Daisy Grace

We would like to announce the arrival of our new sweet baby girl...

Daisy Grace!

Daisy was born on Monday, April 25 at 1:51 pm. She weighed 6 lbs 8 oz and she is 19 1/2 inches long. Everything went very well and we are praising God for another beautiful baby! More pictures to be posted soon!

Getting ready...

Well, we are getting ready to welcome our new baby girl! Lord willing, we will go into the hospital on Sunday evening (April 24th) and be induced...she should hopefully be born on Monday morning! I cannot believe it is time already. We are all so excited to meet her! So...to prepare we started a couple of weeks ago by moving Layla into Kaine and Halle's bedroom. Yes, I know this makes their bedroom very crowded! But they are all loving being together:) I took this picture of the 3 of them all sleeping last night...can you see all of them? So anyway, that is going well.

And baby girl's room is ready to go! By the way, the black things on the shelf are 5 picture frames all turned around backwards...if you turn them around they spell the baby's name:) So there is a good hint...her name has 5 letters!
So the next time I post anything on here, we will probably have our 4th baby:) We are so thankful God has blessed us with these 4 kiddos!

Have a blessed Easter weekend!!

lately...

So we have decided to start phasing out Halle's naps...it's not going so well, as you can see!

We were thinking (hoping) that by not giving Halle naps, she might sleep in more in the mornings. But, that's not working:) She still loves to get up before 7:00! Not cool. And as you can see from the above picture, she still definitely requires the occasional nap! This was really so cute, she just fell asleep right at the supper table! But wow, that was a terrible time for her to fall asleep--it was soooo hard to wake her back up!

Also, we are just loving the outdoors! Although it is kind of cold lately, we all have spring fever and we have been spending lots of time outside!! Kaine and Halle are loving it, as you can see:)

And Layla is just ecstatic to be outside. I doubt she remembers much from last summer, so this is like a whole new world for her! The cold doesn't seem to bother her at all:)

And today, I was getting my hair cut and we decided to have Halle's hair trimmed, to make it a little more even...her first haircut!! She held still and she was so cute. She said now she is like a mommy, because she got her hair cut:)

Here is the "after" picture...hard to tell much of a difference, but it looks more even and healthy now! What a cutie!!

Hope you are all enjoying the somewhat nicer weather! Have a good rest of the month...I can't believe it is almost April!!!

celebrating halle:)

We had a good time celebrating Halle's third birthday! I thought I'd post some of the festivities:)

We were off duty a couple of days before Halle's actual birthday, so we decided to go to McDonald's as a family to celebrate. We considered Chuck E. Cheese, but it had been less than 2 months since we went there for Kaine's bday...we decided to do something a little less chaotic:) Our kids really love McDonald's!! (and actually, confession...so do I!)

Here is Halle with a birthday french fry:) She looooooves french fries, and Kaine always goes for the apple fries! Go figure.

they are getting to be such good friends!

And this little sweetie is just a content little girl:)

A group shot...a pretty good picture minus Halle's extremely cheesy smile:) But actually, I like it, I think it's still a good picture!

Here is Halle, soooo excited after just going down the slide ALL BY HERSELF! If you know Halle well, you know what a major feat this was. See the next picture, to see what this slide looked like. She is usually terrified about stuff like this, but she was so brave! And of course, once she went down it she didn't want to stop!

I still can't believe she went down this thing by herself!

Layla was loving the playplace, too! Nathan is such a good dad...he took Layla through the tunnels and slides numerous times! Such a difference than all the other parents who are always in the playplace (the ones who just let their kids go and spend the whole time texting?) Of course, I also just sit and watch (not text) but I have a pretty good excuse since I am 8 months pregnant:) It sounds almost impossible to navigate through those tunnels!

So then we were on duty on Halle's actual birthday. We celebrated her birthday with our residents, and my parents and Jill and Ivy were able to come up, too! (Aaron had worship practice at church). And Nathan's parents were visiting Jenna in Magdalena. But anyway, we had a good evening! Here is Halle, looking very excited about her My Little Pony cake:)

Nathan and the residents made Halle a really cute pinata! Halle took a couple of swings at it and then wanted Kaine to finish the job:)

Here she is, wearing the pinata!

We gave Halle a bunch of headbands with interchangeable flowers. Kaine wanted to try one on so bad, so I let him do it ninja-style:)

And here is Layla modeling one:)

So then, about a week later, we went to my parents' house to celebrate Halle and my dad's birthdays. Here is our family playing Halle's favorite game as of late...Farmer in the Dell. She just loves it!

Halle holding up a really cute dress from my parents

And blowing out candles with my dad:)

Wow, that ended up being a long post! We had fun celebrating with Halle. Happy Birthday, again, Halle! We love you!

Happy Birthday to Halle!!

Our sweet little Halle Rae is 3 years old today! Halle is such a joy to have in our family. She has so much personality it is amazing! She is such a sweetheart, a girlie-girl, and so affectionate...and she has a very strong will to go along with it all:) We pray that God will use that for good--we know she could do amazing things for Him someday!

Here is Halle with her birthday breakfast...pink cream of wheat:)

Such a sweetie!

We love you so much, Halle Rae-Rae! We thank God for allowing us to have you as our daughter. We hope you have a very Happy Birthday!

A new direction

Wow, it is really hard to know how to even begin this post! I'll just start by announcing that God is leading our family in a new (very new) direction! This past year we have felt convicted and led to a different type of ministry. To start, here are some statistics:

-There are approximately 7 billion people on earth

-There are approx. 16,000 people groups on earth

(a people group consists of people who share the same language and culture. They can communicate effectively amongst themselves).

-About 6,800 of these people groups are considered "unreached" by the gospel. This means that there is either no church or not a strong enough church for evangelism to happen. There are over 2 billion people in this category!

-Among these unreached people groups, there are still 1,568 that are "unengaged." This means that there is no scripture, no church, no missionaries, and no known Christians in that group.

-632 of these unengaged groups consist of at least 50,000 people!

Here is a powerful 3-minute video about these people.

(disclaimer: we love short-term mission trips and have been very blessed by them!)

In Matthew 28:19, Jesus gives a command:

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"

(note: "nations" does not refer to a political state, but it is from the Greek word 'ethnos', which refers to people groups")

Over the past 6 years, God has been working in our hearts. Our role in this Great Commission has been to send others to the unreached. However, this past year God has directed us to actually go! Surprise! We still can't believe it:) We have spent this past year praying about it and feel certain this is the direction God wants for us. We are excited about it but at the same time we feel inadequate for this type of work. It has been hard at times, at least for me, with struggling with worry (about our kids, safety, etc)...but I am reminded that God is sovereign! No matter what happens, He is in charge, everything that He does is good and right, and I need to trust Him in this. All He is asking us to do is just trust Him and obey Him. If we can trust God to save us from our sins, we can certainly trust Him with the things of this life! Another thing that has helped us so much is to try and keep an eternal perspective. Thinking about all of the souls that are lost in darkness and headed for hell, and thinking about men refusing God the glory that He deserves. Jesus paid the price for their sins and He deserves their allegiance and worship!

So, for this kind of work lots of training is needed! We will start with 2 years of Bible training, followed by 2 years of Missionary training (to teach us to learn a new language, make a written alphabet, translate Scripture, install solar panels, etc). After that we will head to the mission field, which will probably be somewhere in the 10/40 window. The ultimate goal is to learn the people's language, translate Scripture, teach the Gospel, plant a church, raise up leadership, and send out evangelists to reach their own people. Altogether, this will probably take 25-30 years. We plan to start this August! Prayers are appreciated (and that is a huge understatement!!) More details to come (I will try to update this blog a little more often than what I have been!).

We love you all! To God be the glory!!

A fun family trip!

For Christmas this year, Nathan's parents decided to take us on a family trip to Brown County, which is a state park with an extremely cool pool! It was a good idea...thanks, mom and dad! We had a really great time (especially our kids--they just loved all the swimming!) Anyway, the hotel at Brown County recently renovated their pool area, and installed an amazing indoor water park-type pool area. It had a water slide, which was actually really fun--way faster than I would have guessed. It also had a lazy-river type of pool, and a zero-entry pool area that was perfect for Layla. She loved being able to just walk around in the water, and I loved the fact that I didn't have to worry about her falling off a step, or falling into deep water! (We still had to watch her very closely, though--the girl is fearless!)

A not-so-great picture of the pool area (our camera is a little dark). You can get the idea, though!

Layla's first time in the water...she was loving it!

A cute picture of our 3 kiddos:)

Layla loved the freedom of running down the halls of the hotel! She is such a cute little walker:)

Here is the water slide, which by far was our kids' favorite part of the pool...especially Kaine's! On the second day that we were there, he decided to try out a life jacket, and he was brave enough to go down the slide all by himself! He was just loving it. Right when he would get down the slide, he would climb out of the pool and run right back up the stairs. It was so cute!

With the life jacket, Kaine was swimming all over the place:)

Nathan getting Kaine ready to go...

Okay. This is not the most attractive picture of Layla, I know:) But she is just so funny...this is her new "face." She seriously makes it all the time! It is mostly when she is unhappy about something, even something so small. A lot of times, when Layla sees me she will make this face because she wants me (she is becoming somewhat of a mommy's girl). So anyway, when we were at the pool, a stranger would comment on how cute Layla is, etc...and Layla would just look at them and give them this face! It was embarrassing--I would just have to apologize and tell the person that sorry, this is the new face she makes all the time! Lately, though, I think she just makes the face because she knows it makes us laugh:) Such a funny girl!

I think this is SUCH a great picture of Nathan and Halle!

Grandpa Dave loved taking our kids down the slide, too!

A funny pic of Nathan and Halle...they both have crazy looks on their faces (typical for both!)

Layla getting splashed (by herself, probably! She loves hitting the water and always seems surprised when the water hits he face:) )

So...such a great time! Thanks so much, mom and dad...it was a great Christmas present!