Winter Updates

Slightly overtanned kids in front of our first live Christmas tree. We color-corrected for pictures that went to grandparents:)

Naaman and Kyra after an hour of sledding. Sledding is definitely a highlight of living up north.

Kelsie with her sled. She actually goes down this one on someone's lap. It tends to spin around like the one on Christmas Vacation as you go down the hill.

Kelsie after sledding down the hill. she gets pulled back up to the top. Whew!

Kids having fun in the backyard yesterday. You should see the pictures of snow angels. We got 7-8 inches last week.

Naaman at "the Bean" in Chicago.

The whole family with Donald Duck at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.

Kyra after getting Stitch's autograph. Those autograph books from Uncle Mark and Aunt Cherry were a hit!

Snow white at the Princess lunch looking a little scared that she was being stalked by Kyra, Kelsie, and Cousin Lauren.

The amazing Osborne Family Christmas light display at Hollywood Studios.

You probably think we haven't updated the blog because our fingers are too frozen to move. Not so...we are actually ENJOYING the cold weather. There were several scary and sad things about moving to Illinois, and the cold weather was very near the top. I guess we built it up to be worse than it was. I was on my way to the mall last weekend, and I passed a bank which had a sign with the current temp. It was -3 degrees. We've acclimated so well that we now think 37 degrees is warm. Sadly it will get up to 37 next week, and all the snow will probably melt. Bummer. It's been hanging around quite beautifully since Christmas.

So, we haven't written in forever. Life has been CRAZY! Since the last update, we had 2 months with out-of-town guests. Nathan, Katie, and Josie came to stay for a week so he could work on our house around the same time as Liz, Blanca, and Renee came to town to help out with Freedom Bags (a really cool event hosted by our new church that raised $$ for International Justice Mission and 10,000 Homes.) Then Rudy's mom came to town for a long Thanksgiving holiday. She stayed almost a month. David, Martha, and their cute kiddos came to stay for almost a week over Thanksgiving Break. Can you say"super fun"? We made our first trip to Chicago that week, which was a crazy story in and of itself because we spent a lot of time lost, and Rudy had a little run-in with a very pretty parked Audi. We also ate delicious Chicago pizza, got to see the semi-impressive tree lighting, went ice skating outdoors downtown in the rain, and checked out the cool, block length window display at Marshall Fields. Thanksgiving dinner was no slouchy event, either. Martha makes a mean turkey:) Speaking of mean turkeys, have you guys seen the animated movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Hilarious! We saw it at the dollar theater last night with the kids.

Ok...back to the point. Of course, after Thanksgiving, we were hurtling headlong toward Christmas and the end of semester stuff with the students. Nathan came back to install a downstairs bathroom for us--nice! Rudy had his 36th birthday. We had lots of fun playing with his gift--Rockband 2 for the Wii. I honestly can't remember much else about that time period. It's pretty much a blur. I think we had a Cornerstone Leader's Retreat in there somewhere that was really fun. There was one lowlight...Rudy drove his mom to the airport in chicago the day before we left for our Disneyworld Christmas vacation. There was much packing, wrapping, preparing of gifts for shipping, and Christmas card writing still to be done. He was rushing because I had made him a bit late by volunteering at the kids' school that afternoon. Anyway, the keys to our car ended up in his mom's suitcase, and he didn't notice until she had already taken off. The Honda dealership came to the rescue with a new key, but the new key didn't work for turning on any accessories, including the heater. Poor Rudy!

The Disney vacation was a wonderfully fun Christmas gift from my mom and stepdad Bob. We were there for 5 full days and were able to stay at the beautiful Animal Kingdom Lodge where we had zebras, giraffes, etc roaming around outside our windows. Super cool! They also purchased the meal plan, which allowed us to have lunch with the Disney princesses and a breakfast buffet with Mickey Mouse and gang. My stepbrother and my brother, his wife, and our niece also got to go, which made it all even more fun.

We returned from Disney on December 23. I worked December 24-28, and then we left for the GCM Ignite conference on the 28th after I got off work. By the way, Christmas was really wonderful in our new home. We had lots of snow Christmas night, and the kids were excited about everything, including the birthday cake for Jesus. But it was a little lonely being in Illinois for Christmas with all of our new friends out of town. We are so used to being in San Antonio or Reform, AL for christmas that it felt kind of lonely and strange. It was sort of nice just being together as a family, though. Bummer I had to work to make up for the Disney trip. I have very little paid time off at my new job.

The Ignite conference was awesome! It was so great seeing the GCM staff from all over the country that we hadn't seen in years. It was also great to connect with some of our Texas friends while we were there. I had not been to a GCM national conference (besides the LT summer programs) since 1995. It was just too expensive for us all to go so far from Texas. It's always in the midwest somewhere. It was so cool to have the conference only 6 hours away in Westerville, Ohio. We stuck the kids in the back row of the car, so driving there was almost like a date for Rudy and me since we had been so busy the last few months. (I know...pathetic.) We had to drive back early in the morning on the 31st because I had to work at noon, but it was fun while it lasted.

New Year's Eve was spent with the Klunke family and a few friends celebrating Mike's birthday. He's pastor of the church here, and is actually 23 days younger than Rudy. I was off work on New Year's Day, and we had so much fun going sledding as a family--my first sledding experience since 1995 when we sledded down a little hill in Indianapolis at the GCM National Convention on empty salt bags. Yes, there are actually 2 decent hills in Bloomington-Normal.

We've been recovering the last week or so from all our travels and getting back into the school schedule. Only 3 days after the kids went back to school, we had a big snow here, and they got to take a snow day. They were quite thrilled and went sledding again with Daddy while I was at work. Rudy said the snow was so powdery you had to pave a way for the sled to go through first. He said he got to the bottom of the hill one time when he was double sledding with Kelsie and couldn't even see her face, she had so much powdery snow on it. She wasn't too thrilled, but the snow is beautiful. The kids and I played outside yesterday with snow and icicles forever despite the 5 degree temperature.

Now you're all caught up. Thanks for reading, and I'll try to be more frequent in my updates so you won't have to read so much next time. God bless you for your perseverence.