God's grace to us has been abundant this year. We are so thankful for His mercy and grace in our lives. I always begin a year with a mixture of emotions, wondering what the next year might bring. There is always a mixture of exciting happenings, sorrowful losses, unexpected blessings, painful lessons, stretching, growing, refining us. We endeavor to be constant in prayer and thankful for all circumstances.
This year seemed to bring many examples of lives being cut short long before we would want to see them end. This has affected Rachel more than any of us. All of us are heartbroken over the incomprehensible level of loss and pain being felt by parents, friends and community in Connecticut. Last night, we were at Clackamas Town Center for our annual photo with Santa. As we sat in the food court, filling out a star for the memorial there, the reality that our lives are a vapor was so real. Our days are numbered.
Rachel had the opportunity to be part of the play Our Town this year. She auditioned for the play after seeing the script and its beautiful portrayal of both the beauty and brevity of this gift of life. Her character ended the playing asking the question, "Does any human being ever realize life while living it, every, every minute?"
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| OUR TOWN CAST |
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| LONDON ADVENTURE - TOURNAMENT AT OXFORD |
The play was emotional, but also wonderful. Pete and I were blessed to be able to travel to Virginia to see her in the play and meet many of her wonderful friends at Patrick Henry College. This is her Sophomore year and fall semester was wild and crazy. It was filled with late night play rehearsals, trips into Washington DC, an internship with WORLD magazine (if you subscribe -- look for her story that was in the December 1 issue!) and debate tournaments at Yale and Oxford. Just a couple of weeks before the play, one of her dearly loved professors passed away unexpectedly. All involved in the play marveled at how God had led them to a production that was used to bring hope and healing to a grieving campus. Last summer, she worked for three of our local newspapers doing reporting. We are waiting to see what next summer brings, we hope it brings her home again. You can find her on Facebook or her blog -- jbarjwriter.blogspot.com
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| MINNESOTA - SPEECH AND DEBATE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TRIP |
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| AN UNEXPECTED BLESSING - BABY GOATS! |
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| SHAKESPEARE'S GREATEST HITS |
Sarah is a high school Junior. This year brought many adventures for her also. She continues to love art, music and theater. We are starting the process of looking at colleges where she can pursue these interests and further develop her gifts and talents. She hopes to study English and Theater. She will be involved for the third year in a drama program called, "Shakespeare's Greatest Hits." She loves the acting training and loves Shakespeare. She wrote a Biographical Narrative about the life of William Shakespeare for speech competition last year. She competed at Three Qualifying speech and debate tournaments, a National Open, Regional Invitational and the National Championship in St. Paul Minnesota. It was a very successful year for her at every tournament. . At Regionals, she got first place in Biographical Narrative, Original Interpretation and Impromptu Speaking. In addition, she and her partner placed 1st in Team Policy debate, debating the resolution that The US Federal Government should significantly reform its Criminal Justice System. At the National Championship, her Shakespeare speech won first place. She and her partner finished third overall in the nation for Team Policy debate. We are very proud of her hard work and accomplishments. Her real joy in the speech world has been teaching a Junior Speech class for the past three years. She had 31 students between ages 7 and 12 this past fall. She also enjoys encouraging and helping her fellow competitors and has made many friends around the country.
We are thankful for physical healing for Sarah in this past year. She has been plagued by chronic hip pain for the past three years. In February, we finally found a hip surgeon up at OHSU who was able to diagnose and recommend treatment for her pain. She had surgery to reshape her right hip ball and socket in July and on her left hip in late September. This has involved hours and hours of quality time with our wonderful Physical Therapists and much quality time for the two of us together with her daily therapies. We are thrilled with the results. She has about three more months of therapy still to go.
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| Many Faces of James, Courtesy of Paul Hartung |
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| The Hat Rachel sent from London |
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| Will play for coffee -- at coffee shop in Sisters, OR |
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| Summer Swim Meet! |
James is 14 and in 8th grade. He is doing Team Policy debate for the first time this year and doing some more speech as well. His great passion is music. EVERYTHING about music. He plays piano and drums and is just starting to learn guitar. If he has a spare moment (or even if he doesn't) he can be found at the piano. He has enjoyed organizing a "band" of fellow musicians in various combinations to play and record songs in our living room. He downloads all sorts of music and enjoys giving me "music appreciation" lessons when we are alone in the car. He also enjoys using computer programs to remix songs and would love to get into a music studio some day. We are excited to see where all of this will lead. He also continues to be on the Molalla Barracuda swim team and plays soccer and basketball.
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| Lego Creation - 2nd place at Fair |
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| The Animal Lover aka Bird Whisperer |
Mark is 11 and in 5th grade, though he continues to push ahead in math and his great passion -- science. For the past couple of years he has tagged along with our high school level science co-op, just because he LOVES it so much. He especially loves animals and has a little egg business going. He also loves studying current events. He and Pete try to make a regular date so Mark can bring Wall Street Journal articles for discussion. He also enjoys WORLD and was very excited about his sister's publication. He is competing in Junior speech and looks forward to being old enough to compete in the big league next year. He also swims, plays soccer and basketball. When he has a spare moment, he can be found in some form of Legomania.
Joshua is 10 and loves life in general. He attacks everything with grade enthusiasm and LOVES to laugh. He also loves Legos and sports. He took swimming lessons again last summer and loves soccer and basketball. He really enjoys computer games and Wii sports games. He will also play board games anytime he finds a willing participant. He has an incredible appetite and continues to grow rapidly. We wonder just how tall he is going to get! He is very sociable and has lots and lots of friends. He loves tagging along to speech tournaments just so he can make more friends and spend time with other kids.
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| Learning Ballet moves with Cousin Jill |
Anna is 8 and continues to be a bundle of energy. She loves to sing and write little stories. She has personality traits that are an interesting combination of her two older sisters. She loves singing and dressing up and being girly like Sarah. She writes story notebooks and character ideas and keeps them in a box like Rachel. She loves to organize things and is a great help to me in remember the daily details of life. If something is lost, I can usually count on her to find it. She has great compassion for those in need, if she knows you have a need, she will be praying for it. For her birthday, she asked everyone to bring items that could be used to pack Christmas Shoe boxes for children. She woke up the other morning on a mission to pack lunch bags for homeless people that she knew we would see at freeway exits on our way to speech class.
Pete continues to work for SAP from home. He has occasional trips to Philadelphia and Germany. Once in a while, he is able to stay over a weekend and drive down to visit Rachel in Virginia. He also continues to be a bundle of energy. He and James did a triathlon last summer. They are looking forward to doing another extreme race of some sort -- a manly, crazy, obstacle course. I just pray for him to be safe. He is kept safe, most of the time and has always recovered from his injuries with the help at our good friends at the Physical Therapy office.
I keep busy prodding our children along in their academics from home or driving them to an outside class or activity. I've enjoyed being involved with their speech and debate league and traveling with them to tournaments. Pete and I enjoy regular date nights and occasional over night getaways which keep us refreshed and ready for the next adventure. We are both involved with the ministry of Christian Family Adoptions and our kids have helped at their events as well.
We are thankful to our Gracious God for giving us strength and endurance. Hebrews 12:1 ".....let us run with endurance the race that is set before us...."
I could go on with a long string of verses that have been meaningful to me this year, perhaps I will make time to do more blogging in this coming year. For now, I will end with a verse that seemed to fit well with our theme for this year as we reflected on life along with Rachel and leave you a special song that we all came to love. May you all be blessed by God's grace and mercy in this coming year.
John 10:10 - "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." - Jesus
Life is Beautiful
