Merry Christmas

from our family to yours!

Happy Birthday Jesus!  We're so glad you came to save us!!!

Isaiah 9:2

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

9 months meant the worst photo shoot yet

Oh and I'm a month behind :P

Sometimes you take what you can get in terms of pictures. 9 months marked Zoe starting to cruise, being completely off baby food, and using mama and dada pretty regularly, although not correctly..

It's been a while

So since our move, I haven't been able to post very often because our desktop wasn't hooked up to the internet and my father-in-law's desktop is FAR too slow.  Since moving in we've conquered quite a few projects.  We painted three rooms, my father-in-law and uncle were wonderful and put in laminate flooring for us (after the carpets wouldn't come clean no matter how hard I tried).  And we are still in the process of moving in.  Waiting for one more closet to be finished and hopefully that'll be done soon.

I have been trying to work on some Christmas gifts and have quite a few done but still have more to go.  Where does the time go?

And Zoe OH MY! She is getting so big.  I just love her to pieces.  She is now cruising along using furniture.  She is also SUPER fast at crawling.  Her favorite targets seem to be the downstairs bathroom and the cat food.  Yup constantly pulling her out of the cat food bowl. She still puts nearly EVERYTHING in her mouth.  I try to sweep the kitchen floor at least once a day.

Here are some of her 8 month pictures.

This is what happens when someone wants the camera herself. 

Some Essentials for me these days

Since becoming a parent I've been convicted about what I watch/listen to.  Aaron and I have been praying about this for a while now but haven't taken the step to actually throw things out yet.  We've started making progress though.  We want a strict guideline of what we will and will not accept in our home.

All of that to say, when Zoe was nursing ALL.THE.TIME.  I was watching a lot of TV unfortunately. And the things that I watched weren't something I wanted her to watch, Dancing with the Stars being one of them.  I danced ALOT growing up.  But lately all of the dances are super raunchy/sexual and the costumes are just AWFUL! PLEASE WEAR CLOTHING.  Ok, anyway.  It makes me so sad though because I love dance and love to watch dancing but I can't keep watching things that are so wrong.

So lately, I've found the LivingWaters ministry again.

OH BOY

Just what I needed.  They have a show called ON THE BOX.  It's on at 2:30 EST.  I really enjoy watching this show because it makes me excited to go out and do evangelism.  It's even given me the courage to talk to the JWs when they came by recently.  Praise God for hopefully planting some seed in their lives.

Also, if you've never seen Hell's Best Kept Secret, find it on youtube, NOW.  Listen to it.  It was so convicting the first two times I listened to it.  (I think I've watched it at least 3-4 times now).  Also Ray Comfort has a teaching called True and False Conversion. (It's in the right sidebar.) It really challenged me to test myself to see if I'm in the faith.  (2 Corinthians 13:5)

I've also been listening to a lot of Todd Friel from Wretched.tv.  You can listen to his show from 3-5 pm EST on Familynet.com/radio.  He really encourages/admonishes believers to really think about what we believe and to test the things that we hear.  SO GOOD.

And Paul Washer. . . oh man some of the best preaching I've EVER heard.  No joke.  His sermon on Biblical Womanhood was AMAZING!


PLEASE rake an hour & a half sometime to listen to it.  It was encouraging & convicting.

And this teaching on the maturity of young men was also very good I recommend it to everyone between 18-40 to listen to it.  It's not taught often.

Be encouraged friends.

7 Months Old

Please someone tell me how time goes by so quickly & we're already past the half-way mark in Zoe's first year???

She is the most precious little girl.  She still loves her time outside & LOVES the grass.

OH is that grass that I see?

I shall go check it out. 

And then I need to rip it out so I can eat, I mean investigate it.

See mom, I wasn't REALLY going to eat it.

She has also been crawling a lot so nothing is safe.  The cords are her motivator it seems as they are her favorite to crawl to.  She also unrolled the TP when I was in the shower. Oh & knocked over the trash.  SIGH so of course instead of fixing it, I took a picture on my cell to send to dada. Then I fixed it.

Zoe still loves her food, although yesterday at lunch she fell asleep in her high chair too precious. And baths? Oh she just loves to splash around!

She is quite the photogenic little thing now also. And man, she has a killer smile!

hmmmm this is nice but it's not grass

Peekaboo

HAHA this is fun

Look at me

lambs are funny

k, mom. all done

And then afterwards we came back inside and she has started sticking her tongue out all cute like so precious.

Oh and she's working on those two bottom teeth.  What a busy girl!!!

So thankful to the Lord for my beautiful little blessing. 

A family photoshoot

Thanks to my mom-in-love we did 6 month family photos last Sunday. We had planned to go to the Wintergreen gorge for pictures but it rained too much.  It was POURING so we decide to take photos inside at PSB.  It turned out to be a fun afternoon. 

And at the end we got some nice weather.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I'm so thankful lately for the Sabbaths that Aaron, Zoe & I have been enjoying the last few weeks.  We;ve been trying to use our Sundays to focus more on the Lord.  Jesus tells us to seek first His Kingdom & His righteousness.  That is what Aaron & I have been trying to do lately.  We've been listening to great sermons by Paul Washer (Recovering Biblical Womanhood, Do You Really Desire God?), RC Sproul, John Piper, John McArthur. 

We've watched Pilgram's Progress and a movie on Tyndale (translated the Bible into English & was burned at the stake for it) & Charles Spurgeon.  

We know that we are not saved by doing these things but because Christ saved us how could we not want to honor Him?

Hopefully in the future we will go out to handout tracts and engage people in conversation yet. 

6 Months WHAT??

Zoe Joy turned 6 months old on Saturday. I can't believe it!  She is incredibly precious, rolling over both ways, laughing a lot, working on her finer motor skills (she is AMAZING at pulling my hair: praying I go gray faster than I go bald =P), she is a great independent sitter but really doesn't like to be alone, she is working on crawling and can get herself on her knees and rocking instead of just baby push-ups (although she still does those), she loves the outdoors and her dada.

Can't tell which one I like better

She has started saying mama (sort of but I'm claiming it.) If she is asleep when dada gets home she wakes up at the sound of his voice.  So precious.  Shr's also been eating solid food for about 3 weeks now.  We DON'T like kiwi, Everything else has been acceptable.

Look at that wrinkled nose

Sometimes trying to crawl makes us mad.

LOL look at that face!

Happy half a year old birthday girl!!!

First Entry to Homemaker Olympics

My friend, Sally, is hosting a neat event called the Homemaker Olympics.  TODAY is the last day to enter the first category.  So be sure the check it out!

Homemaker Olympics

I've been wanting to do a project I saw on Pinterest with Zoe documenting her growth by taking her footprint every so often.  Well I missed the doing it when she was 4 months, but I decided I would do it at 6 months and one year.  

Here's what I did. 

Because it won't be completely done until Zoe is a year old.  Here is how it looks now.  It got messed up a bit because *someone* is super squirmy.  However as it dries I like it more & more.  It is not nearly opaque enough but I do like it.

Don't forget to get your entries in. 

5 Month Collages

Yay for turning 5 months old & for cute dresses

We had this outfit in 0-3 months & 6-9 Months so I had to do a then & now photo.

Significantly bigger snuggles now. 

This weekend we visited my family at their camper & Zoe had her first "bite" of watermelon.  She really just sucked some juice out.  And no, I haven't actually started her on baby food yet.  

5 Months

On June 28th, Zoe turned 5 months old!  Such a big beautiful girl!  Her grammie (quite the excellent photographer) took these pictures. (Later I'll post some that I took) :) Zoe has gotten sitting quite well, she laughs quite a bit, Does NOT care for the heat (although still quite an excellent baby), and loves to squeal (just ask everyone at church SIGH)  She really is the best baby though. And did I mention cute?

A huge Help

After my surgery, I wasn't allowed to lift Zoe for 2 weeks.  It was awful for me in my heart, because when she'd cry, I couldn't just fix it.  God has created mamas' hearts to want to fix their baby's cry. 

Although it was hard on me, it was so nice to have my family here to help.  My parents, sisters, nephews, my mom-in-love, a few friends and Aunt Sally helped a ton.  I'm so thankful  for their willingness to help during these times. 

Aunt Sally spent 5 days with us.  She became Aunt Sally Mattress because she'd allow Zoe to nap on her. :)