Christmas in AZ

We have been having a wonderful time here in Az celebrating Christmas with our family. It was so nice to have my aunt, uncle and cousins here from Florida, as well as Andrew's dad here to celebrate with us! We have been busy hiking, eating, watching movies and spending time together. Poor Weston has had a pretty bad cold most of the time and the stomach flu hit two of my cousins, but over all it has been wonderful :)

This is a pic of Christmas dinner: Roasted pork tenderloin with a blackberry sauce, brussel sprouts and green beans with walnuts and parmesan, sauteed carrots with sage and au gratin potatoes

First glove from daddy

sisters singing carols

papa Ray

with Omie on Christmas eve

playing geezer golf in the yard

some cousin lovin

Uncle Ronnie's famous burgers in the making

Ist Christmas

Before heading off to Arizona on Monday, we had a little Christmas of our own with Nonni this past Friday. Weston enjoyed the tissue paper from the gift bags and loved looking at the little Santas on his Christmas pjs! We had so much fun with our little guy and look forward to many more Christmas memories with him. One of our favorite gifts was a handwritten Christmas letter from Andrew which brought a tear to my and Nonni's eyes. We will save Weston's letter for him to read some day, but we all are so blessed by the treasure that we have in our Andrew!

First Bible! Very cool...it is like a sanctified comic book :)

Love the Santa's on my feet

Christmas goodies!

Happy boys!

We are excited to have our Nanni here with us for a fun weekend doing
an early Christmas and concert at Grace Church

Christmas Summarized

I am getting so excited for Christmas this year and it's not just because we will be on vacation with our family for 2 weeks! ( even though that is pretty exciting! ) I am also getting excited to celebrate the beautiful, yet true, story of God coming as a baby to save sinners. This year more than ever I am more aware of what God really did now that I have a baby boy of my own. What a humble way to enter His world, that He created with His mighty hand! A baby is so helpless and sometimes pitiful and it just blows my mind that our God would humble himself to the point of infancy just to show us His love.

In my time of reading today I came across this passage that summarizes Christmas for me in a such a neat way and I would never have expected to find it in the book of Titus!

Here it is: Titus 3:4-7

"But when the kindness of God our Saviour and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

More Thanksgiving fun

As promised here are more pics from our wonderful trip to Manteca and Weston's first Thanksgiving

Thanks Bob and Sue for having us over again this year for a fabulous feast!

The cousins are multiplying! Poor Weston doesn't have a sibling yet, but he doesn't seem to mind :)

The newbies to the group: Weston, Luke and Ava

Proud mommies!

5 months today!

It's tiring being this cute!