Merry Christmas from A winter wonderland!

Winter snow!

Winter Wonderland!

Merry Christmas from a winter wonderland!

As we were preparing for our trip to Ottawa, Canada for Christmas we were getting a little bit worried and even a little disappointed before we even arrived.  Many of the people we were speaking to in Ottawa were shocked about how little snow there was and how strange the winter was this year.  As you can imagine our main goal for coming home for Christmas was to spend time catching up with family and friends but so much of that is just made better when snow is involved. 

The kids had been praying the snow would come.  We were pleased to hear just a couple of days before our arrival that the snow had started, it even got to far as there was a question on if we would be able to land with the level of snow that was coming in (although we were unaware of this from the plane).  It has now snowed almost consistently since we arrived and we are all loving it!

We had a wonderful snow day with family on Christmas eve at one of their homes and now again today we will be leaving in a couple of hours to have a snow day with another cousin again all of the extended family will be there....  photo's to follow i hope! 

We hope your Christmas has been wonderful and you have all enjoyed time with family and friends. 

A Look at 2012

It's funny that as they year comes close to an end we all feel the need to start looking at what we have done in the previous 12 months.  It's a funny concept to me but still I can't stop myself from joining in which the weird little tradition.  Even more amazing is in a few weeks we are all going to try to decide what will happen in our lives in the next 12 months, again as much as in makes me wonder why we do it.... I will be joining in, i just can't help myself!

In light of that thought here is a basic overview of our 2012

January:

Caleb's birthday, he turned 13 this year!

Zachariah arrives, on the 17th we welcomed his arrival. He was our surprise for the year but as I am sure you already know.... A real blessing!

February:

Aaron flew to Atlanta to spend some time with a friend who was in the end stages of cancer, Aaron was blessed to have been able to arrive in time to spend some cherished time with him and then also be at the funeral.

Grandma Renaud left us and returned to Ottawa after 4 months in London

March:

Zachariah's dedication

April:

on the 7th we welcomed Jon Yarrall into our extended family.  He married Kristina, Aaron's youngest sister. They are very happy together and already expecting their first child on July 4th. 

Caleb's Baptism, this was a wonderful day and along side him two Somali believers were also baptised.  We were very excited to see both Caleb and the other two men making a stand to make their faith public. 

May:

Eden's Birthday, she turned 11 this year!

Grandpa Gourlay, Carolyn and two of our nieces Jordan and Grace came to visit.  We had such a fun time and are already looking forward to another visit.

June:

Team Retreat

Queen's Jubilee, we had a lot of fun celebrating with the rest of the country but unfortunately the invitation to join her for a celebratory cup of tea must have been lost in the post!

July:

London 2012 Olympics

we have another nephew!!  Phoenix Amadeus Lawler is born to Luke & Andrea. 

August:

Family trip to France, we went to visit Aaron's sister Phoenicia and her family.  Another one of his sisters Joy and her family also joined us for the trip.  It was great to have so many cousins get together to spend time just being together!

London 2012 Paralympics

We meet our newest nephew. Marc Junior is born on the 16th to Marc & Debbie Lawler

September:

School restarted! 

Eden has now moved to the high school!

Eileen's birthday

House extension starts

October:

Nathan's birthday, he turned 10 this year!

House extension continues.

November:

House extension continues.

Thanksgiving, as a team we hosted a thanksgiving celebration for about 110 people.

December:

and the house extension still continues!!

We are heading to Ottawa for Christmas! we are all looking forward to it so much!

in January we are also looking forward to meeting Joy & Francois' newest little one.  Due on the 29th.  This family just keeps getting bigger!!

so, that seems to be a very basic overview of some of the things that have happened this year!

We are looking forward to see what the next year has in store.

So many LITTLE things!

Zachariah is getting bigger each day, as to be expected! The funny part about babies getting bigger is they seem to become more interested in smaller things! Zachariah still enjoys his fruit and porridge for breakfast but a real favourite part of each breakfast is when he gets his Cheerios!!! It takes him a while but he loves the process of picking each little Cheerio up.

The oldest and the youngest!

I thought this was a great picture of Caleb an Zachariah! Caleb is giving him last cuddles before heading off to MTO in the Netherlands for a week.

He left yesterday and we will meet up with him at Aaron's sisters house on the 20th in France. We miss him already!

Most Improved Player!

This year both of the older boys played soccer with a local team called the 'South Ealing Saints'.  It committed them to every Saturday for practice and then some Saturdays also had games.  They played in sun and rain and even the threat of snow one week.

They had lots of fun and were pleased to be part of the team.  At the end of the year they were both given awards for being part of the team, as all the kids were.  They were excited about them.

Caleb was then surprised to also receive the MOST IMPROVED PLAYER for his age group.  He worked hard with the team all year and really did earn the award and he is looking forward to going back in September and being an assistant coach as this year was his last year to be able to play with the team.

Well Done Kids!

Well, the school year has come to an end and the kids are all off for August.  

Everyone has worked very hard this year and finished with great school reports.  We are pleased with how everyone did and feel they did their best and achieved well.

Caleb ended his year with being invited to do his science GCSE early.  He has been doing triple science all year to be able to achieve this.  For many of you who don't know what GCSE's are the closest i can explain it to be is a basic requirement to graduate high school and everyone has to do some, people vary between 3 and 10 depending on their academic levels and plans.  Being allowed to do one a year early means you are able to fit more in to help get better grades when you leave high school but it also means you are fitting it on top of your normal academic requirements. We are allowing Caleb to do this has he achieved good grades with doing the triple science last year.

Eden has finished primary school.  This is a huge stage as she will be starting high school in September.  She is very excited and looking forward to being at Twyford.  This is the same high school that Caleb is already attending.  Eden struggles with some aspects of standardized testing so we were very excited with her results.  She achieved higher than we had expected and really showed us what she can do.  As far as academics go she is completely ready for high school..... the real questions is, are WE ready for her to go to high school?

Nathan also did great with his school results, showing us what he is able to achieve.  He has always been a good student but this year he managed to cross the line into a high achieving student as we saw his grade levels show an amazing jump.  He deserved the good marks as he worked hard all year and took great pride in his home work and projects.  Clearly his school also felt he worked hard as they gave him the award above.  He is very proud of himself and is already talking about how hard he is going to work on his homework next year.....   We have told him he can probably relax and enjoy his summer before starting to worry about next years homework!

Zachariah enjoyed going out with the family to celebrate the good reports. We were not surprised to see that he found eating the menu much more exciting than the pizza! 

We Love Visitors!!

We love to have visitors come to our home.  We don't have a huge home but we do like it to be open to friends and family, we consider it a blessing to be able to host those who come. 

It is even greater when Grandpa, Carolyn show up with cousins Jordan & Gracie!!  What a special treat.  

Aaron and I managed to keep it a complete surprise from the kids.  They were very excited when we showed up at school to pick them up.

A Welcome basket for Carolyn.
It is all British for her first trip to the UK.
(even the basket is made from wool from
British alpaca's!)