Happy New Y(ear)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! You would have thought with so much extra free time around the holidays I would have had more time to post - but it just was not the case. I found myself busy enough with kids, school work, and family activities. I hope you all had as nice of a time as we did over the last two weeks. We were able to spend Christmas morning with Christy's family (two sisters, brother in-laws, and the kids' three cousins) which was great. Then on Christmas day we drove up to Michigan to spend Christmas evening through Saturday with my family. During that time we were able to see my mom's parents and my brother and sister-in-law.

One of the gifts that Christy got (actually on her birthday on December 28th) is something I am most excited about. A couple weeks ago we played a game called Carcossonne with our small group from church and it was so much fun. I won't go too much into how to play it, but it is basically a tile based game that anywhere between 2 and 5 players can play. You use the tiles to build cities, roads and farmland - and based on the positioning of your men - you score points. One of the best parts is that as few as two players can go at it - I'm guessing that there will be some lonely nights in the first couple months of Costa Rica where Christy and I will tire of learning Spanish and will take a break playing this game. If you are ever looking for a fun but simple and quick strategy game, you should check this out. If you are familiar at all with 'Settlers' - it is similar but maybe a little more simple.

The most exciting thing that happened over the last two weeks was our adventure last night. On the left you can see a silly picture of Lizzy looking cute. However, if you were to pull back her hair you would see the aftermath of last night (see to the right). She was running around at Nana and Papa's and we think caught her foot on the rug and fell down next to their coffee table. Instead of a bump or a bruise, she managed to some how slice her ear about a half an inch at the end of her ear lobe, straight through. I assured Christy by saying, 'I think she is probably fine, I'm pretty sure we do not need to go to the ER' which translating Josh speak means - I have no idea how much the ER costs with blue cross blue shield, but I think Elizabeth's ear is not worth it. Luckily, Christy (clearly the smarter half) insisted that we go to the ER and I'm glad we did. (from Christy - Getting out the door and getting to the hospital was pretty chaotic with Lizzy crying and holding a paper towel fiercely to her ear...she was ready to bite off the head of anyone who tried to remove that paper towel hand for even a second. She helped break our tension a little bit, though, when she confided in me that her real worry about going to the hospital was that the doctor was going to take off her ear as a way to fix the problem. Once we assured her that they would not take her ear, she warmed up to the idea of getting some help.) Luckily they did not need to do any stitches (instead they were able just to glue it shut because the bleeding was not terrible), but the nurse and doctor said had we not come she likely would have had a pretty large scar across the bottom part of her ear. The one thing that hit me most yesterday while in the ER was the pain you feel as a parent when your daughter is squirming in pain. That has to be the single worst thing you can go through as a parent. I was almost feeling her pain and contorting with her - but still utterly helpless. Now...think how much worse it is for parents who have kids how are seriously ill, chronically sick, or worse yet end up passing away. I can hardly even fathom how hard that must be. My last thought before I fell asleep last night was, now think how hard that must have been for God to send his only Son. Certainly gives you pause, and makes you appreciative of the fact that we have a heavenly father who will stop at nothing to save his children here on earth.

On that note, its getting later here and I'm going to try and listen to a lecture for school or maybe get some more reading done. I hope your new years eve was relaxing and fun. We look forward to seeing many of you in the first quarter of this year before we head down to Costa Rica!