Wednesday, January 31, 2007

My mom just sent me this picture of Terran feeding our niece, Kaitlyn. It's from when we went to visit for her first birthday. She is almost 4 now( hard to believe). I love how big she opened her mouth to eat. Posted by Picasa

Monday, January 22, 2007

Out With The Old and In With The New

The New Year started in a mad rush and is running wild.

Let me start by saying that Terran and I truly had a wonderful Christmas. Christmas Eve we had friends to dinner and ended up staying up till 1 am playing Settlers of Catan with them. It was a fun time filled with lots of food (Christa, my friend, and I both love to cook) and laughs. Christmas Day we went for a hike and spent the afternoon and evening with T.’s family. Again we enjoyed lots of food and laughs.

This year I felt incredibly blessed in how real the Lord seemed to me. I felt awe as I pondered how Christmas is the beginning of the great miracle of Christ’s life. What a great God we serve that would humble Himself coming as new born babe, completely helpless and reliant for all His needs, to grow up in our fallen world to save us. I’m staggered by it.

Terran and I have been filling our spare moments with lots of snowy hiking, some cross-country skiing, and indoor climbing (we have to do something that isn’t cold). It has been a lot of fun and feels great to stay so active during the winter. The two dogs really help to get us out of the house. They are one of the best motivators for exercise and activity. It’s been a blast with snow on the ground to take them out and throw snowballs. The dogs love it.

Yes, we are having a snowy winter. I haven’t seen the grass in the back yard since before Christmas. This is very rare for us. We usually get one or two little snowfalls, but not the crazy amount we’ve gotten this year. We went snowboarding a couple weekends ago with our Junior Partner and had over 6 inches of fresh snow when we left the house. That is a lot for us. And it was falling on old snow. It’s been fun and cold.

This weekend I braved the cold and ran a 4 mile race called the Appleton Freezer. It really was a freezer too. I heard a couple people say it was about 16 F. while we were running. I had a blast out there running with the other people and challenging myself to finish. I felt great till the last mile and then had to work a bit to have a strong finish. A couple times I was deciding if I should stop and puke or just keep running. I'm glad I chose the latter. My finishing time was 34 minutes and 13 seconds. Just a tad over 8 and half minutes per mile. A couple people finished the whole race in just over 20 minutes, absolutely crazy.

naomi
Fun in the snow. If you look closely you can see Kojo peeking up behind Kaia. Posted by Picasa
Kojo and Kaia trying to catch a snowball. Posted by Picasa
A coyote we saw on a hike after the first real snow fall. It watched us and the dogs the whole time we were out. Terran and I found it very cool Posted by Picasa
Terran's Moms birthday lunch. I love the pictures of T.'s parents and Aleah, our niece. The quilt is a wall hanging I made as a gift from all of us kids. The pictures are all of us kids and the corners are pictures of the grandkids. Posted by Picasa
Christmas baking is on of my favorite thinkgs to do. This year I made eleven different kinds of cookies. The guys at Terran's work love the Christmas plate. Posted by Picasa
Garage Hockey and sledding with Trinity. Garage Hockey is one of Trinity's favorite things that we do. Posted by Picasa