Andrej, Jessica, Kaiya, Tobi, Eli and Jakob

The following is a copy of our Christmas letter that we sent out to family and friends (those we had addresses for) announcing Baby #3 and our decision to move to South Atlanta to join an urban ministry called Sub-Urban.

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Since I am the worst blogger that ever existed, I need to do a few rewind posts to bring the blog up-to-date. I have the hardest time just blogging about recent happenings, which there are some exciting ones, when I know there are important memories from the past few months that will soon be forgotten if I don’t at least mention them here in this space. In fact, September feels like ages ago and I had a hard time even recollecting what happened during that month. Thankfully, a little stroll through our pictures jogged my memory and reminded me that a huge milestone in Kaiya’s life happened in September.  (Read more …)

On the day before Thanksgiving 2004, Andrej and I arrived at my aunt’s house where my dad’s side of the family had gathered to celebrate the holiday. No one knew we were coming. Andrej and I had decided to spend Thanksgiving that year in Michigan and volunteer at a soup kitchen instead of making the long drive down to South Carolina. That was until we had news to share and wanted to share it in person. As we got out of the car that evening, we could see my family through the glass doors gathered around the table just about to enjoy the feast. Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect and my only regret is that I wish I would have informed at least one person and asked them to video the moments that followed.  (Read more …)

I may not have had much time or energy for posting actual words on here lately, but I have been uploading a lot of pictures. I do want to blog about recent happenings, but until then enjoy the snapshots…they are worth more than words anyway, right?

Random family pictures are found here, and the rest are in their own albums found here. The most recent ones are: Kaiya’s 3rd Birthday Party, Camping at Cran-Hill Ranch, an afternoon at the lakeshore and a playdate at the zoo.

Out of all the recent pictures, the following two are my favorite. The first picture was taken by my dear friend, Trisha, and Andrej captured the one of Kaiya mid jump. If a picture really is worth a thousand words, then this post is actually quite lengthy.

These carpooling pictures were taken with Andrej’s phone (hence the terrible quality), but too cute not to share.

This post is a continuation of an account of our recent trip to SC/GA. Part one is found here, part two here and part three here.

Late Monday afternoon, Andrej and I left the kids in the capable hands of my parents and headed to Atlanta. We weren’t even a few miles down the road when Andrej shared that he had a knot in his stomach. Relieved that I wasn’t the only one sad to leave Kaiya and Tobi behind, I too admitted the knot in my own stomach. We have never left the kids overnight. Even when I was in the hospital for Tobi’s birth, Andrej came home each night to be with Kaiya, so we haven’t had much practice with leaving them for more than a few hours. However, we knew it would be good for us, good for them and good for my parents.  (Read more …)

This post is a continuation of an account of our recent trip to SC/GA. Part one is found here and part two is found here.

After two busy days, Monday was declared a lazy day and the only thing on the agenda was relaxing and playing with the kids. My grandparents joined us for breakfast and Kaiya and Tobi had fun interacting with their great grandparents.

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