Happy New Year and catching up....

Pre Christmas Picture ( showing small gifts he received in the mail)

Happy New Year to everyone!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and have started off to great beginnings!
I have truly been a slacker from blogging due to good reasons. We have been traveling a lot this past fall and just enjoying our son and his growth, and enjoying family time. Before I knew it, months had passed before I had updated my posts. Every time that I would sit down to create a new post, I would become distracted and never came back to complete the post.

My intentions were to do a high light of 2011 last week, however, we were traveling again out of state due a great loss in my immediate family and funeral/home going service for my grandmother on New Years Eve Day. She passed two days after Christmas and I miss her dearly, however, I know that she is in a much better place. She was a Great Woman of God, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, great great grandmother and an awesome pastor. She lived her life to reflect that of God daily and led a life and legacy for others to follow. She was a pioneer in different ways and I even learned some things that I did not know about her during the service. Her service was truly like a praise and worship service. Her legacy and work in the community leaves a lot for us to continue working towards with our own lives. Her legacy also reminds me that I have continued work to do with my walk with Christ in life and to remember those core values that she taught me at an early age.

In addition, I loss my four legged baby of 8 years to cancer 2 days after Thanksgiving. He transitioned quietly in his sleep at the vet's while we were out of state with family. We did not want him to suffer and we knew that the cancer had returned and was causing him to become severe anemic. We had already completed a round a medical measures in the fall of 2010 to after we received his cancer dx. At that time we knew that he only had about a year to live with the treatment unless the cancer went into remission. So, sadly, we loss him as well and I am still coping with his death as well.

So, now my plans are to do a high light of 2011 to catch everyone up on what we have been up to all year long in my absence with blogging. It was not my intentions to leave my blog this long without updates on my son, however, I just think time got away with us, in a good way! So, my belated presents to my faithful readers will be highlights of this past year. I am here, I am back and I will share with you all of 2011 that I have not shared. Before I know it, another birthday party will be around the corner and I never shared pictures from last years birthday party. I started his birthday plans on paper and on the computer back in September. Now, it is time to start getting things together.


I leave you with a simple pre Christmas picture that we took of him after he opened up a package that my parents mailed him with Christmas songs, a DVD and a Christian biblical story about Christmas for toddlers. He took this picture for his Nana. His Nana knows the he enjoys receiving mail and opening it. I wasn't for sure why my mom sent this prior to coming, but she told me that she wanted him to receive something small in the mail before they arrived with his Christmas gifts. You have to love grandparents! I will be plugging in more high lights this evening. On a side note, the bear beside him is a bear that I found after Thanksgiving. It is a Nativity bear and when you press the hand a narrator tells the whole story of the birth of Jesus. It is quite a story and it lasts a great while, but excellent.