A VIDEO GREETING FROM SYDNEY AND LILY

_____________

Dear Family and Friends,

From our family to yours, we wish you a merry Christmas and a blessed new year!  We have been very blessed this past year with some pretty big events.  Lily began Kindergarten, Sydney took a “Painting the Masters” art class, Jennifer travelled to Indiana to meet her friend Barbie’s new baby Abigail, Mark finished three more semesters of school, and the greatest event of all was our trip to Disney World!

Lily’s first experience with school has been great.  She excels at reading, likes folder work and art class, and loves getting to be the helper of the day!  Lily has continued to enjoy her dance class where, unlike the dinner table, she’s allowed to be a wiggle-worm!  You won’t be surprised to learn that Sydney loves second grade.  She likes art, music, math, reading, poetry, work stations, her reading group and everything else she could think of… needless to say, Syd is to cool for school ; )  At her painting class, Sydney got to try her hand at Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet and others.  Her “Starry Night” is beautiful!  Both girls are involved in Daisies, the younger group of Girl Scouts… anyone wanna buy some cookies?  In addition to all of this, they have had many opportunities this year to hang out with their cousin Lyndsey, who they LOVE to be with.

Jennifer has had a busy year and has stayed involved at church on the worship team, scrapbooking, and taking classes.  You can also find her helping out in Sydney and Lily’s classes at school two days a week, and just generally keeping up with two little girls who hit the ground running every morning!  She even has the distinct privilege of being the room parent in Lily’s class, so add party planner to her resume.  Also, Jennifer has begun working part time for our friends Dan and Tina who own a mobile veterinary business and has done a couple stints on staff at church helping with worship team administration.

Mark is continuing to grow into his position as preaching pastor at Cornerstone Friends Church.  This has been a fast-paced year with many opportunities to develop his ministry calling.  In addition to pastoring, Mark is in his second year at George Fox Evangelical Seminary working on a Master of Arts in Ministry Leadership.  While most of the coursework is completed online, he enjoys travelling to Portland, Oregon twice a year for 9 days.

Our trip to Disney World was the highlight of our year.  From the airplane, monorail, boat and train rides to the shows and amusement park rides to the amazing meals, our vacation this past September was truly magical!  Some of the highlights include our favorite ride, Soarin’, at Epcot Center and the truly scary Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios.  The best part about the whole trip, of course, was the many encounters with real Disney princesses!  The girls were over the moon when they saw them, and we even caught a couple princes being a bit to flirty for daddy’s liking ; )  The only things we have to finish from this trip are our scrapbooks, the highlights video, and the plan to go back!

We hope 2010 has been as much fun for you as it has been for us.  May the Lord bless you and your loved ones in the coming year.

Blessings!
The Winners