All Things New

We finished up 2012 with two lazy and wonderful weeks of celebrating Christmas and spending time with family. John didn't have to report to the office during the holidays and not having him rush off every morning when we've barely just woken up is one of my favorite parts about December. I got to snuggle in bed a little longer and enjoy my morning coffee a few times while he got up with our early birds and fixed breakfast. Ahh, if only it could have lasted forever. Today I was running around like a crazy person trying to get the kids out the door by mid-morning because I apparently have forgotten how to do it by myself. Oh how I miss you already, two-parents-at-home life of leisure.

Christmas was so fun with such excited little ones and their equally excited cousins.
 It just gets better every year. Here are a few of the highlights.

                                   

 

As John and I celebrated New Years this week, we both agreed that we are more than ready to say good-bye to 2012. See ya later! It was a good year, but one with a great deal of sorrow and trials. God has stretched us and tested us, and yet we have found Him to be so faithful and loving to us amidst the heartbreak. We are eagerly anticipating the new things that are coming in the year ahead. The biggest being that Gavin will HEAR this year! Whether God chooses to heal him through His miraculous power or through the medical miracle of cochlear implants, we are giddy with the thought of our son hearing our voices in only a few short months from now. It just can't get here soon enough.

My verse for this year that God has really been laying heavy on my heart is this:

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a NEW thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the dessert and streams in the wasteland."
-Isaiah 43:18,19

That is just some powerful scripture, no matter where you find yourself starting out this year. God is going to do big and amazing things, because it's in His nature and, well, He just can't keep Himself from being Himself. He loves us way too much.

Happy 2013!