Trip to the Fallons'

This time we managed to take a trip to the Fallons' AND get some photos of it! ;)  Here are a few pics from our great time with great friends.

Every Good Gift

I find it a joy to give gifts to my family.  For months, Noah had been asking if he could have a hat like Robin Hood's. (Think a felt hat with a feather in it).  Earlier this month I purchased a pattern and some felt, dusted off my sewing machine and brushed up on sewing basics (how do you clip a curve again?).  I then made a Robin Hood hat and did my best to make some shoes as well.  Here's a video of Noah opening that hat this evening.  He put it back on after this video and still hasn't taken it off. :)

On this day when gift-giving is central, I'm remembering the ultimate gift of sacrifice given by our Lord Jesus in coming to earth to die for us.  God is so good to us, and if I'm tempted to believe God doesn't love me, all I have to do is remember that He died for me.  Point proven.  In addition to this greatest gift of salvation from sin, God is so liberal in His gift-giving.  He has given me a husband who loves me, and a son who is such a joy among many, many others.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

For those that did not get our Christmas letter in the mail, it is either because I don't have your address, have the wrong address, or forgot to put your address on the envelope.  And yes, I did that.  For example, I'm pretty sure I mailed Matt and Jen's letter with only their names on the front of the envelope.  No return address, no mailing address.   Yeah.  That's floating around in Postage Land somewhere. :)

Anyway, here is our Christmas Letter and photo for those who wish to read it:

Christmas 2011

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits.” Ps 103:2

Dear           

We hope you are counting the Lord’s blessings in your life, and are reflecting on His great sacrifice of love for you.  Would you believe this is our tenth Christmas letter?  Josh and I can scarcely believe that we are celebrating ten years of marriage this Christmas season, but it’s true.  Several gray hairs, a lot of experience, and boatloads of God’s grace later, and here we are. J 

Josh’s work schedule doesn’t seem to change much from year to year, which is probably a good thing!  He is just as busy as ever with rehabbing houses and landlording, though this year I have seen him grow and change in his management skills.  On the home front, he has become an even better husband and father!  If Josh works on Saturdays he usually takes Noah along, and he displays such patience with Noah’s inquisitive ways.  It has been such a blessing to see him be a great dad. 

Joanna has rediscovered “free” time this year since Noah started preschool.  I now have 3 extra hours every morning with which to get my work accomplished.  This has afforded me an uninterrupted Bible-reading time, and piano practice time, in addition to time for the everyday errands and housework.  I had forgotten what it is like to meander through the grocery store thinking complete thoughts!  Parenting gets more challenging and humbling with each passing year, as I see just how far I have to go.  God has been working in my heart, ever stretching me and urging me to rely on His grace—it is sufficient! 

Noah, at four years old, is fully engaged in LIFE!  This boy constantly pleads, “Watch me do this!”  Weapons fascinate him (he’s a boy through and through), and it is remarkable to me how just about anything can be pretended into a sword or gun. J He is learning to read, which delights him to no end to find that he knows what something says.  We continue to teach him Bible memory verses each week, which he enjoys, and teach him about the Lord.  One of our prayers is that Noah would trust the Lord as his Savior, as that is his greatest need.

We have enjoyed seeing lots of friends and family this past year, and hope that we can visit with many more of you in 2012.  If you would like to keep up with what is going on in our lives, please feel free to visit our blog at:  http://aclayinthelife.blogspot.com/.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Anniversary Celebration

So what did we do for our anniversary?  We dropped Noah off at Matt and Jen's and went to a local dinner theatre!  The Alhambra Dinner Theatre was performing Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  So, see? We did find something that was somewhere between a ballet or a monster truck rally. :)

The food was outstanding, and the play was too.  We had been a little concerned that it wasn't going to be worth the money, but it totally was.  What a great way to spend our 10th wedding anniversary!  And here is a photo of what Josh got me to remember the evening by:

Two dozen roses and a gigantic card which reads:  "Happy Anniversary, Joanna my wife, my one and only.  Here's to 10 years and forever to follow.  Love, Josh."

Very special.

10 Years Ago

Josh and I have officially been married 10 years--how crazy is that!?

In honor of our 10 year anniversary, (Happy Anniversary, Josh!) I'd like to post some pictures from "back in the day"--our early years dating and married.  Bear with me; my technological skills are such that I have to take a photo of the photo, and then upload it.  Scanning is just not in my repertoire.  If you're trying to think of what to get me for Christmas, perhaps a basic computer class would be called for. :) 

Raise your hand if you think we looked young.

Happy Anniversary, Josh.  You were my best friend then, and you're my bestest friend now, if that's possible.  I love you so much. I'm so thankful the Lord brought us together.

Love,

Jo

Quickest Draw

I'm beginning to think Noah was born wearing a gun pouch. Or a sword sheath. Or an arrow quiver. Point is, he's rarely without some sort of weapon-holder on his hip these days.

Boys! :)

Life These Days

It's time for another book report of What's Going On Around Here. Exciting, I know!

We're getting ready to send out our 10th (tenth!) Christmas letter/photo, and soon to follow celebrate our 10th (tenth!!) wedding anniversary. Stay tuned for fun snapshots of Josh and me when we were twenty-one and the world was our oyster. Followed by pictures of us now, when we're thirty-one and we're realizing how much we still have to learn. :)

Side note about getting older: you know the haircut I posted about recently? Well, the hairdresser actually recommended that I start highlighting my hair to cover up my grays. I never thought I would hear those words. *sobs*

Whenever Noah hears us talk about life before he was born, he'll say "where was I?" but he doesn't understand the state of not existing. He totally doesn't get it. To him, there's only "when I was a baby" and "now". There was no "before". And then try explaining it to him....

I've been going through old blog posts with pictures and videos of Noah when he was a tiny tot, and it's just crazy to me how much a child changes in a few short years. Slow down!

Josh and I have been planning our anniversary celebration. For a while we talked about going away overnight, but (call us cheap) the cost of that started really adding up (to say nothing of the fact that we need to save lots of pennies for IVF Lord-willing next month!). I think instead of going away, we have decided to still take a kid-free night by ourselves--thank you Matt and Jen!--and just stay home. That way we'll probably be able to go out to a nicer restaurant, and maybe do something else in addition. I would love to go see a ballet, but Josh would probably rather be poked in the eye with a stick! Hee hee! It would be the equivalent of offering to take me to a monster truck rally. Not. Happening. Hopefully we can think of something we'd both like to do. :)

I picked up Noah from school today, and the teacher asked me to talk to him about his language and using appropriate language for school. I panicked, as visions of my four-year-old using 4-letter expletives popped into my head. As far as I know, he hasn't heard any of those yet. Hopefully I can keep it that way for a while! But anyway, the teacher said he had called someone a "poopy-head." Where do kids come up with this stuff? So Noah and I had to have a little discussion about that...

And now, for fun, a poll of sorts. Be honest: When you get Christmas letters from people in the mail, do you read them? Do you read it all? Skim it? Just pitch it? My curious mind wants to know...

Open Letter

It was inevitable. With my last haircut taking place way back in the foggy memories of August, it was either get my hair cut or cut it myself. If my hair grows much past my chin, I start looking like this, only not on purpose:

It's what my hair likes to do when left to itself. Don't get me wrong, she was great in her day, but it's just not me. So this morning I marched myself to the hair salon (the bajillionth one I've tried in 8 years of living here--Josh commented to me that he doesn't think I've seen the same hairstylist twice. He's almost right!) and came out with this:

*yawns* It's okay. But definitely not what I asked for. Again. AND! This time, the lady cutting it had the exact haircut I wanted, which I thought would make things super-easy. I basically told her, "I'll have what you have." And got something entirely different. Fine, acceptable, but different.

SO. I give you an open letter to my sister-in-law:

Dear Andrea,

You are the only person on earth who has ever understood what I wanted in a haircut and done it. Would you please convince your husband to move down here and set up shop in Jacksonville? Thank you soooooooo much!

Love,
Joanna

Funds Are In!!

Thank you to all who prayed for the second house to sell. IT DID!!! And amazingly enough, it actually closed a day early--yesterday!

This is nothing short of miraculous in my mind. If you are aware what kind of market we are in right now, you see how impressive it is for the Lord to provide (1) a buyer (2) with funds (3) who wants to buy our buildings! Praise the Lord! I don't think I should be surprised that all of this happened literally in days rather than months, but somehow I still am. :)

Now that the funds are in, we could move right ahead with IVF. Josh and I have decided to wait one more month though, and begin Lord-willing in January. December is already a busy month without adding IVF to the mix. Also, it would be better tax-wise to wait until the New Year (something that had never crossed my mind!), and Josh wants another month to prepare and keep praying for a natural miracle.

SO we keep praying and wait to see what the Lord has in store for us! Thank you for praying with us.