Finally!!

We have exciting news! We have finally been approved as Foster Parents, and our home is now open for children! Since we lived in NC for 3 years they had to get paperwork from them and apparently there was some problems with them losing paperwork, anyway, it's all taken care of now and we are approved and have our first foster child in our home now!

As you know I can't really give you any details, but I can tell you he's a boy, he is 11 years old, and his name is Jamal! He has only been here 1 night, so all I can really tell you is so far so good! He may only be here about a week, we don't really know how long, but we are very happy to have him with us for whatever amount of time we are able to keep him!

This is not the best picture...I took it last night with my Blackberry, so I could send Chase a picture...I will definitely get some better pictures this week!

Chase is away at YEC (Youth Evangelism Conference) in Macon, so she has not met him yet, but he was telling us that he has an older sister that he is close too, so I am hoping that Chase will be a big help to him!



Please pray for Jamal, that he will feel at home here in our house, and pray for grace, and strength, and wisdom for all the things he is going thru right now, and all that he will go thru in the next few weeks!

Please pray that the Lord will minister to Jamal thru Me, Tommy, and Chase and that we will know the right things to say and do while Jamal is here with us!



Thank you all for your prayers for us to become foster parents and now we covet your prayers now that we are foster parents and as we minister to each and every child that comes thru our home!

*I will post Christmas pictures soon, I was just so excited I had to post about Jamal

The Nutcracker 2010

Chase and I were so excited when our friends Philisha, and her daughter Payton invited us to go to the performance of the Nutcracker at the Coweta County Performing and Visual Arts Centre with them on Monday night! Tommy and I used to go to the Fox Theatre every year when we were first married to see the Nutcracker, and we have taken Chase to see the Nutcracker, as well as a few other performances like the Wizard of Oz and Beauty and the Beast (that was our favorite), we have not had the privilege to do any of those things in several years now, so I was thrilled when Philisha invited Chase and I to go with them to Coweta County's version! Philisha owns a business here in town -The Right Weigh Spa- so Philisha is a patron of the Centre, so we had wonderful seats! The show was amazing!

These few pictures can't do it justice, but I will share a few just so you can see what we enjoyed in person!

Thank you Philisha and Payton for inviting us to come along!!

We had a great time!!

Parties, Parties, Parties!!

We have had so much fun this Christmas season, hosting a couple of parties! The first party was for the Deacons of our church and their wives, along with our Ministry staff and their wives! I can't believe I forgot to get a picture of everyone the night they were here!!

Our Deacons and their wives are: Charles and Ira Kent, Jim and Becky Prince, Jim and Monty Morris, Gene and Dot Patton, Josh and Missy Toombs

Our Ministry Staff includes our Student Pastor Adam Cain and his wife Dana, and our Minister of Music John Mease and his wife Regina

Tommy and I are so thankful for these wonderful men of God that he is privileged to serve with at LBC, and their wives have been such an encouragement to me! They all are such a blessing to our family and to our church!

Tommy and I hosted a dinner last year for the deacon staff and wives, but our deacon staff, as well as our ministry staff has grown so much this year that we decided to just host a Christmas Party! We had so much fun everyone chipped in and brought some party foods, and we had beautiful gifts for everyone thanks to our daughter in law Hester! Hester has a new gadget that allowed her to etch the last name initial on a jar and she added some Christmas ribbon, I added some peppermint candy, and the gifts were a HUGE hit!! Thanks Hester for all you did to help me with these special gifts! I love you!!

Of course Chase felt left out and wanted to have a Christmas party for her friends, she called it her 1st Annual Christmas party (we'll see about that!) She was alittle disappointed in the turn out, but with EOCT's (End of Course Test) she wasn't able to give them much notice, but she had several good friends here, and they had a great time eating pizza, and brownie cookies and doing alot of Wii dancing!! :) I think a good time was had by all!! :)

We will be having our family get together this Thursday, so I will post about that later this week!

2010 Christmas Chorus Concert

Thursday, December 16, 2010 was Chase's first high school Christmas concert!

WOW! What a show they put on! It was amazing! Ms. Robbins is a wonderful choral director and we feel so privileged that Chase is in her chorus class!

Here are a few pictures from the concert:

A Christmas Tour of our Home!!

Here's just a few pics of our home decorated for the holidays! We love to decorate our house and we hope you enjoy this small "tour"

Hope you enjoyed our little tour! We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Traditions & Advent

Some of our favorite Christmas traditions are always having a real Christmas tree that we go and cut down ourselves, we decorate it altogether, going thru each ornament recalling when and where we got each one! It's so much fun! Another tradition is to open a present or two on Christmas eve which is usually Christmas PJ's and a stuffed animal for Chase (just the PJ's for me)! We also love to drive around and look at all the Christmas lights, we are fortunate to live close to a place where several families go into gether and it's like a winter wonderland of lights and nativities, and Santa's! You drive thru a maze, past a lake every square inch decorated it's beautiful!!

However, Advent has become a very special tradition at our house! We started Advent when Chase was about 7 years old. It's a special time that we spend together as a family, reading scripture, praying, and a it's wonderful way to keep ourselves focused on the real meaning of Christmas! I hope along with all our other traditions this will be one that Chase will continue with her family one day!

What are your favorite Christmas traditions?

Are there traditions that you do with your family that you remember doing as a child??

Funny Pics from our Photo Session

Here are the funny pics from our photo sessions as promised in my last post!

Tommy being cool! :)

I have no idea what Chase is doing, but it's pretty funny! And I am having fun "pretending" to choke my husband!! LOL!

I guess Mary didn't do any funny ones! She was all good and serious I guess! Tomorrow I will post Chase and Mary school competition pics (they go to rival high schools)!!

Family Pictures

This year for Christmas I told Tommy all I wanted was for the 3 of us to have some family pictures made! When the boys were living at home, we would have family pictures made every year at Christmas time, and sometimes at Easter too! So besides the family pictures we did last year with the whole crew! We haven't had a professional family picture since all the boys moved out! As you can tell I have already added a picture to the header and some new ones on the sidebar, but I will share with you some others we had made as well!

Just a few of my favorites:

My absolute favorite is the one of Tommy and I on the sidebar...I love it!! I love all of them!! Come back tomorrow...I will add some of our funny ones!! :)