2013 Messenger

We went GREEN! No Christmas Newsletter in the mail this year. It is now here online!

Volume 20 Issue 1 2013

We are thankful for you in our lives: family, friends and my faithful readers! This past year has been filled with milestones and travel. Sadly, our hearts were heavy this past October, when two dear family friends had to bury their young sons: a 10-year old who lost a lifelong battle with cancer, and a 17-year old who died suddenly from an automobile accident. We do not understand why these precious lives were called up to our Lord so soon, but we have peace in the certain hope that we will see them again in heaven.

We cannot take for granted the short time we have here on earth. It can be taken away in a split second and then where will we be? Our hope and desire is that you, our dear friends and family, will be with us and God in heaven one day! That is our fervent prayer.

We wish you a joyous Christmas and another blessed new year.

Matt, Cez, Emily & Hannah

At one of our favorite historical sites: the Roman Colosseum

In case you haven't been following my blog.. this is a brief round up of our year..

Emily (13 yrs)
We have a teenager in the house! Thankfully she hasn't been acting out like a 'rebellious uncontrollable teenager' so we are lucky... for now! Our daughter is almost as tall as me and can almost wear my shoes! She also got a new accessory this past summer: braces!

Emily has braces just like her good friend, Rachel

And for the first time, she had the opportunity to be a responsible pet owner (for a week) when she bunny sat BunnYee, Rachel's bunny.

Emily with BunnYee

Oh she loved that bunny so. We all miss her.. she is now in Bunny Heaven.

Our 7th grader at Kimber Hills Academy is still playing clarinet in the Advance Band and is as academically focused as always, receiving another ribbon (4th place this time) in the ACSI Math Olympics and now a proud (temporary) owner of her own Macbook Air laptop (on loan from school). It's regularly attached to her arm and other than homework she uses it to search nail design techniques. Yep.. she is totally into nail designing now.. her newest hobby! No worries about the birding.. she still loves and cares for her wild birdies.

Butterfly wings

But what's new is that she is one of the newest members of the KHA Girl's Basketball team! We are so proud of her as neither of her parents ever participated in organized team sports! Most of her school days are very long (starting at 7:25am for Band and ending at 5pm from basketball practice. Plus an additional three hours at least for homework... let's just say she is a night owl like her parents!)

Hannah (10 yrs)

Hannah sleeping on the floor with her bears

Our 'baby' (she still wants us to call her that) thoroughly loves anything her big sister does and more.

Now she's into Animal Jam, Winx Club, soccer and Nerf, specifically Rebelle nerf! And of course all her stuffed animals whom she uses to play school and store.

Hannah playing restaurant with her Mah Mah (check out all the mini foods she's selling)

She is extremely creative and 'makes' anything she can think of (laptop, cell phone, cars, store front, mini bathroom) from anything she can find around the house. She is very resourceful and goes through paper, cardboard and tape very quickly!

This costume is a quick redesign of Emily's Annie Oakley costume. Thank goodness for recycling!

She was Pocahontas for her Great American last year. She participated in the ACSI Speech Meet and  received a 'Superior' ribbon (the highest honor).

You'd think that with having anxiety, memorizing a poem and reciting it in front of 25 strangers would freak her out but it didn't. Actually, she had an awesome 3rd grade year (her anxiety has been much lower). We are very proud of her! Now starting 4th grade at KHA she has shown that with hard work and practice she can do quite well academically!

Matt
My husband has been busy juggling everything that has been thrown to him and nothing has fallen! Work at Legacy Partners (18th yr) never ends and he feels like he's never caught up by the end of the day. A great de-stresser for him is to play basketball at lunch weekly and to stay active as much as he can. He loves to snowboard and does several day trips every winter.

Emily and Daddy on a lift

One thing new he did was to sky-dive..

flying in the 'air'

...no not the real thing but close enough I think. He tried iFly with some good friends, and he said it's not as easy as it looks. And it doesn't feel relaxing! It's actually anything but!

FCC Father's Day Portrait

He still leads a bible study, plays guitar in the worship band at church, and teaches in the tweens Sunday school class once a month. He also helps out in tech on Sunday mornings at church, where he can play with the high tech church 'toys' like graphics and the audio sound board. He's having fun with it all.

Cezanne
We were finally able to celebrate my 40th (plus) birthday by going on a Mediterranean Cruise. I've been planning it since 2005 but one thing or another kept coming up so I've had to be very patient! We went in the summer with my parents, brother and his wife, and my cousin's family. It was an amazing trip... not very relaxing but very eye opening into the history from the other side of the world.

My family in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eualia in Barcelona, Spain

One of my highlights was to visit my namesake's birthplace, Aix-en Provence in France.

The statue of Paul Cezanne, famous Impressionist painter, in Aix, France

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip and I'm looking forward to more visits to France and England! On the down side I re-injured my knee on this trip and had to get surgery for a meniscus tear on my left knee in November. This downtime/staycation (now going on my third week) was a blessing in disguise. I was over extending myself in various ministries and began to feel burnt out. Other than part-time work, co-leading a bible study at church, planning women's ministry events, being a Band mom, reading and blogging, I also took on two huge new projects: teaching yearbook class (just shadowing the current teacher who will leave at the end of this school year) at KHA and creating and overseeing POPS, KHA's newest organization 'Partnership of Parents and School'. I really felt passionate about building a strong network of parents who are significantly involved in the school's programs to help support the school staff. Currently POPS oversees eight projects and we have 23 awesome parents!

Our latest POPS Project: Operation Christmas Child Boxes - the school & church collected 228 boxes to be delivered all over the world to bless children with the gift of Jesus!

Celebrations
This year we celebrated the high school graduations of two very special ladies in our lives.

Our goddaughter, Mandy from Valley Christian High School who is currently attending Azuza Pacific University

Our good friends, Michael & Angela's daughter, Jessica from Washington High School who is now attending Biola University

And in October our church, Fremont Community Church, celebrated it's 40th Anniversary where we had the privilege of sharing our story with the congregation that morning.

Each of us, even the girls, shared a little bit.

We are thankful for our friends and family:

Our biannual gatherings of Cezanne's Girls group, the Gang at Marty & Doris'

The girls with their cousins, my sister's Calina & Ken's boys (Daniel-16; Joshua-13; Zachary-10)

The girls with their cousins, Matthew's sister, Matthea and Kenny's kids (Marissa-7; Timothy-4) and their youngest Uncle Matthel (3-Sook), Matthew's brother.

We have been very blessed this year and we would love to hear from you! I know Matthew is on Facebook but I am 'not' so please feel free to drop me a line.. comment here below. Just click on 'comments'!!

On a side note, this is my 300th blog post!! Wow!!

And again, thank you for reading!! Merry Christmas!