Claire: 5 Months

Our beautiful baby girl is now 5 months old! She is reaching new milestones and is as healthy as can be. She just recently started sitting up on her own for short periods of time. She is on the verge of getting up on all fours. A few weeks ago, I started her on rice cereal because she started waking up at 3 or 4am hungry. The rice cereal keeps her full for longer at night, and lets me sleep as well :) It is pretty hilarious watching her try to eat from the spoon. Her tongue is all over the place and she wants to play with it. We go with about 4 spoon fulls before adding more milk and putting it in the bottle for her... but we are getting the hang of it.

Claire is a VERY active little girl... won't sit still :) This is challenging at times, but I can always get work done around the house when she naps :) Her sleeping schedule is still great. She goes to bed at about 9, wakes up at about 7, and has 3 naps during the day that last between 1.5 and 2 hours. Can't ask for much better! Found out that she does not like the harmonica or when my parent's house phone rings. She cries every time... poor girl. Other than that and the occasional naptime fussiness, she is a very happy baby!

I go back to work next week... and it is going to be hard. I'm used to being with Claire all the time. BUT... Ben will be done with work after today, so he gets to trade and stay home with her :) Makes me feel so much better about returning to work!

Got some good news... Ben's sister is pregnant so I will be an aunt again! With this one coming around the end of March and Chuck and Cassie's new arrival coming in February, we will have 8 nieces/nephews! The family sure is growing :)

We are so blessed!!!

Eternity is a long time... are you ready?

I have felt a pretty big nudge from God recently to write this. There has been news about a lot of death lately, and some very close family and friends have been affected. It has me wondering and asking myself what some of my closest friends and family members believe when it comes to faith. I know that all of my immediate family and many of my close friends are believers and have been saved, because we openly talk about it... but there are also those I'm not sure where they stand. So here it goes.

Any of us could die at any moment. We see it happen all the time... car accidents, cancer, heart attacks, a random shooting in a theater.... people die, and many times it is totally unexpected. If you were to die today, do you know where you will go? Where you will spend eternity? God loves us all so much, that he sent his one and only son to die for us to take away our sins so that we could spend eternity in Heaven with him. A place so majestic and incredible that we cannot even image. He did this because HE LOVES US. More than we could ever know. All we have to do is accept that love and ask Jesus to enter our hearts and save us from hell. We all deserve to go to hell. Yes, I know that is bold and scary, but its true. We all are sinners and fall short. I will be the first one to admit that I have made plenty of mistakes and I sin often. I also ask for forgiveness all the time and ask God to help me live the way he wants me to live.

God gives us this totally free gift of salvation. All we have to do is accept it. I pray that ALL of my friends accept this gift, because I want to see you all in Heaven some day :) It just breaks my heart when I hear of someone who died and not knowing if they were a Christian or not. When I say Christian, I mean someone who has accepted the Lord as their personal savior. I hear so much about "religion" and it being about a list of do's and do not's... That is not what it's about. That is what turns many people off to the idea of being a Christian.

The bottom line... GOD LOVES YOU. He has offered you a free gift of eternal life in heaven. I pray that everyone reading this will search their hearts and accept him before it is too late. If you already have, that is wonderful and I am so glad :) I hope I didn't offend anyone here or lose any friends... I have just felt God asking me to do this for awhile now. I'll say it here one last time- God loves you, and so do I! I am praying for you all :)