2012 Birthdays

Justin turned four in January, and Noah turned two today! We are blessed to have amazing friends and family to celebrate with... here are a few of the highlights (many more pictures on facebook)...

 

Justin loves Curious George, so that was the theme of his birthday this year.  We started the celebration with monkey cupcakes with his class at preschool.

 Then we had a party at home with friends from church...

 Justin and his friends had fun reading books, coloring pictures of George, throwing banana bean bags in the monkey's mouth, and even playing a little animal charades game!

And since monkeys love bananas, we had banana splits and fruit juice at the party. :)

We celebrated Noah's birthday a few weeks early because his grandparent's were here!!!  It was so special having Papa Dwayne and Grandma Jill with us for a birthday party... the first time since Justin was born 4 1/2 years ago. :)  (And as I write this, I realize we have no pictures of them with Noah at the party... but we have lots of other pictures from their time with us.)  We invited a few of Noah's friends over for some snacks, cupcakes, and lots of playtime with bubbles, balloons, and balls... needless to say, the boys (and their Dads) had tons of fun!

Of course, Justin was eager to help Noah open his presents. :)

Yay for birthdays and friends and family!

Catching up... Easter pics!

Well, now that it's summer vacation, and we have more permanent help in the church office (praise God - huge answer to prayer!), it's time for me to catch up on life... and that means catching up on our blog. :)  We love the new memories we get to make with the boys all the time, but especially on holidays and special days, so here are a few pics from Easter a couple months ago...

 Justin and I made resurrection rolls for the first time!  If you haven't heard of these, it's basically a crescent roll wrapped around a marshmallow.  The marshmallow represents Jesus, and the roll is the tomb.  After you bake the rolls the marshmallow is gone - He is risen! :)  We had so much fun making them together... in fact just a couple weeks ago, Justin asked if we could make them again. ;)

We don't have access to already-prepared crescent roll dough, so we had to make it from scratch... and it turned out okay!

We decided to make our rolls two different ways... First we dipped the marshmallow in butter, cinnamon and sugar, and then wrapped the roll around it. 

With the other half, we  put the marshmallow in the roll and dipped the roll in butter, cinnamon, and sugar... I think we liked the 2nd version better. 

 the finished results!

 Easter Sunday morning started out with a little reading time...

and then attempted pictures on the front porch... with lots of sun in the eyes! 

 Easter Sunday is always a special service at church, but this year was extra special when 10 people got baptized!  And, I don't have any pictures of that, but I have pictures of the super fun Easter picnic and egg hunt that afternoon...

 our wonderful neighbors joined us for the 3rd year in a row!

 So, even though it's a little late, Happy Easter!  He is risen indeed!

No words...

Sometimes you are so overwhelmed by God's goodness and grace, that there are just no words... Today is Noah's birthday - our baby is now officially two!  We had a party a few weeks ago (post and pictures coming soon), so today was just a pretty normal day.  The last couple months and even the last few days have been pretty rough, things we can't really talk about, and it's easy to get discouraged and let your focus stray.  And today was one of those days... but then our neighbors came over this afternoon with a present for Noah and a beautiful home-made birthday cake... and I am simply overwhelmed by the blessings of our amazing God.  Nami-san remembered it was Noah's birthday, and she spent her entire morning making him an amazing cake (the kind I would never even try;) ).  It's like God is reminding us, "I've got this... I've got everything.  Things might be rough, but remember how I led you here to Okinawa and to this specific apartment... "  God has surrounded us by people who love and support us, and today is a day when I feel overwhelmed by his beauty in our lives.  I pray that we can be reminders of his beauty and grace to the people he brings into our lives, just like Nami-san was to us today.