Another year. . .

It was time for a change. I'm in a blue mood for 2007. Started out pink in 05, green in 06. I'm liking the blue. It is wild to think 2006 is over! Thinking about this time last year: I was LARGE pregnant and anticipating the arrival of our precious boy, Hayley had only been walking for 3 months, we had just moved to our new house, and so many more changes were ahead of us. I'm anxious (in a good way) to see what 2007 has in store for our family of 4. I was taking the ornaments off our tree today thinking about this time next year and how very different things will be around here. Jack will be weeks away from turning 2 years old and Hayley will be almost 3 1/2. It's hard to imagine!

Our Christmas was wonderful. It started out w/ Tra's family and ended up with mine. It was the first time since 2003 that I had gotten to be w/ my family for Christmas at my parents' house. It was SO good to be with everyone again. 2004 Tra was too sick to travel and 2005 I wasn't allowed to travel. It was fun w/ Tra's family to see all the kids. None of them were terribly "into" Christmas this year. I thought Hayley would be more into it, but she so was not. She IS enjoying her new toys though---even if she seemed like she could care less at the time she opened them. One of my favorite memories of this Christmas was being at Richland Hills on Christmas Eve morning for the candlelight service and there were about 5 baptisms afterwards. Hayley always goes to her class during service times but the kids don't have classes at the Christmas Eve service, so she had never seen a baptism until then. It totally left a huge impact on her. I think she has talked about it every day since. She'll randomly say, "Remember when that boy got ba-tized? He just JUMPED in that water and got soakin' wet!" And I'll say, "He said, 'Hey everybody!! I. . " and she finishes w/ ". . .love JESUS!!" Last night she brought it up again and she said, "And then it will be Hayley's turn to jump in that water!" I told her I couldn't WAIT for it to be her turn! SOOOOO precious.

I'll end this post w/ some of my favorite things Hayley has said lately. Obviously the baptism thing was one of my favorites!

"I need a wipe-a-towel!" (paper towel to wipe off her hands/face)

She'll cover Jack's head w/ a blanket and say, "Jackin in the box. . . PEEK-A-BOO!!!" The other day Tra goes, "Hayley in the box, peek a boo!" She goes, "Not Hayley!! JACKIN!!" Jackin???

Jack threw his sippy cup off his high chair the other day. She walked over calmly, picked up his cup, put it on his tray and said, "That's not a good idea, Buddy."

If she sees something out of place she'll laugh and say, "Where did come THAT from???"

We pass a donut place we go to occasionally and she says w/o prompting: "Donuts are too sugary. They'll make my tummy hurt. They're not good for you." I followed that statement the other day w/ "Yea, they're not healthy." She followed that with, "No. But M&M's are healthy!"

We were at my cousin's wedding and she went up to this little boy who was about 6 and patted him sweetly on his arm and said, "Hi little boy! You're so sweet!" You know that "little boy" loved that!

I could go on, but I'll stop for now. Praying for an extra BLESSED 2007 for all of us! Happy New Year!