Since I’m not feeling any originality today, I shall blatantly steal my sister Lori’s blog idea for this “year in review” post.

Here’s a little recap in photographs of our 2008…

OOOPS…

So, I had pictures for January – July that absolutely disappeared when I hit “publish”, leaving only these goofy little gray boxes.  Weird.  I managed to restore all of the pics but the one for May…I’ll have to fix that later.  Here we go…

January…

Noah was hospitalized after a nightmare reaction to an antibiotic that he was taking.  Thankfully, he was okay, but it was a scary start to our year.

February…

Doug’s group performed at a formal dinner that was given by the President of the Walt Disney Company.  I was invited to tag along…it was a fun and fancy night out.

March…

We started to seriously look at the property at 351 Plaza Drive in Eustis as a potential location for our church. Much to our shock and delight, the landlord of the property offered to pay for all of the build out costs for the sanctuary side of the building.  Without his unbelievably generous offer, which could only be from the Hand of God, there’s NO WAY that we would be worshipping there today.

April…

It’s official…the papers were signed and the work to change “Awesome Audio” into “Calvary Chapel of the Lakes” began.

May…

Michelle and I ran, biked, climbed obstacles and crawled through a giant mud pit in Muddy Buddy.  We can’t wait to do it again this year.

June…

We spent a fantastic week in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

July…

Work continued on the church.

August…

Work was completed on the new church building.  We held our first service there on August 17th.  Three days earlier, on August 14th, Doug and the guys in his group received their “close of show” notice at Disney (a very polite “show biz” way of saying “you’re fired”).  How’s that for some “God has a fabulous sense of humor” timing?

September…

We were all at Disney when the final curtain fell for “Four for a Dollar” on September 20.  On September 21, Doug officially went on staff part-time at Calvary Chapel of the Lakes…a tent-making pastor no more.  To God be the Glory.

October…

Noah quickly mastered the first communication device that his school sent home with him.  He qualified for and will be receiving a brand new Springboard Lite sometime in January, purchased for him by the school system.  Sweet.

November…

I celebrated my 40th birthday at the Grand Canyon with Lori, Michelle and Kris.  It was the best birthday present EVER.

December…

While Doug worked 7 days a week, singing with Voices of Liberty at Epcot and with Return 2 Zero at Sea World, the boys and I stayed busy, finding lots of fun things to do.

So there ya have it.  2008.  I hope that yours was full of Blessing and Joy.

Happy New Year, ya’ll.

So a few months ago, Lori and her family gave Isaac some Gatorland tickets for his birthday.  We finally got around to using them today.  Since Hank’s (Lori’s hubby) employer gave him a few freebie Gatorland tickets for Christmas (??!), we decided to go together.  It was a fantastic time.

Here’s some pics…

Climbing around the Gator Mouth Entrance…

Isaac’s favorite part of the park…the train that goes through the swamp…

Waiting for the “Gator Jumparoo” show, where two guys named “Cooter” and “Bubba” feed raw chicken to some big honkin’ alligators.  (File that under “Stuff ya just gotta see before you die”)…

What a hoot.

Thank you Hank (Uncle Henry) and Lori (Aunt Oobie) for a wonderful day!

So yesterday afternoon, the boys, my Dad, Hayley and I headed out to Sea World to see Doug sing.

Evidently, there are a lot of people spending time in the Orlando area this week that have not read the news that the economy is horrible and that they are supposed to be sitting at home, keeping their money in their pockets.  When we arrived, the parking lot was blocked off and signs were flashing that read “Sea World and Aquatica Full”…”Go Away”.  Well, it didn’t actually say “Go Away”, but it gave a number to call to get an update on when the park reopened for more suckers, um visitors to come in.  If it weren’t for the fact that our tickets were free and that the boys and Hayley were excited about seeing Doug, we would have run for the hills.  So…my Dad called the phone number on the sign, which told us to come back in four hours.  Yeah, right.

We drove around the block again, and just as we were coming up to the main entrance, the blockade was being removed and cars were being admitted to the packed out parking lot.  In we went.

Packed theme parks are not my idea of fun.  And boy, was it packed.  But we had a great time anyway.  It was a blast to spend time with Hayley and the boys loved it too.

The boys were excited to see Doug sing, and Isaac thought that Doug’s train conductor costume was pretty cool.  (Doug does NOT think that it is cool, but hey…he gets paid to sing, so I guess you can’t have everything.)

The boys rode on the tea cups with Hayley and my Dad.  I was happy to volunteer to stay off of the ride and take pictures…

A fun afternoon and evening was had by all.

Michelle and Hayley drove down from South Carolina Friday night to spend the weekend.  They are staying with my parents and we’re all hanging out and soaking up all the family time that we can.

Yesterday was spent shopping at Millenia Mall and the Coldwater Creek Outlet.

Here’s a few pictures…

(Of COURSE the boys both smiled for the camera a week after I made my 857th and final attempt to score a Christmas picture of them…)

After a full day of shopping, we had a cookout at my parents’ house and chowed out on my Dad’s hand-cut-it-don’t-get-any-better-than-this french fries.  Yum.

This afternoon my Dad, Hayley, the boys and I are going to see Doug sing at Sea World.

Michelle and Hayley will go back home tomorrow.  I wish that they could stay forever, but I’m so thankful for the time that we had with them this weekend.

Well, I’m glad that some of ya’ll took lots of pictures from your Christmas morning.  Tiffany and Melissa and Deb have some great ones posted on their blogs…I love the kids’ faces and seeing how excited they were with their gifts.

So…we had a great Christmas morning together.  After Doug left for work, I took the boys to my parents’ house where we had a fantastic afternoon and evening with family and friends.

ummm….pictures?  Well…we took…

eight.  total.  and 3 didn’t even turn out…too fuzzy.

What is UP with that?!

In our defense, I think that the camera stayed on the counter because, for the first time in our parenting lives, we had children excited about opening presents.  We just sat back and took it all in…and forgot about the camera altogether.

Christmases past have pretty much had Doug and I sitting under the tree, trying every trick in the book to get Noah to even attempt to open anything.  We would eventually give up…he would run off by himself and pay no attention whatsoever to the new gifts.  Kinda depressing.

This year was totally different.  Isaac was completely into it and excited.  Noah opened several of his gifts, with no more coaxing than us saying…”here Noah, open your present”.  We were thrilled when he…for the first time…got visibly happy about a gift that he received.  The gift that provoked such a great reaction was  a brand new Razor scooter.  He has been riding it all over the house since Christmas morning.  Awesome.

Here’s a couple of pictures that actually turned out…

Isaac hollering about a new train…

…and Noah opening a present…

I hope that your Christmas was Merry and Bright.