Thursday, April 23, 2009

My grandpa Smith passed away this morning...

Just wanted to update you all. My grandpa Smith died suddenly this morning, April 23rd. He had a series of strokes last week, but pulled through them, making a good recovery. However, he passed this morning unexpectedly, 6 years to the day that my grandma lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. I will be leaving tomorrow morning to attend the funeral. Please keep Stephen and Hope in your prayers as they will be staying here. Love you all...

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Trip to Granbury and the Zoo

We had a great weekend last weekend. Stephen has wanted to join the Singing Men of North Central Texas (a group of active and retired music ministers) for a long time now. He finally decided that since their next concert was in Granbury it would give him the perfect opportunity to visit Aunt Sara and Uncle William and to join the group. We drove down to Granbury on Thursday morning and met Aunt Sara for lunch at a tea room with amazing sandwiches. Stephen left to go rehearse for the day with the Singing Men while Hope, Aunt Sara and I went shopping at Walmart. We all met up for dinner with Uncle William at a new Chinese restaurant in Granbury, then we headed to the concert. The church was packed with people. Even the overflow room was packed out. We were glad that some of Sara and William's friends saved us a seat. I had to leave early because Hope was not thrilled at all about being in the nursery, but what I saw of the concert was amazing. The room was so full of energy, and it was so good to see so many people worshiping. There were over 100 Singing Men performing and they had an orchestra and handbell choir too. Hope really took to Aunt Sara and Uncle William quickly. She figured out pretty fast that they are cool people. Thanks Aunt Sara and Uncle William for taking such good care of us while we were down there!

We saw this out the window on our way to Granbury. It is called a circumhorizontal arc. It looks a lot like a rainbow, but it's not. It is a rare optical phenomenon. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:
"The arc is formed as light rays enter the horizontally-oriented flat hexagon crystals through a vertical side face and exit through the horizontal bottom face. It is the 90° inclination that produces the well-separated rainbow-like colours and, if the crystal alignment is just right, makes the entire cirrus cloud appear to shine like an undulating rainbow."
It was SOOO neat to see and we got lots of cool pictures of it!

On Saturday we decided to get out a little early and head to the Dallas Zoo. We weren't sure if it would be rainy or not, but we checked the radar and felt confident that the weather would cooperate. We were wrong. It rained quite a bit, but we still managed to see most of the animals. Hope is obsessed with animals, so it was a lot of fun.


The ride home from the zoo... She was tuckered out!

Monday, April 20, 2009

A few pics of Hope...

Lots of pics of the pigtails...









Hope finding her Easter basket...


















Saturday, April 11, 2009

Small update and a few pictures...


Hope is feeling lots better lately. It took her about 2 weeks to get over the bronchitis, but I think we're in the clear here, thank goodness.

Hope is growing so fast and learning new things everyday. She's like a little sponge. She can speak in 2-3 word sentences now, can sing her ABC's (on pitch too!), can count to 10, and is just running around all over the place being a busy little girl. We have been working with her on shapes and colors for awhile, but I think those are such abstract concepts that it is going to take her a little while to catch on. She finally has enough hair to do little baby pigtails (YAY!), so hopefully no more old people will be calling her a little boy (even when she's dressed in pink from head to toe)! We are really enjoying this stage. It is so neat to see her absorbing everything. She is still a GREAT eater and sleeper. She will eat almost anything we give her, which is great. She sleeps from 8 at night to about 8:45 or 9:00 in the morning and does a two hour nap in the afternoon, so she gives her mommy and daddy plenty of rest, which is nice.

Stephen and I are well, just busy as usual. Stephen has been preparing for the Easter service, getting all the music ready. He is also busy with Children's/Preschool stuff, which means he's completely in charge of VBS this year on top of everything else he has to do. If you have ever been in charge of a VBS, you know what a huge feat this is. Thankfully, he's got some good children's workers who are very helpful and supportive. My internship is still going well and I am learning a lot. School is going well too. I have finals in a couple weeks, so pray for me! Barring any huge tragedies I should manage A's in both classes. I'm also still busy with MMO and helping Stephen out at church.

Ok, now for the good stuff....
My sister came in town last weekend for my cousin's baby shower. She had lots of fun with Hope. I did get more pictures than this, but they are all on my phone and I have lost the adapter, so I guess they are forever stuck on my phone...


Bed-head



Our budding pianist...




Hope you enjoyed. I have a ton more (especially of her pig-tails, we are just so elated that she finally has hair!!!), but will have to find the adapter first before I can post them. Love you all!