happy birthday to our little girl

Stella Grace turned two on Saturday! We are just amazed at how fast the time has gone. To me it seems like those first 6 weeks before she slept thru the night were longer than these past 2 years have been! After the struggles of the year, we are more grateful than ever that God has allowed us to be parents. We praise Him for the good gift of Stella and are sobered by our responsibility to raise her for His glory.

Over the weekend, we had a wonderful time celebrating her birthday with both sides of the family. It is nice living close enough that we can all be together for these special occasions.

I love themes and this year we deviated from the ladybug theme that saturated her whole first year of life and did an ice cream cone theme. Quite fun for me and her! Carrie from church made her the cutest little ice cream cone bow (I need to blog about Carrie's amazing bows soon) for her hair and her outfit had ice cream cones on it too! Miss Liz even got her an ice cream cone dress and matching bow for her to wear to church on Sunday to finish out her birthday weekend! We are thankful for our friends who get excited with us over her even though they really don't have to (Mr. Ben, Miss Wendy and Miss Joy too!)

Stella is teary here b/c she got scared when everyone

started singing "Happy Birthday" to her!

She, of course, chose the "cherry on top" scoop

Ammy and Appy

Aunty Jenny, Mimi, Gampa and Poppop

Thank you Uncle Philip, Aunt Betty, Adam and Joy!

(getting the "say cheese" part right but forgetting to smile!)

Loving the quilt her Poppop (great-grandpa owen) just stitched for her. He's amazing! Wish we had a picture of the quilted pattern part to post.

Giving Rachael Ray a run for her money in her new kitchen.

Children are a blessing from the Lord!

a few more vacation pics

abuelita and the girls having fun with bows!
viv's little party
making a wish
little cam's chubbers
after some delicious tiramisu and coffee

Of relaunched churches, timeshares, and sweet tea

We were blessed to go on vacation to the Orlando area last week. We spent Friday through Tuesday morning with Andrew and Vivian Haney at their home in Odessa. Andrew has been pastoring for almost a year now at Keystone Bible Church, and it is exciting to see what God is doing down in that assembly of believers. They could always use a hand so if you are moving to the Odessa area, check them out. And if you're not planning on moving to Odessa-why not?

Our next stop was a Hilton Grand Vacations resort in Orlando. We got a great deal on it and just had to listen to a teensy-weensy presentation where we are shown all the benefits of buying into the system. Unfortunately, the presentation consists of being thrown into a dungeon and being flogged in an attempt to get you to relent. Anyway...it's just minutes away from Disney World, Sea World, and an assortment of other attractions. However, we had no desire to visit any of these attractions. If we weren't in the pool, we were next to it. Now that is my idea of a vacation. The only difficult part was leaving Stella with both sets of grandparents-not because they would do a bad job!-but because we would miss her so much. We're glad that she was able to spend some time with them, though, and were equally glad for a little break.

These are the Haney's four kids. They gave us our kid "fix" since we were sans Stella.

Erica had a surprise birthday party for Vivian at a Cuban restaurant called Arco Iris. They had spent all day shopping, and fortunately, I did not have to be a part of that. To me, shopping and vacation are incompatible concepts.

This was the building that we stayed in. It was called Villa di Tomaso which if my Italian translation skills return to me, means Villa di Thomas. If you're scratching your head right now, that's just a joke-don't worry about it.
In case you couldn't tell, this is a picture of an ornate ball fountain thing. Moving right along...
Here is a shot of the pool. We spent all of our time here. And I do mean all.This is just a general shot of the resort.
Another shot-it was a Tuscan theme, and I have to say it was very beautiful and very well done.

Perhaps the greatest discovery (at least for me) of our vacation is pictured above. This is a $1 sweet tea sold at McDonalds. This was something almost too good to be true. The north/midwest knows nothing about one of the south's greatest treasures, sweet tea with lemon. I consumed more of these than I care to admit and still miss them even now.

This is the kind of stuff we didn't miss on vacation :)

Endeared Friendships

No doubt Christian friendships are a means of joining and holding together Christ's body. Ephesians 4 speaks of the body being built up in love as each part does its work.

Endeared and intimate Christian friendships are used by God to sharpen His people as iron sharpens iron.

We are thankful for those God has used in our lives to build us up and leave us different than we were when we first met them.

It's an understatement to say we'll miss you guys.