Any Request?

Hey everybody!
So I'm trying to figure out what everyone wants to read! Of course there will be the family updates, but is there anything else? I think a lot of people like the Stay at Home(made) Mom stuff too but let me know HOW MUCH of that stuff you're interested in. Any ideas?
Can't wait to hear from you!

Now that the holidays are over we are packing up Christmas and getting our lives back to normal. Like most people it takes a while to "De Christmas" our house. It has taken me longer than usual since Lori is so mobile.




Here she is giving me a "helping hand"

(for the record she got in there ALL on her own. How, I have no idea seeing as the box is above her waist.)






So Christmas is packed up (mostly) and we're looking ahead to the upcoming year! We have so much to look forward to! The first of these things the birth of our nephew. My sister and her Husband are expecting their first baby, a boy, on February 4th (give or take) and we are so excited! He'll be born in California but I'll get to fly out and visit a few weeks after he's born. :)

We are also very excited to watch Lori grow and to celebrate her 1st birthday in April. I'm already thinking about how to celebrate! We're going to go all out!

In March Jorge's best friend and his wife are coming to visit us. We haven't seen Steve since our wedding and we haven't seen his wife Michelle since there wedding over 5 years ago. They are driving down from Minneapolis to spend a week with us, and bringing their 4 year old daughter with them who we've never met. We recently got reconnected with them thanks to Facebook. (I have say that albeit a GIANT waste of time, facebook sure has done wonders for us by connecting us with LOTS of people we would have only heard from a few times a year at best.) Thank you Facebook!

On top of all that we have a handful of very close friends who are also expecting babies this year so our Houston family will be multiplying greatly. And we can't be more excited!

Here's to 2009! It's going to be a good one!!

Dancing Machine!

Over the Holiday Season while visiting my family, Lori learned a new trick. She learned to dance. Now she's a far cry from Micheal Flatley but I think she's on her way. Here's a little sample of Lori dancing to the opening song from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I never paid much attention to the song before but I can assure you that I will from now on!

(That's my mom in the backgroud singing along and talking to Lori.)

Happy New Year everybody!!!

This year was a big one for us for one very obvious reason. Lori has made our lives so much richer. We have not only been blessed to have her as a daughter but we also feel even MORE blessed every time we see her with one of our friends or family. We love watching her be a "joy" to those around her and seeing how much all of you truly love her.

This year we celebrated the New Year by serving dinner at The Brookwood Community, a community for adults with functional disabilities. It was such an amazing experience! Our church has been involved with Brookwood for a long time and it was one of the many things we loved about Grace. We, along with a few other couples form our Sunday School class were lucky enough to be able to serve the residents dinner at their New Years Eve party! The party only went until around 8:00 but Lori felt like leaving early (hungry) so we stayed long enough to serve them their food, but not long enough to dance. (Hey there's always next year!) I loved watching all of the residents smile as Lori gave them a huge toothless grin. Like I said before, watching Lori make people happy is one of my biggest joys in life. She is really living up to her middle name, that's for sure!





After we were done all of us went to our friend friends Grace and Duncan Vise house and rang in the New Year! It was as usual ( for us anyway) a low key New Years Eve, although it seems to be getting harder and harder to stay up until midnight, and I'm beginning to think it might be overrated.