Happy Halloween!

Here's a treat for you!


Here we are as pirates and our award winning pirate ship at the town's trick-or-trunk. This is our core group, minus Mike, from left to right: Adrianne, Abbey, Amanda, Matt, Lucas, Everly, Shauna, Aaron, and Andrea.


Handing out candy--Lucas (in the ship) did a great job talking to the kids like a pirate as they walked by.


We also helped with the pumpkin decorating--what a cute little Dorothy with red curls!


Everly was a fairy princess and got so many oohs and ahhs. A grandma next to us held her most of the time. :)


Here's the family afterward, a little tired from the day.


Halloween morning--we started this tradition when we got married, making a special breakfast for each holiday. Today it was jack-o-lanturn pancakes with pumpkin, orange coloring, and chocolate chip faces. :)


Here's Evelry in her bee costume from our friend Jayme that she'll wear tonight, maybe minus the crown Aaron says.


Hope you have a fun day!

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Trick-or-treating Fun!

Ready to go!


Rrick-or-treating Chalmette style! Everyone is outside and set up for the kids with lots of fun stuff.


Someone had a popcorn and cotton candy machine. Ev liked tasting the cotton candy!


We ran into the Woodwards and their Buzz Lightyears!


And here's our stash.

rebuilding

aaron and i are reading Nehemiah right now. it's interesting to read about Jerusalem being rebuilt as New Orleans, specifically Chalmette for us, is being rebuilt. after the wall around the city was rebuilt, the homes still needed rebuilding. hmm... well, our town and parish doesn't have a wall, but we do have a sheriff force unlike any other i've seen and only a few ways into our parish. there has only been one murder in st. bernard parish since hurricane katrina. it's the safest parish in the metro area. but, there is still destruction everywhere! homes still sitting empty, some still not gutted, waiting to be demolished most likely.

anyway, the israelites gathered to worship God after the wall was complete. it is a different group of people than those who grumbled after being freed from captivity. they read the Torah and wept at its words. they recognized how Yahwah had performed a miracle--protecting them and equipping them to rebuild the walls of jerusalem in only 52 days while other nations plotted against them! their lives were being changed.

after we had helped families with their home, gutting or rebuilding it, they too recognized God's hand blessing them. the city in general has recognized that it is the Church that has helped the most after Katrina. but will they turn to worship God? i realize that we have a great responsibility and privelage to teach them God's word now. God doesn't only want to rebuild their homes, but their lives. God has rebuilt all our lives through the power of Christ! i think about how my life is different. in my sin, in the darkest of times, i turn to Christ and their is life, hope. i want for the people of Chalmette, for New Orleans, for all the world, to know Christ.

shrimp, Scrabble, sippee

Last night we enjoyed our first shrimp broil with our church community and a church from Minnesota. They are here working with Journey Christian Church and want to help support a church plant here. It was a lot of fun. A local man and his wife from Journey came to broil the shrimp, and while that was happening I got to play Scrabble with his wife and a couple other really smart ladies. I knew they were going to be good so I said I would just watch but they would have none of that. So, I played and got a very lucky move--I used all my Scrabble letters to make the word BEETLES, hit three double word scores forming two words, and scored 104 points! I told them I had never done that before, but they joked about it the rest of the evening. It looks like I'll have to play them again in the future. I'm sure I'll lose! :)

Well, we prayed for no rain that night and God blessed us with that! But it got dark quick and Aaron and others scattered for lights. There were over 70 of us all together in the Woodward's (our lead pastor) yard! It was a good time fellowshipping with people--some of them had come down last November and worked with us at CrossRoads, so that was neat. It was also amazing that the food lasted--each of us in our group prepared a side dish and dessert, but I was sure we were going to run out. I think Matt mentioned that in his closing prayer, that it was almost like God multiplied the food like when Jesus fed the 5,000!

Another neat thing was that our friend, and the Woodward's neighbor, Walter came over. It's always good to catch up with him. We mostly talked politics. He's a Sheriff's deputy and we have a huge election race going on right now. I have seen about three debates on TV- for our Parish president and for governor. It's crazy how big of a deal this is here! Well, preliminary voting is Saturday. It's going to be a big deal--I'm not sure how to pray for it. Well, now that I said that I'm sure I'll update you with how it turns out (Adam- I'm sure you'd like to know).

So, that was our fun evening. Everly stayed up late- til almost 9:30. She's asleep now and Aaron is on the road. He and the rest of the staff and our intern are going up to Cincy and Louisville to talk to a few churches who are supporting us. So, pray that that goes well. I'm sure it will cause these are great people of God. As a final note, a high for me today was seeing Everly figure out how to drink from her sippee cup! We tried to teach her a couple weeks ago before we went to Indy and today I got it back out. I was so excited and could tell that she was, too. She even held it a little and got some in by herself. ...she's growing up too quick! :(

here's a cute picture from today to end on...

our little stander

Every time I turn around Everly is standing, holding on to something new! It's crazy, but she loves it and wants to explore everything. here's a couple pics!


under the kitchen table


the newspaper basket--i have to put her bumbo seat on top of it so she won't eat the paper!

7 months today! Indy and work update

well, it's been a while and i have been meaning to update this with some pretty exciting stuff. Ev started crawling a few weeks ago, and then standing a week later! She can pull herself up in her crib and on other things. i often find her standing up holding on to things and am amazed! everyone says she's really strong for her age and that she'll probably walk early. she sure is going to keep us busy!

crawling


standing for the first time- on her music box!


and today she is officially teething, i think. how can you ever be sure? but she was pretty fussy and i bought some baby oragel which seemed to do the trick. but it could be that we had a crazy busy, and fun, time in indiana and am still trying to get her take longer naps again. aaron and i got our naps in after an early morning flight and late night to see his grandparents and a friend 2 hours north of Indy. our schedule while we were there was packed! during the week aaron had training from 8-4 and everly and i got up early to take Leah to work and to get to seeing people before we picked her up at 3:45. it was good to have that time structure though.

all smiles with great grandparents cooks!


now we're trying to get back into the swing of things here. Aaron worked the day we got back, Sunday and today with a team from Georgia Tech. They had about 180 students here working with us and CrossRoads. today I got to make a quick stop at the bowling alley to see the progress. they tore down old brick walls inside, gutted the rest of the duct work and other scrap metal, and were cleaning up all the debris. tomorrow some guys from Indian Creek are flying in to look at that buiding as well as the Flechsig's house--Todd will be the community center director and a group from Indian Creek will help him with his house in December. It's exciting to see continued physical progress!

the bowling alley- the igloo looking entrance on the end will be the day care area where one used to be before Katrina.


one last thing- everly had her eye appointment today and all is well. poor little baby had to even have her eyes dialated but the dr. said she was a really good baby. and since i developed a cataract when i was born, he's going to see her again in a year, but said he doesn't expect anything like that to happen.

so... that is our life right now. we really did enjoy being in indy. we sure do love and appreciate our friends and family and wish we could do life with so many of you daily! but this is home to us now and we anticipate similar deep relationships here too. :)