Awww, the joys of Christmas

We have been spreading some Christmas cheer over the last 2 weeks and wanted to share some pictures to illistrate.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas Program at church. The kids did great! We read the Christmas Story in Luke with some Christmas Carols in between, and some of the kids even memorized verses and recited them at the program. It was beautiful.

We had a great "Christmas Sunday" and a crazy, awesome snowball fight after clean up.

These are some pictures of the Caroling we did at 3 of the nursing homes in town. We actually had people call and ask us to come to their home, since they heard we were going to others. God is so great! The kids also did great there, singing in 4 dining rooms and 1 hallway they were so patient, not to mention cute.

We are so blessed by all of the opportunities for service that the Lord provides. We know he will continue to do so. We hope you all have a very blessed Christmas and New Year and are praying you see the love of God in everything you do and everywhere you go.

Baby, it's cold outside!

Wow, we are not used to this cold weather. When Tadd left for work this morning it was -2. That's Cold. I had to make a run for the heater switch and then get back under the down comforter, until it got into the human survival temperatures. Then we got up to start the day. Our poor dog can't stand not chasing the cars outside, but she has even been taking breaks to come in and warm up. With cold comes some pretty cool static stuff. Here is some sweet static caught on camera.


What? It's hard to make out?

Here's the extreme close up.

Elijah was feeling left out, so he wanted me to take a picture of him laughing at Kenya's hair, don't worry, he is not going into acting anytime soon.


Tadd's Parents are down this week enjoying the cold with us. They came down to celebrate Tadd's Birthday and hang out for a couple of days. We had a great Thanksgiving, as we hope you did too, we shared it with our friends the Bakers and Kenya took a picture of the post dinner activities. It's a little yellow and a little blurry, but I think you can get the jist.


We are still praying about the adoption/CPS thing. No changes as of yet. We will keep you updated on what the Lord does. We will be doing some Christmas Caroling and Christmas Programing in the next few weeks at church, so pray that everyone is blessed and no wise men or shepards are embarrased or injured. Thanks for the Love, we always feel it and appreciate it.

Please Pray!

We got a phone call from the adoption Social Worker this morning, saying all of our paperwork will expire in February and we will need to start the updating process now for it to be done in February. Otherwise we will not have a laps in our paperwork that could delay the kids being let into the US, even it the passports and visas get done on the Haiti side.

We had been hoping that since the adoption was finalized in Haiti and we are just waiting for passports and visas, we would not need our Homestudy (the socialworkers write up on our family) any longer and as such would not need to update it. Because our immigration papers are expiring also, we must have a current homestudy to turn in an update your immigration papers. The papers for Immigration are what lets Annecy and Isaiah come into the country.

We were hoping the kids would be home before February and we would not have to worry about updating all of theses things, mostly because the homestudy update is $500 and the immigration papers are $875. The money is not a big deal, as we know that the Lord has in the past and will continue to provide it when we need it. The thing we need prayer for is that when you update your homestudy you have to get a child abuse background check from CPS. As it stands now, CPS and I are not seeing eye to eye on my parenting skills, due to the kidnappind in March. Thus, it will be very difficult for a social worker to write a favorable homestudy.

We know the Lord knew all this would come, before we even started the adoption process. So we know he will use all of these impossibilites to show His power and for His Glory. We are not worried about the outcome. Even though it looks like a tough situation, those are the favorites for the Lord to show his power.

We need prayer that we would not try to medal in his plan and that we will accept the "Peace beyond Understanding" (Philipians 4:7) that He gives to those in need. We need to make a decision in the next couple of days about whether to update everything now or wait and see if the Lord will do a miracle and bring the kids home before february. All of the info. we have says this is an impossibility as the offices in Haiti shut down from Dec. 15 to Jan 15th for "Carnaval" and the passport office and visa office that we are waiting to get into in the next couple of weeks take about 4-6 weeks each. As I said though, these are the situations the Lord uses to show His power and use them for His Glory.

Please pray that we would get clear direction on whether to wait and see or to move forward and file the papers that need updating. Also that the Lord would provide the money to update paperwork, if that is what He tells us to do. We are so blessed to have so many Godly prayer warriors for us. We have seen numerous time in this adoption where the circumstances are very bleak, but after asking for prayer, the Lord does a Miricle and we are amazingly blessed. Thank you for interceeding on our kids behalf. We love you!

Here is a video of Annecy and one of Isaiah too. We got them in the mail last month. It is a generic video of the orphanage at first, but at the end of the first one Annecy says Hi and the end of the second one Isaiah says Hi. Hope you enjoy them.

All charged up!

We just got back from a long weekend in Bellingham. It was so nice to take some time to see old friends and hang out with family. We went to Tadd's little brother's wedding and we were actually able to sneak in a couple of great coffee dates with some people we love. We got to go to Calvary Lynden on Sunday and be so blessed to catch up on the great things going on there as well as get smothered with hugs and how are ya's.

Noth'in like a weekend like that to lift your spirits and get you all charged up to get back to the everyday. All that said, even though we were only away from home for a couple of days it is always so nice to come back. We tried to snap lots of photos so we could make up for lost time, as we haven't been very good about taking them lately. So here goes the commentaries.

We hit the weekend just right and made it to Tadd's oldest brother and his nephew's birthday party. You can see Kenya and Elijah are not shy about getting front and center even if it is not their birthday.

Next is the lovely bride and groom, the last scheffer male, finally giving into the inevitable. Congrats Andy!

This is Kenya, Elijah and Lakota (their cousin) dancing thier heart out, were not sure who the boy in the tux is but when you are danc'in like crazy, does it really matter?

This is the one, Kenya asked Daddy to dance, and apparently it got framed with a commentary by Tadd's two sisters.

We did meet with our lawyer on Saturday and all I can say is, please continue the prayer. She felt like we did not have a lot of options, as CPS is not the criminal justice system, so the only question the judge would really ask is, "was the law that CPS said you broke, really broken" obviously the answer is yes, the kids were left in a running vehicle which is against the law in Washington. Furthermore, there are not a lot of cases like ours to try to look back on and find loop holes, so it makes it a little harder to work around.

Needless to say. The lord isn't really interested in how doubtful the situation looks or what the facts say. He is above hopeless situations and he doesn't need the facts to line up. It just gives him more room to make a miracle. He has chosen to use man to make the miracles possible though, that is where all of your prayers come in. Please continue to pray and we know that even if the finding of neglect stands. It 's because God wants to use it some how to make His name even greater and we are all for that. Isn't it cool to know that no matter what happens it's all good, cause God is so good? Lord, please help us to always remember that.

Thanks for walking down the road of life with our family and thanks for being the encouragement that lifts us up. Love you all.

Gett'in out a dodge

We are headed to Bellingham this week for Tadd's brother's wedding. We are excited to get some R&R and some good family time. We have an appointment with the Lawyer who is handling our CPS case, we are meeting with her about the Trial in February, it will be nice to get an update on all of the goings on over the last couple of months as we have kind of turned it over to her, it's been so nice not to have another thing on our plate.

Kenya and Elijah are so excited to see their cousins and Grandma and Grandpa They made out a 8 page book of things they want to do with illistrations just in case they forgot. They have already packed both of their back packs and are counting down the days.

Tadd is a little bummed as he will miss the Men's Retreat going on this weekend, he was really trying to make friday, then come to Bellingham Saturday, then come back for Sunday, but when it all boiled down to it, it was a lot to do and Charity is not as confident in her old age, about driving over the pass with snow and 2 kids, by herself. He will have to miss out on the retreat this year and catch up next year.

It will be our first Sunday away since we started down here, we were starting to get nervous about whether we had all of out bases covered, especially being short all of the Men who will be at the Men's retreat. Then the Lord reminded us that it is actually His church not ours and he would take care of it. He is much better at taking care of it than we are anyway.

We will update you on the trip when we get back, in the mean time bless ya and we love ya.

Harvest Party

We had our Harvest Party on Saturday night and we managed to get all the kids sugared up, sleep deprived and spoiled, then sent them home to bed. You would think it would all even out, since we got an extra hour of sleep on Saturday with day light savings. Someone forgot to tell the kids internal clock that. These are the days that teaching sunday school really needs some prayer time. Here is a picture of some of the kids that could stand still long enough to get their picture taken.


This is random activities we had and some pretty cute kids along with it.


We had lots of fun!

We finally got out furnace fixed and now we are really missing sitting by the fire. There is just something about putting the kids to bed and sitting by the fire to wind down. I guess we are never quite content. We are very happy to be warm though and having it happen one of two ways works great. Especially since last friday the power was out for 9 hours and we were supposed to have some of the women over for a biblestudy in the morning. That is when a fireplace comes in really handy. We were toasty warm with coffee made from a french press with hot water from on top of the fireplace. As long as you have heat and coffee what else do you really need.

Kenya and Elijah started Gymnastics again today and had the first day of their "Book worm club" at the library. They really enjoyed both and then we got to top it all off with a date night with mom. Since Tadd has men's biblestudy is at our house every other tuesday night, mom and the kids get to be creative and think of cheap fun things to do for 2 hours. Last time we took the down comforter to the park with lots of pillows and watched a movie on the computer while we ate fiddle faddle. This week we took board games to the ice cream shop and had ice cream and played 4 different games for 2 hours. It is really fun and we all really enjoy getting out and spending time together.

We are headed up to Bellingham next week for Tadd's brothers wedding and are looking forward to spending some family time. Charity has an appointment with the lawyer that is dealing with the CPS case and should know more about what we can expect for the actual trial in January, when she gets back. Well keep you posted whether you want us to or not. God bless ya!

Mail Call!

Kenya, Elijah and Charity went to the Post Office for a feildtrip today. It was lots of fun and they learned lots. They went with 6 other homeschool families, so it was a lot of kids, but it seems they all enjoyed it. They got to take a letter and go up and buy their stamp, then put the letter in the Big Blue mail box. They got to go back and see where all of the mail goes after you send it out and how they post office has ways to make sure they are doing their job right, it was pretty high tech.!

We were supposed to have a group of people from the Bible College in Seattle come down and do a week long Campus evangelism for us, but it looks like they will have to postpone until April. Which is OK because we would have had the Harvest Party right after they left and it would be a lot, for the next couple of weeks. We are excited for them to come in April, when we can spend a little more time focusing on having fun with them.

It was Charity's Birthday on the 14th, so we took a little date night to Yakima. It's amazing when you are short on time and money, how fun just doing the simple things can be. We went shopping for church stuff and used her Birthday coupons to get coffee and just drive around talking. I know it may sound lame to you, but we really love just hanging out together, especially now that our time together is few and far between.

Kenya and Elijah and Dad have been getting some good wrestle time in and some how Kenya managed to get eaten, as she often does.

She plays the Damsel in Distress roll very well. Mom usually has to come in and rescue her multiple times. It is getting to the point where we think she may actually get into distress on purpose. Oh well, I guess there's nothing like burning calories as a family.

We hope you are all having a great fall season and praying you feel the Lord loving and blessing you to the max.

First winter rain

We had our first winter rain today, the kids were hoping it would be cold enough to do snow, but no such luck. It sure does feel cold enough though. We are really burning through the wood in our fireplace as we just found out our furnace is shot and will require a whole different set of building codes to put a new one in. Should be interesting. It's a good thing the Lord provides us with wonderful people who just drop wood off at our house.

Chruch is going great. We had ten people at our first prayer hour on sunday night. The prayer time was wonderful and we are being blessed by the weekly bible studies. We are also gearing up for our Harvest party on Oct 31th and some of the guys from the Bible College in Seattle are coming for a week to pass out flyers around town, help with a concert for the college age kids and spread some general excitement around.

We are also really enjoy spending some relaxing time together as the bad weather sets in. Elijah is really enjoying it. I sent him to his room for a time out and he thought he would through me for a loop when I came in to see him. I guess he didn't plan on falling asleep.

I guess we could have rented out his room and just moved his closet into Kenya's room for him to stay in.

We'll keep you posted on the upcoming events, I am sure the Lord will be faithful as he always is.

Home Again Home Again Jigidy Jig!

Charity got home yesterday from the Pastors Wives conference in Califonia, it was a wonderful get away and she was very blessed. But a wonderful blessing to be home again also. Grandpa completed Tadd's whole honey do list, plus chopped wood for the fireplace and stacked it nicely.

He's definatly is a keeper. I'm not sure what was more refreshing, taking 3 days at a retreat or coming home to find the whole honey do list completed. Thanks Grandpa. Then Grandma suprised Charity at dinner with a B-day cake and cards. Kenya and Elijah were so excited to be in on a secret that mommy was not in on.

While Grandma and Grandpa were here they let Kenya and Elijah use their camera to take pictures around the house and outdoors, so they could show the cousins when they got back to Lynden. Then we gave then our camera just to even the sharing time out a bit and as you can see they went to town.

As you can see they had lots of fun.

Calvary Ellensburg started the first midweek bible study this week and it went great. The men's bible study started up this week also and woman's starts next week. Exciting stuff and so happy to have a little more fellowship time. We are having our Harvest Party on Oct. 31 and inviting the community so you can pray for people to come and hear the gospel shared and also for the sugar high the parent s will have to endure afterwards. Thanks for all of your prayers we sure do feel them and are looking forward to what the Lord will do because of them. God Bless!

A whole new way to do fall

Fall has definantly hit here in Ellensburg, apparently it is not a gradual thing. One day it was 70 something and the next day we were scrounging for firewood. It has been fun to sit by the fire and pretend we have nothing to do for the rest of the day. Next week we start all of our fall Programs at Chruch, Woman's and Men's Bible studies, Midweek Study and getting ready for our Harvest Party on October 31st.

Tadd and Charity got very blessed to get away for a day and attend the Northwest Pastor's Conference in Warm Beach (which is not really warm and technically not a beach) but it was so great to be blessed by the 4 speakers we listened to and have some great worship time. Not to mention some time together without the kids even though we love them immensly.

Charity has been blessed by some friends, to go to the Pastor's wifes conference in California next week. She leaves on Sunday and comes back Wednesday night. Tadd's Parents are coming down to stay while she is gone and Kenya and Elijah are so excited to get up early and play "WAR"(a card game) with Grandma.

We are so excited to start getting into Bible Studies again and have some time to fellowship and spend with the people we love. Kenya and Elijah are loving all the play dates,

Also, getting back into school with the kids, where some days we just hang out in out pj's and read books by the fire. This is one of the major reasons we homeschool. Call us lazy, but I call it tons of fun.

It looks like Annecy & Isaiah may not be home until after the Holidays, as the signature we have been waiting on has not come yet and it has been delayed long enough that all the other ones may not come in time to have them home for Christmas. It's a good thing the Lord knows all and does whatever is best for us and our kids or it might be a liitle more discouraging.

God is so good to us and is so faithful we are so excited to see his provision, grace, purposes and plan for the next couple of months.

Home Again!

Our family is back together again, Charity and the kids got home on Tuesday after a long 11 days away from home. It was lots of fun to be with family and the kids got to spend a lot of time with their cousins they haven't seen in a long time. The kids got a free week off of school due to Charity's brother's wedding and her Grandma's funeral, now they have to face the music and get started this week.

We went to the local nursing home tonight with our church Sunday School classes to sing and hand out cards they had made. It went great, the kids loved it and so did the people at the nursing home. It is great to get a little more involved with the community.

School starts at Central Washington University this week so we had a hord of college students come to church for the first time today, we are so excited to see what the college atmosphere add to the church, as when we started on sunday morning college had just ended for the summer.

We hear the winter comes quick here and so they say to expect snow in the next month or so. To be honest I am not sure how we are going to handle a real winter. We are used to Western Washington Winter were it snows a few days out of the winter and it melts with in a day or two. I guess the snow starts in the fall and and it dosen't go away until March or so. God was good to give us 2 all wheel drive vehicles. So we will see how our snow driving is. The kids are obviously excited to wear their snow suites more that once this winter and I am sure we will have lots of snowmen to play with.

The CPS hearing was actually a pre-trail hearing to establish witnesses and what each sides case would be. Charity was in Utah, so the Lawyer handled the hearing and the actual hearing was set for January. We will continue to pray that this time is just to soften the hearts of the people involved, God is always faithful and we know he will be in this situation too. We hope you are all doing well and have some time to settle down and spend with the Lord and loved ones as the fall sets in and things slow down a bit. Thanks for all the love.

Traveling

Well, Charity is in Utah, having lots of fun with family after attending her Grandma's funeral and then helping get ready for her brothers wedding. Kenya and Elijah have been having lots of fun with their cousins, on Tuesday we went hiking up to a waterfall with 6 kids in tow all under the age of kenya and elijah. It was a mile hike that was a little steep at times, but I think the kids out did the adults.

Then after the hike, Grandpa Davis took us to a Salt lake Bee's baseball game where they got toasted by Sacramento. It sure was a lot of fun to get sick off of baseball food though. Thanks Grandpa!

We still have 4 more days down here and boy are we missing daddy! Partially due to the fact that Elijah started a fever on Tuesday night and has been down for the count ever since. Because we don't want to get anyone else sick, we have been hunckering down at the house for the last couple of days and boy is Kenya getting cabin fever. Please pray for Elijah as we are not entirely sure what is wrong with him, so we may have to pay a strange Dr. a visit.

The hearing with CPS went well I guess, because of the family emergency, the Lawyer did all of the dirty work and she said we will find out next Tuesday if the Attorney General will make a decision on his own or if it has to go to trial. Please pray that the Lords will be done and pray for the Lawyer as she tries to put all of this together.

We are getting excited for school and fall weather as it usually means hanging out at home a lot more, we sure are ready for it. Hope you are all too. We will post some more about the remainer of the trip next week. God Bless your week.

Going South

We found out today that Charity's Grandma in Utah died last night, so she will be going to the funeral on Satruday. Then because her brother's wedding is on the next Saturday she will probablly just stay all week. So Tadd will be a bachlor again for a week. We could use your prayer as we are both away from each other and lots of stuff going on.

One of the really cool things going on is, we got an e-mail on Monday from another pastor in town who said he had seen our website and noticed we meet at the park on the first Sunday of the month. He wanted to inform us ahead of time that they had rented the same park and were doing a BBQ and outreach service and thought we should know before sunday. We checked our receipt from the park and sure enough we had it rented also. We called the Parks service and after checking their records, they were very apologetic and said they would call the other church and tell them to relocate. We really did not want to make another church try to reschedule on such short notice, so Tadd called the pastor to see what we could do. After talking they decided to do a joint service and BBQ for both churches. They are wonderful people and we are so excited to get to know them better. God is so good to make these meetings and do His work through them.

We also just finished dropping off our "Exit Baskets" to the woman's shelter. As part of the woman's ministry we decided to pair with the woman's shelter and make baskets full of kitchen and bathroom items for the woman who are moving out on their own from the shelter to an apartment. When they move out they have nothing and so the woman in our church purchased and put together beautiful baskets complete with Bible and the "Love letter from Jesus" tract. Please pray for the woman who receive them, that they would read these with an open heart. Here is a picture of the finished product.

Charity has her hearing with CPS on Tuesday the 8th and apparently will be in Utah for it. It is a phone hearing so it should work out OK. As always though we would really appreciate some prayer for that this week, that the hearts of the people involved would be softened and the Neglegence charge against her would be reversed. Also prayer for Tadd as he teaches 120 more people this sunday, than he is used to and that the Lord would bond our churches together for no other reason than that we are all a part of the Body of God. Lastly that Tadd would not have a heart attack from all of the frozen pizzas and hot pockets he will be eating while charity is gone.

Here is a picture of what the girls, do while the dad's are taking care of them during the woman's activities.

We will keep you posted on all the goings on, as we know God is in them all and they will all turn out for His glory.

Hang'in out with Chic's

We had a great week at church, here is a picture of some of the kids hanging out before church while their parents were helping set up and do worship practice. We have a great group of people.









We also had a very eventful week, we are turning into a regular farm. We got 32 baby chicks this week. Kenya and Elijah are having lots of fun with them. Not to mention all of their friends that come over.










Charity and the kids are getting ready for a road trip to Utah for Charity's brother's wedding on September 12th. It should be a quick one, but it will be good to see family. Tadd will have to stay home to hold down the fort and bring home the bacon. Then it's back home to start up the school year once again.

The infamous Ellensburg Rodeo is coming up on Labor Day Weekend so the town is turning into a cowboy haven. We love to see all the excitement and are hoping we can catch some of the festivities before we head out of town.

Tadd and the Pastor from Calvary Yakima are going to look at the church that we found out was vacant and possibly for sale, when we first moved down here. They have finally cleaned it out and are ready to put it on the market. They are looking at it with the owners on Monday night. If you could pray that the Lord's will would be done we would really appreciate that.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer, we are looking forward to sharing more wonderful new of what the Lord is doing.

Officially Podcasted

As of today Our Calvary Ellensburg Website @ http://www.calvaryellensburg.com/ has been uploaded with podcasts (recordings) of sunday services. Hopefully this week we will have some photos on there too. Check it out. We had about 40 wonderful adults at church on sunday and too many kids to count.

We are back to being a 2 car family. I can't help but feel guilty about how good the Lord is to us. He gave us two wonderful friends that came down and took literally all day Saturday, to pull our whole van apart and fix the 5 major things wrong with it. Not only did they fix those, but they went the extra mile and made sure it was it tip top shape. Thanks guys!

Then on friday we drove to Yakima to get our fingerprints re-taken for the adoption and picked up the car that was gifted to us by a wonderful woman, after it had been given a TOTAL overhall and detail.

It really is amazing how wonderful our God is. Just when you think you can't be more blessed. He sneaks one up on ya!

Charity has been sick for the last couple of days, so the kids have had to get real creative about spending their time, since they have had a lot of it to themselves.

They have been wonderful at taking care of her and keeping occupied. Thanks for the balloons Uncle Marky!

Thanks for all your prayer and support, we are so blessed at all the lov'in that keeps com'in our way.