Meeting Family and Friends

Susanna Cate is very loved by our family and friends!  BeBe and PopPop (my parents--as named by Lydda Grace) were able to meet her right after she was born (they drove to Atlanta in the middle of the night when I called to say I was in labor!). Grandpa and Grandma (Mark's parents) and Uncle Wyn came to meet her when she was three days old.  It was wonderful they were able to meet her when she was so young since they live so far away.  Susanna Cate had both sets of her grandparents with her to celebrate her first Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving indeed--we are so thankful for her and for all of our family and friends!

 PopPop and Susanna Cate

 Uncle Wyn, Grandpa, and Susanna Cate

 Susanna Cate's first walk, on Thanksgiving Day

 with BeBe and PopPop

 with Uncle Wyn, Grandma, and Grandpa

A HUGE "thank you" to our family, especially BeBe and Grandma, for taking such good care of us during our first week at home!  BeBe and Grandma cooked and cleaned all week, and even cooked a great Thanksgiving feast for us.  Thank you!!

Rebekah, Javier, and Isaac were in South Carolina for a wedding the day after Susanna Cate was born, so they were able to meet her the day we came home from the hospital.  I was so grateful for Rebekah's encouragement--as a new mom herself she knew my worries and insecurities with a brand new baby and had exactly the right words to lift me up.

 Meeting Isaac.  Someday Isaac and Susanna Cate will be great friends and have tons of fun together.  But right now, he looks SO much bigger than her.  What a difference six months makes!

 Isaac and his littlest cousin

Susanna Cate met Aunt Emily, Uncle Jon, Lydda Grace and Wade, and Uncle Joel and Sean, via Skype.  We can't wait to introduce her to Uncle Joel, Aunt Monica, and Sean in person in January!  Then she will have to wait until the summer to meet Aunt Emily, Uncle Jon, LG and Wade.  We will have many Skype visits before then--so thankful for the internet!

Susanna Cate has also met many of our friends.  We are thankful for the encouragement and community of our friends in Atlanta!

Meeting Aaron and Caroline Swiger.  Susanna Cate is hiding behind the Clemson onesie they brought her.  It was a little big for her to wear for the Clemson vs. NC State game but she will wear it soon!  :)

Meeting Laura and Michael Patterson

Meeting Abi and Mark Spears

August Visitors

In August we enjoyed visits from lots of family!

Mom and Dad Boerckel (Grandma and Grandpa) came to visit from Illinois.  Since they live so far away we don't get to see them very often, so it was wonderful that they could come for a nice long visit.  Mom and Dad Moore (BeBe and PopPop) came for the weekend while they were here.  We got to see Joel, Monica, and Sean briefly on their trip down to Atlanta, and Uncle Joe, Aunt Joy, Madalyn, and Muriel also came by for an afternoon on their way through town.  How great to see so much family at once!  Mom B, Mom M, and Monica were all able to come to my baby shower...more about that later.

We so wish we could see Mom and Dad B and Joel, Monica and Sean more often.  Once again though we are thankful for the way that technology lets us stay in touch.  Though we have only seen sweet little Sean a few times since he was born, at least we do get to see what he's up to via videos!

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of Mom and Dad B's visit...I need to get better about taking pictures (working on it!), but we were also very busy!  Dad B went biking on the Silver Comet trail while Mom B and I got pedicures.  (I'll take that trade any day!)  They graciously put up with my sporadic summer violin-teaching schedule.  We spent lots of time talking, eating, and laughing...the perfect combination for great time spent together.  

They also really blessed us by helping us TONS with our nursery!  We are so thankful for help from both sets of parents to get baby girl's room ready.  Dad B painstakingly painted our changing table while he was here.  The changing table belonged to Emily, Rebekah, and me, and then Lydda Grace and Wade.  It was a little worse for the wear, plus I wanted it white to match our nursery.  Dad worked really hard, and it went from the dark wood of the previous post to this:

Thank you, Dad!  It looks so much better!

Mom B is an amazingly talented watercolor artist.  Our house looks like a gallery of her paintings--we love it!  We were so happy that she wanted to paint for baby girl's room.  She painted one Bible verse for baby girl before they came, and then she painted another one for baby girl while they were visiting!  We love that baby girl will have two special paintings from Grandma reminding her of Truth every day.

  Thank you, Mom!  Such special gifts to baby girl!

Also while Mom and Dad M were in town, Mom M made curtains for the nursery, and we found a mirror for over the changing table.  After all of this help from everyone, here is what our nursery looks like today:

Still more to do, but it has come a long way!

Aunt Kay's Birthday

Still catching up from July...

The weekend before Jon, Emily, and the kids left, we also got to visit with Aunt Kay and Uncle Talley and Uncle Mike.  Aunt Kay had just had a birthday so it was fun to celebrate with her!  

Mom made Aunt Kay a beautiful quilt.  I love seeing all of your creations, Mom!

Saying Goodbye

After a brief spurt of posts to get this blog started on the right foot, I promptly disappeared.  Here's why:

I REALLY did not want to write about what comes next!

Because what comes next is very hard and heart-wrenching.  But it is also very beautiful.  I needed time to process.

Back in July, we said goodbye to Emily, Jon, Lydda Grace and Wade for a long time, and across a long distance.  They have moved to China for Jon to teach English at Harbin Engineering University.  I admire so much the sacrifice they are making as a family in order to share their lives and hearts with Chinese students.  They are living love on an everyday basis.  Their willingness to pick up and GO halfway across the world, leaving family and friends and everything familiar behind, is inspiring and challenging.  I am thankful for their example in my life.

I knew it was going to be hard to say goodbye, but I didn't know how hard.  For the two years we have lived in Marietta, Emily and Jon have been the closest family to us, only about two hours away, and we have been blessed to visit them often and see Lydda Grace and Wade grow.  We are going to miss those precious little ones and their parents so very, very much.

The very hardest part, though, is not just the time or the distance but the experiences that we won't get to share with them over the next year--namely, welcoming a particular baby girl into the world this fall.  Baby girl will have to wait about seven months to meet her Aunt Emmie, Uncle Jon, and two oldest cousins.  This new mama will sorely miss having her biggest sister around to call anytime about the new world of motherhood and all its challenges.  And we will miss just sharing life with them--holidays and sewing projects and reading Angelina Ballerina and playing games and building block towers and staying up late talking and everything else...

However, we are so grateful for the technology that will allow us to still share life all the way from Georgia to China.  Baby girl can meet and get to know Emily and family over Skype or Google Talk.  Mark and I want our kids to be great friends with their cousins, and we are determined that the Internet will allow that to happen for baby girl and all of her cousins--none of whom live close by.  (Virginia and Ohio are much closer than China, of course!)  A tiny plus is the twelve hour time difference...I will definitely be taking you up on the offer to talk in the middle of the night, Em!

Here are some pictures of our time together in Chapin before saying goodbye.

Wade working intently on MarbleWorks

LG showing BeBe her completed ballerina puzzle

Mark's "this is the best thing ever" face

 Aunt Emmie making Isaac smile

Aunt BekBek and LG reading comics

The whole family

When you give a Javier a camera...

...you never know what you're going to get!

PINK!

There can never be quite enough pink for Lydda Grace.

We celebrated her birthday on Sunday in Chapin.  We were going to have funfetti cupcakes with white icing and colorful sprinkles, in pink cupcake liners.  Upon her request, these cupcakes turned into:

pink cupcake liners

pink batter

pink icing

pink sprinkles

Baked to a chorus of:

"PINK! PINK! PINK! PINK! PINK!"

Baby Girl, if you are anything like your cousin, I foresee lots of red food coloring in our future.

Lydda Grace

Upon finding out she was going to have a girl cousin, this precious girl commented as if it were the most obvious thing in the world:

"You can name her Lydda Grace!"

Someday you'll read this, sweet Lydda Grace, and understand that only YOU can be Lydda Grace to our family.  Uncle Mark and I love you!

Voting

The vote before the gender reveal (my side for boy, Mark's side for girl):

The record shows that almost my whole family was correct.  However, I believe most of them were just being contrary to me, because they really thought I was right...