Happy New Year

Our nightly meeting of the minds

All the siblings celebrating Mom's 70th birthday

Our mantle

Our first ever gingerbread house (from a kit:) )

Ready to go to church the day of the Christmas program

Well, it's one of those gross, gray, January days where nothing sounds good but hibernation, so I thought perhaps I could sit and update my blog. We had a great Christmas, complete with our annual K family get-together at Stoney Creek Inn. That is always a highlight of the season for all of us. Three days of relaxing, gabbing, eating and bonding with little or no cooking, cleaning or serious thought: )!! The kids love having constant access to their cousins and my hubby loves the constant access to the multitude of college football games.

We are now back into our school schedule. On M-Th, I have started taking care of a 2mo. old little boy, Ridge. He is the son of good friends of ours, Kenton & Heidi S. He is such a sweet little boy and we have a lot of fun with him here. Lena takes her role as "big sister" quite seriously. Each Friday, I go to the school in the afternoon to volunteer for the teacher(s) and read to Abe's class. I love being involved and getting to know all the kids.

My 2010 half-marathon training starts next week. YIKES! I'm going to be feeling all those holiday snacks big time! Shannon and I are also signed up to take the 13-wk. Financial Peace University course from Dave Ramsey at a local church. We already completed Crown Financial with a small group a couple of years ago, but we really like Dave's style and wanted to take this course as well as we are still figuring out how to balance earning a living and running a ministry (for which we get no income at this point: )). We would love your prayers as we carefully move ahead with this. I am learning how to budget in a whole new way and I think it has been good for all of us.

More to come from the Haerr Cave.....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.......