Our Costumes for 2011

We had a great time at the fall festival at church! After a quick free meal of hot dogs, hamburgers and chips, we headed over to the game booths. Julia was happy to be able to walk around with the big kids instead of being in the stroller like last year. Daddy held her up so she could make baskets in the basketball free throw – so cute! Gabe played every game and earned tons of tickets, so he was able to pick out some of great prizes from the prize booth. We saw lots of  friends and collected lots of candy too. After he had played all the games and enjoyed some free popcorn, Gabe helped me volunteer in the bowling booth. He was so sweet handing out tickets and candy to all the kids!

Happy Pumpkin Day!

We hope you have a great day! We’re looking forward to going to the fall festival at our church tonight to play games, eat candy and have lots of fun with our friends! P.S. Look how much the kids have changed since last fall: http://lovelylovelythings.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/weekend-photos/

January Scrapbook Pages!

Remember the month of daily photos I mentioned?  Well, I’m happy to say I have them all scrapbooked already AND uploaded to Shutterfly for when I’m ready to print another photo book :)! Woo Hoo! So, you can see why I haven’t blogged much, I’m spending all my free time trying to keep up with all my photos :). Here are a couple of the digital pages I made. I know they are very simple, but I just want to keep the focus on the photos, you know?  If you want to see the rest of the digital scrapbook pages I made for January, click here!

Our Life in Daily Photos

Hello my friends! Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I took a break during the holidays, then we had a few weeks of sickness and now I think things are finally getting back to normal around here :)! Even though I wasn’t blogging in January, I WAS taking lots of pictures – at least one each day (usually many more)! And I am happy to say that I have been making lots of digital scrapbook pages with all of my photos too :). Here’s a little sample of my pics, one for each day of January.

Hope your Valentine’s season is off to a great start :)!!!

Operation Christmas Child

Advent calendar verses from yesterday and today:

The mountain of the house of the Lord… all the nations shall flock to it, and many peoples shall come. Isaiah 2:2-3

After me comes he who is mightier than I… he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Mark 1:7-8

Each year we participate in Operation Christmas Child. We pack a box for a little boy Gabe’s age and for the past two years we make a little girl one for Julia to give too. It is so exciting and fun to put together a special gift to share the love of Jesus with a child in need! Gabe also got to contribute to and help pack two extra boxes this year: one in his Cubbies group and one in his Mission Friends class.  Since I co-teach a Mission Friends class, we let the kids in our class help decorate our boxes this year with Christmas gift wrap as a group project. After the boxes have been collected, I bring Gabe into the sanctuary at church to show him all the boxes the church members gave. Every year, a group of volunteers from our church travel to Atlanta to a large collection site where they help prepare the boxes to be shipped out. This year my sister went and last year my dad went. When the kids get older I hope we can go too. I think this is such an excellent ministry and I plan to get involved every Christmas!