Half a Year!

Happy Half-Birthday, Serena! We've had a great Christmas, and are enjoying relaxing with family in San Antonio. These are some recent pictures of Serena. She's a lot of fun these days, with lots of laughing, grabbing (everything, including the keyboard at the moment), sitting, and jabbering.

Christmastime

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around our house. Serena's too young to care or know what's going on, but it's still a little more fun to get in the holiday spirit with a little one around. And the Christmas pictures are definitely cuter. We went out to the "holler" on Saturday to pick out and cut down our Christmas tree at a tree farm. It looks great and smells good in our entry room. Serena also posed for a few pre-Christmas pictures.

Cozy

I was trying to think of one word that could describe my life right now and the only word that came to mind was the one that I have decided to title this "piece." I look around the living room and on each of the three mantles is a Christmas themed display, two with a baby Jesus, one with blue balls. The words "BELIEVE" and "JOY" have taken prominence because they go with our color scheme, though you might not notice since our Christmas decorations are decidedly less numerous than when they filled our apartment in Princeton. But the freshly sawn Christmas tree, a "Canaan Fir," adds a seasonal fragrance that marks this place as home.

Growing up in the promised land, I never thought I would call West Virginia home, but that is truly what Amy and I have found here. This is a wonderful place for where we are in our lives right now. While I may be one of the only nestcocks in the entire state, there are not many other places in the U.S. that we could afford to do it. But sitting here with Bishop sleeping on the floor at my feet, my wife lying on the couch behind me and Serena in her crib upstairs, we have indeed found coziness amidst the hills and hollers of West Virginia.

God Bless,
Joshua