After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” - Matthew 2:1-2
Greetings and Merry Christmas! Blessings to you and yours!
We had a very fun this year and started getting a little busier, something we're sure won't stop for a LONG time. Our big family event this year was a road trip down to Kentucky, primarily for the annual Cairney Open, but highlighted with a two night camping trip at Mammoth Cave National Park. We also stopped at for state capitol buildings along the way as well. Check out our whole trip here. The kids were total troopers and did a lot of their own walking in our cave tours, a couple hours a piece - one two miles and the other with hundreds of stairs.
Ryan didn't do a whole lot this year, but did get to go to Disneyworld for work in February. Steph started selling wonderful, practical, and affordable thirty-one products this year and even earned a trip to Denver for the annual conference for her early results. They did each run their first 5Ks this year. Steph ran the Twin Cities Color Run (which was MLB All-Star Game themed) and Ryan ran in a 5K for the Good Shepherd School.
Elisha started second grade this fall. He was given the opportunity to jump to third grade math and seems to have done very well with it. He continues to do very well in everything else he does. He was on Coach Pitch Baseball, Soccer, and Flag Football teams. It was his first time doing team soccer or football. He did really well in soccer, always running as fast as he could and making quite a few good defensive plays, making good passes, and scoring quite a few goals. He was a star defensive player in football with quite a few interceptions and even ran one back. Constantly an analyzer, he always talked through his performances on the way home. Running his first fantasy football team this year, he is in the championship this weekend. Football has become his life, it is ALL he talks about. Even Ryan is looking forward to the season end. He still enjoys reading and playing video games at home. He even saved money for over a year to buy his own Nintendo 3DS this past month.
Isabella has become even more of a star of her own film this year. She is very much into playing with her babies and dolls and it is rare if at least one character doesn't break into some song. When not making them up, she loves singing other songs she knows as well. Her big passion this year was Frozen (as with most American 4 year old girls). She contributed probably a million of the YouTube views for "Let It Go". She memorized it so well that she was eventually performing the song with actions from the video with the house as her set. Her costume would follow suit and change as well through the song. It gave us great entertainment. Isabella is really enjoying writing her letters and pointing them out when reading. She's starting to give sounding out some words a shot, although she has memorized all the states by shape in her little state book. Isabella had to get glasses back in February and she took a step towards being as beautiful as mommy by getting her ears pierced for her birthday.
Zechariah has turned into a little clown, always saying the funniest things. He became a big fan of Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Disney's latest story in the Peter Pan universe. He was an avid Fruit Ninja player and while he does love to eat fruit as well, he also likes to eat anything else laying around. If the other two don't eat us out of house and home, he will. If you haven't heard us say it before, we are certain he will be a fullback or linebacker the way he plows us over. We took this year off for surgeries for the little guy, but will be starting back up in January. There's a chance this could be the last one, but chances are he will need probably just one more after that to finish with at least the main procedures for removal of his nevus.
That's all for us for this year. We hope again hope you had a blessed 2014 and God's blessings on 2015!
Love Ryan, Stephanie, Elisha, Isabella, and Zechariah
