Well, It's Here!

Happy Birthday Jesus!!!
I don't know how I'll do, but I'm praying that my heart will give you the
honor and place that you deserve today. I know I can only be a tiny, tiny
glimmer compared to the sum of everyone else, but please let my heart
bring you joy today... I love you!

Merry Christmas friends!

Willow Creek Christmas :)

:) Lauren and Wolfgang, I finally got this post up!
Especially because I know you were probably wondering what kind

of people we took to your house while you were gone, I made sure to take

quite a few "people" pictures. So here we are in the parking lot waiting for

all the other people from 'the caravan' to get out of their vehicles.

Me, Michael M., Crystal, and Stevie M.

Crystal and Alex!Alex and Me sort of "camera-warring".

The pretty auditorium? I'm not really sure what you call it...

It was all decorated and had light bulbs hanging everywhere! They looked

like stars when the main lights were turned down.

Singing Christmas carols.

:) Kinda like a mini-concert.

Willow Creek has VERY talented musicians!

And actors for that matter!

They put on a very wonderful production that I quite enjoyed.

This was all the pictures that I got of the stage though (sorry!)

Some of the Waasdorps :) The sat two rows behind

the rest of us. They ordered their tickets a day after the rest of us did,

but thankfully we still got to be relatively close to each other!

The rest of the Waasdorps! And Rachel... :)
And half of our row. We took up a whole row in one of the
sections! (I think that was 22 seats!)

Stevie, Michael and Me. We were being "cool". :)
That's why we wear our sunglasses inside!

Back at Lauren and Wolfgang's house (which they ever so kindly let us

'borrow' even though they are not there!!!) we feasted! And I do mean

that literally. There was food set out everywhere!

Wolfgang, do you notice in the bottom right-hand corner of this photo

that we had colored peppers in your honor??

Mary-Sue, who was a wonderful hostess stand in for Lauren (but we

reallyreallyreallyreally missed Lauren!!! :*( Boohooo!) Had put on

"White Christmas" to add to the ambiance or something like that...

Guess what, we are definitely having a white Christmas this year!
We got 3 or 4 in. of snow last night, and the weather channel says we are going

to get hit with another strain of snow Thursday or Friday.

I guess that's fine though. Then maybe Winter will get the snow out of its

system and we'll be ready for Spring, say, come Sunday?? :D

I came into the room later to find Mary-Sue and her daughter

singing the "Sisters" song :D And couldn't help but take a picture!

More food (yumyum!) Even MORE food! (see, I told you we feasted!)

And COOKIES!!!!

We had a wonderful fellowship time with everyone there, but it was

sad not having L&W with us. We really felt like part of 'us' was missing for

the whole evening. Oh yeah... It was :(

Rach and I trying to be cool... Sigh, we fail awfully at looking 'cool'...

Lauren! You'll be happy to know that there were a few Christmas decorations up!

And uh, maybe its a good thing that 'dancing santa' wasn't in the bathroom...

It might have given one of the 'newbies' a heart attack :P

Our shoes. Not quite as chaotic as in years past... Maybe

we are all improving on our organizational skills?? The... More 'mature' crowd monopolized the red couch and watched White Christmas.

Muh ahahahaha! And pretty much left the rest of the house to the rest of us!

Don't worry, don't worry, we behaved and didn't destroy anything!

And some clean-up. Leave it to a Mom to realize that the bread should be

put away as soon as everyone was done eating so that they wouldn't

have a whole bunch of giant croutons later...

Then after White Christmas was over, Crystal (with a little help) figured

out how to work the speakers on W's computer so that we could watch the

messages that L, W, M, and R had sent us!
We loved them! Especially the singing! :D And last but not least, a group picture!!

ThankyouThankyouThankyou Lauren and Wolfgang for lending us your

house! I'm sure it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to let a bunch of

strangers traipse through your house without being home, but it added

so much to our night, and we so enjoyed ourselves!

THANK YOU!!!!

Inspiring/Thought Provoking Words...

Well, the whole book is wonderful, but I just finished reading the 26th
chapter of Job in the Bible and it left me with one of those "wow" feelings.
Soooo, like usual I decided to write it over here so you can see it too :)

Job 26.
Then Job spoke again:
"How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved a person who
has no strength! How you have enlightened my stupidity! What wise things
you have said! Where have you gotten all these wise sayings? Whose spirit
speaks through you?
The dead tremble in their place beneath the waters. The underworld is
naked in God's presence. There is no cover for the place of destruction.
God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on
nothing. He wraps the rain in his thick clouds, and the clouds do not burst
from the weight. He shrouds his throne with his clouds. He created the horizon
when he separated the waters; he set the boundaries for day and night. The
foundations of heaven tremble at his rebuke. By his power the sea grew calm.
By his skill he crushed the great sea monster. His Spirit made the heavens
beautiful, and his power pierced the gliding serpent.
These are some of the minor things he does, merely a whisper of his power.
Who can understand the thunder of his power?"

G'night all!

:D Happiness abounding in a box of crayons!!!

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum

Yet Another One For W&L.

So, just look at all you are missing while out there basking in the sunlight on

the beach! Snow covered doggies...

Looking all tough in all your winter garb (and don't forget the

sunglasses!) They make the outfit!

Bundling up only to still freeze when you go outside...

Snow covered windows.

Slippery roads, and snow obscuring your vision.

Lovely blizzard looking outdoors...

And ice...

And snow angels! (I know you really really love doing these every year!!) :P

We miss you guys!

And wish we were with you ;)

See, if you take away the snow, don't you think we'd make great pseudo-Texans?

:) Hope you're having a great day!

Family Pictures... (Blooper Edition)

Well, she did say, "Let's just do some candids instead of formal ones!"

Since most of us don't really like getting our picture taken, and on top of

that if we try to get some nice pictures we all just tend to look stupid...

So we did get a few nice photos during our 'shoot' but mostly we just

goofed off and got some pretty hilarious pictures out of the deal :)There's not much to caption about these pictures because although

they're not all the "same" they are all similar so I'll mostly leave

the captioning to your minds :D

Devyn's face! "What are they doing??"
Dad and Josh look sort of like they are cheering at a sports game...

Ta daaaaa!

We're fallllllinggggg!

Sorry Mom... I guess you should have been in the front with the

'shorter' crew.

And again...

That's better! Everybody duck down so we can see Mom :)

Gotta love it!

Ah, what a family... Tryin' to be tough...

Heh, we don't do 'tough' very well.

Wow.

This one actually would have been cute if Crystal and Devyn

would have been smiling!

Someone told us that this one looks like we are in a band...

They titled our band "Josh and the Kalebaughs" :D

We're all mad here...

(If you haven't seen the 2010 Alice in Wonderland um, it was good)

Tralalalala...

Great face Dad!

Crazy!

I really like this one...

Well, the silly pictures were definitely much more fun than the

'nice' ones. Much more fun.

Choke Mom!!
(Never ever ever for real!)

What about that face!?

How cute!

Well, did anyone else other than me enjoy looking at the silly

pictures way more than the 'nice' ones??

Ah, well we've got some fun stuff recorded now, and (Muh hahahaha)

a lot of dirt on everyone if we ever need it!