We want to wish all our friends & family a very Merry Christmas! This is our Christmas card for 2009. You'll notice that the zillion little snapshots (slight exageration) attempt to tell the story of our year together in clockwise order from the purchase of our new home at the start of the year all the way to Christmas decorating! Below are a series of links that will take you to blog entries that tell the stories behind the pictures:Picture 1: We bought our new house at the very, very end of '08 and spent all of January moving in :) No links for this one because the blog had yet to begin!
Picture 2: A little St. Patrick's Day cheer as we got ready to celebrate Julie's birthday.
Picture 3: I got this one out of order! It didn't happen until the summer. Nonetheless, we took a trip to St. Louis and got to hang out with Kenny & Karen.
Pictures 4 & 5: We took a trip to Angel Fire, NM with friends from our "Barbarian" transformation group. Neil's parents also met us there.
Picture 6: We got to spend some great time with the Phillips for the 4th of July.
Picture 7: Neil got to sing with his Dad at one of our church's Gospel Homecoming.
Picture 8: We met Mimi & Papa in Little Rock and had a great visit! No blog entry here...how did we miss that?!?!
Picture 9: Baby Griffin has arrived!!!
Picture 10: We celebrated our 1st Anniversary by heading to Branson for some big-time Ozarkian fun :) (this blog is continued in a second entry)
Picture 11: Neil got to speak at Camp Sharon's Middle School summer camp. He & Jon baptized about 8 students in the Lake of the Ozarks! No blog entry here, either...it was a VERY busy summer ;)
Picture 12: Marty came for a visit! We were so glad to spend some fun times with him.
Picture 13: Paul, Freda, and Lori all came to see our new house and to hang out with us for the weekend.
Picture 14: Thanks to Mimi & Papa we got to spend our vacation on the beautiful white beaches of Florida. We also got to spend some way-too-rare quality time with our cousin, Krystin! (this blog is also continued in a follow-up entry)
Picture 15: Mimi & Papa told us that we should check out the Blue Angels since they practice just a few minutes away from the condo. It was awesome!
Picture 16: We went to Estes Park, CO to lead worship for a youth retreat there. Added Bonus: Getting to spend time with college friends who live so far away now.
Picture 17: We really had fun "Decking the Halls" of our house for the first time. While Julie has blogged about our Fall Decor, the Christmas Decor blog is still "Coming Soon" :)
Note from Neil: I just want to thank my wonderful wife for her work on this blog. It is a blessing to me and I know it's a blessing to many of you, too! I did not reference the blog when I first put together our "Christmas Card" and I just tried to pick some pictures that described our year. I am so impressed to look back and find that there is a blog for just about everything that's happened to us over the past year. Thank you, Julie Ann, for being the historian of our adventures! All the memories with you are my favorite part of 2009 and I can't wait to spend another wonderful year with the love of my life ;)
