Thankful

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and have so much to be thankful for. We were blessed to be able to head to Abilene to spend time with my family and got a little relaxing time in and enjoyed yummy food!

Aunt Marie and Mom relaxing while the food finishes cooking

Mom and Emily

Our delicious buffet! Dean and Aunt Kack dishing up!Family Time!

Lizzie and her friend Tori joined in on the fun

My HUGE little brothers Benji and Matthew! Can't believe they're in High School!
Of course they had to start up the go-kart for after lunch ridesThankful for my 2 boys!

What's Thanksgiving without family game night? This was Pictionary, preceded by Apples to Apples, and then of course Settlers of Catan!

Colby always "ends up" gaming with my brothers!

Was a great weekend! So thankful for all of my family! Colby and I headed back to Ft. Worth on Saturday to go to the BU vs. Tech game at Cowboys Stadium with the Brownlees! It was so great to be able to spend time with them during the Thanksgiving weeked too! Baylor suprisingly played a great game and we had lots of fun seeing the ginormous stadium and running into friends as well.

Go Bears!

The man that tried to take our picture cut Austin off... :(

Loved seeing my good friends Laura and Celeste!!Us with Mace and Celeste! Yes they were famous on the Jumbo-tron! :)

Vision

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. We have always celebrated Advent in my family. As a child, we had an Advent fair and made miniature wreaths and ornaments, all to prepare for the Christmas season. Advent begins 4 Sundays before Christmas and is the period of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus. Growing up, we not only lit the candles each Sunday in church, but as a family on the Sunday evening after dinner we would light the candle, read scripture, and discuss as a family what it meant. This is something that Colby and I like to do to prepare our hearts for the true meaning of Christmas is and will do this when we have a family of our own someday.

So tonight we lit the candle of Vision, which signifies the Prophet's Candle. The scripture reference was Isaiah 9: 2, 6. "The people who walked in the darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
The prophets of old saw the need for the coming of Christ. Being close to God, the prophets looked at the world with more than their eyes; they looked with their faith, sense of justice and love. They saw life not only as it is, but as it should be, according to God. When the people strayed from God's way, the prophets expected that God would someday act in a special way to set things straight her on earth. The prophets spoke of a Messiah- someone who would come to save the people from wrongdoing. Today, we need the prophet's vision, seeing with the eyes of God.

I pray for vision for all of us, as we prepare to celebrate His birth and wait for His second coming, so that our eyes are fixed upon Him in spite of the busyness the Christmas season brings. I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving, I'll post those pictures eventually, just wanted to hit an important post first! Colby will slowly be bringing the Christmas stuff down from the attic, so here is the "bare bones" of our advent wreath and hopefully will be full of greenery by next week. I'm so excited to decorate for Christmas, that is also a "rule" in our house, that it can't be done until after Thanksgiving, so I'm looking forward to putting things up slowly this week! Blessings!

Fall Recap....before it's too late!

Well, I better recap the last month and a half or so before we dive into the holidays. I have a presentation tomorrow that I need to prepare for, and I always seem to get the most blogging done when I am supposed to be doing something else, ha! :)
Colby and I participated in Light the Night once again this year, which is a fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It was wet and rainy, but we still went out and had a good time for a great cause! Work lately has been particularly draining and my heart breaks for these families that are going through such awful diseases. We have lost several kiddos over the last few weeks and it makes me want to work harder in getting the word out toward researching a cure!

Fun Nurses I work with before the walk

...it was pouring at this point!

Blurry/rainy one of Colb and meMy Sommer!

Action shot of the walk. The red balloons are for participants, the white for survivors, and the gold are memorial balloons.Ran into one of my favorite families, with her white balloon! Praise Jesus!We then got to go to Midland and meet our sweet niece Callyn Joy, as you could tell by the previous posts, we had so much fun with her. She is truly a blessing from God. We wish we could push the pause button so she wouldn't do too much growing up while we are away, as it stinks living so far away from family. But Paige is doing a great job of posting pictures and keeping us informed. We can't wait to spend time with them at Christmas!

We could just sit and stare all weekend long!

Uncle Colby & Auntie Jo with our Callyn JoyCallyn with her AuntsThe boys with the sweet peaBirthday cake time with Mom & Dad!For Halloween at work, we dressed up as the 101 Dalmations. The kids loved it! All the nurses were the dalmations, our secretary was Cruella, and one of the case managers was Jasper the dog catcher. It was so fun to see all the kids in their costumes, pushing around their IV poles and participating in our Trick-or-Treat parade throughout the unit. They tie-dyed shirts with child life and got to have some fun in spite of being in the hospital.

Ashlee and me! Yes my badge hung from a dog collar, hehe!Then Halloween night, we had some friends over for dinner to hang out, carve pumpkins and play ping pong of course. We loved handing out candy to all the trick-or-treaters, and I was actually surprised how much our neighborhood has grown, as we ran out of candy!

We were on a time crunch, so we got out the power tools to assist with this thick pumpkin!Colby with the finishing touchesThe finished product, our mummy pumpkin!Daniel & Claire's peace hippy pumpkinThen Amy, Shelton & Mason came and spent the night at our house. We went out for fun Mexican food and it was great catching up. On Saturday, we volunteered at our church's Sharefest in the medical tent and got to spend more time with cutie bug Mason James! :)

We can't wait for the holidays! And more importantly this semester being over...ugh!

Rocky Dog!!

Kelly's Korner is hosting "Show us Your Pet" day and I couldn't let this one pass me by without posting a few pics of our Rocky! Rocky is our min pin + something and he has been in the family for over 4 years now, and Colby and I just love the joy he brings to our daily lives. He is constantly cracking us up when he plays with toys, chases after flies, and snuggles up to the best seat in the house. Rocky goes EVERYWHERE with us, he's such a good traveler and loves adventure! He is such a good dog and I attribute that mostly to Colby, who had him trained perfectly from the beginning. I love hearing comments from other people saying what a good dog he is, because we surely think so!

Here he is as a puppy when we first got him!

He always finds the best seat in the house! He's not allowed on the furniture at our house, so he was loving this at Grammy's house!Rocky is always a Rockstar for Halloween!Here he is on our hiking trip, yes he of course has his own backback to carry his own food, bowls, etc.!He also went on a 3-day kayak trip with us!

He's great with kids, we can't wait for him to be a big brother one of these days. This is sweet Dami with RockyHe's not a huge fan of water, but loves riding in the boat!He poses perfectly for family photos!Here's our Trophy-Dog! Ha! See what I mean about cracking us up!
He LOVES his daddy!Always helps him out with studying!
I love Rocky!!!

I think it is so amazing how God has created animals to be such great companions, he definitely is the most faithful dog and makes being at home when Colby is at the library so much better!