Christmas at the Fosters

The week after Christmas we climbed into our '99 Honda Accord and did the 6 hour drive down to St. Louis to visit the Fosters and celebrate the holidays with them. This being our first official trip to visit them since moving to Illinois, I must say the six hour drive is SO much nicer than the twelve hour one we used to do :-)

Of course, Grandpa and Grandma spoiled Sarai but she did get some great gifts that will definately make the winter feel not quite so long.

Dad diverted from the "Christmas list" and bought Sarai a Magna Doodle which was a huge hit. Good job Grandpa!

We asked for a "My First LeapPad" and I have been pleasantly surprised how well Sarai plays with it on her own.

Snuggle-time on the couch with Grandpa

Grandma and Sarai found a quiet morning while the boys were watching football games to bake cookies. Sarai is quite the baker and she had a blast stirring, rolling, cutting out, frosting and adding sprinkles to their cookies.

I thought this pic was priceless :-)

Eating the fruits of her labor

EAT MORE CHICKEN!!!!!

When we moved to Illinois, we left behind one of our favorite fast food restaurants: Chick-fil-a. Why has no one thought to open a Chick-fil-a in Chicago you might ask? I have absolutely no idea!

We discovered shortly after we moved here that there happened to be one located in a mall in the town of Racine, WI a mere 25 miles or 45 minute drive from our home in Lindenhurst. So being the good parents we are, Mike and I decided this morning that Sarai needed to experience their amazing waffle fries for herself :-) Not to mention having not eaten there for almost 10 months, it sounded wonderful to the two of us. So we took a lunch field trip! I'm so proud to say that she loved it! Chicken nuggets, waffle fries and cookies'n'cream milkshake were all a hit! And I'm kind of glad now it isn't in our backyard. I will definately appreciate it more when we can have it :-)

Enjoy the picture of Sarai modeling the waffle fry wrapper and the video of her excitedly proclaiming where we were eating.

Christmas at Our House

We waited until Christmas Eve after Sarai was in bed to put out all the presents. We were afraid she would get into them before Christmas Day!

Just a pretty picture of the tree

We started a tradition with Sarai last year of giving her a new pair of PJs on Christmas Eve. This year I found really cute pair of purple, footed jammies with snowmen on them.

Coming down the stairs Christmas morning!

Daddy reading the Christmas Story from Sarai's Bible before opening presents

Stockings!

Sarai knew to dig all the way to the bottom :-)

Cool, new sunglasses!

The keyboard I'm already wishing we could hide! Sarai loves to hit the "demo" button and walk away from it as it continues to play annoying songs.

Dress up clothes from Uncle John and Aunt Sarah

Our very own Snow White!

Dr. Suess board books from Andy and Misty! Thanks you guys!

Andy and Misty joined us Christmas morning to open presents and help us eat the Christmas Breakfast Casserole. We enjoyed celebrating with them :-)

And just for your enjoyment, Andy decided to "tag" Sarai with a bow on her tush and we all got a good laugh out of it. She walked around for most of the morning with it!

Going To "Other" Church

Two weeks after we moved into our rental last April, we turned around and headed back south to the National New Church Conference in Florida. Awesome conference by the way! I strongly encourage anyone even entertaining the idea of planting to go. Anyway, I had signed up for the track geared toward spouses of planters and during one of the sessions, the speaker mentioned a book called “My Husband Wants to be a Church Planter…So What Does That Make Me?” Also, a great resource and a must read for all wives of church planters. As soon as we arrived back in northern Illinois, I logged onto their website and requested a copy of my own.

So I’m reading along one afternoon and get to the chapter about how church planting impacts your children. I’m immediately intrigued because I myself was a PK (preacher’s kid) and many of the principles I began reading about could easily apply to families in established ministries as well. But then I began to wonder about my family’s current situation. How will our planting this church affect my almost 2 year old daughter? Right now she has the friends that I choose for her, she goes where I go and she eats what I make for dinner. My thought was, she will probably just go along with it and know no different. But I was amazed at how quickly her toddler mind started understanding what has happening.

Early in June, our core group began meeting together on Wednesday evenings at the local township center. Without realizing it myself, Sarai figured out the difference between where we were going to church on Sunday mornings and where we went to “church” on Wednesday nights. The already established North Point Harbor Campus, where we were attending on Sundays, became know as “brown church” in her mind and the township center was now “other" church. And even now that we have launched the Warren Campus of North Point and are meeting in a local high school, Sarai will inform me enthusiastically on Sunday mornings, “Go to school, go to 'other' church, learn about Jesus.” Her little mind gets it!

Like a majority of plants, we have to set up our children’s area every Sunday morning. We are currently using the cafeteria of the high school for our children’s ministry. The tables are raised and arranged into rows to make classrooms and we bring in foam floor squares to brighten up the area and make it more kid friendly. Sarai and I arrive every Sunday morning at 8 to help get things set up and ready to welcome the children and their families. After just a few times of watching mommy set up and tear down the nursery and preschool classrooms, I noticed Sarai involving herself in the process. She will help me set out the squares and once they are together, she knows which bins have the toys in them. She will begin pulling toys out of them and arranging them on the brightly colored mat. Then when it’s time to clean up, she puts the toys in the bins I set out and pulls apart squares to be stacked in a pile and loaded onto the trailers. My mommy heart is overwhelmed with the pride I feel for Sarai and her willingness to help me every Sunday.

She may not fully understand why exactly we go to all this work on Sundays, but she does know this school is transformed into a church where she will learn about Jesus. And that’s all that really matters to me. Don’t underestimate how much your kids can be involved in this new body of Christ that your family is pouring their life into.

And Then There Was Snow....

Yes, this is our reality now that we live in northern Illinois. We had a nice snow storm several days before Christmas that dumped just over a foot of snow. And then we got a few more inches a day or so later. Needless to say, we had a white Christmas :-) I took several pictures of the house, our mailbox and a shot down the street so you could get an idea of exactly how much snow we had. It was funny to see only the tops of the mailboxes peeking out over the snowdrifts.

This was taken right outside our front door. It was up to my knees! All the snow had been piling up from shoveling the walkway.

Making snowballs with daddy

Sarai attempting a snow angel. The snow had become icy at this point in the afternoon and wasn't really conducive for making them. But she gave it her best effort!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures of our snow day fun! Christmas pics coming soon!

Lunch with Mark and Jamie

Back in the middle of December, we had the opportunity to have lunch with one of my dear friends, Jamie, and her husband, Mark. I have known Jamie for about 17 years now which is so hard to really comprehend. Seems like yesterday we were at church camp together. After graduating from college, Jamie spent several years with a team of missionaries in Uganda. It was there she met her husband, Mark. They are currently home on furlough and were lucky enough to have a layover in Chicago while on their way back to Texas from a visiting one of their supporting churches. So we took advantage of the time they had in our neck of the woods and rode the Metra train down to the city to take them out for Chicago pizza!

Sarai LOVES riding the train into the city. Here she was entertaining herself with some goofy faces.

Mark and Jamie's train was running a bit late so we bummed around Union Station for awhile. Sarai enjoyed the long benches she could sit, climb, lay, and play on.

She also found the LONG staircase that took you up to street level. She would have gone up and down them all day if we had let her.

The beautiful decorations throughout Union Station

Cute shot of Sarai and me :-)

Jamie and me

Here's the happy couple! I wasn't able to attend their wedding so this was the first time I had met Mark and the first time they had met Sarai. Mark's a great guy Jamie and I am so happy for you!

It was a quick visit over Jimano's pizza but so worth it. I'm so glad we were able to get together with them :-)

May I Have A Side Of Self-Pity Please?

So I had one of “those” days Tuesday. You know the kind of day where the world seems against you. My day began by answering the phone. Another friend is pregnant, and I am not. It took us almost a year to get pregnant with Sarai and I had promised myself I would not become impatient this time around. But five months into the “trying process” and I’m already on edge. First on my “to do” list was dropping off the car at Sam’s to have the tires rotated around 10 a.m. My sweet friend Mary Beth had agreed to pick me up so we could take our girls to the story time hour at our local Borders Books while my car was unavailable. Should have been easy enough right? As I walked up to the woman at the car center, she apologetically informed me that they were shorthanded today and would need 2 hours to rotate my tires. No big deal I thought. She said she would call me when my car was done. Mary Beth and I would just take our girls to grab a bite to eat after Borders to kill time. So I gave her my information, handed her the key to my Honda Accord and met my friend in front of the store.

My morning was off to a decent start. The girls had a blast at Borders and we had a yummy lunch at Panera Bread. By this time it was noon and still no call from Sam’s. So being the money conscience women we are, we decided to go wander through the dollar bins at Target. Dangerous I say! By the time we found the checkout line at Target, it was 12:45 and I was hoping Sam’s had just forgotten to call me. Arriving back at the auto center two and half hours later, I learned my car had just been taken into the garage and it would be 30ish minutes before all four tires would be securely back in place. We were well into naptime so I thanked Mary Beth for a nice morning and sent her home to put her 2 year old down. An hour later, I was finally driving home with my own very tired 2 year old. I had survived the morning.

But the afternoon was just beginning. Sarai was now overtired and fought her afternoon nap, I spent way too long on the phone with Sprint trying to get an explanation for why we were being charged for a service included in our plan, and our electricity went out just as I was beginning to put the meatballs together for spaghetti. My patience was on empty. Thankfully we have a gas stove. I lit a few candles and continued to work on dinner. But my mood was sour. About this time the Holy Spirit gently began prodding at my bad attitude but I clearly did not want to listen. The power came back on and we made it through dinner. I cleaned up the kitchen and began working on a new cookie recipe while my husband put our daughter to bed. Once Sarai was down, he joined me in the kitchen so we could share the events of our day. One topic led to another and we ended up having a rather heated conversation. Oh, and my cookies ended up being way more work than they were worth. I was frustrated, I was tired, I was ready to crawl into my bed and pretend the day had never happened.

After semi-resolving our conversation, Mike wandered down to the family room and I headed upstairs to our bedroom to find my PJs. The Holy Spirit wanted to talk to me again because as I washed my face, I started thinking about people who most likely had a much more difficult day than me: my friend whose husband recently lost his job; the family who lost everything in a house fire; the couple who was told they cannot become pregnant. “Not now!” I remember thinking. I was enjoying my pity party! But as I crawled under my warm down comforter and let the stillness surround me, I heard Him talking to me again. “Be still and know that I am God.” “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice!”

How many times today had I asked God to be a part of my frustrations? Umm, none. How many times had I stopped and asked for His patience and understanding. Umm, not once. Lord, I'm so sorry. My day could have been so different if I had let You help me find the joy in the curveballs thrown at me. Satan is on the prowl and he is looking for any way to distract us. As church planter’s wives, our days will inevitable involve many highs and lows but if we don’t allow God to be a part of both, we will become tired and frustrated just like I was today. I pray the next time my day does not go how I would have planned, I will be still and ask Him to show me how to rejoice through it all. I’m still a work in progress and I’m thankful He isn’t finished with me yet.