Gabriela Zoe

the info is in the announcement but she was also 20 inches long and we had a hard time getting her out but she did get out with the help of God and a good doctor and has been safe and strong like we prayed. The good doctor did a c-section which by now that I am writing has healed beautifully and by the grace of God our outings started long time before the traditional 40 days. I guess I had some other problems that enabled her to feed from a bottle. I need to report that those problems have diminished greatly and she now gets breastmilk the traditional way :-)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Friends and Family hope you have a wonderful year. For New Years we did our traditional trip to visit Charles and Kathi...my american parents. Because of Stephen's work I didn't think we were going to go this year but Stephen is such a wonderful husband and planned it all out and let me know that we get to go. So we drove Sunday evening and arrive at 10:30p.m. and we stayed until Wednesday afternoon. During our stay we did not do a whole lot besides attending the Prayer and Prophesy at the Coastlands which is also a tradition of preparing for the New Year. The Lord spoke to us like every year reminded us of His promises and gave us some direction. We also spend a little bit of time with the boys grandchildren...Stephen had lots of fun playing around with Aidan and Brennan. The rest of the time we were at home relaxing, eating and sleeping. We are so thankful for Charles and Kathi and how they always make us feel so comfortable :-) Around this time is our 1/2 year wedding anniversary so we call it our 1/2 anniversary spot...so we thought maybe next year we'll leave the baby with grandpa and gradma, but that thought was quickly given way to the fact that Kathi probably wouldn't let us come without the baby :-)

Christmas

The Christmas celebration is a three day celebration for us. It starts with Christmas Eve when in the afternoon we get to hear the carols over the phone...only this year because of ichat we actually got to see our friends in Greece, we sang with them danced and showed off my little pregnant belly. Then we went to have dinner my side of the family...it is great to have this time to see them since it's one of the few times in the year that we get to see them. After that we went to the 9:45p.m. service at the church. We stayed late because Stephen had to clean up before we went home. Unlike other years once we got home we started wrapping presents (other years that is a job done many days before because I treasure seeing all the gifts under the tree). Around 12:30a.m. we read the Bible story, thanked the Lord and exchanged our gifts. The we kept wrapping so by the time we went to be it was 3;30a.m. Christmas day we got up early to join the family at Bobby and Shannon's for breakfast and exchanging gifts. After the morning activity we relaxed, talked and played with the kids until it was time to clear out so they could get ready for the rest of their day and we went to aunt Sharon's. There we relaxed more even took a nice nap after lunch :-) Around 7 p.m. we went to the parent's house exchanged immediate family gifts and then played Apples to Apples and ImagineIff with t he fam and the Woods who were in town. The next day we went to the other side of the fam. where we celebrated also Papa Stu's birthday. It was a fun Christmas with family!!! Next year we'll also have the baby...how exciting :-)
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Music of Christmas

Since early October I spent many weekends practicing with the Church choir of the annual Christmas show !!! It was tiring and sometimes I had to "Press On" but the weekend came and it was such a blessing to know that I was part of a celebration where people got into the Christmas spirit but more importantly there were a lot of people that accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Disneyland

Stephen's work as part of the Christmas present is spending a day in Disneyland. It is a lot of fun because we each go with our own family but throughout the day you keep running into people you know. This time we were not able to do a lot of the 'grown' up rides (I did wait in line with Stephen so he can go to space mountain) but we ended up spending the day doing kiddie rides and going to the stores. We still had a ton of fun :-)

More pics? Here you go:
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Sweet Girl

Hmmm so we know you can't really tell by this pic but it is a face shot and her little hands are by her face. In this picture I am 25 weeks pregnant and it was at this appointment that it was confirmed that she is a girl. She is so cute, dancing and bounding around. She absolutely loves to hear daddy speak and sing to her :-)

Thanksgiving

This year since the house was just a mess we took a little break from our Thanksgiving tradition of having it at our home and went to our parent's :-) A lot of the family was there including the newest addition...little Briley. It was a wonderful day of relaxing, hanging out with family and eating delicious food :-)