild Style off The Lego Movie.

Yay for cousins Heath (above) and Jude (below) coming to celebrate. 

The famous Stephanie who is a balloon artist and Hobbit expert.

Appomattax Courthouse

Last weekend we took a day trip to Appomattax Courthouse with some of our new friends. This was a really great learning experience for us and our children. They (or maybe we) worked really hard filling out an entire book of information related to the Civil War in order to become Junior Rangers. This was a big deal as they had to say a Ranger Pledge and received a nice certificate, badge, and special cards.

Ezekiel working hard on his book making a map of Appomattax Courthouse.

Waiting around for our tour and working hard on those books.

I can only imagine what these two are discussing. They both have proven to be class clowns and there is always a lot of laughing when they are together.

New friends.

Damaris and her new friend. It has been really fun for Damaris to have so many girls her age here. We had a group of girls over to make bracelets last Sunday. These girls are always doing cartwheels, flips, or hanging upside down from something. 

Didi's reenactment

In the background is the place where the Civil War officially ended. We were able to see the room where Grant and met. We learned about the silent witness, a baby doll, and were able to talk about how this home was different from our own homes.

The road through Appomattox Courthouse.

Heading back to the courthouse, now turned visitor center.

This place was beautiful.

Group photo. For once the girls outnumber the boys.

Mei Mei didn't cry the whole time, in fact I think she had a good time, as long as she had her chips :)

Me and my love. A rare photo together.

Fall Festival

Last weekend our group here at orientation put on a really fun fall festival for all the kids. The festival was a week after Halloween so we were able to find four brand new, fun costumes at Target for 90% percent off!!! That was four new costumes for less than $10!  The kids were super excited and they looked really great in them.  Below are some pictures of Mei Mei in her monkey outfit, complete with banana and all.

Profile pic of Mei Mei to get the full effect. The tail was attached with velcro so everyone kept pulling it off. It spent more time in her hands than attached to her.

Ready to go!

Pumpkin roll. Try to roll the pumpkins into a square taped on the floor. That was not an easy game.

Balloon animals. Dietrich got a turtle to match his ninja turtle costume.

Pin the pumpkin on the pumpkin patch. Our friends graciously ran our game for us so we could follow our little ones around and help them. Do you see Peter Pan in the background? Captain hook and the Tick Tock Crock were there as well. Two of my favorite costumes were three girls dressed up as Rock, Paper, Scissors and a young couple who were Indiana Jones and one of his girlfriends. 

Face painting. Is this what he is going to look like in a few years?

Greek Goddess or Pretty Princess

Always the clown. Tim had some hair painted on his head :)

Halloween Fun

Since we weren't at home for Halloween this year we didn't go trick-or-treating. The kids decided they wanted to decorate our apartment so we went to Hobby Lobby and found some crafty stuff to do. 

Damaris cutting out our Halloween print for our door. We also used this at the Fall Festival for pin the pumpkin on the pumpkin patch.

Zeke coloring his bat.

Didi picked out a pack of these cute bat finger puppets. He even made one named Nana.

Daddy and Didi. I love that Didi is wearing his crown. The boys in his class all made these crowns and they have "Who is your King?" written on them. They all walk around with these crowns on all the time and they will tell you their King is Jesus when you ask them.

Mei Mei and Mommy. More fun with bats.

Happy Halloween from Mei Mei. The "Halloween" on our sign won't stay up so we have just kept the "Happy" banner up. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings "Happy Monday!"