Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t done a blog post since December 9. For me, this is a big deal and I usually never go that long between posts…my goal is to write once every week or week and a half. So what happened?
Christmas chaos, sickness of all kinds for just about every member of our family at some point (including a nasty upper respiratory infection and cough that I am still battling), and if I am honest, lack of inspiration about what to write about. A friend once wisely told me that if I didn’t feel inspired to write a post and didn’t have anything to say, that I just shouldn’t say it. And so I haven’t. Not that we haven’t had lots of fun things going on and not that I haven’t had lots of soap box moments that I could have shouted about on here. But I have always felt the need to cut some things out in the midst of focusing on Christ this season and battling not feeling well, and blogging has been the thing I have had to say no to so I could say yes to other things. But, the good news? I AM BACK.
I have had our website pulled up on my screen for the last week wanting to find the time to write a post. Its not a super spiritual post about Christmas. Its not a ministry update for the semester (though that would be a fun one to share soon as I was super encouraged by all God is doing as we recapped the semester with our team). I honestly just wanted to do a life update and highlight some things we have been doing the last few weeks. So as I sit here in our hotel room in Baltimore (we are here for our annual winter conference we staff and put on for the college students in our region) watching my 4 little kiddos sleep, I am going to just lay out the pictures that describe our December. If you want a ministry update or super spiritual post, come back next week 🙂
We attended winter concerts and campus parties and class parties and church small group parties and birthday parties. So many parties. This is a picture of one of the girls’ winter concerts. The lady pictured is a dear friend that I met when we lived in the same apartment building and had kids riding the bus together to the same school. She is from Indonesia, her husband works at the UN, and though we don’t talk as much as we used to since we moved, I have loved getting to know her better. I even got the opportunity to share with her about having a relationship with Jesus and what that means to us. She moves back in June :(. The last pic is a Christmas party with our St. John’s Cru students (missing quite a few!).
We got to love on sweet Esme so her parents (friends that are in our small group) could go on a date. She was so good and sweet and I got my baby fix. I also learned that while she was adorable and all and we handled it great because Ed was home to help, I for sure couldn’t handle 5 kiddos by myself. 🙂
We loved having Ed’s parents visit and then later, opening presents from Grandpa and Nona (Ed’s parents). The kids are thrilled about their new Kindle tablets and Brynn finally has her own dress up dress!
Going to see Christmas Lights in Dyker Heights has been on our bucket list since moving to NYC. It required a car as it is pretty hard and time consuming to get to by the train, so we had to wait to rent a car or until we got our own. It was well worth the wait! We went on a weekday night which was awesome since the crowds were way down. They say some of these people spend up to $10,000 in light bills in December and after seeing it, I believe it!
We have done lots and lots of baking!
My parents and brother, sister-n-law, and my niece and nephew traveled to NYC to spend Christmas with us. We had a great time touring the city with them and spending time with them. There was lots of noise, lots of laughter, lots of tears, and lots of memories made. Here are a few pics of our travels with them – and yes, when you see the sea of people outside Rockefeller and Times Square, the pictures don’t even describe the chaos it was. Seriously insane madness. NYC is beautiful at Christmas time but apparently everyone else thinks so too and wants to see it.
On Christmas Eve, we went to the Candlelight Service at our church. This is always such a highlight for me and the kids have grown to love it as well. Here are the pictures of the night as well as our friend Fady that is in our small group as he read part of the story of the birth of Jesus in Arabic.
Now, we are at a conference in Baltimore with around 1,000 college students from our city and neighboring states. It is going to be a busy week with lots of meetings and late nights and balancing the kids and work demands…but, we are excited to see our students and to meet so many others and to pray that this conference changes them the way one changed Ed’s life many, many years ago! Here is the picture from our hotel room – nice view and I am loving the skating rink on the top of the building next to us:)
