**UPDATE**On Mike's Job Search

Things are still rolling with the job search. Mike is waiting to hear from a couple of companies, and should hear back this week.

Thanks for the thoughts!
Shelley

Keep those prayers coming!

Well...last week was a pretty good week. Thank you for the prayers for Mike. Today is a big day as well. Mike has a meeting today, and one tomorrow, so if I can ask...please keep those prayers coming! We really appreciate it. I will update everyone once I have any information.

Until next post!

Power of Prayer

As I am typing this, I literally have chills down my spine. As some of you know, we have been going through a tough time. Mike lost his job back in November, and has been searching for one ever since. Right now, as I type this post, he is in a job interview with a potiental new employer. About ten minutes before his interview, I called some of my friends up and asked them to pray for Mike. I also sent out an e-mail request(all of this Mike is unaware I did). Shortly after that, I started to pray. I prayed that God would give him the words he needs for this interview. I prayed that God would give him the calmness he needed as well. I have to tell you that shortly after I finished praying, I started getting chills. (No I am not sick)...It was the power of prayer. To those of you I called or e-mailed thank you. I know even if you said a prayer at some point today it was heard. Even if you prayed this morning and not right at three o'clock. I know that God will guide Mike through this process, and place him right where he needs to be.
So I guess my point of this post is that God is amazing. He will handle things in his time, not ours, and if you pray, he will hear you!

Have a wonderful day, and I will keep you posted on what we hear about this interview.

Until next post.

More December Happenings

So, it has taken me a while to get the rest of the pictures from the holidays up. I think I know have most of the ones that would be interesting to everyone. Throughout the holidays, we created gingerbread houses, decorated cookies, decorated the house, spent time with family and friends, and had a wonderful holiday season. I will add Christmas morning pics to this post a little later...those still have to be edited! =-) (Make sure to go all the way down to the bottom of the post to see the pics!)

One of my favorite pictures ever of Cassidy is in this group, but I had to show it separatley as well. This is the dress that my grandmother made. Both Shannon(my sister) and I had matching dresses. We are now down to one, but it fits Cassidy! I started crying when Mike went upstairs to get her dressed before his family came over to celebrate Christmas, and she came down it. WOW, what a feeling. I think she looked adorable in it!








Until next post!

Some Christmas Decorations

So I realized that a lot of my family and friends didn't get to see us this Christmas. With that being said, I thought I would share what we did for our decorations this year...I think we did pretty good, but next year will have more lights!

What is your opinion? It's o.k. you can be truthful!

Park Fun

When it is not cold outside, we usually go to a local park here in The Woodlands called Creekside. It is wonderful for the kids to play at and it is beautiful as well. Cassidy loves the playground, and you can get some wonderful nature pics. I thought I would share some from last weekend.

Christmas Fun...

This Christmas was a little different than previous years. We started our Christmas celebration a week before Christmas. My Mom raised me not to open presents early, but since we were having Christmas with my step-dad Garth and my Mom, I guess it was o.k. We celebrated early because my Mom and Garth were headed to California to be with his family for Christmas. Gammy and Poppa spoiled Cas like normal. Last Christmas she got a Fisher-Price Loving Family Dollhouse (I highly recommend), and this year, she got furniture for every room in the house. She has been playing with it constantly and can't get enough.

On Christmas Eve, we started out the day by baking some Christmas cookies. Cassidy and I love baking, and it is always an adventure. We got to goof off and play during the day. That afternoon, we went to our Church's Children's service. It was adorable. It was the live Nativity, with some of the high school kids dressed up as the animals. Cassidy loved it. She was so into the message...wouldn't you be?

After church, we decided to go and look at Christmas lights for a while. Cassidy thought that was really cool. She loved seeing all the sparkling lights, and thinks we need more on our house next year!

Once we got home, getting Cassidy snug in bed was a challenge. She was WIRED! She couldn't wait for Santa, couldn't wait for the reindeer, couldn't wait for the presents, just couldn't wait!!!! Well, finally, she fell asleep, and the house was quiet. Santa finally made his way to our house (I am sure later than he wanted).

Christmas morning was a blast. Cassidy didn't know what to do or play with first. She wanted to see her stocking, wanted to see all of the toys under the tree. Wanted us to open our gifts, wanted to open all of hers! Needless to say, that took all of about an hour total. By then it was about 8:15 a.m., and Mike and I were beat!

The rest of Christmas day was quiet at our house. Not much was going on at all. We watched some Christmas movies, and played with all of Cassidy's new toys.

Yesterday, we took out Cassidy's new Dora Big Wheel, thanks to Great-Grandmommy and Poppy. She loves it. She feels comfortable on it, and is not scared of falling off of it. She can't wait for it to get warm enough to be able to ride it again. At the last minute yesterday afternoon, I told Mike that we needed to have someone over. I called my cousins Chris and Kelly, and invited them over for dinner. We cooked homemade pizzas, and played the Wii! We had a blast.

I am off for the rest of this week! YAY! We are going to have our good friend's The Charles' Family over for New Years Eve. Can't wait! I am going to use one of my new Christmas presents, "The Big Top Cupcake Maker". Yes, I know you are jealous, and I have watched it on info commercials for a while now. Mike got it for me! I can't wait to make something in it. I will post pictures of my creation once I have them.

All the pictures are from some of our Christmas fun! I will have some more later!

Merry Christmas to all!
Until next post!