9 months old!

18 lbs 10 oz (22%) and 29.25 inches long (84%) at his 9 month checkup. Doctor said everything is great developmentally. And double ear infections... Again. yay for round two of antibiotics.
Loves fruit! Grapes and blue berries especially.

Favorite toys: a stuffed duck that quacks, his jumparoo, tupperware, Jack
Getting his top teeth in - 4 of them!
Taking a few steps here and there, no walking yet.
Very vocal! Calls Jack something similar to "Back" and calls for him all the time.

Loves going to the park for our playdates with friends.
He's all boy and crawls all over the other kids.
EVERYTHING goes in the mouth. Doesn't matter what it is.

Loves the toilet. Really, he's fascinated with it. He has played in the water. Beats on the top. and plays with the little knobs on the bottom of it. Gross. Very gross. Worse than when he plays with the trashcan.
Loves blueberries and grapes.
Uses the jumparoo for exercise in the mornings while mom and dad try to wake up.

Jumping makes him tired.

He's been going to sleep at 8:30ish each night, therefore he wakes up around 7:30.
Still wakes up a few times during the night. We're ok with that though. Extra snuggle time.
Starting to wear 12 month clothes. 6 months are put away, most of the 9 months are winter so we just moved on to 12 months.
Size 2 diapers.
Size 3 shoes (and outgrowing those fast!)
Loves to watch Blues Clues.
Celebrated his first Easter and participated in his first Easter egg hunt.

I guess the biggest thing to happen during month 8 was Easter. Daniel's mom, dad, and brother Nathan came into town for the weekend. Of course, I had to work Friday and Sunday night. Saturday morning we hosted a CARES event for our residents which included a nice Brunch and Easter egg hunt for the kids. Liam got to participate by sitting in the grass between two eggs and reaching for them. Not much of a hunter yet, more like a gatherer. Daniel's family got into town shortly after the event ended and I went to bed for a few hours. We took them to Fuzzy's tacos for dinner and they spent the evening playing with Liam and video games. Sunday was Easter and Daniel, Liam and I went to church even though Liam was slightly sick that morning. I just wore him in the Ergo carrier on my back while we served in Children's Church. We got home and had a huge lunch and invited the Joostens and Wiggins. Chicken, ribs, potato salad, green beans, mac and cheese, homemade bread, and yummy desserts. And then I went to bed again. Haha. That Sunday night I started to loose my voice and it just went downhill from there. It's been 5 weeks now and I'm still 100% after multiple meds and doctors visits. Liam has been up and down in the sick department since then too.

Easter Sunday - Liam looks terrible. :(

Bible Stories with Mamaw

Texas Bluebonnets - a tradition that we finally got in on

Easter Egg hunt at the apartments

Big boy sitting at the big kids table at church one day!

One of my favorite songs to sing: Glorious Day by Casting Crowns
One day when Heaven was filled with His praises
One day when sin was as black as could be
Jesus came forth to be born of a Virgin
Dwelt among men, my example is He

Word became flesh and the light shined among us
His glory revealed

Living He loved me, dying He saved me
And buried He carried my sins far away
Rising He justified freely forever
One day He's coming, oh, glorious day, oh, glorious day

One day they led Him up Calvary's mountain
One day they nailed Him to die on a tree
Suffering anguish, despised and rejected
Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is He

Hands that healed nations, stretched out on a tree
And took the nails for me

'Cause living He loved me, dying He saved me
And buried He carried my sins far away
Rising He justified freely forever
One day He's coming, oh, glorious day, oh, glorious day

One day the grave could conceal Him no longer
One day the stone rolled away from the door
Then He arose, over death He had conquered
Now He's ascended, my Lord evermore

Death could not hold Him
The grave could not keep Him from rising again

Living He loved me, dying He saved me
And buried He carried my sins far away
Rising He justified freely forever
One day He's coming, oh, glorious day, oh, glorious day
Glorious day

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming
One day the skies with His glories will shine
Wonderful day, my beloved one bringing
My Savior Jesus is mine

Living He loved me, dying He saved me
And buried He carried my sins far away
Rising He justified freely forever
One day He's coming, oh, glorious day, oh, glorious day
Glorious day, oh, glorious day

Updates, Spring Break, and 8 Months Old!

7 month old photo shoot by Amanda Bilbo!

What's happened in the past month? Well let me tell you. :)

• Liam says Mom-ma now!!! He was babbling for a while and say "mmm mmm mmm" and then all of a sudden it turned into Mom-ma! Now he's saying something with a "B" like "Bweh Bwuh". We haven't figured out what he's trying to say with that. The only thing we can come up with is that Daniel calls him "Boy" most of the time so we think he's imitating that.
• We've been spending a lot of time at the park, going to walks, having picnics, and swinging. Liam is loving the warm weather and being outside. We've been going with friends and the little girl that I've been keeping. I enjoy being outside too!

• He's crawling everywhere, pulling up on everything, and if it's in his reach, it's not safe. It goes straight in the mouth. Clothes, remotes, toys, food, dirt and leaves, the dog's ears, trash, diapers (clean mostly), diaper wipes (these seem to be his favorite, besides the remotes), the iPad and our phones. Beware of Liam. 
• We did a lot of solids over Spring Break because we actually sat at a table to eat our dinners and he did wonderful. But now that we're home, he's not really interested in eating solids. Oh well. He'll let me know when he is. 
• He LOVES puffs! You know those little cracker-like things that melt in the mouth. Yep, he'll grab handfuls. And over Spring Break he actually learned how to get them in his mouth instead of dropping it on the floor while trying to eat them.
• Broke out bubbles the other day. I don't know who had more fun, Jack or Liam. :) Jack went crazy.

The first few weeks of March flew by! I don't know where the time went. I bought a sewing and embroidery machine from a friend so I'm excited to start working on projects. I went to JBF (a large consignment sale here in FW)  and got lots of cute things for Liam. One of my favorite toys has been a stuffed dragon that is filled with balls (like a ball pit) - Liam loves it! I also bought a bunch of newborn and 0-3 month onesies so I can start making gifts for all my friends who are pregnant! :) I'm so excited to learn to use my sewing machine.

Liam is officially a big boy! We got him a convertible carseat before we left for Spring Break because we didn't think he'd be too comfortable in his infant carseat on the long trip.

On to Spring Break! In my last post, I mentioned that we had planned to go and preach a revival through the Seminary, but that didn't work out, so we decided to take a vacation. We decided on Colorado since we never got a "real" winter in TX. We got to Colorado Springs late Saturday night and stayed at a hotel. Liam decided that sleep was for the birds, so when everyone else went to bed around 10:30pm, Liam and I headed down to the hotel lobby for more playtime. At midnight, we went back to the room, I put him to sleep in the pack-n-play and laid down myself. He woke at 1am, I brought him to our bed, and he woke again around 2am. At 2 he was wide away and crawled all over the bed making cute noises so around 2:40am he was being too loud so we went back to the lobby. He got tired around 4am, put him in the pack-n-play, awake again at 5am, brought him to bed with us, woke at 6am and I just got up at that point.  We went back down to the lobby for breakfast at that point. I got *maybe* 4 hours of sleep that night. Somewhere in there we lost an hour. Not really sure where. We left Sunday morning and were going to drive up to Pike's Peak, but they had the road closed to the top so we just took our time and headed to Estes Park where we rented a cabin for a few days. We settled into the cabin on Sunday evening and found a local restaurant with really good food.

Exploring the cabin

On Monday we decided to go snow shoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. So much fun! I strapped Liam to my front with my new Ergo carrier and he slept most of the time. I've never hiked in the snow before. Liam did great and we all enjoyed an afternoon outside looking at the beautiful mountains, frozen lakes, and landscapes around us.

 

Tuesday we went into town and walked around a while. Think Gaitlinburg, but smaller, and less commercialized. We looked in a lot of stores, ate some really good pizza, and got candy at some of the candy shops (there's like 6 in a short stretch of town). Oreo covered caramel apples. Yes, please. Salt water taffy. Yum. Peanut butter and chocolate fudge.  Oh yeah. We drove around RMNP for a while to see all the different mountains and views. Incredible. I love the mountains.

Both nights Liam has been having problems sleeping. He's been waking every hour. He won't let you put him down after he's fallen asleep - he just wakes up crying. It's been stressful, but God gave me strength and while I didn't get much sleep, I wasn't super tired. I was very thankful for that. Liam was so precious on this trip. Other than at night, he's so happy and he's loving new surroundings. He ate some snow and got so excited. I wish he would be able to remember this trip. That's what pictures are for I suppose. :)

On Wednesday the boys went for a hike. Apparently the trail was really hard to follow and they ended up working a lot harder to get up the mountain than they were supposed to. They missed quite a bit of the trail. But they made it to the top! They came back with lots of fun stories. They both ended up breaking treking poles and there was lots of slipping on random patches of ice. After lunch we headed to a indoor climbing gym. We had assumed it would be too cold to climb outside so we didn't take any of our own climbing gear. We should have known. The weather was perfect for climbing outside, but no gear. But we had a great time at the gym. For a while we were the only ones there and Liam crawled all over the place. He was so happy.

The boys and their broken poles - but they conquered the mountain!

I'm so glad that we've traveled with Liam and didn't let having a child slow us down. He enjoys it just as much as we do I think. We'll have some awesome stories to share with him when he's older. How many 2 month olds have camped on the rim of the Grand Canyon, or visited a metor crater, or stood among a heard of elk, or snowshoed through the mountains to a frozen lake? I can't wait to see what other interesting things we end up doing with him. :)

On the way home we stopped at some steak house that Daniel has seen advertised numerous times. The atmosphere was crazy, the food was good, we were serenaded by a band of old men who were hitting on Laura Beth, and apparently if you at a 72 oz steak in 1 hour you got it for free. We didn't try. Liam really enjoyed eating some lemons that night too.  We got back to TX around 4am on Friday morning and we all crashed. Exhaustion had set in.

I took a nap before work on Friday night and woke with a fever, but came to work anyway. I should have known better. I was feeling pretty bad by Saturday morning. I slept most of the day on Saturday and that night felt better so I went to our CARES event (a wine tasting party). During clean up I started feeling bad again and got home and found that I had a temp of 101. Sunday I decided to stay home from church and I went to a clinic to see if I had strep or the flu. I had neither. They weren't really sure what I had but gave me a script for some antibiotics which I never took. I stayed home from work Sunday night since I still had a fever. Then Liam got sick.

Around 1am on Monday, Liam woke with a fever of 102.5 under the arm. I gave him some tylenol and called his pediatrician and we went for a visit. (18lbs - woot woot!) But double ear infections. Poor thing. We started some antibiotics and were alternating with tylenol and ibuprofen. The fever never really went away though. Tuesday morning he woke up with a temp of 104.2! So I called the pediatrician again and she wanted to check him for RSV since he was having some pretty bad congestion now. (Lost a few oz, 17lbs 10oz - no biggie) And no RSV thankfully. Poor thing was so puny for most of the week. His fever finally went away sometime on Wednesday and by Friday he was pretty much back to himself. I hate when my child gets sick. Especially when he's that sick. Plus he's teething again. So that doesn't really help anything. He's doing better now though. But the teeth are starting to bother him again.

We broke out the bubbles the other day. It was so cute! He loved sitting there and crawling after them, then looking at me with a confused face when they popped and disappeared. Jack had more fun with them I think. He was going crazy!

I love my life. Even when I'm tired. Stressed. Emotional. Burnt out. I'm still blessed. I'm trying to remind myself of that.

My little Blessing (7mo) - photo by Amanda Bilbo

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:2-4

7 Months Old

6 month photo shoot!

Liam is now 7 months old. Here's an update on the past month:

• He has 2 teeth. That's right TWO! Bottom teeth. Those things are sharp!  

• We went to the doctor for a shot at the beginning of February and Liam weighed 17lbs 10 oz (but that was with clothes still on)
• He started army crawling all over the place at the beginning of February.
• A few weeks after that he started to pull up on the couch, TV stand, dog, whatever he could get his hands on. 
• And then a week after that we had full on crawling - hands and knees.
• The house is no longer safe from Liam. We've officially babyproofed everything. We barricade him in the living room with our ottoman to keep him from going to the kitchen.
• We have had a lot of falls this past month. I'm preparing myself to have to go to the ER one of these days.
• He's wearing 6-9 month clothes. The 9 month pants are still too big, but we're making them work. 
• No more thumb sucking. He just chews on his fingers now. 
• Never started signing with him. I still should do that.
• He's still not very verbal. He definitely makes more sounds, but not "word" sounds.
• Still loves his Jumparoo - but he prefers to be free these days
• Working on solids. I haven't been pushing them though. I think it's more laziness on my part, but he doesn't seem to want them anyway. We've added peaches and avocado to the list. Loves peaches. Hates avocado.

Sweet potatoes from head to toe

• We put frozen cantaloupe in a mesh teether the other day and he really enjoyed chewing on it!
• He's started taking a pacifier some at night. He normally falls asleep during his nighttime feeding but still wants to suck on something so we transfer the pacifier in to keep him happy. 
• He's slowly but surely learning to put himself to sleep without having to eat or be rocked to sleep. 
• We bought him "The Beginning Reader's Bible" for Valentine's day and he's been enjoying his reading scripture with some awesome pictures before bed each night. 
• The past two weeks, we've been keeping a little girl who is a month older than him and he's been learning about sharing. And he's doing great!

A.B. and Liam

• He has a favorite show on Netflix. It's called Early Bloomers. If he's ever fussy, all we have to do is turn it on and he immediately quits crying.  I don't know who invented it, but they were a genius. And Daniel introduced him to Blue's Clues the other day. He's a fan.

In a trance

• He's started staying in the nursery at church on Sundays and enjoys playing with other little ones. 
• We've been having lots of play dates with other kids! Mommy enjoys them too. :) 

My living room gets full when we have play dates with other moms and their kids.

• Sleep Habits: Up until a few days ago, he was going to bed around 11pm and waking after 9am with 1 or 2 feeds in the middle. But these past few days he's been going to bed a little earlier and sleeping ALL NIGHT! I'm so proud of my little man. And I've thankful for consecutive sleep. My body actually hurts though because I'm used to waking up and changing positions after getting up to feed him and now I'm so tired that I collapse and don't move all night = soreness in the morning. But thankful, very thankful.  

I guess that's about it concerning Liam. I need to learn to update as things happen. Maybe one day. Probably not though.

Daniel and I have had a busy month as usual. I continue to work weekends. Daniel continues to work on MWF, so we have Tuesday and Thursday together, which is nice since I work on weekends.  But Daniel got a NEW JOB!!! Praise the Lord! He's going to be able to use the engineering degree that he worked so hard to earn at Mississippi State. He will be working for a company called Kobi Group. Definitely a God thing as to how he got this job. He'd been searching for one all last semester, but nothing ever worked out so he gave up. And then a random facebook friend of mine (not even someone that I know, just know of her) posted that her husband's company was looking for a new employee with an engineering/math/science background. So I gave her Daniel's name and email, the lady's husband contacted him, Daniel submitted his resume, they talked on the phone, he went in for a real interview, and came out with a job! He starts when we get back from Spring Break.

Speaking of Spring Break, Daniel had originally planned to preach a revival somewhere in the US through SWBTS as part of their Revive this Nation program. But they had too many sign up and not enough churches, so he wasn't asked to participate this semester. We were really bummed, but decided to take a road trip since we had the opportunity. We've wanted to go to the mountains and stay in a cabin and have snow, so we decided on Colorado. We also decided that we would rather go with some friends, so we talked with our friends Brett and Laura Beth and they decided to come with us! We got a nice cabin in Estes Park and we can't wait to spend time with our sweet friends! :) Plus it will be Liam's first time in the snow!

Daniel and I are still really enjoying teaching Sunday School and working with the children's ministry. God is teaching us a lot through this ministry. And I have started a one-on-one Bible study to disciple a lady from our church. We had our first meeting this past week and I'll just say that God is good!

Daniel and I had our first REAL date in we couldn't tell you when. Before Liam? My mom watched Liam when he was 2 weeks old so Daniel and I could go out for ice cream, but I don't really count that. Our sweet friend Erica called and asked if she could babysit Liam on Valentine's day so that we could have a date. Her husband was working that day so they were waiting a few days for their Valentine's day. Daniel took me to see The Vow and we ate dinner at the movie theater (it's one of those dinner and movie theaters and then we went out to Benbrook Lake to watch the sunset. I miss our dates like that. We used to do things like that all the time when we were in college. Thanks again Erica for letting keeping Liam! :)

Maybe I'll add some pictures later. - DONE! :)

First time to pull up! We dropped the bed that same day.

Got a bike seat so Liam could go on rides with us.

A Valentine from Liam!

Basic, but Truth.
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

6 Months Old

Six months ago today, I became a mommy. It has been the most rewarding 6 months of my life. And maybe the most sleep-deprived. But totally worth it in my opinion. I've been trying to remind myself that this is just a season in life and that one day I will miss my late nights with my sweet boy cuddling and rocking and nursing. And I do already miss the "baby" in him. The other day I was trying to cradle and console him and he was pushing away from him. Broke. My. Heart. I cried. But then when he finally calms down and flashes me one of those sweet grins that he always gives me. Melts. My. Heart. He knows my voice and searches for me. While sitting on the couch and Daniel is holding him, Liam often will start throwing himself at me or reaching over to me. (Sorry, Daniel.) In the mornings he'll fuss when he wakes up, but the minute he sees me, he smiles from ear to ear and throws either his fist or his foot in his mouth. Moments like these make being a mom worth it. I could sit and look at him all day long. I love holding him and kissing him all over and making him giggle and grin. His smile is the sweetest thing ever. I never knew I could love someone in the way that I love him. I thank God for Liam. These 6 months have flown by. I'm sure the next 6 will too.

• Liam at his 6 month check up on the 17th was 28 inches long (94th percentile), 16lbs 4oz (30th percentile), and head circumference 44cm (60th percentile). He took his shots like a champ - cried immediately after them, but stopped as soon as I picked him up off the table. 
• Liam's first tooth came in today! We were sitting in Chik-Fil-A eating dinner with some friends, and I looked down at his mouth and noted something white! 
• He is wearing 6 month clothes, and we're slowly pulling out some of the 6-9 mo. He can still fit in a few 3-6 mo but they are getting a little short and tight.
• We tried solids around 5 months but it didn't go so well. We attempted bananas, applesauce, peas (that was his official first solid), carrots, and sweet potatoes. Eventually we just gave up because he didn't want to cooperate and I don't think his gut was ready to start processing the food because it took him like a week to have a bm. (TMI? sorry)
• We've started back solids now. Applesauce and oatmeal is what we're working on and he will sit there and open his mouth for more. Apparently he's ready now. And the bms are not an issue this time. :)
• His thumb is his new best friend.
• Still doing physical therapy. No real changes. It's more developmental things now. I'm not paying for it though, so I don't really care.
• He sits up and plays with toys. He doesn't last a super long time because he gets sidetracked and then he'll fall to the side. But he's doing fantastic!
• He is CRAWLING! Well, army crawling at least! He's using his knees and elbows to scoot around the floor. He had been rolling all over the place. We'd put him down in one spot, look away and next thing we know he's halfway across the living room.
• He LOVES his jumparoo. I'm pretty sure it's taken the place of the frog bouncy seat. He doesn't really enjoy the bouncy seat these days, but he will jump for hours. Seriously. And when you're holding him, he jumps. He's started to interact with the toys on the jumparoo, too. He's figured out what to do with them all. Even when he's ready to get out of the jumparoo, he cries and jumps at the same time. Go, go, go. We think that's why he's so skinny. He's so active.
• He hasn't said "words" that we know of yet, but he loves to do the "raspberry" noises with his mouth. He spits everywhere when we does it. He cracks himself up.
• He likes to play peek-a-boo and will giggle. His giggles are precious.
• I'm going to start teaching him simple sign language. I am so excited
• Sleep Habits: Prior to arriving in MS, Liam was waking up about every 4 hours or so. In MS, he slept through the night, until about 5 or 6 each morning, then would go back to sleep until 8 or so. He continued this pattern when we to AL and my mom watched him. So when we got home, we decided it was time to move him to his crib in his own room. Success! For the most part at least. We still have nights that he wakes up around 4 wanting to eat, but normally he'll sleep until about 6. For about a week, he would wake up at 6 and want to play for an hour. So we played, and went back to bed until 10. :) He still doesn't go to bed early, normally it's around 11pm. But we've had a few nights that his 8pm nap turned right into bedtime. I won't complain though, he lets me sleep in most days.  

We spent New Years in Fort Worth. I did not make it till midnight on New Years Eve. Working the Friday before and getting very little sleep did not help. I don't remember a whole lot about the night. Three of Daniel's college friends came into town for a few days to spend time with Daniel. They went rock climbing, worked in the garage making pens and other wooden items, watched How I Met Your Mother (our new favorite show on Netflix), and played frisbee golf. We really enjoyed having the guys here! They were great with Liam!

The "uncles"

Still happy.

Liam's first National Championship Game and Bama won!

Daniel and I have started teaching Sunday School at our church. We are teaching the 2nd-4th graders. We teach every other Sunday and we've taught twice now. It's a fun age, but they are mostly all boys and very very rowdy! So much fun though!

In the next 7 months or so, Liam is going to have a few more friends and we couldn't be happier for our sweet friends!

I can't think of much else that's been going on in our lives. Liam is most of it. We're still in limbo at this time as far as working towards leaving to go overseas next year. We have to wait until this April to see if there is job for us and if the IMB thinks we're ready to leave. There is so much that can happen in the next year, we are just praying that God would guide us through it all.

Still loves bath time

Back to foods! Yum, applesauce!

  ¹ Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name;
   make known his deeds among the peoples!
² Sing to him, sing praises to him;
   tell of all his wondrous works!
³ Glory in his holy name;
   let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!
⁴ Seek the LORD and his strength;
   seek his presence continually!
⁵ Remember the wondrous works that he has done,
   his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,
⁶ O offspring of Abraham, his servant,
   children of Jacob, his chosen ones!
Psalm 105: 1-6

5 Months Old

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 

Luke 2:10

Liam turned 5 months old on December 23rd.

• He is wearing 6 month clothes (and working on outgrowing them). 
• I have no idea how much he weighs, we'll find out when we go for his 6 month check-up in January. He loves to roll around the living room floor now. I'll put him in one spot and next thing I know he's rolled halfway across the living room. 
• He has a new appreciation for his Jumparoo and loves bouncing up and down. Seriously, he'll play for at least an hour in it. 
• We've officially started solids. So far he likes apples and bananas. He's not too sure about peas. He can't stand carrots or turkey in turkey broth. My little boy has a sweet tooth. :) I made my own babyfood with the banana the other day. And I gave him a chunk of a banana inside a mesh feeder. It made quite the mess, but he enjoyed chewing on it.

Such a happy baby!!!

Peas for the first time!

So happy in his Jumparoo.

Too much fun wears him out.

 Christmas time came quick this year. We had a CARES event at our apartments - Breakfast with Santa. Liam sat in Santa's lap and gave us his precious smile for pictures. :) Right after the breakfast, we headed out to MS. Yes, I worked Friday night, stayed awake for the breakfast, rode in a car for 7.5 hours, and then attended a Christmas party and didn't get to bed until after 11pm. I am crazy. That's what lack of sleep will do to you. We had several "Christmases" in Mississippi before heading to Alabama to see my parents and grandma. It was the first time that Mimmie got to meet Liam. Liam definitely got his fair share of great grandparents during that week!

Sharon kept Liam at night for 3 nights so I could actually sleep. It was glorious. And my mom continued this for 2 more nights. That makes 8 nights of 8 hours of consecutive sleep. I felt like a new woman. Our families were too good to us and to Liam this Christmas. Our truck was packed down on the way home. We never could have made it home with everything if we had taken my car. 

Liam's first look at the Christmas tree.

Playtime with Papa in MS

He's such a cool kid.

Great Grandparents rock.

Presents from MaMaw

Grandpa Rich and Liam

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree - I want to eat your lights.

Best present under the tree!

Making faces at GiGi

Too much fun with the grandparents makes for a tired little boy.

We came home the Friday before Christmas because Daniel had to work, and I worked that Friday night and Sunday (Christmas Day). We had 2 couples over for Christmas Eve dinner. (I can't believe we didn't take a group picture!) None of us have family around and so we spent Christmas with our Seminary Family. Liam's little friend Rizpah was over here and he started making moves on her, trying to eat her face. Such a little boy. No manners. We went to Christmas Eve service at our church prior to dinner. It was wonderful to worship with our church family. On Christmas day, we spent time as a family and that afternoon we went to see a movie. We saw Mission Impossible. It was so cool to see Tom Cruise scaling the Burj in Dubai since we had the opportunity to go there and go up the Burj just a week after he filmed those scenes. I came home, napped, and then went to work. As much as I hated having to be at the hospital over the Christmas holidays, I'm glad that I could be my patients' nurse so that I could maybe share a little Jesus with them in their time of sickness and hurting. 

I hope you and your family had a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year!