I am thinking about Tracy today.

Yes, cats Do watch TV

Yesterday I was clicking through the channels and there was a show about wolves in Yellowstone and May was transfixed by it. I have never seen either cat take any interest in the TV before but this National Geographic program really hooked her. It was so cute.

Thank You

For Your Prayers Haiti 2/16 - 2/25:
For Effectiveness, For Safety, For Peace, For God's will to be accomplished.

I have a picture of each one of you and I'll be praying for you too!
Love, Tracy

Grandma

Well, as many of you know Grandma is in the hospital. She went in on Thursday and is still there today. Linda said that when grandma called this morning, she said the doctor told her that she isn't getting better the way she thought she would. Because of this grandma is going to be getting a different kind of meds to help her get better. I know that you do already, but take a bit of extra time today and pray for a fast recovery. We love you grandma and you are in our thoughts and prayers. Get better soon, we love and miss you! Addy

Prayers rising up

Tracy, I am imagine you are getting really excited about leaving on your mission trip tomorrow. We will all be breathing prayers for you as you go about spreading help, smiles, and support to the Haitians. They will see the face of God in yours. May God be with you!

Carol you asked for it so here it is!

Carol asked to see my home picture wall that I have. When we moved here I wanted to keep close to everyone so I asked for and took pictures of the homes of all of you. I pass by this wall many times a day and I am reminded to pray for your households when I do. If your wondering about the little picture on the top it is from Genesis 31:49 "May the Lord Watch over Thee One from the Other" I think is really speaks to our family being apart but yet together. This is a quote from Biblegateway.com Genesis 31:

"now, let's make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us."

45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46 He said to his relatives, "Gather some stones." So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. 47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, [c] and Jacob called it Galeed. [d]

48 Laban said, "This heap is a witness between you and me today." That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah, [e] because he said, "May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other.

We are still missing some homes and I need some updated pictures and places but present are:
Mom & Dads
Bob
Linda's and Addy & Faith
Tracy
Tim
Pete and Emily Ann
Debbie and Peter
Carol & Ken
Sara's very old place
Yvonne and Dick

I need
Joy & Ryan
updated Sara
Winter
Lindsy
Susie & Paul

No Matter if I have your pictures or not I do pray for you and your family daily. Love you all
Emily Marie

Twitter

Hello Again Family and Friends,

I thought you might want to know that we are going to be getting an international phone for the trip to Haiti.  One thing that will allow us to do is to 'tweet' from Haiti.  We would love to let you know that we made it safely, what our prayer concerns are so that you can pray for us, and give you updates of hope from Haiti. 

You can follow us online or via your phone on twitter.  I have added the twitter scrollbar to the right on on our family blog.

Love you all - thanks for your prayers - I'll be posting as much as I am able before I go.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to post from Haiti or not.

Tracy

Helping Haiti

Hi Dear Family,
Just a little note to say that I need your prayers.  I am currently planning on heading to Haiti on Tuesday, Feb 16th to work with the Salvation Army at The Salvation Army Children's Home named La Maison du Bonheur (The Home of Hapiness).  The details are rapidly coming together and I feel that God has asked me to go on this trip.  I would covet your prayers for safety and effectiveness.   I can't wait to tell you all about the plans and the trip.  Would you pray?

Much Love, Tracy

My Four Smiling Valentines

Today and I am thinking about and wondering how my four Valentines are doing at Disneyworld. I am sure they are sporting their sweet smiles as they re-explore their favorite vacation spot. I miss you!

Grandpa

So the other day Faith and I were driving in the car and she said "mom can i ask you a question?" and of course i said yes. Faith goes "Mom can me, nana, and you go to heaven quick? I really want to say hi to papa." i took a min. to think of what to say and she said "oh and then we can see shorty and pokey too." it was one of the sweetest moments. I just told her that heaven is a place you go when jesus needs us. When its our time to visit he will let us know. she said " ok maybe he will ask us tomorrow." Its hard to know what to say to a 3 year old.

Grandpa has been gone for over a year now and his impact on all of us is something we can hold in our hearts forever. For Faith the time that she spent with grandpa was always wonderful, but she never got to see the grandpa we all remember. I just wanted to post this to remind us how much life is truely a blessing and even though things may not turn out the way we want or we have a bad day, we lucky and very blessed with the wonderful family we have and our realtionship with god. Thank you GG for instilling such good morals in your children. Because of this they have been passed to me and now to Faith.

We love and miss you grandpa!

Good times!

Hello All! As many of you may have seen on facebook, i have finally puchased my own laptop and i love it! This way i will be able to keep in contact with everyone much easier. We have had a few bumps in the road lately with faith and her "clothing issues". Thank you to everyone for the ideas and i have choosen to do rewards and i REALLY REALLY hope that it works!!!! Its funny sometimes i have to take a step back and remember that faith is only 3. With her amazing vocabulary and the way she can grasp the concept of things so quickly her age slips my mind at times. Teaching 4-6 year olds in my class at school and faith who is really comparable to them is great and amazing, but crazy that she is only 3 and i have to take that into consideration.

Faith is truely enjoying her new bed and i love mine as well. She looks like a little peanut in a really big shell! Its so cute!

My road to being healthy has been going pretty well. I go to the gym 3-4 days a week and i really do enjoy it. Sometimes it is hard to get in the door, but once i am there it is great. (A big plus is the gym i am going to is about 20 feet from where i work so it is really easy to get to the door lol!) Faith gets to stay at daycare and it works out great since i get done at 230 now and she isn't always up from her nap yet so she can sleep and get up and play for a little bit before i take her home. I really think it is a good thing for me to post my progress. I feel like i am more accountable for what i am doing when i tell others so then i need to keep going and its a motivation for me. My big plan is to run a 5K in may or july depending on what race i can get to. It is a small goal for me but start small and then go for the big one. Eventually i want to run a 1/2 marathon, but that is going to take awhile and "baby steps" as they say!!

I hope that all is well with everyone and please know that Faith and I really do think of everyone on a daily basis and you are in our prayers. Thank you for your posts i love to read them!!

Sunshine ... here we come!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the boys taken at Disney World four years ago when they were 5 and 7 years old. We're heading off to Disney again this Saturday for a week. It's our favorite family vacation. I look forward to leaving the craziness of our everyday lives behind and just being together, enjoying each other, everyday, all day for a week!

It's February

Hello All,

January was our busiest blogging month since 2006.  Way to go family!  I've loved hearing from all of you!  Here are just a couple of shots still coming in from January.

Love, T

Double Click to enlarge

Live Worship Pictures

Photos Credit to Michael Carian

From the crowd - we were singing "We Are Ready"

I'm in black between the two red lights. :)

Rehearsing "Glory" on Thursday Night. 

I am in the red shirt singing back ground vocals (BGV)

Singing "Cry Out Of Romans" 

Jonathan is playing guitar and Carol is playing piano.

They did such a great job.  I cannot wait to hear it.

Worship Leader Will singing one of my favorite songs of the night.

"Teach Us"

Drummer Alan plays regularly with my band. 

He and his wife Amanda have been really good freinds to me.

Pastor Beau McCarthy was our producer.

He is a talented bass player himself.

I have dubbed Dave the MVP.  He played in almost every band of the evening.  His skills are beyond measure but so is is humble attitude.  What a fantastic guy.  He and his wife, a very talented drummer herself, just opened a music lesson business. 

James wrote some really kickin' songs.  He invited me to sing BGV's for them. 

It was a lot of fun!  He was a real cut up last night.

Mariam wrote a beautiful song out of the psalms.  Mariam has some of the most beautiful harmonies I have ever heard.  She is able to pick up on the unusual or unexpected note pairings that most folks would never think of.

Matt rockin' out on electric.  Nathan killin' the drums.  Nathan and his wife Tina are some of my dearest friends.  They are my second family whilst my family is not all here in Michigan.

Looking forward to sharing more with you - especially if I am able to get some video footage.  Jonathan agreed to write more music with me - so we start rehearsal this week!  Whoot! Whoot!  I'm REALLY EXCITED!!

A Night of Worship

Oh my - what a wonderful night of worship. I wish you could have all been there. We recorded 14 songs live. There were around 300 in attendance and most of all God was in the house!! I can't wait to share pictures, video clips, and most of all the finished cd with you (not sure how long that will take).

I was blessed to have so many friends there to support me from all different parts of my life.

Jonathan nailed his part and the production engineer loved our take of Cry Out of Romans. My heart is overflowing with joy and gratitude. What an absolute privilege and pleasure it is to lead others in worship and to be known by God. He longs for us to worship Him - in voice - in mind - in body - in choices - in action - from every aspect of our life.
A big thank you goes out to Kensington Community Church who donated the space, time, and engineering for the event. Another huge thank you to Beau and Nate who worked tirelessly without complaint. And I can't express how overwhelmingly grateful I am to Jonathan who made Cry Out of Romans come alive.

Psalm 150:6:  Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!

I just found this on facebook.  This is from rehearsal the night before.
myself and Jonathan.

Another Edition of the Outlook!

Another edition of the Outlook is done. I was quite happy with how it turned out. If you take a look, you might notice that Tracy and Emily Ann inspired me in the selection and composition of the cover.

Linda

Another great day

It was another great day here at our house! We had a great time playing with friends in the building who came to bring food and meet Addison. Alaina was excited to see her friend John that we have not seen since before Christmas. It was so cute to see her give him a hug goodbye and share her toys so well.

We had the appraisal on the condo today, so hopefully there are no surprises and we can close on March 10th as planned. We are going on Friday to look at more potential homes in the Lake Zurich and Arlington Heights. Fingers crossed.

Also, after much deliberation, Pete and I have decided that Addison's shortened name will be spelled Addie instead of Addy. That way Addy Cain and Addie Nadeau won't get their names mixed up when we're speaking of them :) We figured since she's only 3 weeks old, we could still make a change.

Alaina almost made me cry today. She was playing with a hat of hers, and all of a sudden picked it up with both hands and put it on. It doesn't sound like much, but she used both arms and I have never seen her raise or rotate her right arm that far before! I got teary eyed just thinking of the progress she has made. We start up therapy again tomorrow, and Pete and I are excited to see what the OT has to say about what the next steps are.

Love you all!
Emily Ann, Pete, Alaina, and Addison (Addie)

The Making of Bunny II

Most of you meet Bunny I when Alaina visited at Christmas. It was her favorite bunny and he went everywhere with her. Well Bunny went missing in action the day that Addy came home from the hospital and Alaina was very sad to lose him. Since I made Bunny I, I need to get into action and make Bunny II. While I was making BunnyII I thought I might as well make Addy her Bunny I. So I thought I would share with you all the Making of Bunny Duece!




As with Bunny one they are made out of Chasmere Sweaters I found at a resale shope. I felted the sweaters and then used them like fabric for the bunny. It makes the cutest small bunny. So very soft and just the right size to hold in your hand.







This one is a heads up picture! LOL


When I saw this picture I could not help but sing that song. "I fall to pieces"


And the Bunnies are done! They are in the mail and on their way to be home with Alaina and one day Addy!

Muscles & Beauty

Happy Anniversary Muscles and Beauty!
I think you are a great match.

New use for the Bed buddy!

So as many of you have heard, Addison has been suffering from colic... It's been a lot of fun at night and needless to say we were looking for a solution to our problems! Emily read online that colic usually comes from being gassy and it suggested that they need to have some extra pressure on their belly to help. We noticed when we would hold Addie against our chest that she would be much calmer and fall right asleep. It's impossible to hold her like that all night and if you put a baby on their stomach nowadays, the baby police will come and haul you away. That's when the light bulb went off with the bed buddy! Not too heavy, but still enough pressure to help her while keeping her in the law friendly back sleeping position. So thanks again Carol! We are very well rested today!

Pete