Best Friends for Life

So I haven't written on my posts on here for a while, and today is not going to be much of an exception because i would never be able to do justice in words to what i am feeling as i write this one. Tomorrow, on new years day, our family will have to say goodbye for now to some friends of ours that over the last couple of years have become like family. Our friendship with the lichtenberger family really started when rich and i joined their small group, about three years ago. Then we have had the priviledge of serving with them on the student ministries team at church, and jeanna and i have been in various bible studies together. And through all of that, our children have grown so close too. As parents you want nothing more for your children than to grow up having such strong friendships with other kids that totally love jesus, and shelby and jesse have so been that for my kids. And precious lucy has allowed me to love on a baby when she would actually let me hold her (she is quite the mama's girl). But all in all this family has been everything that you look for in a friendship, and as so many of you know it is so hard after you are married to find those couple friends that both you and your husband become so close with. So even though i know that our friendship with the lichtenberger family is far from over, which is why i titled this post best friends for life, it is still so hard to say goodbye to them. We are totally grateful to God for intersecting our lives for these few years, and for all of the things that they taught us along the way.

Christmas Cookie Baking and snow...

Hands down one of my favorite things to do at Christmas time is to make sugar cookies and decorate them. I love it. Usually we do it over at my mom's house, but this year we couldn't make that happen, so I decided to just do it at my house, and deal with the mess. We had to break it up into two phases over two days-baking one day, and decorating the next-but it was fun as always, and now we have these yummy cookies tempting us every day!

We had our second snow so far this winter this week. It was soooo beautiful. It only really lasted one day, and it ended up to only be like 2 inches, but you take what you can get right??

Here are some pics that i took out the front door.

FINALLY-An Update

I know, I know, I am the worst blogger ever. All my friends in the blogging world have totally written me off as worthless. But if there is anyone still out there reading this, well, here is an update of the last couple of weeks and some pics to go along with them.

First are some pics of a trip we took to Union Station recently with one of my best and dear friends, Jenn and her children to see the sights there. There is the most amazing model train exhibit there that they were all totally enthralled with, and then, of course, the trip was not complete until they themselves got to ride the little train. It was a fun little trip, and I thought I might dress them cute so maybe, just maybe i could capture some good shots, but then i remembered, oh yeah, i am a horrible picture taker, and i have three little children who are going to have no interest whatsoever in taking pictures. Thus, this is what i got out of it.

Look at Kenna's face-is she having a good time or not??


Precious, i know...but horrible lighting.

Again, camryn and mya, not at all interested in the camera, and the crazy woman saying "look over here......say cheese.....over here"

So next set of pics are just some fun pics that i took of the kiddos playing in the leaves over at my friend Julie's house. It was freezing, by the way, so it was a short photo session.

The two older ones are totally precious, but of course, my precious 3 year old just can't quite get the idea of looking at the camera for the full ten minutes that you have to with our camera till the picture actually takes.

ALL RIGHT!! there we go......this one is totally going in the Christmas card!!

And then these last couple pics are at this house that we drove by and had to stop at because we I had heard about it from some friends of ours that these people have, like every blow up Christmas yard thingy that you could possibly have. It is not even arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way, they are just like on top of one another it is so crowded. They even have them all over their roof. I cannot even begin to do it justice in the photos, this is totally one of those things you just have to see to believe. But here are some pics