Paynes Creek Park!

A picture is worth a thousand words? These pictures have no explanation. :) For all our friend who prayed for our assessment week, thank you! We are disappointed that we were not reccommended for overseas missions at this time, but are trusting that God will make clear where He wants us next! (our mothers were very glad)

We got a chance to leave the babies home with my parents and take the big 3 to the park this weekend. It was a lot of fun....I'll let my pictures show you how much fun we had. :)

My 5 sweet children

Kylie Grace....sweet helper daughter with her 25 dollar glasses from zennioptical.com :). She is one of 2 kids in her class who are writing for the bobcat express (the school newsletter), taking piano lessons, singing solos in church every chance she gets, and reading voraciously (just finished the 3rd Harry Potter book).
Josiah Thomas...my boy that loves to have fun and create. He is enjoying being a part of the Beartooth club (a boy scout-ish group at church), doing experiments and creating inventions out of anything he can get his hands on (mostly cardboard and duct tape), looking forward to karate starting up next week at the "Y", and becoming a major Wii player.

Ashley Joy.....a true source of joy in our family...she is riding her bike (with training wheels) and scooter (or "cooter") whenever she can, drawing stick people for fun, playing littlest pet shop and my little ponies, and always looking to be a big kid and/or take care of a little brother/sister.

Matthias Timothy....my mama's boy who knows how to have a good time. He is loving playing ball, cars and train...driving a car or train around at any given point in the day, trying to keep up with his talking twin sister.... loves: his blanket, to sleep (when his sister isn't keeping him up), to have books read to him, to watch "wiggles", to play with his "yay" (leigh)

Leighton Ann.....my spunky, sweet daughter who is little miss independent. She is loving to eat...anything..., talking up a storm and likes to tell me all day what Matthias is doing (Sigh-ee seeping, Sigh-ee kying, Sigh-ee dink?...Matthias sleeping, Matthias crying, Matthias drink?), loves books and her 2 stuffed "tinky's, resisting naps like crazy (she spends most of her nap putting covers on her brother while he sleeps), and getting into everything and anything (i.e.: dipping toothbrushes into toilets and brushing, pulling out entire packages of wet wipes, drawing on her belly with sharpie markers)

It's chaos....and we love it! :) pray for my parents next week....they're going to need all the help that they can get.

Christmas 2008

We spent a couple hours with the Shanks (friends from Harrisonburg) a couple days before Christmas. It was nice reconnecting with these dear friends.

On Christmas Eve, Tom sang at a funeral in the morning before he preached at the Christmas Eve service that evening. Needless to say, it was very nice to get home that evening and relax...open up a few gifts and put the kids to bed. Christmas Day was a lot of fun for our family. We woke up and got some rolls in the oven to cook while we started to open presents. Leighton was not as into unwrapping things as Matthias was. Everytime Leighton unwrapped something, she then wanted to sit and play with it. We were so blessed this Christmas with a lot of fun things for the kids. It's a little crazy having so many kids and so many things....but the grandparents continued to do their job well. :) We got a Wii, which has been a source of fun for us (especially the older boys).

Leighton continues to eat like a champ in the family. We went to the doctor this past monday and he has given us a schedule for stopping her oral steroids (we'll be done in 2 weeks). We'll go back in early February for an x-ray and will hopefully see a good bit of improvement. Anyways, Leighton will chow down on her meal, say she's "all done" and the proceed to wander around to the people who aren't done eating and beg for a "bite!".

Did I mention that our dishwasher has been broken?? We went without a dishwasher for at least two or three weeks (it felt like more). Here the kids are playing in the box of the new one that we had to buy. (the water is terrible here)

Here are sleepy babies...the beds are a bit close, and naptime is a bit of a challenge, but they are definitely getting the hang of their toddler beds. Generally, Matthias will fall asleep first (after they spend at least 30 minutes climbing in and out of each other's beds) and Leighton will yell "Momma!, Sigh-ee seeping!" (Matthias sleeping) at the top of her lungs over and over again while patting him on the head. I should probably move their beds further apart, but it's been a lot of fun to watch them through the video monitor.

My parents are coming in a week!!! They are going to stay with the kids while Tom and I head to Atlanta to do MTW's assessment week. Japan has invited us to be a part of their team, and if MTW approves us for mission work then we will be free to begin fund-raising. It's a little crazy to think that we will know after this week which direction we're going to head in (job-search or fundraise)...and we're excited to go and move forward whatever way God would lead us! Anyways, pray for my parents....it's going to be a lot of work....hopefully it will be uneventful for them. And...pray for us! That this assessment week will be confirmation (one way or another) for what our next step will be! Thanks for checking in....hope everyone had a restful and joyful Christmas! I cannot believe it's 2009. :)

Josiah's birthday!

Josiah's new bike

water balloon target practice

(note to self: don't use construction paper...which is raised...on a pin the ___ game again)

Pirate cake

We survived 8 other kids in the house for 4 hours! :) I think they had a really good time...we played a few games, ate some hot dogs, watched a bit of a movie (they didn't sit still for that, soo....) and played some games. One little boy, as he was leaving, said "This is the best birthday party I've ever been to!"...a little dramatic, but nice to hear. :) It's always a little crazy this time of year trying to celebrate Josiah's birthday and keep it separated from Christmas stuff, but this year it worked out well. I cannot believe he's 8 years old!!

the crazy busy-ness of this past week!

Tom and I got to go the kids' classrooms and play some guitar and sing some christmas songs last week.

Kylie's class
Josiah's class

cookies from the mom's morning out cookie exchange (yummy)

sweet sisters (aj had just woken up...she looks so old to me)

more sweet sisters (leighton in her 2 pigtails)

the kids sang 'little drummer boy' in church this morning...so cute!

matthias fell asleep while watching tv today...i have a great video that tom took of it, but it wouldn't upload. bummer.

Recent pictures...

Life's been crazy, as usual....this time of year is always crazy busy...anyways, some pictures of our lives....Leighton getting her first hair-trim...we cut the mullet off. It's shorter than I would've gone, but I'm told it'll grow faster now.

Kylie and Josiah were in an after school music club and had a performance at the school's family night this past week.
Our little babies are growing up!! We took the cribs down and put the toddler beds up after church today. The 2 of them spent their entire naptime laughing and playing with each other....sitting together in one of their beds and reading books. Needless to say, they were exhausted tonight and fell asleep in minutes.

It was a little sad to take down the cribs. Lord-willing (can i hear an echo from grandmother's?) we are done with having babies...it's hard to believe that every stage the twins go through is it. Bitter-sweet.

Owl pellets and Leighton update...

My friend, Niki, gave us 3 owl pellets last week....the kids LOVED it! Now, what I first thought owl pellets were...they weren't. It's actually undigested bones and fur that the owl vomits (like a big furball!)...we picked at it with tweezers and pins and came up with this:
Amazing, isn't it???


Tom gave the girls a shoulder ride a few days ago...

...and then the boys got a turn!

Little Leighton was the last of the Mirabellas to get the "bad cold" that started with grandma (we love you, grandma!!)...she fell asleep on the sofa several times monday. AJ had it on Thanksgiving day and fell asleep on the floor while the rest of us ate our Thanksgiving dinner. :(

We finally pulled out our sad-looking 6-foot Christmas tree from storage. We decided to put it on top of the train table so that the twins wouldn't be too tempted to push at it and such. Matthias didn't want to be in the picture, but here they are! I, personally, miss cutting down our christmas tree after tromping around in the freezing cold trying to decide on the perfect one...but the kids had a blast with this one and really don't know any different.

Leighton:

Tom came with me to All Children's today b/c they were planning on sedating Leighton for her contrast CT. Poor baby wasn't supposed to eat or drink anything 4 hours before the procedure, so we woke her up at 5:00 (4 1/2 hours before the procedure) and sat her at the table with a bowl of cheerios. She just sat there looking at us like we were crazy! After about 2 minutes we realized she wasn't going to eat or drink so we put her back to bed....and of course she woke up an hour and a half later and ran to her booster seat saying "cheeros, cheeros!". That was hard... to not give her anything to eat and know that she didn't understand at all why we were torturing her. Anyways, I could go on forever...but long story short she did great for the scan...they didn't have to put her under! Tom was at her feet, I held her hands and leaned in by her head and we sang songs for the 10 minutes that they did the scan. We got the the dr's office afterwards and he said that everything looked great!...the mass pushing her trachea is still there, but has definitely improved. She had several nodes in her lungs....some have gotten smaller, some have not changed, but overall they are encouraged that we are on the right track. We will continue to go in every 3 or 4 weeks...probably until she is totally back to normal. Thank you for your continued prayers...we are so glad about how things are going and will keep updating you as we have check-ups!