Thanksgiving

Below is the greatest blessing one could receive, a grand daughter. Leah was a wonderful girl during the holiday and here she is showing off how she holds her own bottle. Mom is saying, "look, no hands". She is a great eater and has really developed some beautiful

"Cheeks and Chins". All the better for us to kiss. Gram O, Cheryl, and Ron came to visit and brought Janessa with. She is Ron's daughter and a very sweet girl. Sarah joined her at the piano and they played some beautiful 4 hand duets for our evenings entertainment. I even heard Ron strumming that guitar in the background.
Ron spent some time bonding with Leah.
Pink really is her color.
Here she is trying to wake up her sleepy dad.
We actually got one more days use out of her pumpkin outfit. It was perfect for Thanksgiving. See I told you those cheeks are great for kissing.
Leah will for sure be a cat lover. She is getting acquainted with George. Doesn't look like he minds to much either.
Mom and daughter checking out the after Thanksgiving ads in the paper. It actually worked out great and David watched Leah as we shopped. The crowds really weren't that bad, but we had to pass up the sales at Bath and Beauty. The lines were an hour long.
I think our table was beautiful this year. Sarah bought me the new plates for my birthday and they went great with the decorations. Not bad considering all the decorations came from the Dollar Tree and Big Lots.
Unfortunately we had an uninvited guest. Good thing I only made vege-turkey or I could have had a real problem.

Update On Our Life With Baby

David has joined a basketball team. One of Sarah's students relatives asked him to be on his team. We had a great time at his first ball game. Sarah saw quite a few old friends from Oakwood. Jayna Gardner was playing on one of the girls teams. Her boyfriend, Matt Gray, was also there along with Korie Griffith, long time member of Oakwood Church. It was so good to see them. I got the greatest hug from Jayna. Hard to believe she is in Med school at Wayne State and had to go home and study for a couple of tests. Can't wait to go and see them again.David, number 19, did a great job, shooting, passing, and guarding. As you can see below, Leah was thrilled with the game. There must have been 300 people in the recreation center, 3 games going on at a time, and the bleachers were full of cheering fans. Didn't seem to bother her sleep very much.
These are the cheerleaders from the City Temple Church in Detroit. They did a great job and boy did they look sharp. Each team had a cheerleading squad.

Oakwood Academy had it's annual Agape Feast last week. I made 10 recipes of

Potato Corn Chowder for the dinner. It turned out pretty good and I had many requests for the recipe. I may not want to cook that for a while.

Sarah's class did a great job with their singing under the direction of the substitute teacher. This year the program was in the church foyer and it was beautiful.

Edwin Flores, Jr. joined us for dinner. He is one of Leah's friends. Edwin will turn one this December. When I took this picture, Edwin was making a little bit too much noise. David was pointing out the fact that is was Edwin, and not Leah. He screams every now and then. Sarah said that during the middle of the night after the program, Leah let out quite a scream. She claims she never did this before so she must have learned it from her buddy.
Mega was also at the program to see her sister Lily sing. We couldn't resist this picture of the dueling pacifiers.
Adam and Natalie took a ride over for a visit on Friday night last week. This is their new purchase. Natalie is now riding in a bigger car, up from her little Subaru. Yeah, we are in American made again. Sure is pretty.

Dad had to check out the back seat. Yup, there's enough leg room. Sure is nice to sit in the back and have the kids drive us around for a change. Sometimes we can even sneek in a little nap.
Leah is enjoying her second Sabbath at Oakwood's Cradle Roll. How do you like those patent leather shoes. Can't believe we ended up with two shoes after church. It was a little difficult keeping them on.
This is Sarah's student Madisyn holding the baby after Potluck at church. Notice the wings on Leah's Angel Baby hat.

More Sabbath Activities

David and Leah enjoying the warmth from the front window sunshine.

Good friend Connie comes for her first visit. Sorry Kim, we missed you!

Travelin Again

We are off again. It is so much fun to go to Berrien to see our friends. The only problem is we don't have time to enjoy them all. Weekends go way to fast. So do maternity leaves according to Sarah.

Here Leah is ready to go to church with her mom. It was a great service as usual and Leah slept the entire time. Pastor Dwight Nelson preached a very powerful and inspiring sermon.

Natalie invited her sister Francie to come for lunch.
After, the girls had some fun. For her birthday, Adam bought Natalie a kiln and hundreds of ceramic molds to have some fun with. Between working, home remodeling, traveling, Natalie is finding time to make some adorable items. She brought a box full with her and the girls all sat down to paint and decorate their hearts out.

Sarah is trying to figure out ways to use the kiln for outreach at school. It originally was given to Oakwood Academy to use. When the staff who knew how to use it moved away, it just sat and took up space. The school decided to sell and we were the lucky purchasers.

Nat is a great teacher to us novices. I am amazed how much she has studied up on Pottery and learned in such a short time. She and her sisters are very gifted when it comes to decorating and artsy things. We are enjoying combining our years of crafting with them.
Couldn't leave out a picture of Dan with two of his other "grandchildren". Walter came over for a visit the other night and insisted that he is a lap dog, 85-90 pounds of lap dog.......Prince was keeping an eye on everything from the top of the couch. He doesn't get to close to Walter if he doesn't have to.
All of us were a bit tired on Friday night when we arrived in Berrien except for Leah, so we played a little dress up.
I bought this hat over the internet. I thought it came with a flower, but it didn't, so we added this one. Pretty cute huh? We think she looks like a flower pot.

The blanket says it all !!!!!!

Day In Vegas

Looks like David is anxious to get to those cars.
We had had enough of the cars and headed to the mall. It was nice, but lots and lots of walking. After breakfast, we walked over an hour to get to the mall down the Vegas strip. Everywhere we went there were escalators so the girls had to lift Leah out of stroller and put her back in when over.
By the time we got to the mall we were so exhausted, we looked in two stores and then grabbed a taxi to go back for a 20 minute rest until I had to take girls to help guys tear down the booth before sunset. Whew, we were ready for Sabbath and a great day of doing nothing but babysitting for us, and bike riding through the mountains for the kids.
Leah enjoyed her time with grandma and grandpa and then some play time with Uncle Adam.

It was great to be together.

Las Vegas Here We Come!

Once in Las Vegas we met up with Adam who had been there for the entire week displaying his Jeep with all the customization he had done to it. It was shipped to Las Vegas about three weeks ago, so he arrived early to clean up the Jeep and set up the display.
The SEMA show is for after market car parts and the biggest show in the world, with over 100,000 attendees in an area of over 3.2 million, yes million, square feet. It was mammoth, 76 acres under roof.
We are so proud of Adams work. David and several other men at the shop helped and worked many hours of overtime to finish the project. Their theme was WWII, 1942. This was the year that the shop started and the Jeep became a staple of our military.
We may be a bit prejudiced, but quite a few people agreed with us that Adam's car was the best Jeep in the entire show. Next display will be at a show in Orlando FL in December and hopefully Autorama in Detroit. It has been a great learning experience for these young guys. Once again, we are very proud of them.

God Created Pumpkins

This is Leah's first Halloween and we all had a great time.

It was a good thing she actually got candy, cause when we went to Auntie Natalie's, they had run out of candy and had at least 10 more kids following us, so Leah shared with them.

Grandpa loves his little pumpkin, and on November 1st we all headed to Las Vegas for the SEMA afer market car parts show. Here we are on the airplane.