Merry Christmas to All!

We pray all of you will have a wonderful Christmas time reflecting on the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who came into the world so we could all be free and live with Him eternally.

There are a lot of changes in the our household. You will find mention in the previous posts on this blog the following changes for 2007:

1. Marla has a new full-time job and is no longer working at the church. She works in a financial services office as the receptionist/administrative assistant. She started there on September 10. It is close to home and she walks to work whenever she can. It saves us a lot of gas money as well as almost doubling her salary. The extra money has been helpful since Bob's construction work has really slowed down. We have considered Bob getting a new job or doing something on his own but so far haven't felt that is what the Lord wants.

2. The boys (Kyle and Jezra) both headed off to college in August. Jezra is a freshman at Purdue and Kyle is a freshman at Ball State. This left a whole basement empty. Did we leave it that way? No! We invited a young couple from our church to live there. They will be having a baby girl in January. They pretty much have an apartment down there. It has been going very well. We fit together pretty well. We both have our own space, which is nice.

3. Breanna is a junior in high school and is involved very heavily in the orchestra program there. This isn't new but it is new to only have one child at home.

4. Bob turned 50 on December 12. We celebrated by having a surprise card shower for him. Friends, family, and church family gave him cards. Marla and Breanna hid the cards until the day of his birthday. We piled them all (32) on his dinner plate that evening. He spent a long time opening and reading all the cards. Thank you to all who sent him one! (He has received 40+ cards thanks to the procrastinators who have made his birthday celebration extend over tw0 weeks!) Marla also went to a bakery the morning of his birthday and picked up cinnamon rolls. I made him hot chocolate and heated up the rolls as a surprise for his birthday. Marla wanted to get pecan rolls his favorite but they didn't have any that day. We had to make this a very low-expense event because of our tight finances. It was a very nice way to celebrate his birthday, making it special without spending much money at all.

Now that the boys are home for the holidays, our main floor is pretty crowded. It will be an adjustment to living in our more cramped space while they are here and Matt and Amber come home for Christmas on the 26th. We celebrate our family Christmas by fixing a "theme" supper on Christmas Eve. This year our Christmas Eve will be Friday, December 28 since Amber and Matt can't come on Christmas Eve. Our theme this year is Italian. We are doing homemade ravioli. Everyone gets into the cooking and we always have a lot of fun.

We are having 17 (including us) over for a Christmas Day soup lunch. I invited everyone from our families who didn't have a celebration to go to. It turned out to be quite a lot of people but the couple who lives in our basement are coming, too, so we can use their space for the crowd. It should be a wonderful, unconventional Christmas Day.

Blessings to all of you as you enjoy looking through the pictures and events that are in this blog, getting updated on our family.

--Marla for the whole family.