Their Dad

To these little guys, he is Superman!!

Make New Friends

But keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.  We have some amazing friends.  Sometimes I truly marvel at the people God has allowed us to know and love and be loved by.  He is kind.    And though we are making great friends here in our new home, our old friends are still so precious and dear to us.  Maybe even more than when we lived near them.  My BFF from way back, is a shining treasure to me...a reminder of God's perfect love for me.  She's the one who really introduced me to Christ.   And there are my treasures from college and China too.  We have some "gold" friends from each stage of life!

And our kids have a few "gold friends" that we still talk about a lot.  See that candy jar?  It was a gift from some of our china friends when we were leaving.  They are in every little street shop in China, filled with lollipops for little ones.  The plan was to bring it home and eat the lollipops as a reminder of each other and our time together in China.  And we did.  The lollipops are gone, but we keep refilling it and remembering!  YAY for friends and candy!  To the golden friend who gave this to us,  do you still have yours????

Puppet Show

She even wore white puppeteer gloves.  Oh my!  

3 Performances

 (From Wiki)  Saint Lucia's Day (sometimes Lucy for short) is the Church feast day dedicated to Saint Lucy and is observed on the 13th of December. Its modern day celebration is generally associated with Sweden and Norway but is also observed in Denmark, Italy,Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Hungary, Malta, Bosnia, Bavaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Spain and St. Lucia, West Indies.  In the United States it is celebrated by little girls getting super creative with extra garland, sheets, and paper candles.  

HEHE. ok, I added that part!  Andy and I actually learned about this Nordic holiday while in China.  Each year, we loved visiting a local art gallery run by Nordic friends, sipping mulled wine (ok, I hated that part!) and watching this beautiful performance.  Lots of young women dressed in white led in procession signing Santa Lucia and other Christmas carols.  It was really beautiful.  

Grapes is creative.  We all know that.  And on St. Lucia's Day she gave us a really fun performance.  We made the costume and she came down the stairs to the hauntingly beautiful song Santa Lucia.  There are varying stories on the life of Santa Lucia, and it's not a holiday we normally celebrate.  But this year, creativity, the calender, and our warm memories of celebrating St. Lucia's day in China collided for a fun morning!  

 And a little brother can't be left out of the fun.  He came riding down the stairs on his horse to some Gene Autry tunes...but got a little stage fright half way down, as you can see!

And this little guy.  Well he's the star of the CUTE show.  We are loving our five month old! He's FUN and oh so cute!

Each one of these little ones is fearfully and wonderfully made.  Your works are wonderful God, I know that full well!  Psalm 139