Happy Fall

Hello from Bristol! It is always fun watching the seasons change in a new place. The leaves are really starting to turn now and the park next to our house is beautiful. We are excited to say that we have found a church here in Bristol. Calvary Baptist Church. It is just down the road from us and we have been so blessed in just the short amount of time we have been there. I helped out with AWANA last week and plan to keep helping. It is a great ministry. They go and pick up kids from lower-income areas and then feed them at the church and do AWANA with them and then take them home. It reminds me of the summer program I use to work with with all the van schedules and bit of craziness at times. God is also helping us develop more relationships with people here, which is a blessing. I had a couple of moms and their kiddos over to our house this morning for a playdate. It was a lot of fun. They are both resident wives so we had a lot in common. Aaron is enjoying his new rotation. He is learning a lot and working hard. Hope you all are doing well. Come visit us anytime! Here are some random pics.....these are from a while back, but I just thought they were hilarious. She woke up from a nap with some major bed head!!






My cute new dress and shoes from my Great granddaddy Jones and Aunt Laura. Thanks!
Braelyn's hair is long enough now to pull up in a little rubberband. The only problem is she doesn't want anything in her hair!! Oh well, I guess we'll just keep trying.
Steele Creek Park in the fall



Just saying Hi to my Aunt Sarah!! She sticks out the tongue for you Sarah :)

More Braelyn Videos!!

Here's Braelyn Walking! It's just a matter of time until she takes off. Enjoy

Here she is playing and dancing to the toy she got from the Byrds for her birthday.

Braelyn's 1st Birthday!

The pictures are kinda backwards. They always upload on top of each other so the first are last and the last are first! I'm sure I should be able to fix it, but I'm not sure how. So just enjoy the pics and thanks everyone for helping us celebrate Braelyn's 1st birthday! It was a lot of fun! And thank you everyone for all her presents. She is enjoying all of them.


Braelyn's crazy cousins! Colton, Caryss, and Gavin.




"Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward." Psalm 127:3


Braelyn and cousin Mattie. So glad they could all come and celebrate with us!

Don't forget baby Hayden! So cute and smiley all the time.

Great-granddaddy Jones and Aunt Laura. So glad they could come too.






Here are some pics from Braelyn's first bday party last Friday night, the 18th. We had it at a park close to our house and we had a great time. Most of our family was able to come. We missed Sarah and Martin and Daniel and Joanna though. I made Braelyn's little cake for her and some cupcakes for everyone else. She wasn't sure what to do with her cake at first. She played in it for a few minutes and then finally started eating some.

Braelyn had her one year check up Wednesday. She weighed 20 lbs and 15 oz and was 29 inches long. They said she is in the 50th percentile for both height and weight. She also got her chicken pox vaccine and did really well. She cried more while the doctor was examining her than when the nurse gave her the shot! We are SO thankful for a healthy baby and praise God for such a wonderful blessing.

We are thinking that we might have found a church. We aren't making a decision for sure yet, but we are going to keep going there for a while and stop visiting other places. Please continue to pray that God will confirm for us that this is where He wants us. Thank you for your prayers. We really appreciate them. I did find a MOPS group, but they only meet once a month. So I am planning on going to the next meeting in Oct. I am in a women's bible study that meets once a week and I am SO thankful for it. I really needed that. God has answered several prayers through that. It is a Kay Arthur study focusing on God's covenant. I have never studied God's covenants through the bible and I am learning a lot already. Maybe I'll try to post later some of what I am learning. Have a good weekend.

"if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you BE RENEWED in the spirit of your mind, and PUT ON the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth." Ephesians 4:21-24

"So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, PUT ON a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.......Beyond all these things, PUT ON love, which is the perfect bond of unity." Colossians 3: 12-14

Countdown to the big ONE !!

Yes, believe it or not, Braelyn will be turning ONE next Friday!!! I still can't comprehend it, but I am looking forward to celebrating a GREAT first year full of precious memories and amazing blessings. She is so much fun. She has really started trying to talk a lot more lately. I can tell that sometimes she is really trying to repeat what I tell her.....for example she has tried to say "hairbrush", yellow, blue, ball. she CAN say "uh oh", ma ma, da da, and of course, she can bark like a dog. she is starting to understand phrases like "close the door". She loves the Itsy bitsy spider and patty cake. She still loves to sit and look at books and to empty my tupperware cabinet in the kitchen. She is also fascinated with the refrigerator and crawls as fast as she can every time she hears it open! Oh, and SHE HAS A TOOTH!! woohoo! yes, finally, it has arrived. She hasn't really tried taking any steps toward walking by herself yet, but that's fine with me. I know it will happen soon. She likes to walk with us holding her hands. Ok, well, that's a quick update on Braelyn. Aaron and I are doing well also. We are still looking for a church home. We have found a couple that we are interested in visiting more, but still aren't settled yet. I have found a womens bible study at a church down the street that meets once a week during the morning. We are doing a Kay Arthur Precepts study calling Knowing God's Covenant. I have never done a Kay Arthur study before, but I am excited and looking forward to the challenge. It is 11 weeks long, and the first meeting was really good last week. However, I am the only "young" lady there. I am still looking for some young Christian moms to hang out with and fellowship with. That is a prayer request for me. Aaron is enjoying his residency and is learning a lot. He actually delivered a baby ALL BY HIMSELF last week! The lady's doctor got stuck in traffic and the baby was coming out, so Aaron just stepped right up and delivered that baby like a pro. This usually NEVER happens. Ask him about it and he can give you the full story. We thank God for providing the knowledge and skill for him to be able to do that successfully. He is doing OB/GYN and Peds this month and will start MTS(medical teaching service) in Oct for 6 weeks, which is Internal Medicine. ok, I'm going to try and upload a few pics. Enjoy.

Go, Send, or Disobey

101 Posts! 3 new videos

Here's Braelyn playing in her new hippo pool on our back deck!

Welcome to our 101st post! I can't believe it. I was telling Sonya the other day how excited I was and thankful that she started this thing almost 4 years ago. It's fun to look back and see all the wonderful things God has done and how we've grown as a family and as a couple and as Children of God. Thanks for reading!


Here's the other videos finally. They were too big to upload on our blog so we had to post them to youtube and put a link here. this is about the extent of my electronical abilities! Here she is feeding herself. She misses a lot but does pretty good.

Here's Braelyn climbing up the stairs. She usually goes faster but was distracted by the video camera.

Almost 11 months old

Ok, so these pics are a little out of order, but just enjoy!
I love to play in the pool!
Braelyn and Addie

The JoDANna Wedding...August 1
Braelyn went all day without a nap until about 3:00 on the way home....she was a little tired, but was a great baby all day!

Cutie pie!


The beautiful couple! It was a beautiful wedding outside at Joanna's parent's house.

Bath time!

Thanks to my wonderful aunts who give me such pretty dresses!!!!





Braelyn is growing so quickly now. We have some really cute videos to post, but the blog is not cooperating right now, so I'm just going to update and post a few pics. She discovered our stairs about a week ago. The first time she started climbing them she went ALL THE WAY UP without stopping. She climbed them four times that day, with Mommy right behind her of course. So now we have to buy a gate. She has also figured out how to bark like a dog. She says "woof, woof" anytime she hears the neighbors dog or sees a dog, or bird, or squirrel......apparently all animals bark :). It's really cute. She loves animals, especially dogs. She also started saying "uh oh" a few days ago when she would drop her sippy cup in the floor. Sometimes I think she tries to say "ball". We bought her a little baby pool and she loves to play in it. She is doing a better job sleeping through the night now. Praise the Lord. She likes to explore the whole house. We have to watch her constantly. She also likes to point at things now and claps her hands a lot more. If we are watching a TV show and people clap, she will start clapping too. She has a hippo toy that she can walk behind and she does really well with it, but no first steps yet by herself. She is starting to eat more finger food and some table food. Still no teeth, we keep thinking that she is "teething", but we've thought that for about 6 months now. She still takes two naps a day and goes to bed around 8:30 and wakes up around 8. She is such a GOOD sleeper! Like her Mommy :)

We are still looking for a church home. I am still looking for some other Moms to hang out with. We have really nice neighbors that we hope to have over for dinner and get to know better. It is nice being closer to our families. We have been home a lot more in the last few months. Aaron is really enjoying his residency so far. He is learning so much and I can tell it is really rewarding for him to work and bring home a paycheck again. He has a different schedule every month, but so far it has been very manageable. I know that he is doing what God has called him to do and I am so thankful for that.

Oh, and I included a picture of our first vegetables from our own garden, which is VERY small. We (actually Aaron) planted one green pepper, one cucumber, one squash, one zuchinni, and one tomato. The tomato died fairly quickly, but the others are looking pretty good. We planted really late, so we just got our first zuchinni and cucumber about a week ago. They were really good. We don't have any squash or peppers yet....who knows we might not get any. But it is fun to see what happens.