Happy New Year One And All!!!

Here's another one of my "once in a great while" posts!

Since I last up-dated, we've celebrated a very enjoyable Christmas here! Clara's first! We drove about an hour to the home of some friends, who very kindly invited us to join them for Christmas dinner! Delicious. The day was beautiful! It reminded me of a CA Christmas! Warm and sunny and not remotely white. Clara got to borrow a stroller (her's is in storage) and a group of us went for a stroll...during which excursion I recieved a kiss under mistltoe!

Our new friends from the area very generously paid our way to Bible conference on the coast down south. We had a lovely time! There was some excellent speaking and we were able to have some very enjoyable times with friends and family. Clara pretty much decided that being left in child care is completely unacceptable, so most of the time we had her with us. We did get some cute pictures on the beach...which may find their way on here in about 2 weeks, which is when we are planning to move.

Speaking of moving, we've pretty much settled (unless something comes up) on a cute littel rental home near the chapel we attend. It should very comfortably meet our needs and it has a large back yard, which means Stephen and I will probably get to realize our dreams of having a big garden and chickens! Stephen has been helping him get the place ready, as he wasn't sure he could get it ready by the time we wanted to move in.

I'm afraid we have a house full of sickies right now. Poor little Clara had a fever the last couple days. It seems to have gone now, but she is still pretty miserable. Stephen is pretty sick too, but I, thankfully, only seem to have a touch of something.

Clara, when she's not sick, has been doing quite well! She now has 6 teeth through and still likes to put most anything and everything in her mouth, though she's still not to good at eating anthing that's not mashed up to some degree. When she's playing on the ground she spends a lot of time up on all fours. It's like she knows that's the way REAL crawling is suppose to work, but hasn't quite figured it out yet. Crawling is still restricted the military "low crawl". Oh well, at least she can get around. I got some adorable pictures the other day of her try to pull things out of the shelf in the fridge door. "Let me help, Mom!"

Well, I'll sign off for now. A very happy new year to you all!