Um, Facebook ate my blog...?

I know. I know.

I could give a whole lot of excuses for not blogging.

The school year starting.

Sickness(es).

Spending LOTS of extra time at the gym getting all good and healthy.

The Holiday Season.

Errrr...too much time on Facebook.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Or, I could just blog.

Okay, let's see now, where did we leave off? Oh, yeah, Halloween. Oops...wow! :)

Well, a few days after Halloween, Charlie's Oma and Opa FINALLY returned from their month & a half long road trip across the States. Boy, were they missed! And, boy, was Charlie excited when they came rolling up!

You can tell Charlie's thrilled to bits when his little shoulders go up like this:

Eating a banana and scrambled eggs (fresh from our hens!) for breakfast. This was a victorious morning for us. You may know that Charlie is picky. Actually, Charlie takes "pickiness" to a whole new level. To such an extreme that he's starting "food therapy" in February. Yes, our 4 year old has somewhat of an "eating disorder". Okay well, that would be kind of funny, but...

Anyways, this was the morning Charlie finally decided he would try eggs again (after not eating them for over a year) and he LIKED them! Yes!

We LOVE waking up to seeing this outside our bedroom window...

and this outside our living room window.

Oh, and I loved coming home to find Shawn and Charlie playing Monopoly. Charlie played for over an hour and loved it! The kid cracks me up.

The other day, I put the nativity scene out. As soon as Charlie saw it, he ran and grabbed his Playmobil nativity set and integrated it in.

There's something kind of cool about this, something deep. It's 11:00 pm on Christmas...and I can't put it into words right now. But can you see what I mean? Something about the "timelessness" of God and how He holds life and meaning to all ages and through all ages. And all the different styles and different interpretations, they really all add up to the same thing in the end.
I dunno, something like that. :)

A few weeks back, it was early in the morning and Shawn and I were in bed, and we heard Charlie get up and rummage around in his dresser for a while. I didn't think much of it, being still half-asleep. Well, a few minutes later, he comes running into our bedroom, cracking up, looking like this:

What a nut!

Doing some art...but FIRST, and most importantly, gotta organize all the markers by color!

One of Charlie's very most favorite birthday presents - the US Map puzzle. LOVES it. I frame it in for him by doing the edges, and he can put all the states in all by himself! I think this kid knows more states than I do now!

Well, it's late Christmas night. Both my boys are sleeping (poor Shawn's crashed on the couch - he is SICKER THAN A DOG). It was a nice Christmas (I'll post pics soon) even though we were all varying degrees of sick. It was so fun to watch Charlie open presents and get so excited and spend time playing with his sweet cousins.

Okay, before I go, I want to post one last picture. I pondered doing a post on just this wedding alone, but thought better of it - for the privacy of the family. This family has been through the unimaginable, absolute devastation. When I first heard the news about 2 yrs ago, something inside my own heart literally broke. I was in shock and cried, prayed and questioned God for weeks, and even months later, for my friend and her four children. Some reading this know the details of what I'm talking about, but most may not. All I can really say is that it would be like waking up to your worst nightmare. Ever. Ever. EVER.

But now...it has come to this. This beautiful picture of love, security, safety, happiness, healing. My heart was bursting at the seams with joy during this ceremony. I re-cried all those tears, but this time they were tears of happiness and relief! It is, to me, evidence that we should never lose hope, that there CAN be life again after utter tragedy. Out of oceans of tears and sorrow, springs life and love again. And I couldn't help but share it with you. How utterly magical is this?