5 Church Christmas Pageant

Last night we went to an event in Long Beach. It was put on by 5 churches in one neighbourhood. Each one did several live still scenes from the Christmas story! It was so fun! Each place also had live music going on inside and were handing out things like fudge, chili, wassail, hot cocoa, cookies, etc.

Some of the scenes had live animals! There were donkeys, lambs, and goats.

Sarah's Graduation/Birthday

This past weekend as some of you know, my younger sister Sarah graduated from her ROP program to become a licensed vocational nurse. I cannot express how proud I am of my little sister especially considering the extenuating circumstances that she has had to deal with over the years of her pursuing this further education. She looked radiant up there with all the classmates that she had started anew with in the last 9 months since she had to re-enter the program after her tragic incident. It's still amazing to me how she bounced back from the hardest thing she's ever had to go through, especially being there and being happy for her friend Amy as she went on to graduate with class A in July and Sarah had to wait 5 more months. Her forgiving spirit towards the faculty and the intentional way that she came into class B to be a part of it and make friends is an example to many people and certainly evidence of Christ in her life.

Her fiance, Sam, was able to make it to her graduation ceremony. He came all the way from Missouri!

Dani came from Colorado and Stephen from...well Garden Grove, to show their support of Sarah. =)

Sarah with my dad's parents.

(My mom's parents were there but we couldn't find them for a picture.)

On Saturday, we celebrated Sarah's graduation along with her golden birthday! She will turn 19 on December 19th.

The guys replacing some broken paving stones and putting up the golden tarp shade that just happened to match our decorations!

All home made hors d'oeuvres (My mom is amazing!)

Lamp.

We are very excited tonight, we bought a lamp. This brings light to our bedroom and into our hearts!

We're also very happy to have found this new little addition to our home at Goodwill for $8!

Thanksgiving!

We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving in Las Cruces with Josh's family! We haven't seen any of them (Except Danie very briefly) since we moved back to California in May. So we have missed them a lot and the few days we got to spend there didn't seem like nearly enough. But we are grateful for the time we did have a we enjoyed it a lot!

Wesley's little hiding place behind Mom & Dad's bed

Our tradition for the day after Thanksgiving is to go to El Paso to Bob-O's and do go-cart racing along with all the other fun things that come with the pass we get! But most importantly, go-carts!

I love how Danie is photobombing this one

Laser Tag!

Saturday morning we picked up our Penske truck and moved all the things from our storage unit into it. This was light work considering the many hands who helped us, and we are especially thankful for Uncle Don's expertise in knowing how to pack it so everything stayed nice and tight during the drive. We didn't have anything break and I was sure with some of those bumps and jostles that there would be at least one or two casualties.

We left Sunday afternoon after church and lunch with the family. We stayed near Phoenix with my Uncle Jim & Aunt Annette and as usual enjoyed their company and were sad to leave in the morning. We drove the second leg of our trip Monday and had everything moved into our condo by about 3:30! Hope helped us unload  and then stayed to help me situate a little bit so that by the time we can get in on Thursday it won't be AS much of a huge giant wreck.