Thanks again to everyone who voted for Miss Gracie in the MetroFamily online photo contest last Summer.  She’s on the January issue that comes out next week!  Here’s a sneak preview of it…

I’m thrilled with the photo and the layout, isn’t it precious?  Thanks for making her the cover girl!

Trinity says new words every day. She’s at such a fun age.  More than anything she just mirrors what Gracie does or says.  Oh boy…

More good stuff later.  I’m tired.

Hope you’re all having a great week. 

Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I’m so grateful for this life, and for my family and friends.  We had a wonderful time laughing, eating, opening presents, and making memories together. 

Gracie would NOT go to sleep on Christmas Eve.  About once an hour or so she would wake up and ask if it was time to open presents.  When they finally did open presents, Trinity was focused on her new Dusty the Talking Vacuum and Gracie took pictures of everything with her new Kid Tough camera.  Today they’ve blown through the play doh play set, several books, the Light Sketcher, My Little Pony Newborns in new doll strollers, and their matching Strawberry shortcake kisses dolls.  It’s fun to be Santa!

I’m anticipating taking down the tree and getting started on this new year.  It will be nice to lay to rest “the year I almost died”– I’m so ready and hopeful for 2008!

PS I’m trying to get a slide show up here, but bear with me.  I can’t get it to show up.  Let me know if you can’t see it…

Gracie has renamed all Rudolph’s friends.  She sings like this: “You know Asher, and Dancer, and Lancer and Dixon, Conner and Cupid and Donald and Blitzen…” Haha!

And Trinity is making huge progress in the talking department, although I’ve had to really lower my expectations to “normal” with her, considering at a year and a half, Miss Gracie was talking full sentences and everyone could understand her.  Trinity’s more an average talker, with putting two to three words together now, sometimes things only I or Gracie can understand.  She loooooves Yo Gabba Gabba on Nick Jr, she calls it “BegaBega” and when it comes on she totally freaks out and starts dancing and turning in circles.  Shhhh, don’t tell her but she’s getting a Foofa shirt for Christmas! “What’s a Foofa?” you may ask.  Foofa is Trinity’s favorite YGG character. Let me show you…

Really if you haven’t seen YGG, you should.  It’s like Sesame Street on crack.  It’s fabulous.  And how can it not be, with this guy–DJ Lance Rock– as the host? We TiVo it faithfully every day and Trinity won’t watch anything else. Which is actually great because I don’t like the TV on a whole lot during the day. 

Chris is off work for the next NINE days.  What am I gonna do with him for NINE days?  He will be so ready to go back to work after being here so long.  The girls are already driving him nuts.  LOL  He’s currently at Starbucks reading.  I’m positive he deserves the break though, after all those crazy long hours.  When he goes back, he will be getting a promotion, we are hoping it’s in January.  Wooooo!

I am pumped about the Christmas experiences at Northview.  Maybe I’ll remember my camera and then you guys can see it.  It’s amazing.  I can’t say enough about how much I am totally in love with that church!  All churches should make you feel like you can’t wait to get back there.  There is actually some sadness when I have to leave every week.  And no, I’m not a total loser, it’s just Northview really is THAT cool.   

Alright, well that’s gonna do it.  I have to get some stuff done.  The house is totally suffering.   

I think I’m done with all my Christmas shopping.  We didn’t do a lot this year and that makes it easy.  I still think we have too much for the girls but Amazon had some amazing sales and at the last minute I ordered some things…I’m bad.  The packages are supposed to arrive a day before Christmas.  Ooooh, I am cutting it close!

Yesterday I put the girls in their matching pink Naartjie dresses and beanies and we went grocery shopping.  I kid you not, the woman at the checkstand asked me “are they twins?”  WHAAAAT?  I said, “oh I like to dress them alike” because I thought she meant like not literally twins…and she proceeded to ask me how old they were.  When I said “they’re 4 1/2 and 1 1/2, three years apart” she looked all confused.  Um, yes, I had a very hard labor.  Three years of pushing but we finally got the little one out.  People are seriously strange. 

Welp, speaking of strange, Trinity just laid her string cheese across my chest.  I guess that means she’s done with it.  Ew.  

Maybe I’ll post pictures of the girls later.  If I get a chance to get back on…  See ya!   

I didn’t want to be back in ministry for several reasons:

1. the money or lack thereof–we are finally in a place of financial security and having all the benefits of being at a big company like Dell is a dream come true for me! 

2. I love and didn’t want to leave Northview.  Ever.  Ever. Ever.  It’s the people, who are all my friends, and the authentic atmosphere and the messages and the fact that it doesn’t look, feel, smell, or act like a churchy-church. It’s so amazing, it’s beyond wonderful. Did I mention I love Northview?  

3.We feel like we’ve been given this opportunity to serve the needs of a downtown crowd at Northview Bricktown, we believe that there is a lot of potential for change and help in that area, and that we could be part of that.  I totally feel like we ”trained” for NVB when we were downtown at First UMC.  We have a heart and a knowledge for downtown ministry.  I didn’t want to leave that “undone” because I know there is more we are supposed to do.

I was struggling with Chris’ idea that he wanted to jump back into fulltime paid ministry.  What I needed was for God to give us the right opportunity at the right time.  This was offered to us last week. 

We met with Northview Bricktown’s campus pastor, Tommy, who told us the staff felt a strong calling to change up some things with NVB.  One of them, being that Tommy is going back to the main campus to do full time worship which excites me to no end, I cannot tell you what a huge miracle that is…not that the other worship leaders aren’t wonderful but TOMMY ROCKS in a big way!  So…wooooo for Tommy coming back!  But that leaves a void at the NVB campus.  Logistics and some unforseen circumstances has also has left us in a quandry about location, time, format, etc. 

Chris and I were asked to lead the NVB campus in a casual, small group setting on a Sunday night or another night in the week.  We are SO PUMPED.  This means our family gets to serve and go to the larger experiences at the Northview main campus, and Chris will get his chance to do some ministry/teaching like he’s been feeling called to do.  And he doesn’t have to quit his job at Dell, since this is just once a week.  We also have another young couple who is going to help us. So everyone wins! 

One of my jobs at the NV main campus was the Connections desk, which I had to quit when we planted NVB.  Well, now I get to go back to helping at the Connections desk.  This job is tailor made for me.  It’s basically a big desk with some computers and info on everything that is happening in the church–oh and bowls of mints.  My job is to stand behind it and talk with everyone (see, tailor made!) and point them in the right direction and sign people up for things online, and give them information about coming events.  I always enjoyed it and I felt terrible leaving my friend in charge by himself when me and Chris left.  So now I get to help him and be back where I am supposed to be!  I feel sooooo good about this decision, and I’m honored and thrilled that the staff feels confident enough in us that they want us to join them in this endeavor.  Praise God for being so faithful and putting us in a place that we both can be happy, and even comfortable, with!!  And I get to stay at my beloved Northview!!!