Christmas Blessings

Remembering Christ's birth is one of the greatest blessings I can think of this time of year. We can't even imagine what is would have been like for God to humble Himself enough to be born as a man. As Christians this time of year, we often meditate on the Christmas story so we can focus on what this season is all about. I challenge you to also meditate on Philipians 2:4-10. Think about what it would have been like for God to take on the form of man; to live His life in the confines of the human body. He did this so that He might die for you and me, and so that we could be saved. Praise God for sending His Son to be born a man, and thank you Jesus for your example of true humility and sacrifice!
We'll I didn't intend to give an online devotional, but I also wanted to mention another great blessing that God has given to us this Christmas season. God has blessed us with a little baby on the way. Today I am officially half way through my pregnancy! Yesterday T.J. and I went to see our midwife and have our monthly checkup. We were able to find out something very exciting that I wanted to share. (Warning: The secret of the baby's identity is about to be revealed.) Any of you who want to be surprised until after the baby comes should stop reading right now... :) God has blessed us with a BABY GIRL!! Her name will most likely be Ariana. The pronunciation is "Are - re-ona." We are very excited. It's so fun to be able to talk to her in a more personal way. After TJ and I found out, we celebrated over breakfast than went to Babies R Us to buy our first baby girl outfit together. We're praising the Lord for our little Ariana Logsdon! (Middle name will be revealed later). Merry Christmas everyone!

Her head(left) and part of her body and spine ........ ..........................................Of course, the first outfit had to be frilly and pink!

Happy Thanksgiving to our Family and Friends!

Ten Things We Are Most Thankful for This Year:
1. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior
2. Our new baby - on the way!
3. The healing of my hand
4. Our wonderful church family in Williamsburg
5. Family/Friends who love Christ - and us! :)
6. Each Other
7. Freedom to Worship
8. T.J. starting his last full year of seminary
9. God's continuing, faithful provision of our needs
10. Our new, free couch! :)

TJ's Birthday!

My handsome honey turned 26 last Friday. We didn't officially get to celebrate until Sunday night. His restaurant of choice that night was P.F. Changs, a local Chinese bistro. After dinner a couple friends came over to have cheesecake with us. One of his main birthday presents was a new fishing reel to go on his newly purchased rod. My husband has become quite the fisherman lately. It's something he has come to really enjoy. I'm so thankful to God for giving me such a great husband. My life would be so different without him. This is one of many reasons why no one has more to celebrate on his birthday than I do. I celebrate his life so much because my life has been changed forever because of him. Happy Birthday sweetie, I love you!!!

The mighty fisherman! Maybe he did so well CCCCcccccccccccccccccccccccccccc TJ enjoying his delicious
because of his new reel. :) ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc lettuce wraps!

Visits from our family

While I was recovering from the burns on my hand, we were blessed with some of our family coming to visit. The visits from my parents and my grandparents were already planned before I hurt my self. Since God knew ahead of time what would happen and that I would need the extra help, it was a blessing that He had their days already planned to be here with us. TJ had already planned a vacation week from work so he and my dad could do a lot of fishing. With my mom around to help me, they were still able to get a lot of fishing time in. My dad brought down a small boat for them to use and left the boat so TJ could use it when he wanted. TJ was like a boy at Christmas; he was so excited. My mom stayed an additional week to be with me. Since I still wasn't working, we were able to do a lot of fun things and build memories together. Then my grandparents came the weekend after my dad left. They have never been to our house here before. I was excited for them to be able to see where we live. They stayed for a few days and my mom left with them. The same day they left my sister-in-law, Theresa, flew in to be with us for a week. She was a big help and it was great to spend time with her. We had such a wonderful time with the family last month. We were so blessed that they were able to come.

Mom and I went to the Neptune Festival in Virginia Beach














TJ's first big flounder. Dad holding a striper.
















My Nana and Papa/ Theresa, TJ, and I on a picnic together

God's Blessings!

God is so great; His grace is so abundant. In the last few weeks since I hurt my hand, He has shown us His love in so many ways. Have you thought recently about the fact that God doesn't always bless us based on the fact that we do or don't do something right. I use to think that if I was walking with God and doing the right thing that God would bless me even more for my "righteous works." But that's not true! Or have you ever had a day when you weren't walking with God and you didn't feel that close to him; yet He blesses you unexpectedly in some great way? I have. Those are the days that God humbles me and causes me to be even more grateful for the fact that He gets joy out of blessing me not because of anything I did to deserve it. If His blessings were dependent upon my actions, I'm afraid I wouldn't be on the receiving end...ever!

I just wanted to share a few ways in which God has blessed us in the last few weeks so that you all as family and friends can glorify Him with us! Because I burned my hand, I've been out of work the last three and half weeks. It was easy for me to be concerned about our financial situation. Early on, God gave me the grace to trust Him in this area. God has blessed us in that He provided for us through gifts from family, church family, and friends. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of the people God used.

Another area God has blessed us is in the healing of my hand. I must admit that I am surprised at how quickly my burns are healing. I shouldn't be surprised since the Great Physician has been in control of my healing from the very beginning. The doctor said I will have little to no scarring and I'm going back to work this week!

The last blessing I want to share, and probably the most exciting, is that I'm pregnant!! God is creating within me our very first child! I'm about 10 1/2 weeks along and due on May 10th. Many of you who read our blog, probably already know. But we would appreciate prayers from all of you who already knew and who just found out.
Praise the Lord for His blessings!!

Our first baby purchase ......................................................................................................................Our first ultrasound














One of our first baby gifts- stroller/carseat from our Nana and Papa. TJ proudly posing after putting it altogether.


We told our church in a fun way through a mad gab game. We had a Harvest Activity and decided it would be a great time to tell everyone together. As you can see, we shared the moment with our good friends the Hines, who are also expecting their first.

Burnt to a Crisp...well, not quite!

Two and a half weeks ago I experienced the worst pain of my life! I left some oil unattended on the stove and when I returned the pan and oil were on fire. In a state of panic, I picked up the pan and searched for the fire extinguisher. In the process, I dropped the pan, probably because it was burning me. After I muffled the fire with a towel, I looked at my hand and realized how badly I had burned it. Praise the Lord my landlady was home and able to take me to ER. They treated me for second degree burns on my left hand and the index finger on my right hand. It was probably the worst few hours of my life. God gave me the grace to endure it along with some pain medication. :) In the two weeks since then, I have been out of work and attending physical therapy almost everyday. It is amazing to see how God is working to heal my burns. I have almost all the movement back in my fingers and Lord willing I hope to return to work in a couple of weeks.
TJ has been a huge help and encouragement to me. Thanks babe for being there for me. I have also been blessed with help from my mom the last couple weeks. I don't know what I would have done without her. And for all of you who have known what happened, I want to thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and many acts of kindness. You have all been such a blessing. It is amazing what we take for granted until we suddenly lose it. I had no idea how much I needed two hands and especially my thumb. One of the things I have learned is to be more thankful for the things God has allowed me to do with two hands such as cooking, playing the piano and flute, doing hair (mine as well as others), making projects, and many other things (like posting on my blog). God has truly been gracious to me throughout this experience and the mistakes that I made. He's teaching me to keep looking toward Him that He might continue to work in me for the praise of His glory.
P.S.
In case any of you are wondering, I do have pictures of my burns but I didn't think it was a good idea to post them for all to see. It is not a pretty picture!

Here's a pic of the offending pan and my burned hand in bandages.

Our weekend- Football, farewells, and freaky people


Football- Saturday night we went to a football game with a few other couples. We drove to Williamsburg to see William and Mary play Liberty. I'm not usually much of a football fan, but I must admit that the game was pretty exciting, especially the second half. The game went into double over time (which I didn't know could happen) with William and Mary coming out with the victory. Go TRIBE!!

( Our pre-game "tailgating" party)















We saw Carl from our church enjoying the game as well. Katrina & Don are wearing Tribe colors

Final score: Tribe- 48 Liberty- 41

Farewells- On Sunday, we had a commissioning/farewell service for our friends Stephen and Shannon Conley. We have been with the Conleys at Colonial Williamsburg for two years. We are so excited for them and the ministry God has provided, but we will miss them a lot! The service was so encouraging yet emotional. The service was followed by a church luncheon outside on the grounds. It was a beautiful fall day to be outside! Stephen and Shannon, we will miss you both and are thankful for the time we had together at Colonial!

Freaky people- We didn't have an evening service so we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at Busch Gardens. Now that fall is almost here, B.G. has started their Hallow-O-Scream weekends. I use the word "freaky" because I was definitely freaked out by some of the characters they had roaming the park trying to scare me. Let's just say they succeeded! This was probably our last trip to Busch Gardens for a long time. It's definitely become one of my favorite theme parks!

Camping Trip/ Labor Day

Saturday and Sunday we went on our second annual Labor Day camping trip with James and Jess Frohlich. We stayed at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach. We praise the Lord for beautiful weather. Our activities varied greatly for being a camping trip. We experienced all the basic camping activities such as sleeping in tents, building camp fires, cooking our own food, fishing (for the guys), playing games, and observing wild life. Well, the only interesting wild life I saw was a fox, and that was at like 2 in the morning walking through the trees on my way to the bath house. We also managed to do some not so camping related activities such as shopping, watching a movie, eating a P.F. Changs, and driving around Norfolk and Virginia Beach. For not being much of a camper, it was still a great time.






























Monday morning we all drove up to Williamsburg to spend the day with our Pastor and his family and our friends the Hines. We spent the day boating and jet skiing on the Chickahomany River. We also did some skiing, tubing , and swimming. There were a lot of laughs especially with T.J. and James trying to balance on the jet ski with out it falling over. Let's just say it took them a few attempts before they finally got it. We also witnessed Pastor's amazing tubing experience. With Don behind the wheel, pastor had a wild ride. There was also a mini diving competition featuring Don and Katrina. For the sake of male egos, I won't say who won. :) (J/K, the loser lost graciously). Needless to say, it was hard to go back to work the next day. God was so good to give us such a great weekend with friends and a time to build more memories.

Fun in Hampton!

Sat night the young married couples from our church got together for some fun and fellowship. We all met in Hampton, which is a half way meeting place for most of us. A Winks family opened up their home to us. For our activity, we went on a photo scavenger hunt. The teams were divided between the guys and the girls. We had a list of things to take pictures of and different challenges to accomplish. The points varied on how hard the item was to find or how hard the challenge was. We had a great time driving through Hampton accomplishing our tasks. The girls were creative and bold in their attempts to rack up the points. And even though the guys tried to get extra points by taking pictures of things they found on the computer, they still had a lot of great "real" pictures. After our time was up, we all met back at the house to compare lists and pictures. It was such a great evening and blessing to spend time with good friends. Here are some pictures from our evening:

Human pyramid.................................. .......................................... Picture of a couple kissing















Picture of TJ waist deep in water - 50 points! / The team who found a three legged animal got 25 points. The dog picture was one of a few that the men found on the computer, and took a picture of in order to get extra points. Well, it didn't work but it was pretty funny anyway.















I wasn't able to get a picture of all the couples, but here are two.


Steve and Melissa..................................................................................... Don and Katrina

Anniversary trip to Myrtle Beach

TJ and I celebrated our third anniversary on Aug 7th. For our anniversary, we spent about four days down in Myrtle Beach. We thank the Lord that we had beautiful weather! We spent most of our time there just relaxing and spending time together. Some of our other activities were....

Alligator Adventure...

( Biggest Alligator in captivity in the U.S.)














(Albino Alligators)















Broadway at the Beach....
(These fish must have been fed before) :)















Mini golf...
(hole in one!)



















And of course swimming...
















We stayed at a great hotel right on the beach...

( The Hilton) (View from our room)















The night of our anniversary, we got dressed up and went to a Brazilian Steakhouse called Rioz. The meal included all-you-can-eat salad bar and meats of many different kinds. They brought the meat right to the table and cut it off the skewer for us. We sampled lamb, lamb chops, flank steak, fillet mignon, garlic steak, pork loin, chicken, and a few others. Needless to say, we were stuffed. The meal was delicious and definitely worth the experience.















We had such a great time! God has been so good to us. Three years and Lord willing, many more to come.