Snow! Yes, we Houstonians went ape as we encountered snow on our way out to Georgia. We heard rumors that this mysterious, captivating, white flaky substance existed but it is a rare sight indeed when you live where we do. When we hit I-20 around Birmingham we found an awesome little patch so we had to jump out and experience it. Emily went straight to pouncing around and making snowballs to fling at Daddy. Josh was quite exctatic as well. Emily lost all control at one point and flung her little body down into the snow and made her first snow angel and of course Joshua followed suit. This concluded our short snow detour as Emily quickly realized that snow, snow angels and no gloves = cold and the detour concluded with tears and whimpering. But she soon enough warmed back up in the car as we continued on our journey.

On Wednesday morning we had even more unexpected fun in the snow as we got to go 'sleighing' (as Joshua put it) in Whitney's sister's backyard. Emily of course continued to pummel me with snowballs as well (one in the neck, head and back) and she also opened up her own snowball stand where small snowballs were free and large ones were $1 (she is definitely a born entrepreneur).

Emily had her first major project for school last Friday. Her project was on Jonathan Edwards and she had to put together a little book (that she hand wrote) and she made her first display board as well.

Joshua in his Indian costume as the kids dressed like Pilgrims and Indians in celebration of Thanksgiving.

Emily, also had her Thanksgiving celebration today. They were also dressed for the occasion!

Here's a few pics from the last several weeks. Grammy and Poppaw visited with us as well as Gay and Brian. Emily had a blast particpating in the 'Little Warrior' cheerleader program where she got to learn a few cheers and then cheer along with the varsity cheer leaders at one of the home games. Josh enjoyed getting to particpate in his story book parade at his school as a cowboy too. Emily also experienced a huge milestone as she lost her first tooth as you can see in the picture down below. Lastly, the kids had a big time trick or treating in our neighborhood as they dressed up as leopard girl and a rock star.

A few recent pics from Wimberley from a few weeks ago...

His Terms, His Timetable

As I was spending time with God this morning I was wrestling with the following thought: we follow God on His terms and on His timetable and not ours. It's His yoke and not ours that He allows us to take upon ourselves. We are invited to submit to His plan and His way. So many times when we look at our lives it is filled with a frenzy of 'Christian' activity but the end result is that we are completely frazzled and weary and have little or no true fruit to show for it. Our job is to sit and hear God's voice and to simply say 'Yes, Lord' and follow Him. He has His plan and His will and He is working all over the world right now and He breaks into our world and invites us to join Him. It will involve altering my plans and my dreams and my to do list if I want to be a part of what He is doing.

If your boss comes in on a Monday afternoon and says, 'I need you to do this for me.' You dont' say 'Hey, I'd love to but I already have my afternoon planned out, sorry.' No, if you want to keep your job you say, 'yes, sir I'll get right on that.' His request trumps whatever plans you had made because he's the boss and you're not. It should be the same way with God. In Numbers 13-14 Israel rebelled against God at Kadesh-Barnea and refused to believe that God would hand over the Canaanites to them and give them the promised land. So God judged them for 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Right after the judgment was given they decided they had changed their minds and went up against the Canaanites anyway. Well, they were of course completely defeated because they went in their own strength and God was not with them. They had missed their window of opportunity to obey God. God speaks and we have a window of time to follow Him that will pass us by. Everyday we need to be ready like Isaiah with a 'Here am I Lord, send me' attitude to follow Him on His terms and on His timetable not ours.

The kids enjoyed a great view from Derric French's shoulders as we ran into Stephanie and Derric at the Christian Academy football game on Friday night. Joshua acted like he was on a date with one of his classmates as they sat together and 'watched the game', she laughed at all his corny jokes, he (dad) bought her some cookies that they split (famous amos), and then she played hard to get as she ran all around the bleachers and he chased her. Yeah, I think he's got it bad. Emily also got quite a workout as she played the international kids game of 'tag' all over the playground and got lots of hangtime in with her buddy, Connor.

We had some good times this weekend. The Zombie hunt was quite the hit as we hit the Mall for a little shopping excursion. Whitney's mission was to find some new clothes for work. My mission was to thoroughly distract and occupy the kids to free up Whitney to successfully complete her mission. So, we're strolling through the department store and I notice that the sonic kids meal toys my kids had just received had been turned into ray guns and were being fired at objects all over the store and the kids were shooting the 'zombies' aka manicans all over the store. So this evolved into a very elaborate game where they were shooting the white ones, green ones, silver ones, black ones, brown ones, the 'cupcake' head ones, the ring heads, the headless zombies, the kid zombies, etc. Then every time we would pass a picture of a person modeling some clothes one of the kids would ask the picture for a 'clue' on our zombie hunt and they would give us the next clue. Eventually it turned into the quest for the zombie with the golden head (which we are still yet to find). Other features were the mirrors all over the store were the ray gun refueling stations and various colors gave you extra super powers like flying, karate abilities (which Emily demonstrated on one of the clothing racks to Mom's dismay), blending or camouflaging, invisiblity and hot lava-proof shoes. The game did get so out of hand that Mommy scolded all of us (including Dad).
The Zombie Hunters!




A Typical Headless Zombie

















Today we caught a lizard and put it in the kids bug catcher. Emily attempted to feed it a snail but the lizard seemed uninterested. After we finally let it out Emily discovered one of life's little lessons: never try and catch a lizard by the tail. Well she attempted to grab the little guy by the tail and sure enough that tail popped right off. She then was so mesmorized by this that she made me create a display for the tail (a white plastic cup with a little sign 'lizard tail' that was taped on with masking tape). We then enjoyed some time on the back porch as Emily and Joshua each explained a typical day at their school while we looked at a campus map that Emily had made. We then made some popcorn and cinnamon popcorn and watched a movie together.