I know, I know

I am so behind in posting. We had a wonderful Christmas with the girls and our families. They (especially Fern) had so much fun the entire month of Dec. Unfortunately we had computer problems and half of our Christmas pictures had already been downloaded on it. We should get it back with in the next week and then I can try to catch up. We didn't get to all of our advent activities, unfortunately, but I hope we can catch up.

Fern had trigger thumb release surgery on New Years Eve and she has done great with the surgery, wearing the cast and everything. She gets it off on Friday, I think I will be as happy as she will be. It has been a bit of a pain trying to bathe her with it on.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years, ours was all we had hoped it would be.

Oh yeah, one more thing, my mom got engaged on New Years Day! Guess we will be busy planning wedding for the next couple of months...

More Advent Activities

Here are a few more pics of our Christmas activities...

Dec 11- Hang Christmas Stockings (forgot to get a picture of this)

Dec 12- Botanical Garden Lights




Dec 13- Shop for Mommy's stocking stuffers (it's a surprise so I don't have pictures...)

Dec 14- Make a Gingerbread House

Please Pray!

Our friend Amanda has been waiting for her daughter Flor to come home for over a year now. Please join us in praying that the Guatemalan government would let her out of PGN NOW! Flor's b'day is coming soon and I know Amanda would have loved to celebrate her 4th b'day at home, in Alabama. When you think of it, please say a little prayer that she will be home soon!

December 10th

Today we made cookies for our church staff.













Fern really enjoyed helping make the cookies and then eating them when we took them out of the oven.

BUT this is what happened when she realized we were leaving the cookies at church and we weren't staying. I'm not sure if it was leaving the cookies or leaving church that made her cry, but she did just that for about 15 minutes.
I guess she doens't quite understand the giving part...

Advent Conspiracy

Our church has been doing a sermon series called Advent Conspiracy. The goal is to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. The Brook, as a church is collecting a special offering for Living Water International. Our small group collected money to send to Amor del Nino. This is the home Fern lived in before she came home to us. We wanted to do something special as a family. One thing we decided is that we want to teach our children the reason we celebrate Christmas, Jesus' birth, and not just about getting presents. We started out with an advent calendar that contains different activities for us to do as a family. Here are the first 9 days of December...



12/1- Color a picture for Nana & Pa




12/2- Color a picture for Abby & Bob


12/3- Color a picture for Papa Joe & Gran









12/4- Taken canned food to the WAFF Can-A-Thon,


12/5-Toys for Tots

12/6- Christmas Parade-it wasn't that great so no pics...

12/7- Visit to Santa-Have to scan it in...

12/8- Set out our nativity
















12/9- Watched a Christmas movie together

I'll post more pictures when I upload them from the camera. Fern is so excited to open the boxes each day.

Trying to catch up...

I can't believe how fast time is flying! Let's see, we went to Nashville a couple of weeks ago, because I had the bright idea that we should go see the ICE display at Opry. While it was really cool, it was really COLD and a really stupid idea to take the kids. Here's a few pics of that adventure...


























As you can see, Bill was the only one having fun.









The girls were only happy when we were in the warmth of the mall.

growing girls...

I know I haven't posted much recently, we have been busy, busy...
The girls are getting so big.

Rosa is trying to walk. She can take a couple of steps but loses her confidence and falls. She loves to do anything Fern is doing. She has started trying to feed herself with a spoon/fork and does a pretty good job at it. She isn't talking a lot but her vocabulary contains the words: dada, kitty, boo, and she is trying really hard to say Fern. No mama yet, but that'll come soon and NEVER stop! We are working on giving up the bottle. She does OK until bedtime and then she wants it. She is growing out of 12 mo clothes and into 18mo, the same size Fern wears, and a 3.5 shoe. She has been very healthy since I have had her, but did end up with a double ear infection last week. After a round of antibiotics, she is feeling much better. I think she is getting more teeth, she keeps her finger in her mouth all the time. Overall she is a very happy baby, definitely a mama's girl. She loves to eat, anything and is adjusting to regular milk. We are so blessed to have her.

Fern is so smart! She has almost stopped speaking Spanish, which makes me sad. We are working on learning her colors, she knows rojo (that's red to us English speakers), but everything is rojo... She can count to 10 in both English and Spanish. She LOVES books! She has potty books-that's the books she reads while sitting on the potty- and she also sleeps with books. I am excited that she loves books so much. I am not a bog reader but Bill is so hopefully she will be too. She also loves to color and play with stickers. Her baby occupies a lot of her time, putting the diaper on, taking it off and scolding the baby that she should have gone pee-pee potty. And speaking of potty, she is basically potty trained. We still have accidents, but most days she ends up with dry pants at the end of the day. I actually put real underwear on her today, just to see how it goes. I will probably put the pull-up (do you know how expensive those are?)back on before we go out tonight, but she is doing great. Fern keeps us laughing. We love her so much and are so happy that God gave her to us!



Fern got bit in the nursery at church last week, here's her battle scar...




Rosa really gets into eating her cheerios...