Our annual Christmas letter

Dear friends and family,

This has been a wonderful year for our family. We hope you have been as blessed as we have and are enjoying this joyous time as we celebrate the birth of our Savior. We would like to share some of the great memories we have made this year.

As the year began, I started keeping the newborn son of our sweet friends Holly and Bruce, as she returned to work. Holly has been special to us since we met her when Isaac was in Early Intervention as a toddler. It was an honor to be trusted to care for her baby Will several days a week, from January through July. We loved having a baby around, and miss him now that he’s a big boy and goes to Mother’s Day Out. Both Isaac and Abigail began playing Upward basketball at a church here in Helena in January as well. Isaac’s team was the Sharks, and Abigail was fortunate to have her daddy for a coach, on the Sparrows team. They really enjoyed the experience and we’ve already registered Isaac for this season. He’ll play for Coach JJ again, and this year, we’re happy his team is named the Tigers! Speaking of Tigers-- War Eagle!!

James was happy to coach Abi’s team, but many times had to rush from working all night to make those early Saturday morning games. He’s still working in the Neonatal Intensive Care at Children’s Hospital and enjoys it, but has also been thankful for opportunities to work with AirMed as a contract nurse, and also has been on a 20+ calls with Children’s Critical Care Transport Team. He’s been on trips all over the U.S. with AirMed, even one transport to Hawaii and back. He is getting closer to his ultimate goal of full-time transport nursing, and we’re so proud of him! James also recently volunteered to be the leader for Wolf Den 8, Isaac’s Cub Scout den. They just began this activity in the fall and it’s been a wonderful father-son time.

We continued to home school this year, and both Isaac and Abigail have done really well. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to spend every day with them, and am excited since our church has now approved the beginning of a cover school for home schooling families. It will be one more responsibility for me to take on the administration of this ministry, but I’m happy to do it, since it will be such a help to so many in our church family who are educating our children in this way. We are still happily involved with The Church at Shelby Crossings, and are amazed at how God has brought many new families to our church recently. Our life group, community group, and my women’s Bible study are where we are able to closely interact and fellowship with other believers, and it’s so awesome to raise our children among like-minded Christians. The friends in these groups have become like another family to us, and lately have been such a tremendous blessing in some practical ways.

Our most exciting news this year involves our growing family. Though James and I had always longed for more children after adopting Isaac and having Abigail, and had even gone back through months of infertility treatment and more surgeries for me, we realized in the early part of this year that maybe we were complete as a family of 4. There were many tears shed as I tried to surrender that dream and trust that God knew what was best for our family. It was with great joy and surprise when we discovered the first week of May that I was pregnant! We were able to share the news with our families on a memorable Mother’s Day weekend. Our third little one is a boy, and we plan to name him Elijah James. The pregnancy has gone well overall, though I’ve had some complications recently due to placenta previa that have resulted in some bedrest this last week. This is where the help of church friends bringing meals and helping with Isaac and Abigail has been invaluable!

Last year, my Mom suggested we start considering a time when we could all go as a family to DisneyWorld, and so after some initial research, we planned that we’d go in February of ‘08. As often happens, our manmade plans can get changed when God steps in and surprises us. Since Elijah is due January 8, the trip was bumped up to October, which was quite warm, but turned out to be an amazingly fun time. My parents, and brother Jacob went with us, and we spent 5 days in “the happiest place on earth.” It truly was the vacation of a lifetime, and we all would love to go back with Elijah someday.

Other closer-to-home outings this year included some fun play dates at Alabama Adventure, the YMCA pool, the Huntsville Botanical Gardens, the farm owned by Mom and Dad’s dear friends (the Mundys), and our annual trip to the pumpkin patch at the Old Baker Farm. We all love the outdoors, so anytime we can visit animals or enjoy nature, we’re thrilled! We still enjoy keeping in touch with friends across the world with this blog. We’ll post as soon as Elijah makes his arrival, so just check back often.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas season, and would love to hear from you! Love, James, Jennifer, Isaac, Abigail, and Elijah Vines