Lost at Sea

We've had so many Christmases and we already had more toys than we knew what to do with, so we're swimming in a sea of toys.

We were so blessed by the people we spent time with during Christmas and we received some great gifts too! Some of the gifts we opened were:

White Christmas morning!

Globe

Camera

Musical Noah's Ark Piano

Tricycle

Walking toy

books

A very special ring from Aunt Grace (not technically a Christmas present)

Several cookbooks

and 2 disney princess tea sets!

Rachel also REALLY enjoyed playing with Uncle Robby and Aunt Deidra's doggies! It was very hard to get her to pay attention to other things besides the doggies, including going to sleep.

Left Behind

On Christmas Day I lost my dear Aunt Grace who fought a losing battle with cancer. She left behind a loving husband and 12 year old son. There's no doubt that they are grieving and may have a tough time coping in the next several months and I can't imagine what Christmas will be like next year for them, but we'll definitely be praying for them in the coming days. Thankfully she was a believer and is in heaven with my brother, enjoying the presence of God. We are thankful for the lessons she taught us and for sharing her life with us. We were blessed by her.

After David died, Grace's son (then 6 yrs old) said that David was getting to go to church with Jesus that early Sunday morning. It put a smile on our sad faces that day. A similar thing was said of Grace while we were there, saying she got to celebrate Jesus' birthday with Him instead of here on earth.

All my life my mom has called me Grace by mistake over and over again. It's just fitting that while we were in town for her memorial service, mom called me Grace. I turned around and said, "I'm not Grace." Most of me hopes that she'll keep calling me Grace so that in that moment I will be able to remember her life and smile.

Little Tid Bits

There are just a few things that the girls are doing that are new and sometimes exciting:

Rachel has said lots of words but for those words with 2 or more syllables she only used the first one. This was fairly difficult to try to figure out what she was saying. Luckily in the past few days she has started to use 2 syllables for the words that have at least 2 syllables. Toby now actually sounds like Toby.

Rachel's new favorite food is an orange. I've bought the small oranges called cuties recently, so she asks for them often.

Rebekah is crawling everywhere and pulls up on anything she can find, even if it's just Rachel's stool. So far, she is the shorty of the family coming in somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile for height. She has 7 teeth and had 3 new teeth within 9 days (I think). She learned to wave at people, although she waves mostly at things she likes (i.e. the Christmas tree). She's even able to wave with both hands now.

In the last week Rebekah has eaten several new things. I gave her some of my orange the other day. She's also eaten a few crackers on her own. I also bought the Gerber veggie puffs to see if we could have a snack for her to eat on her own. I probably won't buy them again, but it was a good food to begin experimenting what she can eat by herself.

We are getting ready for Christmas and Rachel is excited. She likes her ornament and each ornament belongs to someone. We are hoping for a good Christmas with our families, though we are unsure of what it will bring. Please pray for my aunt who is battling cancer and it seems to be spreading and she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Thursday.

Late night phone calls

...or should I say early morning phone calls. The past 2 mornings and Wednesday afternoon, I have been receiving a phone call for a job offer for some stranger. The automated voice says they are calling to offer a job for Tari (long i) Laymoan? Knowing that this isn't my name I push 2 to have them not call me again today. Well, 5 AM Thursday, we get a call from the same number and a weird recording on the voicemail. They call at 6 AM again and I have my phone this time, so I push 2 to not call again.

Friday morning 5 AM....another call! I almost make it to the phone this time and after I listen to the voicemail, I begin to wonder...

Are these calls really for me and could it be the Aesop system for substitutes? By 6AM we figure out that, yes, it's really MY name they are saying. Our only conundrum is that I don't have knowledge of what my password is to prevent the 5 AM phone calls. After a couple phone calls, I found out that I'm supposed to have this said information in an email I was expecting but never received. This information is apparently floating out in cyber space somewhere! Let's just hope that I can get this straightened out so I don't have to be awakened at 5 AM every morning. Some of us need our sleep!

For those of you who don't know, I have been going through orientation and waiting to become a substitute nurse for the school district Jeff works for. Apparently, I've succeeded and am in their substitute system, but boy would I like to stop getting strange phone calls early in the morning.