Lately.....

.....I haven't been keeping up my blog very well. Life has been very busy and I just haven't felt like sitting down to post an update. But, since I publish this blog into a scrapbook for our family at the end of every year, I decided I'd better stop procrastinating. So here are some of the things that have kept us busy lately:

1. We celebrated the fact that Ashton was named Student of the Month at school. I went in to eat lunch with him at his special awards ceremony.

2. We were once again reminded to be thankful for things we normally take for granted when we lost our power during a storm in November. The outage lasted for an entire day, so we all slept in the living room by the fire to keep warm. The same storm caused the tornado that swept through Washington, Illinois, demolishing many homes. We continue to pray for those affected, and are also amazed and thankful at God's mercy: there were not many people injured in the tornado because the majority of them were in church when it hit. Even though many homes were flattened, the tornado did not touch a single church in Washington. In fact, we heard of a story of two churches that are across the street from each other, and the tornado went right between them without damaging either one.

This photo shows Washington, IL before and after the tornado:

3. We are also praying for those affected by the typhoon in the Philippines. One Saturday in November, a group from our church got together and packaged over 100,000 meals to send to the Philippines.

4. Recently at the doctor, we learned that Jordan has a heart murmur. I'm assuming that it's not a big deal (it's probably similar to Ashton's), but tomorrow I will take him to get an echo cardiogram. 

5. Malia's big news is that she finally has a real tooth coming through in front! This is super exciting for her because when she was about 18 months old, she fell and knocked out her two front teeth. The dentist put fake ones in for her, but one of the roots died and she lost the tooth right around her 4th birthday. For three years, she has only had one tooth in front. Recently, she lost that one, too, and is delighted that a new one is growing in! So delighted, in fact, that I found this taped to the wall one day:

6. Back in November, we had our first snow of the season.

7. I attended a little Thanksgiving celebration in Malia's classroom at school. All of the kids stood in front of the class and told what they were most thankful for. Everyone said they were thankful for family and friends, except for Malia. What is she most thankful for? God and Jesus. Love my girl! :-)

8. We visited family in Illinois for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the only pictures I took the entire time are these:

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

9. Shana has been doing a science experiment to see how different types of music affect plants in a controlled environment. The plants exposed to classical music seem to be growing toward the music, while those exposed to rock/heavy metal seem to be growing away from the music. Just an interesting little tidbit for you.

10. Last night, we went with PawPaw and Grammy to the Lights Before Christmas at the zoo. 

And that's all for now! Have a great day!