Ahhh! Florida!!

Patience was very excited to see the beach and Ocean for the first time!  By the time we made it there the first day the temp had dropped to the mid 60's but that didn't keep her from having a GREAT time!!  The next day it was in the 80's.

Corban LOVED the beach (second day) - he splashed in the water, ate lots of sand and even tried the shells....  But the showering all the sand off at the end was his delight!
First day at the Beach -- Corban was snug as a bug in a rug - which was wonderful since it was a tad cold.
Here the kids are dressed for chapel to hear Daddy speak at Clearwater Christian College.  He did a great job, and we enjoyed our stay VERY much!! The college was so gracious to us during our short trip there. We can't wait to go again!! Chicago temp was 28* when we landed - I'm afraid that we adjusted all to well to Florida!!

Decorating for Christmas

After celebrating Thanksgiving with the larger Bixby clan, we gathered at the Hansons' to eat leftover turkey and to help them decorate their Christmas tree. The collage doesn't show it really well, but Micaiah is wearing some Christmas stockings in that first picture.

Bixby Family Thanksgiving

The large Bixby family gathering was held at Uncle Paul and Aunt Theresa's this year. This was the first time in our seven years of marriage that Tim and I have attended. It was good to see some faces we don't see too often. At last count, I think I heard that 7 of Grandma Bixby's 10 children attended at some point throughout the day. There were about 35 there for the meal and about 10 others drifted sometime after the meal.

There were only a handful of little ones, but they thoroughly enjoyed one another. The kids (besides ours) that you see pictured here are Kingston Marshall's two (Hunter and Kaitlyn) and Jonathan David Gambrell's Rose (his son David was around somewhere, too). Also, Ronnie Jordahl's two (Jeremy and Ashley) were present. It was very interesting to me to see the sizes of our children compared to Hunter and Kaitlyn. Hunter is 6 months older than Micaiah, and Micaiah stands an inch or two taller. Miriam is 2 months younger than Kaitlyn, yet she's quite a bit more filled out in every way than petite little Kaitlyn.

After the meal, some broke off and played games, and then we regathered for a time of testimony and singing. It was very nice.

Our Thanksgiving!

Our Thanksgiving was really low key this year, but we have really enjoyed having the Keisers here for a few days. On Thursday we went to St. Emillion, did some shopping and of course, I got a hair cut! Today we ate Tom Turkey with the Bergmans who drove up just for the day. We had a great time and oh, did we eat! How about the rest of you?

A Thanksgiving "Blessing"

May your stuffing be tasty,
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
May your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!

Fall Fun!

Yesterday Micaiah and Miriam came over to rake leaves with Uncle Brian. We, of course, had a great deal of fun jumping in the big pile of leaves. We also took a break for cookies hot out of the oven!

Some of his first steps.

Thought that you would like to see how well he is doing. He has hit the point that he would rather walk than crawl. So for the time being his Mommy can keep up!

What do Corban and Uncle Danno have in common??

Here's a hint:

Look Who We Saw!

One of the special treats we had yesterday was seeing lots of friends, although it was briefly. It was a big surprise to see Joan there. She came with Steve and Rowena Barnes and Rachel. I told Joan that I would have to blog her picture so that you all could see her as a married lady! Dad thinks there were about 250 people at the funeral. All BMMers here on the field were represented except for two families. As I said, the Barnes were present and Eugene Mumford and I am sure many others that you would have known. It was a very nice "family" funeral. Jamel was in charge and did an exceptional job. As a missionary pastor, Dan certainly was loved and respected.

Miriam's dress

This is for you, Mom! ;-) Thanks for sending the dress from France!

The Birthday Meal

Finally uploaded our pics, and thought it might be fun to make your mouth water.

Johanna's Baby Shower

Our theme was "Watch the Clock"--gifts were geared toward a specific time of day! It was a great shower--she got a lot of nice gifts. We played some games and I had to include the last picture mostly because of Liz's laughter at my reading of Hickory Dickory Dock. I think there were about 35 adults and about 12 kids! It was a lot of fun.

Ruth's Birthday Party!

Psalm 100

Miss Amy (Micaiah's Sunday School teacher) receives most of the credit for helping Micaiah learn this psalm.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Ruth!

Dreaming of your next birthday in France? We are! Have a wonderful day. We love you!

Three Church Retreat

The Three Church Retreat is history for another year. Cours de la Marne was in charge of it this year and they did a good job. Derek played Christian in Pilgrim's Progress. They presented a small part each service. The picture of Antsa is Pessac's turn in the kitchen (she really did help!). Aunt Doris is surrounded by a few of her "kids", and the scenery is from a short sightseeing trip to a town on the Lot River. Next year it is our turn--anyone want to come help?

Our little nurse and her patient!

RULES FOR GOODER WRITING

(I got these from Dr. Layton Talbert.)

1. Don’t never use no double negatives (nor triple ones neither).
2. And never begin a sentence with a conjunction.
3. Watch out for run-on sentences you need to be sure to punctuate properly.
4. Sentence fragments that are very bad also.
5. Do not use commas, where they are not needed.
6. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
7. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration (starting successive sayings in a sentence with the same sound stinks, stylistically speaking).
8. It’s bad to ever split infinitives.
9. Be generally specific, more or less.
10. Avoid clichés like the plague; go the extra mile to eliminate them.
11. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
12. Use of the passive voice should be avoided.
13. Double check your writing to be sure you didn’t any words out.
14. Be very, very careful never ever to use words you do not really need which are unnecessarily redundant, repetitive, and tautological.
15. Verbs and helping verbs always has to agree.
16. As to rhetorical questions, who needs them?
17. If dangling, you should not use modifiers.
18. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times—avoid hyperbole.
19. Don’t abbrev.
20. A subject should always agree with their antecedent.
21. It looks REALLY tacky to use lots and lots of devices for EMPHASIS!!!!!!!
22. He whom uses improper pronoun cases shows hisself to be someone for who extra assistance in English is needed to help he.
23. You should always try to avoid, whenever possible in the context of writing extended prose—or, for that matter, even poetry—stringing out a main thought (or thoughts) too long so that it is difficult for the reader(s) to follow the main idea that you are trying to get across because of your proclivity/proclivities to, as it were, “qualify yourself around the block” (as my high school English teacher once commented on a paper of mine), even though your intention to be as thorough and accurate as possible in your expression of an idea may be commendable, because despite the fact that it is theoretically possible to construct such a sentence which is not technically a run-on (and it is certainly not a fragment, unless you, the writer, go on for so long that even you lose your train of thought and fail to complete the sentence), it is, nevertheless, extremely difficult, if not downright tedious, for the reader to have to labor through it (as a college professor of mine once rhetorically retorted after a long sentence in another paper of mine, “Would you like to have to diagram this sentence?” –it was Dr. Henson, by the way) and you would not want to put this kind of burden on anyone, would you now?

Reformation Day Celebration

In honor of Reformation Day, the teacher of the children's class at our church asked all the children to come dressed as Reformers last night. We had quite the array of Reformation heroes present! Two John Calvins (of which Micaiah was one--notice his Institutes in hand), two Mrs. John Calvins, both Martin & Katie Luther, Gaspard de Coligny (Huguenot leader, top right in the collage above), George Wishart (Scottish reformer, bottom left in the collage above) and even Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, an outspoken contemporary and defender of Martin Luther (he's the fat guy in the top picture ;-). The kids thoroughly enjoyed this hands-on learning experience, and I thought you might enjoy it, too.