Ensemble Visit

It was such a sweet surprise to have our church Ensemble visit Christmas Caroling. Shelly dressed in her Mrs. Santa outfit, and they gave us a gift basket. What a wonderful present on a dreary winter night.

Link for Esther

Esther's family just set up a Caring Bridge page, to share updates about her treatments....

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/estherjoy

Glad I met Kristi

I was looking through my old posts, and found the first post that my blog friend, Kristi, came to visit my blog. It was my post about our fairy ring in the front yard. She said she was just blog surfing, and found my blog. Wow, what a blessing. She's been a great friend, and a great encouragement to me over the past year. I'm so glad the Lord led her to my blog. Thank you, Kristi, for being such a good friend to me. Love you in the Lord.


Thimble Thoughts
http://thimblethoughts.blogspot.com/

Esther update- Nov.

Here is the last update on little Esther...

Dear Praying Friends,

With Thanksgiving literally at our doorstep, we wanted to say thank you again for all that has been done for Esther and ourselves through your prayer, love, and gifts.

The last two weeks since we came back from Ohio have been basically spent in the hospital. Esther received her second chemo treatment and then got a secondary infection that has kept her in the hospital this last week getting IV antibiotics. Praise the Lord they are planning to release her on Saturday. Next week Esther will be getting ready for her bone marrow 'harvest'. This process involves another bone marrow biopsy to see if her bone marrow is clean. If it is clean they will remove some of the stem cells from her bone marrow to start growing her replacement bone marrow for her transplant. Thank you for you continued prayer on Esther's behalf. We trust you all will have had an enjoyable Thanksgiving.

In Christ
Adam and Jennifer Travis - India

Great Neighbors!

Halloween came at the wrong time for us, LOL. Gabey's counts are too low to go trick or treating, and it's on a Wednesday anyway, so we can't really go out because of church. But.....

I talked to my neighbors, and we had trick or treat yesterday! I have 5 really good neighbor friends, and after Jeff got off work, Gabey got into his Mater costume, and went to our friend's houses, and trick or treated. My neighbors were all so cool,and gave him handfuls of candy, and presents! It was so awesome! We got pictures with my sister's camera, so I'll be able to post them as soon as she gets them to me. :)

We got apple cidar, donuts, and caramel apples! We ate Wendy's for dinner, and painted pumpkins. Well, we painted one pumpkin, and just dabbled on the next one. LOL. I still would like to carve the big one we got yesterday, but couldn't last night, because it had wet paint on it.

Little Esther in Need of Prayer

One of our missionary families has been on deputation to head out to the field of India.

They just learned that their oldest daughter, 5 years old, has cancer. It's stage 4! It's all throughout her body, and in her bone marrow. She has a large tumor by her backbone, and then it's just spreading. They're here now for the start of a very intense treatment, which will go on for a year, trying to control and beat this cancer. She will need a lot of chemo, and she will definitely have to get a bone marrow transplant.

My heart just is in sorrow over this. God has been so good to our family. He has worked a miracle in my son's body. I know that even though her situation seems hopeless, they say she has a 20% chance of survival, God is ALL POWERFUL. Whatever happens will be for His glory.

Recent picture of beautiful Esther. Doesn't she look like a sweet, southern belle?

Visit with Neighbors

Monday night was such a nice surprise get together. I was talking with my good neighbor friend, Terri, and we ended up hanging out under her Gazebo for quite a long time. Jeffie came over, and played on their trampoline, and as time went on, she started bringing out snacks leftover from a birthday party they had. Bert, and Eli from across the street came by, and Terri brought out hotdogs, and pasta salad, and we ended up with a fun little picnic.





Video of the boys.

My Saturday...

Every Saturday, my sister, Chrissy comes over, and hangs out for the day. It's a day I always look forward to. Jeffie works on Saturdays, and without Chrissy's visits, it's just another weekday for me.

This Saturday, she brought me my favorite drink, Dunkin Donuts "Mocha Blast" with whipped cream and cinnamon on top. YUMMM. She also does Sunday School lessons for Gabey on Saturdays, and always brings a treat for him when he says his Bible verse. He can go back too all the old verses too, and he remembers them.

We chatted and hung around during the afternoon. I just love being with her.



Chrissy decided on a name for her new car... Bessie the butterfly. She brought supplies to make a mirror hanger, and I helped her make that. She did a cool craft with Gabey while I was working on the hanger.


Later we went outside. Chrissy got in a working mood, and started working in the yard! I was so excited to be having it worked on. She's so strong, and she pulled, and cut weeds, and the back forsythia bush, and didn't stop. She worked all the way around, to the horrible "backwoods" section on the side of my yard. I cut it all down a while ago, and it was back to being a jungle. She spent so much time just chopping away, and now that space is clear. I can't wait to get to the store and get the spray that my friend suggested to kill the roots out over there. There is a trumpet vine that keeps putting out wandering shoots, and a horrible wild raspberry vine with prickers, not to mention all the other various weeds that grow like wildfire in that section.

I helped with the weeds a little bit, and moved stones to put the fire pit on top. JEffie weed whacked quite a bit, and then built a fire in the pit.



I just love having a fire. It was a great night. We roasted hot dogs, and marshmallows. It drizzled a lot, but it didn't stop us from enjoying the evening.

Good Friends

It's so nice to have good friends to hang out with as a family. Almost 2 years ago, I met a great girl named Angi, and we've become really close. The most amazing thing. We were both giving stuff away on freecycle and cheapcycle, and actually switched items like two times in person, not knowing eachother at all. Then, one day she instant messaged me, thinking I was someone else entirely. That's how we became friends. She owns a cool message board, called Super-babies. ( www.super-babies.com ) I started visiting there, loved it, and have become a regular visitor.
I really believe God led us to eachother. She and her husband are born again, and we just get along so well. The really wild thing is, it turns out that Jeff knows her husband! They actually shared a gym class in grade school, and Jeff remembers him.





Well, last night, we went over their house, and all made tacos for dinner, and hung around talking, and then we played a board game together. Gabey played with their girls and dog, and it was a wonderful evening. Thank you Lord, for bringing us together, and letting us have such a great friendship.