Crazy Eights!

No, we have not converted to Judaism so we could celebrate eight crazy nights. Eight is the number of nieces and nephews that we have. Yes, my sister and her husband have four (3 boys and a girl), and my brother and his wife also have four (3 girls and a boy). It makes for some pretty fun dynamics during holidays like Chrismas.

Here's a picture of the crazy eights at my mom's house for Christmas. I forgot my camera at every other place, so these are the only Christmas pictures that I returned home with. Here's a few more pictures of the fun.

I'm not really sure what he's doing, but it looks like fun.

She got this little dress-up outfit for Christmas and had to put it on immediately after opening it up. And, she wouldn't take it off to go home. Her older sister in the left of the picture wouldn't be caught dead in something like that. Instead, she got a skateboard.

And here's us. We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and are still enjoying a warm, holiday atmosphere.

Just for Kimberly

Ok, so we've known that we needed to update our blog. But . . . we have no cute kids or puppies in our home or any on the way anytime soon; and . . . no hurricanes in the past year. I guess that equals less things that people are interested in and so less things to blog about. Everything's been pretty steady for us lately. No big news. Nothing too dramatic going on, although we haven't seemed to be able to completely avoid it. All that to say, we just didn't know what to blog about. Some news that happened this month is that both Stephen and I got promotions. I am now an assistant manager (in training), and Stephen is now a Systems Manager at his work. Hooray for us!

More fun news is that I have gotten some really cool stuff for going through some training things at work. This is not quite the job that I was looking for but the one which God provided and the one through which He is redeeming and replacing emotions, beliefs, and things (well, books really) that I lost in the hurricane. If you know me, you know that some of the hardest things for me to lose were my books. So, I've been tremendously blessed with how God has used something outside of my radar to turn all things out together for my good.

Ok, for the pictures. This is the same tree that I bought in the Ash Avenue house during my senior year at NGCSU while I lived with Staci and Jennifer. Needless to say, Stephen and I decided that we have room for a bigger tree next year. I took Hollie's tip and went to Lowe's to get some free tree trimmings to make my garland for the fireplace. We were looking for some garland, and this turned out to be the best smelling and cheapest alternative. This is the first year that Stephen and I have a mantle, so we're excited about hanging our stockings. We're still working on getting other decorations in order. Like changing the purple candles for some red ones, etc. One day I'll get some drapes up and find the right picture for over the fireplace. Until then, this is our Christmas living room. We'd also like to get some more lights for the tree, but like so many of you, we got some bad lights from Wal-Mart and will definitely be stocking up at the after Christmas sales at some place other than Wal-Mart.

Here's a shout out to Jennifer and Eric who visited us in our new home on their way back to Georgia after Thanksgiving. It was great and a huge blessing!

That's all I can think of right now.