Snow Day!

Here are some pictures of our beautiful snowfall. It is very uncommon for us to get snow like this in the wintertime. It tends to shut everything down but the kids love it!

Tony & Hannah and family.

Hannah is our 4th child and second girl. She is married to a very special guy and has been blessed with 3 beautiful kids. Hannah and I spend a lot of time together and share many similarities. Our life stories are the same in many ways and we are much different than we used to be. That is God working in us and blessing us despite who we are. Hannah is a friend and she inspires me to grow in my faith and become better than I am. I am glad that my girls are my friends as well as my daughters.

Tristan and the girls.

Tristan and his 2 daughters just happen to live next door to us so we see a lot of them. Tristan is a very gifted man who we know is destined for greater things! He is an Artist and can take most anything and make something beautiful from it. We pray that someday he will know how much God loves him and maybe love himself a little more. He has a very sensitive heart and feels things deeply. He was the best little boy and we are so thankful for him.

Pat & Brianna and the boys!

This is my daughter Brianna and her little family. She is my firstborn girl and has been a delight to my life from the start. Brianna has always been a high achiever and everything she does seems most excellent. Her life has not been without heartache and yet I know that God has been at work in her.....teaching her life lessons and building character. Like all of us know it is an ongoing process that never stops. One that is necessary if we are to become more like Him.

Joshua and Kathleen and the boys.

This is our oldest son Joshua who turned 30 a few days ago. How strange it is to think of him as a 30 year old. I can still remember so clearly the first time I held him as a tiny baby. He was a most wanted child and I was so happy to be his mom. I was only a girl myself at 19 and yet I had imagined him for so long! So much has happened in the intervening years. So many changes and so much joy and pain. But God has blessed Josh for his faithfulness by sending him a truly excellent wife and a healthy group of boys! And he is a very happy man!

Our Family

We celebrated Havalah's 17th birthday last week and since we were all together I thought we should get our annual Christmas picture. This is much easier said than done. The noise level during this process is quite high and it is no easy task to get 16 kids 10 and under to sit still and all look up at the same time. I know that eventually this will be an impossibility as I still have 8 kids to marry off and the grandchild count will be too high to even fit us all in the same room. Sometimes I wonder what we were thinking when we decided to take God's word literally when he says that children are a gift and the more the better!