Wiebe Christmas 2011

As I mentioned in my last post, we decided to go to Detroit for Christmas since it had been so long since we’ve been with my sister and her family. We started our drive on Sunday the 18th and made it the 8 hours to Springfield, MO for the night. While we do have the pleasure of having the DVD player in our vehicle, I wanted to add some fun non-TV elements to our journey. We’ve been having fun with our Elf on the Shelf Peter. (He has done such shenanigans as eating our cereal and using a sharpie to draw mustaches and glasses on Ellie and Emma’s photos in our living room!) Peter decided to make the journey with us, and he left the girls some surprises in their car seats. They were excited to have some new coloring books and a new movie each. I also put up a count down line in the car with milestone cities along our trip. The girls had fun taking turns pulling them down as we reached each city.

There’s Peter just “hanging out” and our little milestone banner.

And let me take just a moment to brag on my kids. All 3 kids did SO great. We had a super rough night with them before we left, but they were great travelers. Nathan cried maybe a half hour total on the whole way up there! The girls did great taking turns choosing videos and coloring, etc. I’m so glad our little family can handle long road trips, because I’m pretty sure we won’t be shelling out the money for 5 flights to anywhere anytime soon! :)

The next morning, we took off for Indianapolis where some of our very best friends the Cornwell’s live. We made it by dinner time and had SUCH a great 36 hours or so with them. It was so nice to let them get to meet our little guy. We played games (one of our favorite things to do!) and decorated cookies. I just love that even though we’re miles apart and only see each other every year or two, we can fall right back into a super comfortable friendship in no time at all. Those kinds of friendships are rare, and we’re super grateful for this family. It was fun to get to celebrate Paul’s birthday with them while we were there, too. Here are some photo highlights of that visit:

On Wednesday morning, we left fairly early to get to Detroit. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on those sweet nephews of mine! Jennie had her fourth son just 3 days after we had Nathan. (It was an eventful week!) I hope these little guys will be good buds. Here’s their first meeting:

Their size difference makes me smile, but it will be gone in no time, I’m sure.

Here’s our first attempt at getting a photo of the 7 cousins. If this doesn’t make you laugh, I don’t know what will:

Here’s the best shot from that session:

For sleeping arrangements, we started off trying to sleep the 4 oldest in the same room in two twin beds. Ellie with little James and Emma with Georgie. It didn’t quite work out. HA! We ended up deciding that little James was our biggest challenge, so he spent the rest of the week in with his grandparents. The other three had some challenges but succeeded generally speaking the rest of the week. We tried to be laid back about it in hopes that they were making some sweet memories.

On our arrival day, we just laid low and ordered dinner in. It was a nice time for everyone to reconnect. On Thursday, our main activity was decorating cookies. We also ventured out for dinner that night but ended up deciding to split up where Jen and I went to Olive Garden with the babies and the guys took the big kids to Burger King to play. (Yes, I know we got the better end of that deal. To pay us back, Nathan screamed pretty much our whole dinner…)

This one just makes me smile…

Georgie showed Ellie his video game skills

Emma and John playing with Uncle David

And another sweet bedtime scene

Friday was our big photo shoot day. We all went to a park (yes – outdoors in Detroit in December!) to take some photos. Stay tuned for another post with the highlights from that, but let me just say that the photographer was AWESOME about going fast. It was in the 30s, so we were all bundled up. She did great about getting the photos as quickly as possible. I think it went well and can’t wait to get the photos back. Here are the candid highlights from Friday:

Post photo-shoot cookie treats

Saturday was Christmas Eve. We had a nice day hanging around the house before heading to David’s Aunt’s house for a lovely Christmas Eve gathering.

Our crew at lunch

Little James is such a sweet little love. He kept wanting to see “that cute little baby”.

Georgie and Ellie were good buds the whole time

This photo captures the difference in our babies’ temperaments while we were there. :) Nathan was just off from the trip in general, I think, and was fussier than normal. Joseph, meanwhile, was pretty much a perfect baby and never made a peep. I love them both to pieces, but the difference was funny!

Our crew at Aunt Ann’s that evening. The food was great, and the family was SO nice. We felt so welcomed.

We did our gift exchange here, so this is when all of our family opened their PJs that I made.

Ellie and James changed immediately and were pretty cute if I do say so myself.

And of course that leads us to Christmas morning! Here’s the scene before the kids woke up (oh – and did I mention that we had to WAKE them up around 8?!?! Most mornings they woke up Jenn’s in-laws in the 6am hour – nuts!)

Our sweet babies before they came around the corner to see what Santa brought them. Are we blessed or WHAT?!

Emma with her Sleeping Beauty doll from Santa

Ellie with her Tangled doll from Santa

Guns and dress up :)

All of our babies in their matching little jammies

Outtake!

Peter the Elf adopted the Brady boys upon our arrival. They ate it up, so I’m pretty sure they’ll have their own elf next year. He wrote them notes and even turned the milk green while he was there! Here’s his goodbye note on Christmas morning:

Ellie and Georgie wrote Peter a note on Christmas Eve asking how the elves make all the toys. How cute is that?!

The boys got a fun trampoline that all of the cousins enjoyed immensely.

Cousins playing

In the afternoon, we were invited to a family friend’s house for a Christmas gathering. The host has 8 children and an AMAZING home. We were blessed to be included.

Georgie didn’t want his picture taken, but Aunt Amy didn’t care. :)

One of the traditions at this home is to do a play of the Christmas story. All of our big kids participated and Baby Joseph was even included as Baby Jesus. They did so well – it was super cute.

Baby Joseph/Jesus :)

Georgie as a shepherd

Ellie was one of the wise men

The whole cast including James as the leopard. (John was dressed as a cow but opted not to participate in the actual play. He was still a cutie, though!)

My tired little man at the end of the night. He was coming down with his virus by then, so he slept a TON while we were there.

This is the home we were at….just wow.

We left the next morning to head back. We were sad to say bye to the Brady’s, but we had SUCH a great time. So good to see you guys, and we pray it’s not another year or more until we see you again! Our trip back was less fun that the one there mostly because Nathan came down with a virus. He started running a fever and breathing unevenly on Monday, so we stopped in Bowling Green, KY to take him to an urgent care to get checked out. They thought it was still in his head and not down in his chest and gave us an antibiotic and some instructions on what to watch for. We were thinking about driving straight through but decided to stop and get some rest given his illness. We stayed overnight in Nashville where Nathan slept well and then made our way back home on Tuesday. Nathan clearly improved, so we were grateful for that. We made it home by bedtime and were so glad to have all of our kids in their separate beds for the night.

Throughout it all, we kept our focus on Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. What better way to celebrate our Savior’s birth than by building on the relationships of great friends and sweet family that he’s placed in our lives. We are immeasurably blessed and are grateful for yet another fabulous Christmas!

Twas the Week Before We Left For Detroit…

So, for those of you who know me well, I tend to over commit at times. Crazy, right? The thing is, I have fun doing all the things I over commit to. Such a conundrum! What made this year a little more challenging was our decision to drive to Detroit for Christmas. It had been over 2 years since we’d seen my sister and her family, and I just wasn’t willing to wait any longer. Stay tuned for a post on our trip and visit. We left here on 12/18, so I had to get all my December tasks done before that! To add further complication, James spoke at our church’s youth retreat on 12/16-17, and we went with him! So, essentially I had to finish my tasks before THAT!

Christmas Eve Pajamas

One of our family’s Christmas traditions is opening one gift on Christmas Eve that is our pajamas to be worn on Christmas day. Usually we don’t get matching since it’s hard to find pajamas that are the same in all of our different sizes. Now that I’m more comfortable with my sewing machine, I decided it would be fun to make the pajama pants this year. THEN, I realized we’d be together with Jenn and her fam and thought how cute it would be for all of the little cousins to be matching. And I couldn’t leave out Dave and Jenn, too, so I ended up making 11 pair of pajama pants. (I’m nuts, I know.) I finished the pants the week before my crazy week, but I was wanting to add something to the shirts (all solid red and white that we just bought) to tie them all together. I added the embroidery to the kids shirts (isn’t that snowman pattern cute?) and the initials to the adults. Here was the finished product before we left. Stay tuned for photos of everyone wearing them in my Christmas Day post.

All 11 pair!

Close-up of the kids’ embroidery. There’s an eyes and nose of a snowman, and the kids’ names are the mouth

The adult versions. I also put ruffles on the bottom of the girl ones to make them a little more girly.

Teacher/Staff Gifts

Again, since I have the resources and am enjoying my sewing room so much, I like to make personalized gifts for the staff/teacher gifts if I can. This year, I found a cute tutorial for fabric bookmarks and decided to give that a try for the girls’ teachers and the staff at our church that James works with. Everything was going great until I realized I’d made a mistake about 75% through the first batch (of 15!) and would have to start over. Shoot! I did, though, and managed to still get them finished in time – barely!

I made boy ones with the tassel and flowers for all the ladies. People seemed to like them!

Here’s the note that went on the teacher ones from the girls (including all the teacher’s Ellie interacts with at her public school).

Gift Wrapping

Then of course there was the actual wrapping of presents to be done! :) James and I did that around 10pm the day before we left. Whew! But, we got it done!

Emma’s Happy Birthday Jesus Party

As if all of that weren’t enough, I volunteered to make the cake for Emma’s Happy Birthday Jesus party at her school. This is where I admit I may have gone a bit overboard. :) BUT, I did a pretty simple cake trying to remind myself that 3 year olds aren’t my toughest critics. Here are some photos from the party including the cake:

  Working on a cute ornament craft

Doing a little Christmas Story play where they ALL did EXACTLY what they were supposed to – HA!

Woodbury Visit

Our good friends the Woodbury’s have been living in London for the last year and a half. We ALWAYS make time to see them when they’re here in town, and they were free on Thursday afternoon. As soon as Emma’s party was over, we jetted home to spend time with them. James and Ellie joined us as soon as she was out of school. As always, it was so great to see them!

Ellie and Brylie reconnected as if they hadn’t spent any time apart.

How cute are they?!

Thanks to Ellie for being our photographer on this one. :)

All the kids (and be impressed that they’re all generally looking at the camera and pleasant looking!)

Emma: “I need some help!” LOL – Yes you do, child….

James spoke at church the Sunday before we left and then at the youth retreat (3 times) the Friday and Saturday before we left, so he spent much of those two weeks prepping for all of that. The kids did great letting me spend time in my sewing room to make this all happen. Most of it happened during nap time and after bedtime, though. In addition to all of that, I also went to Ellie’s class party on Friday, had an eye doctor appointment, and had a fun play date and dinner with a sweet friend. I almost lost it once or twice, but I’m so excited to have gotten it all done. It was also SO nice to head out on our trip and be done on the 18th with shopping, presents, etc. It made for a great trip to just be able to relax after all that craziness! Stay tuned for our trip post!

2011 Christmas Letter

We decided to do our Christmas letter online this year. I hope many of you will take the time to come here and catch up with the Wiebes! And as always, we love to hear from you via comments below as well as through your Christmas cards, etc!

A very merry Christmas to you all! It is time for the snow to fly, and maybe we’ll get some here in Texas.

Our 2011 began by learning that we were expecting baby #3. We admit it - we were hoping for a boy. In June, our little guy showed us very clearly that he was a HE! We were super excited. (Well, all of us except for Emma who "reawy wanted a sista.") The girls were really fun throughout the pregnancy. They prayed for the baby (including one from Ellie where she asked "that the baby doesn't hit his head when he comes out" - Turns out that prayer was quite appropriate! Keep reading!) They loved feeling him kick and wondering about what he'd look like. It was really fun to go through it with them being old enough to understand.

 

 

We had a great last summer as a family of 4. As my pregnant wife endured the hottest summer Texas has ever had, we spent lots of time swimming and near air conditioning of some sort. We had hoped to get to visit with Amy's sister and her family in August, but when that fell through we changed plans and decided to take our little family to the beach. We found a last minute deal on a condo near Biloxi, MS and had a really great beach trip together. It was a fun trip that we hope to repeat in the future. It was the girls' first experience with the beach, and they LOVED it!

The last 6 weeks have been filled by a flurry of activity with the arrival of Nathan Kendrick, who we welcomed to our family on October 17^th. His name is a combination of my middle name and Amy’s dad’s middle name. He weighed in at 7 lbs. even and 18 1/2 inches long. Since Amy is incapable of just having a plain-Jane delivery, Nathan’s birth kept the tradition alive. His due date was October 24^th, but Amy went into labor early (a first!), the evening of the 16^th. While I packed our stuff for the hospital, Amy endured some contractions while she tried to finish up Nathan’s going home outfit in her sewing room. We went to the hospital around 12:30am on the 17^th, and they ended up sending us back home a couple of hours later (blooper #1) because they felt that Amy wasn’t progressing enough. They included a sleeping pill for Amy (blooper #2), and we both went back home and quickly fell asleep. Amy’s mother had come before we left the first time to keep the girls for us and was asleep in our bed. Amy slept in her craft room in case she was unable to sleep, and I slept in Nathan’s room, but both of us drifted off around 3:30am. Amy woke an hour later having hard contractions, but thought she’d use the restroom before waking me and heading back to the hospital. Unfortunately, Nathan had no intentions of waiting, and a few minutes later after a small number of pushing contractions, Amy delivered and caught him herself, proving just what a strong and brave woman she really is. Moments later, she finally had the breath to call out to me, and when I turned on the bathroom light, got the shock of my life seeing my wife already holding our son! I drove us to the hospital where they did the (comparatively easy) remaining tasks, and Amy and Nathan were in great shape. (Amy wrote out her version of the story earlier on the blog here.) We’re thinking that we may have our hands full with this little guy considering the rebellious nature by which he arrived. In the last 6 weeks, he’s gained about two pounds and is doing great. His sisters adore him, and we’re all so proud to have him here!

In other news, Ellie is now in kindergarten, which she absolutely loves. She also finished her second season of soccer a few weeks ago. She learned some good skills this fall, and ended up scoring three goals over the season. Each goal was followed by her signature thumbs-up-mouth-open-while-running celebration, though we also got that move pretty much every time she kicked the ball. Ellie is becoming a very good reader and has continued to amaze us with her curiosity and sometimes surprisingly mature insights and questions. Emma is in her second year of preschool, three days a week, and she loves being in school too. Emma’s personality and quirkiness are an almost constant source of entertainment to us. Though she is very obedient, she is definitely a more stubborn independent little lady. So between her hilarious use of vocabulary ("tewific", "wondaful" and "lovely" to name a few), unique temperament, and adventurous spirit, we get to laugh a lot. Shortly after Nathan was born, Ellie and Emma were blessed to be able to go and spend 11 days with Amy’s Uncle Bill and “Uncle” Penni (Emma's term) in Denver. It was a huge blessing to us to have that extra time and space to spend with Nathan during that time. In their time there, the girls stood 10 feet from a big deer, painted, cooked, played dress-up, went on hikes, shopped with Aunt Pen, and had an absolute blast! They were excited to get home to us, but were immediately asking when they could go back. Thanks Bill and Penni for loving and blessing our family!

  

Amy is still with PwC, but has changed roles into a strictly back office position out of client service. She has really been enjoying the change. She is still able to do this part-time, which has always been a huge blessing to our family. She is on maternity leave until February, and then back to her 80% schedule after that. I’m continuing to do counseling, and my role as our church’s small group pastor is still going well. I’ve gotten the opportunity to preach on several Wednesday nights in the last year, and will be the speaker at a weekend youth event as well preaching on a Sunday morning over the next two weeks. I’m very excited about the path God has me on, though much of what that will entail over the next few years is still ‘behind the curtain’. It's been an exciting year at our church as God provided a supernatural avenue for us to become a debt free church. We were burdened by a large payment on our property, and God brought another church to us (unsolicited!) who wanted to purchase it from us. The leadership gladly followed God's lead and after a hectic summer, we've just recently moved into our new facility. We're really excited to see what else God has planned.

Since we didn't get to see the Brady's this summer, we're going to take our family of 5 of a road trip to Detroit for Christmas. (Prayers are welcome!!) We're SO excited to spend time with them as well as a quick stop to introduce Nathan to our dear friends the Cornwells along the way. We're hoping that trip puts the icing on the cake of our very blessed 2011.

One of the books that we’ve read this year that really moved us was David Platt’s “Radical”. It really opened our eyes to the extreme differences in the lifestyle and extreme prosperity of the people and Church in America, particularly when compared to the real persecution and poverty that believers experience in the vast majority of the rest of the world. In spite of the difficulty and risk, these believers in other parts of the world take Paul’s words in Philippians seriously, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”, and they do it with joy! As we celebrate Christmas this year, we have a new sense of thanks for just how very blessed we are, and a real conviction to take even more seriously our charge as followers of Jesus Christ to seize opportunities to make his name known in our community and around the world.

Grace and peace to you all.

In Him, The Wiebes