Praying for Northwestern College

For those of you who graduated from NWC, or are interested in what's happening there, please check out 

http://friendsofnwc.com

There's plenty of reading on this site, but the Dallas Jenkins Memo, Sept. 2008 summarizes the events pretty well.

It saddens me to hear what's going on, and I pray that God will bring integrity back to this place.

10 Months!

Yesterday Caleb turned 10 months old! I can’t believe how fast this time has gone with him, but then I think about this time last year when we didn’t even have much of his room ready for him and that seems like SO long ago! I can’t imagine life without him! What a special blessing it has been to watch him grow and develop. Children change so much in this first year. He is gaining more confidence with walking and has started to venture off on his own when he really wants to get somewhere. Most of these times he’s chasing our cat, or last Saturday, Grandma’s dog! He seems to be an animal lover. Our cat, Dori, is starting to be more tolerant of Caleb’s attention. Lately when Dori is near Caleb, he will crawl toward her, but then he doesn’t stop when he gets there. He just keeps plowing through, head-butting Dori along! My favorite time of day during the week is bedtime. I love to feed Caleb his bottle, tell him a story, pray for him, and then cuddle close for a few minutes before putting him down. I know it’s not a good habit to rock him to sleep, but sometimes I just can’t resist holding him until he’s completely relaxed and peaceful. It’s so precious when he snuggles his little nose into my neck. Joel and I tend to “fight” over who gets to put him to bed now that Caleb’s not nursing anymore!

He just loves these teething crackers, but they're so messy!

Future Northwestern College grad?

We've been having fun experimenting with our new camera.

He was helping Daddy pick the last jalapeno from the garden (or just digging in the dirt!).

We had a wonderful MEA weekend spending time with family. Uncle Josh traveled up north and got to spend lots of time with Caleb, and we also celebrated my dad’s birthday. It was a laid-back weekend, which means I didn’t get nearly as much housework done as I had hoped, but quality time with family is much more important!

Video Update

So we tried many times to upload the video of Caleb walking.  We tried many different versions, but no success, so for now you'll have to go to my facebook to see the video.  If you have any tips, let us know!

First Steps!

On Friday evening Caleb took his first steps!  It was kind of unfortunate timing since Joel and I didn't get to see him all weekend as we were at Trout with the Jr. Highers, but it was still very exciting!  We came home after school and had a few kids hanging around until we left for Trout.  Mom was saying that she thought he was going to walk very soon.  So just a few minutes before we left, mom sat down on the living room floor with Caleb across from me and held him out to me.  He took a couple of steps and fell right into my arms!  I yelled for Joel to come quick, so he did, followed by all seven of the kids that were hanging around, and we all watched him do that a couple more times!  It was so cool!  I don't think he really realized what he was doing.  So then of course Joel broke out the video camera real quick and we got a short clip of him taking those unsteady steps.  Hopefully we'll be able to post that here very soon!  

Needless to say, it was difficult to leave him for a whole weekend at such an exciting time, but we made it through.  I thought about him a lot.  At chapel on Sunday morning the speaker used the picture of a child learning to walk to his parents' extended arms as a parallel to our walk as Christians. After explaining how the child continues to get back up after each fall and look to a parent for encouragement and assistance, she showed a video of a bunch of different kids learning to walk.  Yeah, so that was pretty hard!  It's a good thing I got to see Caleb today!   

Our weekend went very well.  The kids opened up and we had many great discussions about sin in our lives and how to ask God to help us get rid of it.  We ate lots of good food and played really fun games.  It was a pretty wet weekend, but the rain held off during most of free time on Saturday, so we were able to go on the zipline.  As expected on these weekends with youth, we didn't get much sleep, so that's what I'm going to do now!

More about this week...

This week has been pretty crazy getting ready to leave for Trout tonight, hosting our Bible Study group at our house on Thursday night, and teaching youth group Wednesday night.  But what really threw me off was Joel's back issue.  Last Saturday Joel removed the window-unit air conditioner from our front window, and in the process did something to his back.  Sunday morning while playing piano he felt somewhat uncomfortable, and by the afternoon was in some pain.  Monday and Tuesday he did his best to get through school, but was not doing well at all.  He basically came home and didn't move from the couch all night because he hurt so much.  So Wednesday he stayed home and rested his back while getting a bunch of grading done.  As we taught youth group Wednesday night, he realized the day of rest hadn't made his back any different.  So Thursday he stayed home again and got an appointment with our doctor.  He was prescribed three drugs - an anti-inflammatory, a muscle relaxant, and Vicodin.  Needless to say, he feels much better and is in school today.  Praise the Lord that he's able to still go to Trout tonight and not be completely miserable!  Please pray that the Lord would speak to the kids this weekend and that their hearts would be open.  We have had many deep questions coming from our kids lately, so it is obvious they are searching for truth.  May God do a great work in them and us as well!  Have a great weekend!

A Busy Week

Life is busy, but good for our family of three.  I'm excited to begin this blog and share life with family and friends.  It's a fun way to stay connected and share new things about Caleb.  Recently he learned to crawl, and he's so proud of how independent he is now.  He uses crawling to get himself to some kind of furniture where he can pull himself up to walk.  He really cruises along the coffee table and the couch quickly.  He loves to feed himself finger foods or his bottle.  Although he's so active that he rarely sits down to drink a whole bottle!  He chases the cat and head butts her.  He talks, sings, and dances.  There are so many times that I look at him and think, "How did he learn to do that?"  It's just so amazing how God created our minds to learn such a large volume of information and then use it to do new things.  Another one of Caleb's favorites:  lift-the-flap books.  He has a few small books with animals under the flaps, and today he sat and looked at one page in one of those books for a few minutes on his own.  He just kept lifting the flap, and putting it back down.  It's amazing to see a smart little person learning about books who just six months ago only knew how to eat, sleep, and poop!  It's so incredible to watch that development.

So our week has been busy as usual.  Tuesday night we had our Bible Study group over for a game night, tonight was youth group, and Friday we leave for the Quest retreat at Trout.  I'm excited to have a weekend to focus only on study and prayer.  There are so many distractions at home, and frankly, it's tough to find quality time to spend with the Lord with a toddler running around!  I'm also praying that our youth will open their hearts to what God has for them this weekend.  But we'll definitely miss Caleb - it will be the first time we'll be away from him for two nights.  I will miss seeing his precious peaceful face as he falls asleep and hearing his high-pitched cooing as he plays.  Of course, he'll have a wonderful time being spoiled by grandparents!