GORGEOUS!

A friend of mine, Ronnie Arrington who lives in the Forest Lake neighborhood posted this picture on Facebook this morning and I just had to share it with you. Mike wanted his nephew to see it... so Brent...this one's for you.....

I borrowed these local shots from another Facebook friend that lives here at the lake.....ENJOY!

Happy Birthday Landon!!

We celebrated Landon's 10th birthday with a party at the ice skating rink in Durango on Monday! And they had a blast!!

I was very proud that this year Landon felt like he had enough friends here to have a party instead of having one in Alabama!

What he wanted the most was a Fushigi ball and here it is!

Today was his actual birthday and boy did we have one excited kid! He spent the day playing his new Toy Story 3 Wii game and then we went to see Yogi Bear at the movies because you get in free on your birthday!
Haven helped to make Landon a cake

It happens in a blink...it happens in a flash.....

and the kid you birth turns 10! We love you Landon and hope your birthday celebration was everything you wanted it to be!

Christmas Comes Alive in Vallecito

Saturday night our church performed a live nativity called "Christmas Comes Alive in Vallecito". (That may sound a little familiar to our Gordo readers! Ours was very small scale) Now that we have the covered drive through on the new building, we enclosed it with tarps, put in some gas heaters and created our barn. It was a perfect spot!

The drama started off in the sanctuary with a prophesy by Isaiah....

Then the guides walked them out to see the shepherds and the angels that appeared to them.....

And then into the barn for the presentation of the nativity.....

It was short and sweet but hopefully a reminder to our community of the real meaning of Christmas! God is so amazing......the weather was bad all day, snowing and blowing but at the time we got there to set up, the snow stopped and subsided until after we were done! Our fear was that the weather would keep people from driving up to see it and it possibly did, but we still had around 85 come through it and had to do 7 performances. So it was a great first year and it's always great to work with your church family on a project to glory our Lord!

Here's more shots of the night.....

We had a sheep, a donkey, and two goats that were the hit of the night for all the kids!

Haven's favorite was Cecil the donkey.....

Below is Steve and Nancy Walb, two of the greatest teachers of God's word. I've learned so much from these two since we've been here

Merry Christmas from the Owen family and we can't wait to see many of you next week!

10 MORE DAYS!

Today's the 14th so only 10 more days until CHRISTMAS EVE! The greatest part about Christmas for me is being with family. We plan to leave after the Christmas Eve service on the 24th and drive a straight 24 hours to arrive in AL by Owen Christmas Party time on Christmas Day. Yes, I wish we could fly but it is just too expensive for 5 of us. We'll only be there for 6 days which is a bummer.

The Vallecito Kids Christmas Party was Saturday and Haven got to see Santa.....


"Mr. and Mrs. Claus" goes to our church......(but no questions were asked!)

Pictures for the grandparents to see.....

Our "Christmas Comes Alive" is this weekend and we are very excited to see how this turns out. We have had great weather this week but snow is on it's way tomorrow and Thursday. Landon finished up his basketball season and had a great last game as he scored the game winning shot! He was so excited! He really improved this year and his self confidence definitely increased. Mike was a great coach and they finished the season at 3 wins and 3 losses. Mason is trying out for basketball this week. Everyone that tries out gets to play so this week determines who is on what team. The 7th and 8th grade will have a total of 5 teams. I think this is great because everyone gets to play this way. And Haven can now do a cartwheel! YAY!

Hope everyone enjoys the next couple of weeks and gives God glory for His wonderful SON that he sent to earth for us!

Have You Ever Tried... SHUTTERFLY?

Capturing memories is very important to me and we love to take pictures! This fall, I tried out an online photo site called SHUTTERFLY located at www.shutterfly.com and it is awesome! It is a free online photo storage site that you can download your pictures to and order them to pick up at your local retail store. Why put your pictures on a photo storage site? What if your computer crashes tomorrow and you lose all your pictures! Prevent that by downloading them to SHUTTERFLY. It also has the option to "share" your pictures with family and friends so that they can view your pictures and order the ones they might want. This comes in handy when you have family that lives so far away. SHUTTERFLY also offers various other products that make great gifts for others, including photo books, calenders, ornaments, cards, mouse pads, coasters, and much more.

Oh and for the person who is hard to buy for, try out their unique photo mugs at http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-gifts/photo-mugs

However, this Christmas season, I'll be using SHUTTERFLY for their adorable Christmas photo card offers, located at http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

Hmmmmmmm....these are my favorites....which one will I use this year? Well you'll have to check your mail in the next couple of weeks and see!

SHUTTERFLY also has 5 x7 photo cards as another option at http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

Are you wondering why I am advertising for SHUTTERFLY? They are nice enough to offer their customers 50 free cards if they blog about their site. Pretty smart, huh? Thanks SHUTTERFLY!

Christmas Decorations

Haven and Landon wanted to start decorating before Thanksgiving so here's the results of their efforts.......

Ha-ha! They colored pictures of Christmas scenes and taped them in a line down the hall. Although we may not make it on the Christmas "Tour of Homes" for our decor, I thought it was precious!

I really turn into a grinch when it comes time to decorate for Christmas because our house is too small for all the stuff that's in it, and then adding more "stuff" stresses me out. We didn't get out but about half of our stuff and got the tree decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

It is Dec 7th and there is barely any snow on the ground thus far which is pretty unusual. We were even able to decorate outside this year because of this ( and upon Landon's insistence!). We are getting excited about the "Christmas Comes Alive in Vallecito" coming up next weekend and are busy getting ready for that. I hope everyone keeps their focus on the miracle birth of our Savior this Christmas season and enjoys every minute of being with friends and family! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We're Going to be "Greats"!

This is Kayci and Jamie Cummings and they are fixing to make us into a Great Uncle and Aunt! Kayci is Mike's sister Angela's daughter and they are expecting the arrival of Baby Brayden by the end of this month. We are so excited for them! And we are so excited to meet our first "great nephew". It's been 5 years since there was a baby in the family. And what's even better is that we will be there either for the birth or soon after (we hope!).

Congratulations Kayci and Jamie!! We love you and are so happy for you! And we can't wait to meet Brayden!

Our First Children's Trip!!

I have no doubt that God is moving and working in our little church.....but sometimes it takes a long time to see the fruit of that work. After being here 2 years, we finally have a children's group!!! Praise God! We have tons of kids that come through the church (especially in summer) but this little group has been coming on Sunday mornings for the past couple of months and it finally feels like we have a real group! We've had 7 or so up until this fall that were consistent but we've added about 7 more. So we went on our first children's outing this week so eat pizza at AJ's and then to do a little bowling.......

Here's some shots from AJ's.....

Haven had fun bowling with the gutter things up.....

And here's a group picture of our precious little crew.....

Now, a silly shot........

I have such great memories of my church's children group going place and I hope to create this for my kids. We still need youth leaders in our church and are still praying for that. We are looking forward to doing a "Christmas Comes Alive in Vallecito" live nativity reenactment on Dec 18th for the area and all these kiddos will be a part of it. Can't wait!