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Scattered Snapshots Holiday Card

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Wrapped In Holly Holiday Card

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Stationery card

Halloween Wish Halloween Card

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1st Swim Lessons

Eli had his first swim lesson today! It went great, was so much fun for me and he smiled every once in a while. It's not that he didn't like the water, he was just so busy watching the little boy on the other side of the pool really swimming. Here are some pictures we took.


We worked on blowing bubbles in the water....


holding on to the side of the pool, he was much strong than I thought he would be...


floating on our backs...


here he was just checking out the other kids...


worked on kicking with our legs to be like a motor boat...


learned how to climb out of the pool, he was pretty good at this! And then he had to wait to jump in until I said it was ok...


and paddling with our arms.


This is the group we are swimming, singing, and learning with.

Elijah's Balloon Birthday

Eli is ONE! I can’t believe it’s been one year, what an amazing year. I know more than anything you really just want to see pictures, so this will be short. We had Eli’s first birthday party at our church in the Children’s worship area- it was perfect. The only decorating I did was table cloths and balloons, our family had so much going on in the past three weeks that I ended up having to keep the party a lot more simple then I had planned, but I pretty happy with the outcome. My saddest moment was about an hour and a half through the party I realized the camera was on the wrong setting- so many of our pictures are blurry because of this- so sad but we still got a few good ones once I fixed it. We have had a week full of family and new adventures for Elijah- I will post pictures soon of our visit to the zoo and arboretum. Here are just a few of his birthday pictures. Sorry I am on the mac, and the pictures are on the PC. So I hope to have a little smile box slide show soon.

It was so much fun to make the balloon trees and banner, I wanted to find an inexpensive way to use all the balloons I found in our church garage sale and this worked perfect! I had so much fun decorating with the balloons I was sad to take them down. John's family helped blow them all up on Friday afternoon, it was so fun! My mom ordered the wonderful Batman cake you see below, it was so cute.

Fun & Soaking

Some fun news for our family, yesterday I received an email from Shutterfly.com asking to use the picture of Eli I entered in a contest for advertising. I receive a $50 credit and so does the friend that took the picture. I was pretty excited, she said Eli's picture will most likely be used in like birthday card examples on the website- but I'm still excited about it.



As for what’s been going on in our lives I think you could say John and I are in a soak phase. With Eli we are soaking in these wonderful days of laughter and discovery. One of our favorite times of day is around 9pm each night. We strip Eli down to his diaper, usually putting him on the couch between us and just play together for about 30 minutes before his bedtime. The sweet smiles and wonderful giggles we get in those 30 minutes seem like pure bliss and continually help us praise, God is so great.




With our family we are soaking in the opportunities to share afternoons and meals together. The past couple of weeks my sister and her family, and all my parents have come out on different Sundays to join us for church and spend some time with Eli. It is amazing how Eli and Anabelle (my niece) have made spending time together an even bigger priority in our families. We hope to visit John’s parents at the end of March.




With friends we are soaking in some wonderful traveling with the Howards, soaking in our small group dinners, and I am soaking in some amazing accountability/prayer group emails. A few weeks ago our family joined the Howards out at Lantz’s parents home in Graham to help do some work on the house. Jessica and I enjoyed some great time just playing with the babies together. This past Sunday John and I joined some of our small group friends for an Oscar evening party. It was so fun to get dressed up and having an evening out with John and friends.



I am absolutely soaking in Isaiah this year with my BSF group study. I have learned so much and continued to have a renewed awe for God’s work in studying Isaiah. We are soaking in (sometimes drowning in) a blessed youth ministry that consistently has challenges (so we know Satan is worried and working against us) and growth (so we know God is moving in our students lives). I don’t know what is ahead for our family but I do feel like God building us up right now with so many blessings!

Family Book 2010

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Valentines Day Card

Love Hugs Kisses Valentine's Day 5x7 folded card

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VOTE FOR ELI!

Check out this entry I found on Shutterfly Holiday Photo Contest.


I have entered Eli in the Shutterfly Holiday Photo Contest! Please take a couple of minutes and vote for Eli! Thank you!

Shutter Crazy!

The past couple of years I have tuned into my creative nature and love for graphic design (on an amateur level of course) and spent hours upon hours creating my own family Christmas card in Adobe Photoshop. The task itself is a bit time consuming, resizing and reformatting pictures to be the correct size but great enough quality to show the awesome pictures. And then there is the process of loading the Adobe Photoshop file into whichever service you plan on using to print your cards, which last year was the most frustrating part of my Christmas card experience.



Last week however, on Monday a friend of mine that I go to church with agreed to take our Christmas pictures with Eli, she did his new born pictures as well. Bianca took the pictures on Monday morning and by Monday evening she had sent me the link to Elijah’s own web page through www.shutterfly.com that had all of our family pictures! If you would like to view some of these amazing pictures you can find them at www.elijahkimberlin.shutterfly.com. The next day I loaded all the pictures from the shutterfly.com page she had created into my own shutterfly.com account and from there made a Christmas card within 15 minutes! And ten of those minutes were spend trying to decide on just one of their Christmas cards!
I won’t tell you yet which Christmas card I have chosen but a couple of my favorites are below; feel free to help me decide.

1. With Love Chartreuse Christmas: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/with-love-chartreuse-christmas-5x7-folded-card?sortType=1&storeNode=93496
2. Many Merry Memories Christmas: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/many-merry-memories-christmas-4x8-photo-card-4x8-photo?sortType=2&storeNode=93496
3. Merry Modern Collage Christmas: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/merry-modern-collage-christmas-card?sortType=1&storeNode=93496

Also, besides Christmas cards shutterfly.com does so much more! I have already done two photo books and I am working on a third. The photo books have been amazing! I have one from mine & John’s trip to Italy celebrating our 5th Wedding Anniversary and one from the first months of Eli’s life celebrating his birth. They are so beautiful and shutterfly.com even sent me a replacement when my Italy book was torn. For Eli’s book all I had to do was upload the pictures and shutterfly.com actually organized them for me into a photo book layout. Caring for a new born, I was thankful to have so much of the work done for me.



Like our Christmas card from last year I spent several days (maybe even weeks) working on Eli’s birth announcement, by the time I ordered them and got them in Eli was already 3 months old. I wish I had made Eli’s birth announcements from shutterfly.com; they have some many super cute ones... http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/birth-announcements/baby-boy-birth-announcements?c=60375&sortType=1&pageNumber=1&foType=a&fa=8&DCL=true. I love the ones with multiple pictures because we could never narrow down Eli’s pictures to one. And because his new born pictures were already on a shutterfly.com share cite I could have made it in about 10 minutes! Think of all the naps I could have gotten in, instead of working.



So, there you have it! I hope that even if you don’t go to shutterfly.com to get your Christmas cards you will look into how great their service is! I am working on getting all of my pictures into my shutterfly.com account. After my computer crashed last year I almost lost all of them, but on shutterfly.com I can not only store them but create a share page for family to see new pictures of Eli. Which is great considering John’s brother & family is in El Paso, and John’s sister who just returned from Afghanistan is now in Georgia. She hasn’t even met Eli yet but has been able to see all his pictures!

So go shutter crazy! (MAKE SURE YOU CLICK ON THE PICTURES POSTED TO SEE THE FULL PICTURE).

Five Months, the next step...

Elijah is now five months old! I cannot believe he has been a part of our lives for that long already, it is simply amazing. He is doing great and it seems getting happier and happier each day. Below are a few photos for you, we started yesterday giving him rice cereal! He seems to like pretty well for the most part.

I have returned from the wonderful life of maternity leave! I love my time at home with Elijah and being able to visit friends around town- it was amazing. I am so thankful to have a job that allows for 12 weeks maternity leave!

However I am also loving being back at work- I have completely renewed passion for youth ministry and feel confident that I am working where God has placed my heart. Also now as a mother (even though I'm only a new mother) I do feel like I even have a renewed love for the students themselves, knowing that they are someone's children and need to be dearly loved as I hope some day others will love Elijah.

Our fall at home and with the students has taken off with a flying leap! I came back the week we welcomed in our new 6th grade students, and the next Sunday we had 52 in class! To put it in perspective, the first Sunday John and I were at Preston Road (6 years ago August 1st) we had 5 students in class- in 2007 our goal for Friends Day was 50, and we didn't make it. What is more amazing to me is that it isn't really a huge income of new families either, it is simply our members that are now invested. Our next Friends Day is this Sunday, our goal is 80- I'll let you know how that goes.

At home Elijah has been wonderful! Smiling, rolling, and reaching are some of the highlights- it is amazing. And we have been so blessed to spend time with loads of friends lately. I had two college roommates come in to see me (well to see Eli, but I was there too). Traci and Neena each brought their kids and we had so much fun! It was as if we had not been apart at all- I love these girls and cherish their friendship so much. We have also had so many chances now to spend time with the Howards who have Kennedie(she is 10 days younger than Eli), their move to Dallas have been nothing short of the hand of God. I know it's not just for my benefit but sometimes it does seem like it. :) Lantz & Jessica shared their tickets to the Cowboy game last week, I have to say this is one of the first games that I have spent more time talking than watching the game.

baby.

Baby Eli and John play with the new video camera.

A few sweet moments...

I thought I would update with a few sweet moments I have had time to work on, we have so many pictures it takes so long to pick ones out and edit them. In this slide show are his first bath, and just some sweet moments with dad or sleeping. :) Elijah is doing great! Growing so much, smiling all the time, and making some sweet sounds. I love how much he recognizes mine and John's voices! He is starting to sleep 6-8 hours at night, which really makes the days so much more fun! We are loving every moment of our little man.



Let me explain this picture, of course it is funnier to JOhn and I than it might be to ya'll but oh well. The left side is Eli trying really hard to stay asleep, he would not wake up for anything. The right side is after John had pestered Eli to try and wake him up, his little fist went up really fast- as if he was saying, "go ahead touch me again..." We laughed so hard in the moment. Hope you enjoy the pics!