Holiday Hiatus

Hopefully no one noticed that I hadn't been writing for the past few weeks because you were as busy as we were with the holidays. Some of it was good busy, some not so good busy. There were way too many hospital visits and subsequent funerals this holiday season.

I must confess, with Christmas Eve on Friday, Christmas day on Saturday, when Sunday came I was saying "Church again??" Can I say that since I'm not officially a pastor's wife yet?? Haha, don't tell the Sem.

Christmas without extended family was a little weird. Waking up Christmas morning kind of felt like just another day. But that's the rest of our lives, isn't it? John will ALWAYS have work Christmas Eve and Day :) Next year will be our last year "off" which we'll definitely take advantage of. So we're going to have to start making some of our own Christmas traditions so that even when family and friends are far away, it can still feel like a special day. I did make homemade taquitos and chimichangas! They were good, but NOT as good as the real stuff, which is what I'm used to having for my Christmases in Phoenix. And we spent the afternoon at the senior pastor's house with his family, which was a great time! So it wasn't like we were all alone on Christmas. It was just... different...

We had a wonderful visit during New Years from our dear friends Tim Nicole and Caden Vogel who are in Georgia now. The weather was perfect! It was freezing before, and it's been freezing since, but I had been putting up lots of prayers for decent beach weather, and God delivered! Of course, the water was waaaay too cold to swim in, but you'll notice from the pictures, that didn't seem to stop the boys...