Christmas Letter 2015

Merry Christmas 2015!

Greetings to all our fam­ily and friends! It’s been an­other full and blessed year for us. January had an ex­cit­ing start: when we re­turned from vis­it­ing Melissa’s fam­ily in Honduras, we dis­cov­ered that a cou­ple of rats had been us­ing the apart­ment in our ab­sence. The next few weeks were some­what stress­ful as we washed and wiped every­thing that was out in the open, and learned to hide all our food. We were very glad to dis­cover the rats had not got­ten into any of our draw­ers or cup­boards, which saved a ton of work. Eventually we found all their holes, sealed them, and man­aged to trap one rat and, er, re­move its pres­ence from the house.

In June we were priv­i­leged to host mis­sion­ar­ies, the Jason and Ashley King fam­ily, dur­ing our church’s Missions Conference. We en­joyed get­ting to know them and the other mis­sion­ar­ies. The con­fer­ence was a great bless­ing and chal­lenge, and ended with a BBQ/cake/pie bake-off at our church. Melissa placed third with her prize-win­ning Swiss Roll Cake, de­thron­ing many pre­vi­ous champs. She looks for­ward to plac­ing first next year.

We spent our sum­mer va­ca­tion in Orlando, FL, at­tend­ing the Dice Tower board gam­ing con­ven­tion. For three days we en­joyed play­ing board games, meet­ing new peo­ple, par­tic­i­pat­ing in Dice Tower ac­tiv­i­ties, and just be­ing nerdy among oth­ers like us. We even got to play a cou­ple games with one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Dice Tower!

The last night of the con­ven­tion we at­tended a pi­rate din­ner show, fea­tur­ing swash­buck­ling ac­ro­bat­ics and pi­rat­i­cal ro­mance!

From June to July we got to spend a whole month with Melissa’s brother Tim be­fore he shipped out to Japan. We had a great time of board games, movies, and just hav­ing fun. We also toured the USS Alabama, ex­plor­ing through­out the en­tire ship.

Around Christmas 2014, we dis­cov­ered we were go­ing to have a baby! The won­der­ful ladies of Crossroads Baptist Church threw a baby shower for Melissa in August, and Mom and Megan Koser got to at­tend. So many won­der­ful gifts were given, and once again we say thank you!

Our lit­tle Lydia was born September 3rd at 7 pm, weigh­ing 7 lbs. 10 oz. and mea­sur­ing 20 1/2 inches long. Brian was won­der­ful dur­ing la­bor and de­liv­ery, and the staff at Springhill Medical Center were very sup­port­ive. The birth went well with no com­pli­ca­tions, and re­cov­ery was swift. Melissa’s par­ents and sis­ter were pre­sent for the birth, and Brian’s fam­ily ar­rived the day af­ter. We also got to see Melissa’s Uncle Leland and Aunt Marty, and a week later her brother Dale and his fam­ily vis­ited as well. It was a very ex­cit­ing time, and we were so glad to see every­one! Many thanks again to every­one who helped us with meals and house­work those first few weeks.

Just af­ter Lydia was born, Brian switched to a new job. While be­fore he was do­ing data­base work in the med­ical field, now he works for a con­sult­ing firm, do­ing many dif­fer­ent pro­jects in many dif­fer­ent fields. Although he can no longer walk to work, the new of­fice is close enough to still come home for lunch every day.

Since Lydia was born, Melissa has not tried as many new or chal­leng­ing recipes, pre­fer­ring to stick with those that are quick and easy. However, ear­lier this year she did make deep dish Chicago-style pizza, fried ice cream, and from-scratch straw­berry donuts. She also made some cin­na­mon candy for Christmas. The links lead to those recipes on our web­site, where you’re also prob­a­bly read­ing this Christmas let­ter! Speaking of which, Brian has made a few changes to the web­site, im­prov­ing the ap­pear­ance and adding recipe tags.

We’ve en­joyed get­ting more in­volved in our church this year. Melissa is now play­ing the pi­ano full time. Until Lydia was born we taught the 3rd-grade class of our Wednesday night chil­dren’s Bible club and taught a Sunday morn­ing preschool class once a month. We also got to help out with Vacation Bible School this sum­mer, teach­ing lessons, songs, and Bible verses. Working with chil­dren can be chal­leng­ing, but it’s al­ways re­ward­ing.

Brian’s fam­ily was able to visit for Thanksgiving again this year, and we en­joyed a hearty meal to­gether. We also got to watch his sis­ter Megan per­form in a pro­duc­tion of The Scarlet Pimpernel at PCC.

Logan Harding took our Christmas pho­tos; hire him to do video or pho­tog­ra­phy at Shadowpoint Media. Bekah Haas made Lydia’s scarf and booties; get your own at the Softly Sweet Facebook page.

Today is Christmas, and as we post this, we’re en­joy­ing spend­ing Christmas with Brian’s fam­ily again, in Louisiana.

If you pass through Mobile in 2016, please stop by and see Lydia (we’ve found that she’s the main rea­son peo­ple visit nowa­days 😊). Looking for­ward to a great 2016!