An Evening at the Playground

We've had some gorgeous 80 degree weather days in Missoula the past week. A last hurrah of summer for us before the long winter sets in. We spent about every night this summer at the park just down the hill from us. As you can see, it's a glorious view! We are thinking a lot, praying a lot in the midst of a lot of decisions we've had to make as a family. We'll keep you all updated as we figure things out! Have a great weekend!

Meal Time

Where have we been?

It's almost midnight on a Friday night. I have too much rolling around in my brain tonight to sleep at the moment- strange for a tired parent, you'd think I'd be getting all the seconds I could! It' s been a long few weeks for us, Brendan has had one day off in the last three weeks. We have all of Saturday and Sunday together as a family! Oh joy. So, I thought I'd get back to the old blog and update you all with some picture from the last month and a half. Enjoy!

The place where we spent most of the summer...our patio and backyard



The yummy tomatoes grown (we are so thankful to have a yard of our own!)


Emma in Colorado thinking about riding a "horsie"
(yes, she is wearing a coat- it was cold at 9,000 feet in August!)



"Emma ride horsie...Emma ride horsie...Emma ride horsie..."


"Wow, that horsie's really big, never mind!"



Hiking around Yellowstone Park- we were there for a wedding-
Congrats Andrew and Laura!

Family Pic

Our little cutie with her buddy Jack

Yellowstone

Our Summer so far...

Good news for all of you (our friends)! Here are a bunch of pictures from the past couple months. We've had a great summer so far, visiting Katie's family in VA, and also my family in AK. You'll get more of the scoop about each of those trips as the pictures progress... But first, a picture from our own beautiful state of MT.

The above picture is from a place called Morrel Falls, about an hours drive from Missoula. It was Emma's first official hike as a toddler, and she did great. She rode in to the falls on my back, and then walked almost a mile on the trip out. We're looking to more of this kind of stuff with her!

Emma walking with Dad.

Emma eating a bagel on our food break during the hike. She was hungry!

Emma was ready for the beach before we even left Missoula!

Here she is digging to her heart's content.

Uncle Nate (who is in Scotland right now!) and Emma looking at the cows at Maymont in Richmond, VA.

Mimi, Auntie Rachel, and Emma

Here's our family, all together, on a trampoline...Emma for the first time. She really loves to jump. She makes us jump, her stuffed animals jump, her doll jump. And she's working really hard to get both feet in the air at the same time. So, you can imagine the trampoline was a hit.

This is a picture my dad took of me on their trampoline in AK. I was a gymnast, after all. We were there for my sister Danielle's wedding.

The above picture is my sister, Danielle, just before their wedding ceremony. Katie was a bridesmaid, and I was a flower girl, along with Emma.

Emma is in the immitating stage of life right now, and wanted to carry around her doll, just like mommy was carrying her around. She has named her baby doll "Lola." We're not sure where she came up with that name, but it's suck. She danced Lola around the house for a while this morning.

We've been doing a lot of work on our house since moving in last October. The most recent project was replacing the windows. This is me working on trimming out our bedroom windows.

Have a great summer all!

She's Got Rhythm

Pictures from December

Before we post any pictures, we would ask you all who have a chance to view our blog to please pray for the situation of violence in Kenya. The pastor who we lived with two summers ago in Kakamega was robbed and beaten in the marketplace as he went out to buy food. He made it back to the orphanage alive. Please pray also for our friends the Karaus who run an orphanage and pastor a church in one of the biggest slums in Nairobi. They, too, are safe, but the violence in the country is very unpredictable. Thank you for your prayers for our brothers and sisters in Kenya.

"Do You See Orange" a campaign led by Intervarsity at the U of M to raise
awareness and money for AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa

Emma reading with Gran Jamieson when they were out to visit in early December


Emma with her buddy Jack


Emma's first semi-sledding experience (Thanks to her dad who
insisted upon it, but all we could find was a shovel for her to ride in).


My brother Nate who came out to visit us before we all headed home to VA


Getting some use out of the backpack


Emma with her Great Grandmother


Emma and Auntie Rachel


Grammy Adams time

Emma's first foray in playing the piano (Brendan is so proud)
being supervised by Grandpa Adams


A wonderful visit with high school friends Amberleigh and Anna
(and their new additions Dulaney and Ella)

That's all for now folks. Time to hit the sack, it's been a long day taking care of a sick baby- thanks to airplane travel.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all! This picture taken at the National Art Museum in Washington D.C. is just a small reflection of our travels in the last two weeks. We've been to Charlottesville, VA visiting Katie's family, Williamsburg, Newport News, D.C. and a surprise trip to Salt Lake City after we were bumped from our returning flight home. We're back settling in for a short week until we head off to Hawaii with Brendan's parents before the semester starts up again. Emma is now a champion traveler. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Season of Change

Well we are finally re-emerging into the blogging world after a three month hiatus. The real reason for a lack of updates has been a broken camera. It seemed hardly worthwhile to update without picture of Emma, which we know is why you all check in at all! Along with that has been a hectic few months. As some of you all know, we had been wrestling for awhile with the decision of whether or not to stay in Missoula, working with InterVarsity at the University of Montana. We spent a lot of time this summer praying, listening, talking with friends and family, and just waiting for a direction from God. After a particularly meaningful time of praying with friends, we felt the confirming nudge from the Lord to commit to staying on with InterVarsity in Montana. We decided to make the commitment to be here for the next few years. It was a big decision, deciding to continue to fundraise our income (especially with me cutting back big time with my work at our church) and really settle here for the time being. It was such a hard decision because we both would love to live closer to our families. As an outward symbol of an inward commitment, we began to look into buying a house. God began to move and after a chain of miraculous events, we bought a house at the end of September. October was a whirlwind of painting, house improvements, and living between our apartment and our house. My parents came to visit a week after the move into the house. Then followed Brendan's preparations to co-lead a track on prayer at our fall conference. Which leads us up to now. Here we are, exhausted homeowners. We were not prepared for the stress of moving quickly, having a baby who had a hard time adjusting to a new place, a baby who does not sleep well, as well as our own stress in the changes in life. We are finally settling in. Pictures to soon follow.

Emma update: Our little high energy gal is her old happy self at last. She began officially crawling in the middle of September after a month of doing a pilates/inchworm kind of move. She is the proud owner of eight teeth- six on top, and two on the bottom (why that way I have no clue!) She is super busy and zooms around the house destroying tupperware drawers and bookshelves. Packing was insane with her, I would pack a box, and she would unpack it right behind me. She loves to laugh and has the best giggle that sends us all rolling. We needed someone around here to lighten us up! She learned to climb the stairs at an IV retreat in September and we had to get baby gates as soon as we moved into our new place to keep her on one level. She loves being read to and also loves when her daddy plays the guitar for her. I caught her sitting in the guitar case last week while he serenaded her. She loves dogs and eating dirt from one of our plants if I'm not careful. We love this baby who is growing up into a little girl.

We are posting a couple of pics my parents took when they were here a couple weeks ago, that's all we have, unless anyone knows how to get pictures off a camera phone! We had to buy a disposable camera when they were here because I dropped their digital. Bad luck with cameras I guess. Anyways, we'll update with more pictures of Emma and the house soon!

Beach Photos

As promised, our beach pics from the last week. They're mostly of Emma, but I don't hear any complaints about that!

With Great Grandpa and Grandma Adams

With Grandpa on the minigolf course

Learning to play cards with Daddy

Meeting Great Grandma and Tom Rorrer

First time in the ocean- I'm convinced she WILL be a beach lover, it's in her genes,
even if she did cry when the waves reached her toes

On a walk with Daddy