Our Christmas letter...

In lieu of a Christmas letter this year we decided to just add our blog address to our card. Most of you already know what has gone on in our lives over the past year, however there may be a few who are still waiting to hear "the rest of the story..." As last years Christmas letter was "to be continued..." If you recall, last winter we were awaiting the arrival of Anaya, waiting on God for direction and leading for a ministry and a place to live. Well we have the answers to all of those questions and more.

I must admit, last year proved to be one of the most difficult and trying times of our entire life. Now looking back, we can see how God provided so many blessings. For instance, when we lived in Zeeland, we lived in a very old and decrepit farm house. It was fine, and we made a nice home there~however, we were always struggling to fix or repair or live without something(like clean water!) Here, God has blessed us with an beautiful home to live in, we enjoy not dealing with things falling apart, using the tap water and have an incredible view to boot!(OK, we do have the driveway to contend with but God...has provided us with some new snow tires and hopefully the driveway will no longer be a problem!!!)

We moved away from family and friends and some of the conveniences we had back "home." And some days that is still hard and frustrating! But I know that could definitely be a TON worse. I still get to see my family once a week(most of the time) and it is teaching me to be a better planner~although I have a lot to learn on that front yet! We have been blessed with a great church family, and some very good friends! Ryan has been enjoying being in the ministry full time and not being divided and spread thin with the farm!

Then there was the awful and painfully long wait for Anaya's birth certificate. While that was REALLY hard... God blessed us with the awesome opportunity to go to Guatemala and live for almost 2 months!(Ryan and I were talking last night and we can't believe we did that!! I went to a 3rd world country with 5 kids, and he let me!! It was definitely a God thing) That trip will forever be etched in our hearts and minds and we are so grateful to God for it!! When we were in Guatemala, Spencer didn't want to come home. He said he wanted to stay and live in Guatemala. Now that we are home, he says he is going to go to college then go back and live in Guatemala to help the poor people and children there!! That trip changed all of our lives. You can not see such deep poverty and be unaffected by it. We will always have a huge place in our hearts for the people of Guatemala, and we hope to go back there someday.

We are blessed beyond measure, and we are looking forward to another great year ahead! Here are my hip hip hoorays for God three cheers for HIM who has blessed us so abundantly!

Psalm 147:1
1 Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! 2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. ~I was broken hearted last year, but God...

Isaiah 25:1
1 O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago. ~ HE has been faithful...

Psalm 106:48
48 Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, "Amen!" Praise the LORD.

That's twice!

I love winter, however since we moved~I have had a love/hate relationship with the snow! I guess it is not as much the snow as it is my driveway.

Or probably it would be more accurate to say that it is my van that is the problem, since I did have trouble with a back road about a week ago(right girls?!) Anyhow, last night I found myself stuck, once again in our driveway!! To fully understand the issue of course you would have to actually see our driveway(the picture just doesn't do it justice) but let me just tell you it is STEEP! It is a sight to behold I am sure, but I seriously have to do a drive around the service station that is at the bottom of our driveway(just to the left of the trailer)to get up enough speed to make it up the driveway~every time in the winter!! Annoying!! Well, I made it pretty far up, but then started sliding backwards and sideways! Ryan was able to finally get me out with the help of his truck. The last time Gary "drove it right out" for me~Thanks so much!!(But I did try, seriously, it is not fun to drag 5 kids up the driveway with heels on!!) Anyway, the last time Gary said he was going to check into getting me some snow tires!! And today they put them on for me!! YAY!! We were able to drive right up tonight without doing the run around the station!! Thank you so much Gary and guys that is a huge blessing!

Today the boys made targets to shoot at with their bb guns before they went outside! Check out Easton~he is such a goon! He wanted to be "naked on top" today, why not!

Today was a sad day. Nearly 6 months to the day of coming home from Guatemala, I finished off the last of my Guatemalan coffee! I think it is high time I go back to get some more!!

Anaya's first time playing in the snow!

It was funny first of all to see her all dressed up in her snowsuit, she looked like a big pink marshmallow and could hardly walk, which made her mad!! Once outside she was fine until...


We sat her in the sled! She was not liking that one bit! So I took her out and we sat and watched everyone else go down the hill a few times. Then I grabbed her and we tried it again. This time there were no tears and she actually was giggling when we went down the hill! The next time we went she was loving it!

Gabi, Anaya and I
The boys all piled up!
& Anaya and Gabi

Our friends Mike and Lee invited us over to go sledding. It was Anaya's first time sledding, and I think it may have been Lexi's first time too(unfortunately I failed to get a picture of her sweet little face!)They both loved sledding down the hill. Riding in the sled was another story it made Anaya very nervous~probably because she saw what happened to poor Lexi when Mike first started pulling her!!! We all had a great time today! Thanks guys!!

Happy Birthday Spencer!!

Spencer was the "special student" today so he got to help Mrs. Elenbaas!

Go Spencer Go! Hula hooping in gym class! Ryan was the helper this morning so we got some shots of Spencer in action at school!

opening gifts ~ I think he likes it!

Jayden and Spencer opened the gifts from Uncle Robb and Aunt Lisa, Uncle Jonny and Aunt Sarah and Grampa and Grama VZ today as well. Thanks Guys!! They loved all of their gifts!

We have been trying to get all of the kids together for Grampa and Gramas Christmas picture for a while now, and finally we got it done. We got all the kids lined up and took a nice picture(it took about 10 pictures to finally get everyone looking!) Then Ryan came out of the bathroom with Spencer...OOPS! We didn't even realize he wasn't in the picture until we saw him! So we had to gather all of the kids back up and do it over again. Then poor Rylie got kicked in the face(accidentally!) just before we took the picture! Having Chuckie in the picture was not their first choice for a background, but the kids were all there and we called it "good enough!" Besides this one will certainly be memorable!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUYS!

My 2 adorable birthday boys!
My awesome husband opening his "good" gift!

Jayden decorated the cake all by himself! Unfortunatly all I had in the form of writing frosting was white, and I didn't realize it until after I had the cake frosted!!

I took Jayden out to eat at McDonalds today for lunch! It is so much fun to have just one on one time with each kid! Usually since it is Ryans Birthday too, he gets to take him out, but today Ryan let me be the one! He is the best!

Today is Ryan's birthday!! It is also Jaydens birthday!! On Friday it is Spencer's birthday!! Dylan's is on valentines day and Eastons is right around the half birthday of Ryan in June. Even Anaya was born on cinco de Mayo!! I attribute all of these "holiday" birthdays to the fact that I know how to give good gifts!!! I mean a son for your birthday~what more could you want!! Ryan didn't think he was getting anything this year, but when I handed him his gift he was all smiles~until he felt the box and realized there were clothes inside~then he said "OH, it's clothes." Well, there were clothes inside, but also a gift card to Barnes and Noble and one of his shirts has camouflage on it so over all he was happy with his gift this year too! Jayden on the other hand was THRILLED with his gift! All he wanted for his birthday was a DAISY! bb gun of course! Ryan gets the credit for that gift though. I don't mind, I love that he takes the boys out and spends so much time with them. He is the best husband and daddy and I am so blessed to have him!

Thankful!

Wow! There are so many things to be thankful for, and of course the most obvious one is that Anaya is HOME with us!!! I am also so thankful for the little things, like when today for the first time since she has been home, she cried and clung to me as I dropped her off at nursery!(OK so she wasn't wailing or anything like I am used to with the boys, but she was certainly sad!!) Usually she lunges for the nursery worker or anyone else around, now I must say it has been a refreshing change of pace to be able to leave her and know I am not going to get called out of church because she is throwing a fit(like the boys did!) But, I am so thankful that she is starting to want me! We had a couple of weeks there when she wanted to be held by complete strangers and would cry if I took her back! That was like a kick in the gut~I would give my life for this child and she would rather be with a stranger!! Hmmm...I think there is a spiritual lesson there...Christ gave his life for me, But do I cling to Him as I should, or do I look to others for what I stand in need of?...

Anyway, we are so blessed and I am so thankful for all of the things God has brought us through this past year! Last November 9 we were told we were out of PGN and that Anaya would be home in 6 to 8 weeks!! Well, we all know how that turned out... throw in a difficult move and job change and that about sums up our fall/winter last year. But God is so faithful and He has shown Himself mighty in so many ways.

Houston, we have a problem....

We went and scouted out the perfect(ish) tree, which by the way was WAY harder this year than in years past, as we went to a different place to get our tree. At the old place you could pretty much pick out the tree while blindfolded and it would be beautiful, this place however was not so great, but we needed to get a tree, and there weren't any other options so....

We found this beauty. We cut it off at about my head, and it looks fine. The strangest thing though, the tree smells like citrus, like citrus Halls cough drops! I don't really care for that smell, I am a pine tree scented pine tree liking girl, can't wrap my head around why this one smells the way it does!

After letting each of the boys take their shot at sawing it down, and hauling it to the truck, we went home and started decorating it! First of all we had major light problems, and of course by the time we figured that out, the store in town was closed!(oh how I miss Meijer!) So I had to tear off the lights and start over again using 3 strands for my entire tree~Ugh! Then we put on the colored lights and had the same problem only 1/2 of them worked! Finally we got to the ornaments and after a few smashing once they hit the ground (we have the tree on the hardwood floor~not carpet like usual)it was time for the little "helpers" to go to bed!!!

I finally got it all decorated and ready to go and we remembered that we didn't water the tree yet, so we filled it up and that is when I said "Ryan(Houston)... we have a problem!" There was water everywhere!! It seems we are missing something on our tree stand and the water is running out the hole where the stake is. We have never had this problem before, and so now we don't know what to do, as the stores are closed, and we are leaving for Thanksgiving out of town and our tree is definitely not getting any water!! The lady said this particular tree holds it's needles well ~ lets just hope that it does so long after it is dead!

Look what I found on my tree, a duct taped candy cane! Oh the joys of little boys ~ although this one has Ryan written all over it!!