The Greatest Love

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 (NIV)

While not typically associated with Christmas celebrations, I honestly don't feel like anything beyond this verse needs to be said about the true meaning of Christmas. What a powerful love God has for us!!

And the mandatory holiday pictures, which all our parents expect to see:

A few outtakes from attempting to create our Christmas card.

Christmas Eve: eating the traditional tamales - hey, we are in the southwest! And then followed by the baking of goodies galore - these are some delicious pumpkin gingersnap cookies.

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Brad loves his new Star Wars lunchbox while I am excited about the large bottle of Soju.

I swear, we saved the rest of the presents for Christmas morning!

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Like small children, we woke up at 6am on Christmas morning. But unlike small children, we don't have parents telling us to go back to bed and wait until a normal hour to open presents. We do what we want! While we unwrapped fabulous things such as this awesome sleeping bag, the dogs enjoyed their new toys: roadkill. Sorry, Mom, but those things lasted about 5 minutes before the fabric was ripped open and they were tearing off pieces of the rubber tread marks. Oh yeah, notice in the background, yes - we have a "real" tree. Apparently garland stapled to the wall in the shape of a evergreen didn't quite cut it.

Brad was also excited to make something with his new cookie cutters, so we tried making jello ships (fail). And as you can see, we are definitely still a TOMS family - new shoes for us both!

We needed a nap after all the present opening

Merry Christmas!!

Love to all,

Liz and Brad

From Time to Time

Certain people, who shall remain nameless, keep asking about when we will post another update. While yes, I did say it would happen occasionally, I suppose it has been far too long for all our readers back home. So here goes an attempt to update everyone of all the things which have happened this past fall:

Who could not fall in love with this face?! One day in September, I went to the animal shelter with some friends who had dreams of getting a dog. They all walked away empty-handed but naturally, I found this darling and after a week of bugging Brad nonstop about her, we adopted a second puppy. Six months younger and half Cleo's size, we named her Athena. She was abandoned outside the county pound and the animal shelter had rescued her. Everybody's best bet is that she is a mix of boxer and pit. Cleo and Athena quickly became friends and even quicker, Athena surpassed Cleo in size. Currently, Cleo remains the 30 lbs she has been since June while Athena is a stocky 45 lbs. My mother reminded me there were no pictures of her up anywhere, so all these pictures are for you Mom :D

Brad and I celebrated

Halloween in grand style this year, which we haven't done in a few years, so it's worth posting pictures of. For those of you who don't know, I make an excellent Justin Bieber (at least Brad says so) so I decided to give my second graders a glimpse of it. We never got a picture of the actual outfit on Halloween but I did snap a preview shot with my newly acquired hoodie and high tops so you get the idea. My students especially liked the hair flip (they had to show me what that meant, but I think I mastered it in Justin's fashion). Brad's office did a Price is Right theme so he went to work as Bob Barker, complete with white hair, and hung up props we made together. There was a contest between the area Enterprise branches and Brad won "Best Costume" while his office came in second overall.

As far as work goes, Brad is enjoying the managing position, but the daily commute is beginning to wear on him.

School for me has been hectic as usual. This past semester of graduate school kept me incredibly busy most weekends and I was unbelievably happy when the semester ended. Only one more to go! Second grade could fill up pages and pages with all the antics students pull, but I'll sum it up with my class this year is pretty much your standard room full of 29 students. We have had a lot of fun together and its exciting to have a class willing to be pushed in academics. More on them later.

But for those of you who have made it this far, I have a Christmas gift for you! While Brad and I are not able to come home to celebrate with our families, I figured we could still add to the conversation by being our typical selves. My husband is currently at work so he doesn't know I'm posting this. Enjoy this video, shot back when I was on fall break!