My friend Jenni just got ENGAGED!!!!!!! WOO HOO JENNI AND BRANT!!!!

Everyone has GOT to be happy for a girl who’s name will be Jennifer Szambecki-Benninga!!! Doesn’t get any better than that! I am pretty sure they’ll never be able to move to a foriegn country because no one will be able to pronounce her name.

She has the benefit of planing a wedding at the age of 30, when she knows better than to go into debt for it.

Here’s her blog on how she’s doing it.

A Truly Affordable Wedding

Oh, and on a side note, whoever invented these:

I want to give a bear hug!

(yes, on facebook, I wanted to kiss them. I’ve decided I am not as excited about the hooks as I am Jenni’s wedding so I didn’t want to cause the post to get off balance)

I have high hopes I’ll be a blogger again. Here’s my first attempt.

For now, I’ll try to share some pictures from our vacation that we just returned from. Only a few have been downloaded. But I’ll try to tell the story with what I have.

We began our extended week by driving to Nashville to do Halloween with Aunt Bekah and Uncle Jeff.

Here’s our little Handy Manny and cutie-patootie flower. I love this picture!

Then we drove through the Smoky Mountains to Glenville, NC to stay at an amazing lake house in the Nanahalah National Forest. The home belonged to the generous family I used to nanny for in Atlanta. Here’s the view from the back porch.

It was INCREDIBLE!!

Okay, side note. I am realizing that the photos Josh has downloaded are ones he took on his iphone. So, bad news is, we are missing most of the pictures we took with each other and with other people. Good news is, the downloading onto the blog is going really fast and I may get this post done before nap time is over!

After 3 days in the mountains, we drove to Atlanta for four CRAZY BUSY days of visiting the people we long to still be living life with. Most of the Atlanta pictures were taken with our camera so I’ll share them later (cross my fingers). For now, I’ll share the pictures Josh took on his phone in order to tweet them. Mostly, they are of the restaurants we have been hungering for a year now.

Here’s an artsy one of Eliza at a Buckhead breakfast stop:

Here’s our favorite Atlanta restaurant and their fish tacos:

We went to church on Sunday. It is hard to let go of our church and the idea of our kids growing up in the children’s ministry there. Jadon liked getting his picture under the taxi tower.

Then, there was the beautiful drive we used to take every day to our old house.

sigh. We miss the city and the people so much.

Finally, there was the drive home, ALL NIGHT Sunday night. Overall we spent around 40 hours in the car with a 9 month old and a 2 1/2 year old. . . . . . . . . the kids did A M A Z I N G L Y well!!! Here’s a picture of them at 5:30am on Monday morning when were were about 2 hours from Kansas City. Can you believe it? (mom and dad weren’t doing as well)

To close it all out. I’ll show you a picture that sums up how Eliza feels out her trip to the area of the country that is a big part of her family, but she never really lived in.

I think her words were, “Wha, what?! When yo’ taking me back to The ATL, my parentals? I already miss my peeps!”

Yeah, laugh at me all you want. Her words, not mine.

We spent Memorial Day in St Louis with our good friends we met in Guatemala. They live within a couple hours from St Louis in the opposite direction so we met up for the weekend. Jadon and Hudson rode to the US on the same plane so it is so great to see them begin playing together! The kids had such a great time, and so did the adults. God has richly blessed us with this family! It was SO much fun!!!

At the Zoo

The St Louis Arch is the coolest monument I’ve ever seen.

Here are pictures of us at the top of the arch. Jadon was amazed. Eliza slept the whole time.

This is a long post. So I’ve put in a couple pictures to liven it up. There’s a reward at the bottom for those of you who make it there.

Here’s a pic to start you off. If you don’t know already, “Jadon Rocks!” It’s gone to his head. He walks around sometimes saying, “I rock!”

Thank you so much for everyone who has sent a caring message in the past few days. I am going to try to attempt to explain a little more.

Hallmark announced Tuesday that they will be laying off 6-8% of it’s workers. It was a surprise in the way that Hallmark takes laying off it’s employees very seriously, but not a surprise because of the way the economy is going. They may have already started to lay people off, but we won’t know for sure who is laid off until several weeks, maybe even months have passed.

When we were leaving Atlanta and Josh’s job at Lockheed Martin, I said a couple times that it felt a little crazy that we were leaving a job with solid government contracts for airplanes to work for a retail company that relies on Americans’ holiday spending. But, we decided it was worth it to move closer to family and get Josh into a job that was fulfilling, challenging and exciting to him. We have not regretted the decision. It is incredibly wonderful to be near family and Josh has found his job to be every thing and more than what he dreamed it would be.

When we left Atlanta in October we left with only what we could fit into our pretty small Honda CRV. Our home was left with all of it’s furnishings and most of our comforts with the hope that it would sell better. In October and November the economy made it’s sharpest declines and it became increasingly obvious that we were going to have to take an extreme loss on our home in order to sell it. We said several times in those months that if it wasn’t for Josh’s love of his job, we would move back to Atlanta in a heartbeat. We got a contract, but we did loose a significant amount of money on our sale in December. Side note, we absolutely loved our home. If we had stayed in Atlanta we would have been happy in it for many, many years. But instead we were living in my parents basement and were looking forward to getting our furnishings from our home before our baby was born. At that time our brother-in-law began working on my sister’s unfinished basement in order for us to move into it.

In December, we closed on our home with a loan we had to take out because of our transfer. We moved our stuff to two places. Half went to my parents’ basement and the other half to my sister’s where we’ve been living ever since (see previous post). Our plan was to allow our finances to recover somewhat for 6 months, then move around Hallmark downtown to start our lives here. We’ve been planning on finding a church and a community to serve and live in this summer. We’ve been on two house hunting trips, researched schools, found doctors, applied to preschool programs all in the area we were planning to move.

So, on Tuesday it came as a blow (as I am sure it did to all Hallmark employees) that Josh may loose his job. We feel pretty unsecure because Josh is definitely the last 6-8% to be hired, which we are sure puts him at the top of the list of who to consider to lay off. There are reasons to be hopeful, but certainly reasons to be worried too.

On Wednesday I was pretty down. I think the first year after a move across country always is. When you move you loose all of your “normals” and nothing is comforting. The grocery store is different, the weather is surprising, you get lost all the time, everything is just different. Suddenly friends you only saw once a month or got go on walks with are the only people you want to see in moments of homesickness. When we heard of Hallmark’s layoffs, all I could think of was the home, friends, church and the beauty of Georgia that we left behind.

I do know that if we were still there, I would be incredibly sad that my family wouldn’t have been there for Eliza’s birth, I would miss dearly the deep talks I have with my sister after the kids go to bed, I would miss the way my son anticipates time with his grandparents and cousins he now knows.  But in either decision there are pluses and minuses, ups and downs, things to rejoice in and things to mourn.

Thank you for your prayers. In many, many ways our situation is not that bad. We are blessed with family, health, a roof over our heads, safety, many things that America has recently found we all take for granted. More than prayers that Josh would keep his job, I ask for prayers that we would continue to find contentment. Realizing peace in a situation we don’t want to be in while God being glorified in our hearts is actually the only thing we truly want. Knowing our God in moments of crisis is the only thing we actually need. The world could continue to fall apart, but as long as God continues to reveal himself to us, we will be fulfilled.

Josh would like to keep his job in order for his family to be provided for and in order to continue to do a job he has found that he absolutely LOVES. I would like him to keep his job so my husband continues to be fulfilled and challenged during the day and so that my family can have a space to live and thrive in.

If you are still reading this incredibly long post I thank you for loving us. Thank you for walking beside us by listening, commenting and praying. We are so thankful for everyone we’ve been blessed to live life with. We’ll keep you updated.

Here are the pictures I promised:

About 2 months ago we had our friends over for dinner. If you don’t remember them, check out the end of this post. We met Tony and Sarah in birthing class and discovered we both had sons, 3 months apart from Guatemala. The girls ended up being born 4 days apart (and the day we left the hospital they were randomly put in the same room that we were!) When we got the girls together outside of mine and Sarah’s stomachs, here’s what happened:

We placed our new cuties next to each other on the couch.

We snapped a decent picture.

Then, things quickly made a turn for the worst.

And in the time it took for me to snap 4 pictures while laughing at 2 poor 3 week olds, disaster struck.

Will they ever trust us again?

The month started with sledding at Grandma and Papa’s house. (I was reminded that I just had a just c-section, oops)

Jadon got a “big boy bed” and is doing very well on it. He may like it because of the “Cars” bedding we let him pick out. Whatever works, right?!

Cousin Morgan is in a bit of a ham stage, can you tell??

My friend Jenni ran a 4 mile race in KC for St. Patrick’s day. Jadon and I went to watch her. She did GREAT! GO JENNI!!

We finally talked Jadon into holding little sister. Just after we took this he said “All done” and tried to push her off with both hands. Yikes!! But really, he does great with her.

Cousin Alex and Aunt Julie (josh’s sister) came to visit from Colorado Springs on their spring break!! Sorry you had to sleep on the couch in our basement Julie. Next time, we hope to do better.

Where did J learn to cheese like that??

Jadon likes to take some lovin’ out on Sierra. I am not sure Sierra likes it as much as Jadon does. But it makes for a cute picture.

We had Easter egg decorating time with Ashlyn and Morgan up stairs while it sleeted outside. -Notice the eggs in the back ground- We decorated them in many ways (dye, stickers, markers, plastic wrapping), we read books about Easter, talked about what Easter means and colored Easter pictures. Fun times!

Then, we decorated Eliza with the eggs!!

Here are my adorable kids who wouldn’t look at the camera. I fall more in love with them every day!

Eliza at 7 weeks. Be still my heart! I can’t believe she’s old enough to look at the camera like this already! Ugh, I try not to get wrapped up in how short babies are babies and just enjoy it!

That was our month!

Now bring on April and please Kansas City, BRING ON SPRING!!!!

Please pray for Aaron, Sara and Jonah. Hope passed away yesterday to be with Jesus. They haven’t posted about her passing yet, but I am sure they will soon.

http://www.hopemaus.com/

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/hopemaus

When I student taught and worked for Young Life at East High School I knew these two great kids, Sara and Aaron. I first met Aaron as a freshman in my boy’s choir and Sara I knew through many girls who came to Young Life. They both have great stories and it’s really wonderful to me that they fell in love and got married. They have tremendous faith in Jesus and are incredible people.

A few weeks ago Sara gave birth to her second child, a little girl named Hope. She’s in very critical condition and just had serious heart surgery. I could try to explain what they are are dealing with but I’ll just give you their website so you can read for yourself. Please, please pray for this sweet family. If you decide to donate to help them with their medical expenses I can vouch for them that they are very trustworthy and faithful parents who would be extremely grateful for your generosity.

Here’s their site.

http://www.hopemaus.com/

Please join me in prayer for this sweet family.