Happy Easter!

Easter was great this year! Besides the amazingness of realizing once again that Christ died for us, we also had a house full of people to celebrate with! Cole's sister Julia dropped by for a quick overnight on Friday with three friends from college and Chris & Jordan Stern came for a long weekend. This was Chris' 6th Easter break with us... keeping the tradition alive! It was a great weekend, full of good talks, fun games, lots of food and drink, and just a little sleep to keep us going :)

Happy Easter Y'all!

10 months!

Our Clay-man is 10 months old! 

- He isn't walking like we thought he would, but every day we think he's almost there!

- His new thing is yelling: yelling when he's happy, yelling when he's hungry, yelling at his sister when she makes him smile, and yelling when he wants me to pick him up. 

- He's also gained a lot of weight in the last few weeks. At his 9-month appointment, he was a little small, so my pediatrician recommended giving him more food and more formula. He gained 3 pounds in about 3 weeks (!) so he's an even 20 lbs now. 

- He cut his top four teeth this week so he's been a drool-machine, but hasn't complained much. Those new teeth sure are sharp though!

- He's still our smiley, happy, goofy baby and we sure do love our little guy! Come visit him (and us) in our new house soon! 

Diving in

We've only been here at the Vine Community Church a few weeks, but today we had our first crisis. One of the students from a much loved family in our church died last night in a car accident. Cole woke up this morning to the phone call and has been gone all day meeting with students, grieving with the family, and preparing for an impromptu memorial service for the youth that happened tonight. It has been an emotional day. I just got back from the service and am heavy with the grief that I witnessed there. I didn't really know the boy, Peter, but had gotten to know his sisters and parents just a little bit in the last few weeks. Last week I actually sat with his mom and sisters in church and took communion with them (Cole is usually running around the whole service so I'm on my own) and felt so loved by them "adopting" me for that Sunday. And here we are, a week later, and their whole world has crashed down on them. 

I keeping thinking about the day Matthew died and my heart just aches for his mom especially. The disbelief, the numbness, the anger, the crushing grief, and the aching emptiness is so overwhelming. Just making through the day is painful. I remember this wild and crazy sorrow that would come over me where I would think that I might not being able to keep living with my son gone. It's horrible. It gets better, of course, but the first days are horrible. I wish so badly that I could do or say something to make it better for this family. I wish Cole could give a magical sermon that would ease all the pain and calm all their hearts. But we can't do that. So instead, we pray that God would give them glimpses of heaven; glimpses that will bring peace, and eventually joy, to their hurting hearts. 

So I ask that y'all would pray for this family and for our youth group; that God would use this tragedy to bring glory to His name and that the hearts of all these hurting kids would be drawn to Him. 

New House!

Here's a pic of our new house! I'm not ready to show pics of inside yet :) Give me a few more days (or weeks) and then I'll share!