Its almost Christmas and 2009 is almost over. December has been a busy month for us like it probably has for everybody. Ronda has been a little busier at school since she is teaching a new unit that requires more grading. She is doing a phenomenal job teaching while pregnant. I know I couldn't do it. I just finished my second to last semester at Moody and will be graduating in May (Lord willing). This Christmas we are staying home and will miss seeing our families. One of the fun things we did this month was go to a NFL game in Indianapolis. The Colts were playing my favorite team the Broncos. We have been wanting to see the Broncos play for a while now and we have some good friends who are Colts so it seemed like perfect timing. Thanks to Caleb trading us for telephoto lens we were able to zoom in and get some fun pics.

ConLai is ever growing and is growing up fast. She is talking a lot more and trying to count. She usually starts at 6 and goes through 8 repeating 7 and 8 a lot. She can usually repeat any word we say so now we have to choose our words carefully. It also helps us find out what words we repeat a lot. For instance, I found out I must say "nasty" a lot because ConLai uses it quite frequently. She has fairly good manners and usually says "Bless you" after anyone sneezes or coughs and even says "excuse me" when she burps and toots. One morning ConLai woke up early (before 6) so Ronda got up with her and rocked her for a while. After a while she said "ni-night". Then she said "ni-night please" so Ronda put her back to bed and she fell back asleep for a while. It was a surprise to us since she usually does not fall back to sleep once she wakes up in the morning no matter how early it is. She is also quite a girly girl. She loves to paint her fingernails and toenails. We put a fancy dress on her for a Christmas program last Friday and she twirled in front of the mirror while we got ready. And she has been a big helper helping Ronda wrap Christmas presents. She has showed amazing restraint in not touching or opening the presents under the tree. And we just took a few minutes to set up her new bed. Someone from our church just gave us a used kids bed yesterday for free and it is really nice. Now she can get used to sleeping in a bed and we can use the crib for our new baby girl when she arrives.

ConLai and her friend Isaiah copying eachother.

ConLai taking a picture using an old broken cell phone.

ConLai and Mr. Southern (Becca's Dad) playing over Thanksgiving. He was teaching her to follow which cup had the cheerio underneath it.

The flag for the Star Spangled Banner at the Bronco's game.

Our friends Andy and Lindsey Sherrod

Brandon Marshall with the stiff arm. It was really fun to try and take pics with our new lens. Thanks Caleb.

ConLai likes to play in this section of the shelves. She closes the door and then says "knock knock" and then kicks it open.Our Pastor and his family. We love our church even though its not perfect. We had a huge turnout last Sunday because we were giving out winter coats that someone donated. When he gave the altar call about 15-20 people got saved. They live right next door to us and asked us to come take their Christmas picture.

November gone??

We were blessed with my two brothers and their families visiting us the weekend before Thanksgiving. We all were super excited to spend some time with them. Thank you so much for making the effort to come, dear brothers and sisters! It happened to be Hadden's 1st birthday over the weekend, so we even got to share in that! We also got to visit Caleb's wife's family for thanksgiving in Michigan. (Try and have pics to come.) The Southerns were so gracious and hospitable. It was truly a celebration! It was nice to have a bit more time to be with Caleb and Becca and for ConLai to become comfortable around them.


ConLai's cute new outfit from Gram-O and A. Dhana - thank you!
Amidst the fun, Anthony has been working super hard on the bathroom. He finally finished all the tile (not shown in pic) and just has grouting left. He has done such a great job, taking time to make sure he does things right. I think he's a great handy-man. Completely unlike our cleany ConLai, Hadden dug right into the cake. He had no problem getting his hands dirty to complete the job. ConLai was quite disturbed when Hadden would reach over and get frosting on her chair. He's a great lil' brother/cousin. :)
Hadden was incredibly smart in figuring out how to open presents.

For the first time since being here, we made the climb to the top of the Sears Tower. It was fun to see the city from above and to venture onto "the Ledge"....a window box that sticks out from the building. The kids had no fear in going right up to the window.
The newlyweds.... :)
And you wonder where Diek gets his expressions from?? :) We love you Alicia.