Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Little Game of Catch Up

I haven't posted since AUGUST and it is now NOVEMBER.  It has been one heck of a fall. 

September 19, 2010 was the 1st birthday of our little man Archer!  I've never had one year dissolve before my eyes so quickly before!  Goodness gracious!  We celebrated with a small party with family at our home where he finally got some "boy" toys.  Before his new toys, he was playing with Nora's hand-me-downs.  Even now?  After having his new toys for a couple of months?  He's still playing with his old toys yet.  He got some money to put in his savings account as well. 

November 7, 2010 was the THIRD birthday of our little sweet pea Nora!  Seriously?  THREE?  We spent the day looking through the photo albums of her birth and then making cupcakes for her to take for her friends at daycare the next day.  I asked her if she felt any different now that she is three and she replied, "Not really".  The girl's honest at least!

A few weeks ago I was uploading all of my Christmas CD's to my iPod while also listening to them (yes, it's early for them, I know, but Christmas comes but once a year!).  We were listening to my Uncle Dan's Christmas CD.  Nora looks at the computer, looks at me, looks back at the computer, looks back at me with a confused expression and asks..."Is Uncle Dan in there?"  Oh man...when I finally stopped laughing I told her he was, in fact, NOT in the computer, that it's just a CD.  Well, last Saturday night 27 other Habel family members, Jed and myself went to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band concert at the Mystique Casino.  Oh my gosh....one of the BEST concerts EVER.  What a wonderful, wonderful night of memories made.  At any rate, on Monday morning we were listening to Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Colorado Christmas" on the way to daycare and Nora asked, "Is that Uncle Dan singing?".  I had to send my Uncle Dan and his wife (my Aunt Sue) a quick text to tell them the quick story because I knew Dan would get quite a kick out of it!  I'm sure he had quite the ego boost for the day with being compared to Jeff Hanna of Nitty Gritty Dirt band!

A few weeks ago on October 28th, Jed and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary with a surprise trip to Davenport (Jed surprised ME!) for dinner and a Steven Curtis Chapman concert.  If you are not familiar with Steven Curtis Chapman, he is to contemporary Christian music what Reba McIntire is to country music.  He is a staple.  BUT, it wasn't just Steven Curtis Chapman himself.  It was actually a concert series entitled "A Night With The Chapman's".  His son's band opened for him, he played, and then his wife, Mary Beth (who has a bestseller on the NY Times book list) spoke before he played yet again.  If you're wondering why his wife spoke, back on May 21, 2008 one of their older sons accidentally ran over their 5-year old daughter, killing her.  They have three biological children and three adopted children from China.  Their 17-year old biological son Will ran over their 5-year old adopted daughter, Maria.  What a heart-wrenching story of despair, unconditional love, faith, and hope.  Jed and I both left there with a sense of feeling so small compared to the rest of the universe around us. 

We have both gotten very involved with our church and are growing in our faith each day.  The best thing that we have found through Hope is our small group.  There are 4 other couples in the group.  We are studying the book "Power of a Praying Parent".  It's helping us to discover things we need to improve on with regards to our parenting but it's also reinforcing the things we are doing right. We have taken a hiatus from our book study to give our individual testimonies and oh my how close it has brought us.  We are getting so much awesome Christian advice.  And right now, it's definitely what Jed and I are needing.

And with that...the holidays approach.  I am so looking forward to spending time with my family and friends as this past year has been a struggle and I look forward to putting it behind me.  Each day Jed and I work harder and harder at putting the pieces of our lives back together only to get knocked back down by outside forces, but we have to have faith in GOD that HE will get us through these dark days and we will prevail. Patience and compassion are virtues.  They are not given to us...we work on them every single day.


"Be joyful in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer".  Romans 12:12