Happy Fall

On Saturday we took a little trip down the road to Walden Farm for a quick fall outing. They have pumpkins, hayrides, corn mazes, and all kinds of activities for the kids. Gracie is still too small to enjoy most of these things, but it was fun just to get out of the house and get a few pictures.

It's been a while...

I think it's been over two months since I took the time to write a real post. Maybe that's a statement of priorities. Maybe it's just one of reality. It's been a couple of months filled with good times and bad times. Things we wanted to do and things we needed to do. Things at home and things away from home. Looking back, there are a lot of things that we probably wish had happened differently, or perhaps not at all. But that's just the way Life is!

Thankfully, we do still take some time to just sit around and be goofy...



And yes, we still take pictures of Gracie in the high chair...



We managed to make another trip to Sarasota, Florida, to visit Bettye and Jerry. Be careful... Bettye will tell you that she is my real mom. She is known as GB to Gracie. Kiki and I took our first vacation together in Sarasota 3 years ago, thanks to some great advice from Bettye. This was a bit of a reunion for us!





A lot of time was spent in the back yard in August and September. One day I hope to have the back yard as green as the front yard. But it has been a lot of work just to get it into good shape.




Where did the rest of September go? Work. Hours and hours of work. Most of it was in the office, sometimes late at night. Thankfully I'm able to work from home, but that can be a bad thing as well. It's been a long time since I've put in 60 hours in a week. A long time. It can't get much worse, right? That's what I thought, and then I put in 80 hours the next week. Let's hope that's done for a while.



Also in September, Kiki spent a week in Michigan with her family while her mom was recovering in the hospital after complications from her hip replacement surgery. Joye is doing much better now, although she has had a very difficult couple of months and still spends a couple of hours every day getting an infusion of antibiotics at a local clinic. Please pray for Joye as she continues to heal!

After things calmed down back at home, we were able to go to Michigan to camp with Kiki's family. This has become an annual trip, and this year with Gracie it became a completely different trip. Bless her... but we've learned already that for Gracie, change of scenery = bad news. She will have so much more fun on these trips when she's able to run around and play! We really missed having Sonny and Joye this year!




Finally, the ZOE conference was this past weekend. It's really the culmination of lots of work on the CD this summer, and lots of planning by Eric, Brandon, and others for the worship conference. As usual, it's a blessing to be part of such a special ministry. This weekend was such an incredible experience, especially Sunday morning at Otter Creek!



Busy? Yes. What would I change? Lots of things, if I had a choice. But that's the way Life works... you take the good with the bad, and you just go with it!

Oh yeah, and remember to take lots of pictures along the way to keep your family happy! I promise I'll do better! And here's a start...

Hello, world

Yes, we are still alive. I have not forgotten, but somehow have not been able to post in over a month. More to come...

Yes, we are still alive...

Just so you know, I am very aware of the fact that it has been several weeks since our last posting. It's been so long, the proud grandparents are calling and asking what happened to all of the pictures of Gracie!

So here's a nice picture... okay, I'll admit it -- I stole this picture from Christy's blog. Shame on me. Have we really gotten so busy that we not only fall behind on posting, but also have to resort to borrowing pictures from others to show off to our friends and families?

Gracie turned 8 months old this week. She is becoming more active and is trying really hard on strengthening her legs. It's cute when we stand her up and she holds on to the furniture. It's also cute when she spins herself around in circles on the floor while she plays with toys all around her. It's a little aggravating when she's on the changing table and she tries to turn over on her stomach and roll off the furniture!

We're starting a new photo series... "Gracie in Shopping Carts". Here's the latest from our trip to Target this week. We've got a couple from Publix. Where will Gracie be next? Who knows...

Gracie is sleeping without her swaddle, finally. We still put her in it like a sleeping bag sometimes so she doesn't get cold. But at least she is able to keep her arms free.

Here's a picture of Gracie twisting and turning to try and get to one of her toys. (Yes, we are those parents who put toys just out of her reach to try and get her to crawl.)

I've been spending a lot of time in the back yard over the past 3 weeks. I started a big project to level out the back yard a little bit. The yard is small enough as it is, so naturally we would prefer that the yard we have is in good shape so Gracie can enjoy it when she gets bigger. Thanks to Dad for helping me do some heavy lifting a few weeks ago.

Brandon has spent a lot of time in the studio finishing up the mixing on the new ZOE cd. He sent some samples earlier this week and it really does sound awesome! The CD should be out in September. I'm so glad I was able to be a part of it!

School has started everywhere around us, and Kiki is not there. So far, so good on the staying-at-home thing. She's actually managed to stay pretty busy during the week and doesn't seem to miss school at all.

And if you just can't get enough of Gracie, then here's a small video of her latest activities around the house!

Time Flies

Our little girl is growing up so fast!! I'm really not sure when we got to this point -- the point where Gracie just sits up to play with her toys. It's not even something that has happened in the past few days. The picture above was taken a couple of weekends ago when we had our life group over on Sunday night. We all stayed outside in the front yard, and Gracie just sat on her blanket in the grass and played with her toys.

One night last week Gracie and I had a night to ourselves at home. It was the first time that I actually thought about sitting her down in the floor. I'm still so used to having to put her in her chair, or put her swing, or put her on her play mat, or just carry her wherever I go. For the first time it occurred to me to just set her down in front of her toys. And she was fine!


Kiki and I were both in the nursery at church a couple of weeks ago. In this nursery the kids were a little older than Gracie -- all were walking. So naturally the toys there are a little bigger than what we have at home. We had Gracie with us for a few minutes since we were a little early, and we noticed that she really liked those toys. Skip forward a few days, and now we have some new toys at home for Gracie. She has definitely gotten out of the shake the rattle stage.


And finally... Gracie can sit in her high chair when we feed her!! She has developed a bad habit of looking down when you try to put the spoon in her mouth. But who cares!! (easy for me to say since I'm usually not the one feeding her)

Gracie is still working on learning to crawl. I give her a workout pretty often just trying to get her to learn to tuck her knees underneath her. I'd love to see her crawling soon, but I know Kiki is definitely not in a hurry.

We're so thrilled that our little girl is growing up so fast! Time really does fly by so fast!

Gracie is 7 months old!

Our precious little girl will be 7 months old on Friday! We had this picture made a couple of weeks ago. She had a rough day and didn't smile for any of these pictures, but we really love this one!

The Missing Pictures from Destin

On the last night of our vacation in Destin, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the pictures that I had taken from our trip. Particularly since we went through some trouble that night to get a couple of "family" shots. There's a very technical reason for what happened next, but I'll sum it up by saying that I goofed up and lost 2 days worth of pictures. Ugh!! That almost ruined the entire trip for me.

Since there's a very technical reason for what happened, there's also a very technical solution to this problem. And I'm sooooo happy that I was able to recover most of the pictures!

Kiki with the Thomas kids

The Pennas at Baytowne Wharf

Baytowne Wharf

Brandon and me -- I'm so glad we got to hang out together!

Beachside at the Sandestin resort -- the Hilton (where we stayed last year) was right next to us in this picture.

The beach area was not as busy here as it was on Saturday -- but it is still packed.

Gracie and Mommy on the beach at sunset.