Praise the Lord He has seen fit to grow our family!! New baby Francisco coming August 2010!

The Jesse Tree was a very special tradition in my family growing up. One of my best Christmas memories throughout my life is putting JESUS! on top of the Jesse Tree on Christmas morning! And I was really shocked at how well Geneva did with it this year. We would read the corresponding Bible story every morning and then add the symbol to the tree and after a week or so she was going over to the tree saying “this one is Adam and Eve, this one is Noah, this one is Abraham, etc. etc.” SO cool. And it REALLY helped her understand that when we put JESUS on the top of the Jesse Tree it was finally His birthday!

My mother made the one pictured here, which is the same one we still use today. You can make it too! She used two pieces of burlap with batting in the middle, finished with a woven red ribbon. She embroidered (using the sewing machine) the front piece of the burlap with red thread to make a family tree. She sewed and glued one side of the velcro to the tree and hot glued the other to the symbols and voila! EASY project and SO special. If you are here in the Springs, I’d love to get together and do a Jesse Tree workshop sometime! Let me know!

you want me to do what now? smile? hm..

CHEESE!

finally got the cat out of the picture, only to have a dog in a dress enter it! lol. That's how taking pics with a toddler goes I suppose! :)

oh, and you might notice a certain small brown dog in the picture!! That is the latest addition to our little ever growing family! Her name is Liberty and she is seven years old and a miniature Australian Shepherd. We inherited her from Michael’s family when they moved to DC and we love her!!! (esp. now that she’s finally housebroken! She and Geneva got to go through potty training together! haha)

She is SO one of my very FAVORITE things.

Geneva gets a new ornament every year, usually representing something from that year. This year she got a hand painted green nutcracker from Germany. For some reason this year she’s become really enthusiastic about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. She can watch the ballet performance over and over and over (we skip the rats, obviously). She’s getting giddy excited about taking ballet next year, and wants to wear her frilly dancing skirts EVERYWHERE. So she has a nutcracker ornament this year, and just like in the ballet, loves to take him out of the tree and dance around the house with him. <3

Back in september…….

Auntie Debs came to visit!!! We had a blast with our favorite hockey writer, with lots of great talks, trips to the Zoo and park, and of course a great Rockies game! (where mom was not present and Auntie Debs did like all good Aunts do, and spoiled Geneva rotten with lots of ice cream! She’s really going for that “favorite Aunt” title.)

So we had yet to take professional pictures since Geneva was born until last month. My sweet mother-in-law had offered to take Geneva to get them done, and we did so on her most recent visit. They turned out SO cute - hopefully this will make us get our act together and get them done on a more regular basis. (oh, and for all the grandparents, great-grandparents, surrogate grandparents, aunts and uncles. etc. out there - your hard copies are coming in the mail soon!)