Is spring really in the air?

Yay, it finally looks like the snow is melting and the air is getting warmer. It's time for walks and playing in the park! Makenna has discovered her boots and puddles and how it's so fun to use them together... splash splash! But we really don't want winter to end to quickly, at least Troy and I don't. We still haven't got enough skiing in! And Makenna still needs to try as soon as we figure out skis for her!

Things are going great here in Golden. Have we mentioned we love it here? We know that God brought us here for a reason... we have so many friends here who are in the same situation as us, wanting to grow and be challenged spiritually. So with that same desire we started up an 8 week long Sunday night service called "The Challenge" putting ourselves under the Skiers and Snowborders for Christ group name. Our objective was to reach out to the struggling Christians in our town and on our ski hill and invite them to recommit and live their lives for Christ. We held the services in creative ways so that it didn't feel like the traditional church service that sometimes might intimidate people. Every Suday night someone from our group would speak on a topic to challenge everybody with, even Troy had a night to speak to everyone. He spoke about living a well-balanced Spiritual life and challenged everyone to have a relationship with God first and think about what the meaning of the verse that says to "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness". He did a good job. I was involved with the music every Sunday night, usually leading the worship time at the end of the service (for the people that wanted to stick around and worship). Overall we're not sure how many people God spoke to during the services, but as a group running the services we looked back and saw that we were all challenged and stretched spirtually in our relationships with God. Now we are continuing to meet on Sunday nights for a Bible Study at our house every Sunday night so we can keep on encouraging and challenging each other. So God is moving here in our hearts and in our town. Most of all he is calling us to wait on Him so that we can have strength to fight against Satan's strongholds in our lives and in our town... and we can fight through prayer and praise! Pray for us if you ever think of us...

As for family news, Makenna is so much fun to have as a kid. She is growing so fast physically and also in her speech and motorskills. She's a smart little one and blurts out words perfectly clear to surprise us all when we didn't even think she knew those words. She can say, "where did it go?", "what is it?", "where's dada?", "amanda", "baamma and bampa", "nana and bopa"... and there's more. Most times she talks so fast and loud that we can't understand a word... It's still a little hard for Makenna to walk in the snow and today she got a little too confident and gave herself a facewash in the crunchy snow. Now she looks like she got in a fight with a cat with little scratches on her cheeks and nose. She's a tough little one, though.. she never cries for very long and usually doesn't cry about little bumps and boo-boos unless we make a big deal of it. And she loves being outside.. everyday we need to have outside time!

Troy and I have been skiing as much as we can, time allowing, but we don't usually get to ski together very often because of Makenna. But lately there have been random people from our church who are up at the ski hill almost everyday who have volunteered to watch Makenna a couple times already so that Troy and I can ski together. It's nice to be able to have time doing something we love together. The picture of me on top of the mountain is one of those days we got to ski together; it's so beautiful around this area!

The other pictures posted are Makenna splashing in a puddle in our driveway, Makenna with her small baby-size hamburger, Makenna drinking the last drop of milk from the jug (as her daddy so proudly taught her!), and Makenna looking through the front of her Hey Diddle-diddle book.

I'll try to post more often.. thanks for reminding me Gramma!