11 Months

Our Dear Alethea,

You are almost a year old, 11 months to be exact. So much has happened this past year and we thank God everyday that you are in our live. In just the last month you have grown up so much! You no longer have the 'baby' look about you, but look more like a toddler. You have so many great facial expressions, I could just sit and watch you smile all day. Your personality is becoming even more evident as you are learning to have more independence and experiencing new things. Whenever you want to get out attention you say "ahh", sometimes scream it, for some reason you have stopped saying the few words that you know. One of your favorite things to do is to be outside. You will go bang on the front door just because you want me to walk outside with you for a little bit. The keyboard is one of the favorite toys inside. You could sit on my lap and play the keyboard forever (if i let you).

We are still waiting  for you to take off walking, but you have taken a few steps here and there when we have encouraged you. You know how to walk around all your toys and even walk from toy to toy, but don't have the confidence yet to walk on your own. I know it will happen soon enough and once you get a hang of it, no one will be able to stop you. This past week you did so many exciting things! You can now stack your blocks! All by yourself!! You will sit on the floor with your blocks and just stack away. (although you are still working at stacking more than 2). Not only do you stack blocks, but you know how to put the rings on your ring toy! You get so excited when you are able to stack your blocks, and stack your rings.

I know that I have mentioned before that you love books, but I want to make a special note here. One of the  books that you love is one that I made filled with pictures from the first 5 months after your birth. You love to open the book and give kisses to the baby (you) and to all your relatives. It is so sweet to see how much you love to look at pictures of people that you know. You laugh every time you see a picture of Wallace. It's great to see the love you have for your dog. You are growing into such a wonderful girl! I can't wait to see what the next month has in store for us.

Here are some fun pictures!

Ut oh! Got with Daddy's Wallet!

Hey Wallace wanna eat my cheerios?

Hey mom can I see?

Father's Day!

Happy Father's day to the best Dad!!

Jacob,
I always knew you would be the best dad ever! Ever since I saw how you much you love the family of 7, and loved taking care of their children. I always dreamed of what type of father you would be, and you have lived up to and exceeded those dreams. You love to be with Alethea and have done such a great job at being her daddy. I can't wait to see your relationship grow and for Alethea to become a true "daddy's girl". Enjoy these great Daddy-daughter moments!!

Park

One of our favorite family activities to do (when its not too hot) is to walk down to the local park. When we first moved to St. Louis, Jacob and I always talked about pushing our children on the swings at this park. We love that we are now able to live that dream!!  We try to take Alethea to the park once a week (again depending on the weather) and she LOVES IT! She loves to sing and go down the slides!  Here are some pictures from our various trips to the park.

Science Center

We finally made our first trip to the science center. Jacob had been wanting to go for a long time to see the Star Trek exhibit that was there. We decided in the fall to wait until Alethea was born so she could experience it with us. We had been waiting and waiting until she got older to go, and got lucky enough to find a Groupon for the exhibit! We were able to get buy 1 get 1 free and had a great time.

The science center is FREE so we spent some time exploring the entire place before heading to the Star Trek exhibit. The St. Louis science center is AWESOME! Anyone who has kids should defiantly go check it out for a day of FREE fun. It is a fun place for all ages, from toddlers to adults! There are lots of different areas to explore and lots of fun things to do. Anyways, back to the Star Trek Exhibit.  I am not a Star Trek fan, and was just going to the exhibit for Jacob, but I ended up enjoying it. They didn't have as much "stuff" as Jacob would have liked, but it was really neat to see different items from the movie. Needless to say, I got an entire lesson on Star Trek movies in about an hour. Crash Course to say the least.  We had a ton of fun at the exhibit. Some of the things they had were: cast scripts from the movies, actual clothing used, telecommunication devices and models of the ships. It was a great time spent as a family. We were unfortunately not able to take pictures due to copyright but have some other pictures from the science center.

The awesome "mouse trap" thing in the main entrance

These were posted all over the Science Center- this was posted especially for my sisters! 

The Star Trek Movie Film (they were showing this at night)

Tired from the long day

The Omni-Max movie reel

First Vacation

Alethea has one of her big "firsts" at the end of March: A Vacation!! Man, was I WORRIED! Jacob and I knew that we wanted to take Alethea to visit my side of the family and to meet her great-grandma, great-pap, and other great aunts and uncles. Since Jacob had a few days off from school and work we decided to make the 10 hour drive to Pennsylvania. As I was planning for this trip, I was really worried that Alethea would not do well in the car for that long in 1 day, (I mean she was only 5 months old, and I can hardly be in the car that long in 1 day) so we decided to only drive 5 hours each day. Which to some people sounds crazy, but it worked out great!

Car Ride!

One our way to Pennsylvania, we stopped in Kentucky to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins. (sorry no pics)It was so great to see them and also to give us all a break from the car. We had so much fun and stayed up way too late, but Alethea did wonderful! The next day we headed back in the car for the rest of our journey. Alethea could make it 4 hrs (stopping at 2hrs) without much whining, but that last house was pretty bad. (very thankful we decided to drive it in  days) We had so much fun visiting my family and Alethea did wonderful! She let everyone hold her and hardly cried at all. She also did great sleeping in a different place (the country), and in her playpen for the first time. I anticipated to not get any sleep but was surprised when Alethea slept great all night! I think it had to do with her being so exhausted! We had such a great time visintg family, taking a break from school and having some much needed relaxation. We also got some good tips and ideas for our next long trip this summer to Michigan.

On our way back we stopped in Ohio to visit our "grandparents" from college. Jacob and I call them our adoptive grandparents because we spent so much time with them while we were in college. They have taught us so much and it was wonderful for them to meet Alethea. (This was a special moment for us as we weren't sure if Alethea would ever be able to meet a couple who has had such a profound impact on our lives.)

And just in case your wondering; you can TOTALLY use cloth diapers while traveling. (they actually worked better then the disposables)

Enjoy the pictures!

Great Grandma Tippy-toes

Great Pap-Pap

Our Adoptive Grandparents

Baptism

This post has been a long time coming. On January 22nd Alethea was baptized at our church.  We were so thankful that both side of the family were able to come share in this special day. Alethea's one aunt, was unable to make it but stopped by the weekend before to see her. We had a great weekend together! Here are some pictures to enjoy!

Help

I have been working on this post for a while and meant to have it posted a while back, but now it seems very fitting that it will be posted during Thanksgiving. Over the past 6 weeks Jacob and I have recieved so much help from friends and family and wanted to thank everyone! We have had a hard couple of weeks and are thrilled to be back in the swing of things. Thank you to everyone who has helped us.

One of the main reasons we chose to attend Convenant Church was because it felt like home and we felt like family from the first day we visitied. Since then we have become members, been invovled in Bible studies, and Jacob is even helping in the office. We have been so blessed by these brothers and sisters through everything they have done. Our Elder's wife threw us a baby shower during our 8th month of pregnancy and introduced me to many women from our church. My entire pregnancy I wished that I could have a baby shower in St. Louis, our new home, but didn't know enough people to throw one. I was so shocked by everyone who came to the shower to support our family! Especially when many who came had never met us. Not only has Covenant Church made us feel welcome from the beginning, but they have been a wonderful help since Alethea's arrival. They coordinated meals so Jacob and I had dinner for the first month we were home, and have also helped out around the house with all the things that need to get done to maintain a home. Thank you so much! We don't know what we would have done without all the help from our Church.

We are also very thankful to my mom and sisters who have gone to great extremes to help out. From laundry to babysitting to watching Wallace they have been an immense help.  We have received many prayers from family and friends far and near. We are also thankful for Jacob's professors who have been extremely understanding and accommodating during this crazy time in our lives. Each day we are reminded that St. Louis is exactly where we should to be and how much this has become home. Thank you to everyone who has physically helped out and also those who have been diligent prayer warriors. We have had many  requests for prayer over the last year, and who knows what our lives would be like if so many faithful brothers and sisters were not praying for us.

This Thanksgiving we are thankful to ALL YOU who have helped make this time with our daughter special and memorable. Thank you!!

First Day of School

The first day of school has come and gone. We started the semester off with Spiritual and Ministry Formation, which is the class I am most excited about. Jacob is excited about all his classes, but I am especially excited about this particular class because it is oriented toward the couple. The professor and his wife meet with each couple/student at their house once during the semester to help them determine where God is calling them in their ministry lives. Since Sunday (the day before classes started) was spent celebrating Jacob's birthday, I didn't have time to surprise him before he left for work/class on Monday so decided to surprise him after class on Monday night. Here are a few pictures of his surprises.

Don't worry if your not an artist... I certainly am not one

Included: favorite candy, pencils, yo-yo, sanitizer and some chips.

  I raided Target's dollar bin for some items and found some good sales on the other items to make this for Jacob. I have been reading stories from wives about doing something special for their children on their first day of school and decided that I was going to do something special for Jacob on his first day of fall classes. I love doing surprises like this but have a feeling when Alethea arrives the little gifts and notes will be few and far between. Hopefully some of you can use this as inspiration to surprise your husband.

Rango

As many of you now know, based on Jacob's facebook status, he won 2 free tickets to the movies. It was amazing to me that he was able to get through to a radio station let alone actually win the tickets! Let me tell you how the day at the movies went.....

Saturday morning... Jacob says "Amy I have a surprise for you today!! Its a big surprise and your not allowed to know about it." Ha Ha Ha :) So of course, for the rest of the day I kept asking and trying to pry the surprise out of him. Were we going bowling? Going out for dinner? Going shopping? But like always, he wouldn't tell me. We continued our original plans for the day: grocery shopping and studying until about 1ish. Then Jacob said "ok time to go...lets go." So we drove, and since we are new to the city I had NO idea where we were going, until we pulled into the a theater. The movies!! Jacob surprised me with a Saturday outing to see Rango!

Now, I had never been thrilled to see this movie but knew that Jacob had been wanting to see it since it came out. The commercials made it seem like a funny, kid kind of movie; when in reality it was not a kids movie. It was more like an animated adult movie. I was shocked that it was rated pg and couldn't imagine bringing our kids to see this movie. There came a point in the movie when Jacob and I almost got up and left because it was very adult and not funny.

Even though the movie wasn't great, it was sooo much fun to spend an afternoon at the movies with my hubby. We had a great time together and can't wait to win more free tickets!!

Rules we broke today

Today, we broke ALLLLL the rules.

What a great day spent together accomplishing many things that needed to be done!

First we broke the "never go to the bank on a Saturday" rule.
Then we broke the "never go to Best Buy on Saturday" rule.
Then we got even more daring and went grocery shopping on Saturday! This isn't just a rule we broke, it's practically a capital offense.
After getting wonderful deals on all sorts of food (We miss Kroger and Meijer ALOT!!!), we broke another rule-coming home to Wallace and then leaving again. After unloading all the wonderful groceries and putting them away, we broke yet another rule: don't eat breakfast after 12PM.....

Jacob had French toast, bacon, 2 sunny-side up eggs with strawberries on top (totally a Jacob breakfast). After which he said he still very much missed "Jackies" back in Michigan with their wide variety of Pancakes and French Toast.
Amy had.....(Drum roll) A Chicken Sandwich. Hey at least she is branching out (away from chicken fingers and chicken nuggets).
After a very eventful morning and afternoon, the couple came home, wrote a blog, and lived happily ever  after (after Laundry).


What a day!

First Weeks in St. Louis

We have now lived in St. Louis for a month, well a month tomorrow. So much has changed in the past month and yet so much has not changed. Some things that Jacob and I have not changed in our life is family worship, attending church, fellowship with family, and cheering for our football teams. Although there are aspects of our life that have stayed the same, many have changed. Jacob is now a full time student at Covenant Theological Seminary (classes start this week), a new job for me in an actual company, a new area to navigate, church searching and learning a new routine. These have been changes that we anticipated for and were excited to happen. Now that these changes are happening, we are very thankful for them and what God has given us.


I have been very blessed to have a job that I LOVE. When I started applying for jobs in St. Louis, I half-heartly applied knowing I would KNOW the job I wanted when I saw it and hoped I would get it. I prayed that this would happen, but also knew that I needed to be applying to jobs I really didn't want as well. The goal was to obtain a job ASAP, and then if wanted I could continue searching for THAT ONE job. Through all my job searching I was only called in for 1 interview. I went to this interview and really liked the company and hoped to be hired. Two weeks later I called back to inquire about my first interview and was granted a second interview. This time I would be spending time in 3 different classrooms and meeting the teachers I would possibly work beside. Again, after this interview I knew that this was the job for me. I could envision myself working in 2 of these classrooms. I could picture me parking there and becoming a part of this community. At one point I was telling my mom "if you turn this way you will get to my work." Throughout the entire process I was praying that this would be the job God wanted me to have and if not that I would find work soon. I prayed CONSTANTLY that I would receive this position and that this was where God wanted me to be for the next 3 years. About a week later, I received a call from the company saying they would like to hire me and have me start in 2 days. I was thrilled!!!! I was hired to be the assistant teacher in the infant classroom at this daycare.  I get to work with babies (under 14 months) every day ALL day long!! This was definitively an answered prayer.

This week I began my 3rd week of work at this job and I still LOVE it. I get to spend the day caring for babies, and watching them grow. I have been given the gift of feeding, nurturing and teaching infants. In 3 weeks I have already seen so many accomplishments of these children; one has started rolling over, another put himself to sleep, and another has almost rolled over. I am so thankful that I am able to see these accomplishments everyday and praise God for them. I am so thankful for this job!

I just wanted to take some time to share with all of you our journey of finding a job and trusting God. We trusted God to provide employment and did not stress or worry about our future. We know that God is in control and will provide as needed, and he provided in HIS time exactly when we needed it most.

^{Jeremiah 29:11
11} For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jacob's Sermon on Luke 1

Jacob recently had the wonderful opportunity to preach at the Church where he served as pastoral intern. It was a wonderful, blessed sabbath day, filled with encouragement. Both of us felt extremely supported by our families, friends, and Brothers and Sisters who were there that day. For anyone who is interested in listening to the audio of the Sermon, please click on the following link.

The Sermon was on Luke 1:5-25
 ⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. ⁶ Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. ⁷ But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
 ⁸ Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, ⁹ he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. ¹⁰ And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
 ¹¹ Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. ¹² When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. ¹³ But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. ¹⁴ He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. ¹⁶ He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. ¹⁷ And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
 ¹⁸ Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
 ¹⁹ The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. ²⁰ And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
 ²¹ Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. ²² When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
 ²³ When his time of service was completed, he returned home. ²⁴ After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. ²⁵ “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Jacob's Site

http://tomanstome.blogspot.com/Hey Everyone! I know I haven't been around much and will probably go down to posting about once a week (hopefully) but I wanted to let you know about Jacob's website if you do not already know. He writes on his website more frequently, hopefully at least twice a week, about issues relevant to us and seminary.  If you are interested in reading some about our convictions, and what is being learned check out his site!  

http://tomanstome.blogspot.com/