New Job, New School, New Position.. Changes

Wow.. what a whirlwind! There have been lots of changes in the Ferguson house! I am now working for Club Rewind, a new before and after school program with Cy-Fair ISD. I am loving it! This will leave me time in the afternoons to be home with Karis. On Tues/Thurs, Karis will now be going to Foundry Pre-School :) We are very excited about this change, and so is Karis Mae. I am signing her up for her very first dance class tomorrow. Our little performer is going to be able to dance her heart out :) Jordan is going to be the Lone Ranger in the youth ministry for a while. Our other minister stepped down and this Sunday will be his last day. Jordan will be the main man for the fall and they will bring someone in this January. We've had a new addition since I last wrote... no worries, you didn't miss the pregnancy... We got a puppy! We are now the parents of a sweet, crazy Chocolate Lab named Moose. We named him Moose b/c well.. he is the size of a moose. We love him and are adjusting to being doggie parents :) I hope everyone is doing great and I will post some pictures soon :)

Where has the time gone??

Wow! It is now JANUARY! I just looked at my last post and it was in November... I'm so sorry for neglecting my blog! Let me see if I can update without rambling!

Let's start with November - We had a great month! Karis is now staying with a friend of ours, Britton. She has a little girl almost the same age as Karis and is expecting a new little one this summer. Karis is LOVING it! We were really torn on whether or not to take her out of school because it has helped her so much developmentally. We finally just did it and decided we would give Karis the choice after she spent a month with Ms. Britton. She has decided to stay! She has become so polite and social! Everyone has noticed a difference. Karis got to spend Thanksgiving with her dad and new step-mom. They had a great time! Since it was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple and childless, we decided to just have a little time alone! We were blessed to get tickets to the TU/Aggie football game. WE HAD A BLAST!!!

Now, on to December - December was spent getting ready for our first Christmas as a family in our new home! Over the past 5 years or so, I have lost my Christmas joy. Jordan is trying hard to help restore it. Its also helped to have a almost 3 year old that knows about Santa and expects a visit :) We traveled to Arlington to have an early Christmas with the Ferguson clan. We had a great time! We packed up and headed back to Houston on Christmas Eve, just missing the snow! We got back and got to spend a lot of time with my sister and brother-in-law that came in from California. We only get to see each other a couple times a year, so we try to make the most of the time we get. Not sure when I will get to see Mickey, my b-i-l. He is deploying to Afghanistan for his 3rd deployment with the Marines in March or April. Karis left to go visit with her dad on the 28th of December and will be returning to us on January 10th. We try to make the most of the time we have with and without her. We are missing her like crazy! By the time she gets back, she will have been gone for almost 2 weeks! She enjoys getting to hang out with her dad and John is always excited to spend time with her. I also turned 25, a quarter of a century, 1/2 way to 50, only 5 years away from 30 this month. Wow. We got to go to dinner with my family at my FAVORITE place... Pappadeaux's... YUMMMM. After a great dinner and time of visiting, my parents went home and then Rita, Mickey, Jordan and myself headed over to our house to play games! My cousin's came over and we spent the rest of the evening playing a rediscovered favorite of mine... Skip-Bo. Awesome. :) Here are some pictures from the Christmas festivities :)

Playing on her new motorized 4-wheeler!

Future photographer? I think yes!

Our very own Fairy Princess!

Oops!

Oops! I seem to have neglected my blogging responsibilities these past couple of weeks! I am just going to do a quick update, but will write more soon about our trip to Cincinatti!

Everyone on our front is doing great! Karis is finally getting over her coughing/allergy thing that she gets whenever the weather won't decide what it wants to do :) The past couple weeks have been pretty busy for us. I have started a Mary Kay business, so I'm learning how to juggle that with my normal job and then being a mom and wife. Its not easy, but I am hoping in the end, its worth it!

I know this isn't a big update, but there will be more soon! I promise! Along with pictures! I hope everyone is having a great week!

Our first retreat as a family!

This weekend was the first time that we got to go on the Jr. High Retreat as a FAMILY! I went last year and Karis Mae stayed with Nana and PawPaw, but this year, we ALL went! At first, Karis didnt really know what to think. I had tried to explain it to her, but it just didnt make sense! Of course, she wanted to ride with all of the girls, so Miss Sonia let her ride in her car with 4 of her favorite girls in the youth group. After a fun filled ride, we arrived at Lake Tomahawk. It is a retreat center out in Livingston, Texas. We got there a little later than planned, so our activities started a little later than planned. We had a great time with our small groups getting to know our girls. Karis jumped right in and wanted to be part of the group. After group time, we had a time of just hanging out in the common room. I was trying to get Karis to start calming down.. HAHA. We ended up not getting to bed until about 1 in the morning. She decided she was ready to get up and start another exciting day at 5am. You would think she would be a little cranky... tired... nope.. not Karis Mae. She was in the best mood and had great fun with all of the kids! She latched on to one of our boys, Tate. He was so sweet to her. All the kids were really. We have the best junior high group! If Karis wanted to play with them, they let her play. If she wanted to go outside, they took her outside. If she wanted to jump up and down and then fall down... they followed. She had kids wanting to play with her ALL WEEKEND! I thought they would've gotten tired of her and just ignored her, but they didnt! These are an amazing group of kids. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was when a group of our boys were playing some sort of tackle football, but not really football. Anways, we have a new sixth grader and he is autistic. AMAZING KID! He wanted to play. The other boys (mainly our "popular" "athletic" group of boys) let him have the ball. They were leaping and pretending to miss tackling him, giving him time with the ball. When they finally did tackle him, it was more just a big bear hug to his knees. It was a very proud moment for Jordan and for me also. I can't brag enough. I have one picture of Karis Mae that one of the mom chaparones took that I am in LOVE with. Its Saturday night at the bonfire. The other picture of her running just captures the fun and joy she had all weekend! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do :)

Saturday night at the bonfire! I think we will make her our Jr. High Mascot!

This is what the whole weekend was about... running and be happy and free!

This is just one of the picture of how the teens included Karis in whatever they were doing! So proud of those kids!

Fun Family Weekend!

What a fun weekend we had! Friday, Karis Mae got to spend some quality time with Nana and Paw-Paw. She just LOVES going to their house! After a nice visit with them, we went home and hung out just the 3 of us. This is the first time in about 3 weeks that we've had Karis Mae for the weekend, so it was so nice to just get to hang out and do some fun things as a family.

Saturday, we all woke up, ate breakfast, and headed out to Kemah for the day. We had so much fun! The first thing Karis wanted to do was ride the HUGE speed boat. I was a little nervous about riding it with her, but she LOVED it. About 1/2 way through the ride, she wanted to go back. I told her we couldn't, and she had the most fun after that! She would dance along with the music, look at all the boats, and she just soaked it all in. After the boat, she wanted to ride the train. So... we rode the train. It took us all over the Kemah Boardwalk. She liked going through the tunnels the best. After the train, we rode a few of the rides that she was tall enough to ride. We rode the carosel, the balloon ride, and the airplanes. She had a blast. We ate lunch at the Aquarium. She was amazed by all the of fish that were swimming around. Jordan would take her over to the tank for a closer look. We headed back to Cypress around 2:30 or so. Traffic was no fun on the way back and we ended up not getting home until about 4. As soon as we got in the car, she crashed. That was our main sign that she had a blast!

We got home, I packed her overnight bag, and we headed up to the church to take our kids to the Seabird/David Crowder concert. Karis stayed with some great friends of ours, the Fasullos. She had a BLAST at their house. Its all I heard about on Sunday! Here are some pictures from our Kemah adventures...

Talking with the Fish...

Telling us about the train...
Windblown and back from the speedboat ride!
About to take off on our airplane ride!

All is well...

Hello! I know its been a while since my last post, but we have been a little pre-occupied at the Ferguson house! Last week, Jordan and I were both sick. My amazing parents took Karis for me to try to keep her from getting sick and to give me and Jordan time to recuperate! Aren't they awesome? Well, even though she wasn't around us, she still got sick. She went to her dad's house for the weekend and came back almost back to 100%! Sunday night, I didn't get to go to my Dave Ramsey class, but I took Karis to my parents and we had a GREAT visit! Jordan called me around 8:30 or so and told me he was going to the hospital... I was just a little confused :) It turns out that one of our high school kids had a seizure and when he fell out of his chair, he hit his head on the concrete floor! He had a concussion. They ran tests on him and the doctors don't really know what caused it... they told him he was allow 'one free seizure' in his life before they started to worry too much. Interesting... Anyways, we had that kiddo over to our house for dinner on Tuesday night. He is really a GREAT kid! Wednesday we all of our junior high kids over to our house for what we like to call "Fast Lane". Its just a time of fellowship and we have a devo. Its really nice having the kids at the house. One big goal of having Wednesday night bible study at our house is to help them feel more comfortable being in our house and letting them know that they are always welcome! Karis LOVES having them all there! Of course, she not really in the mood for bible study, but she loves getting to play and have all the attention! She's not spoiled at all... HA!

I was the bad guy yesterday and took Karis Mae to get her flu shot. We went to 3 different places, but we got it done! I made her an appointment at my doctors office, but apparently, the new shipment of vaccines has a mercury preservative in them and couldn't be given to kids under the age of 4. So, they told me to try Walgreen's... We ventured down to Walgreen's and found out that you have to be 9 years old to get one there. I called a pediatric clinic that I take her to sometimes and they were great and worked us in! Hooray!

This weekend, we are trying to think of something fun to do as a family! We only have her 2 weekends a month, so we try to do something really fun and different on at least 1 of them. We are thinking Kemah or maybe the children's museum or maybe the zoo. Any thoughts? Well, whatever we do, I will be sure to write about it and post some pictures! We got some sad news in the office this week. I don't think that the news is going to be made public for a while, but if you think about it, just say a little prayer for a special person. God will know who and what you are talking about.

A little get-a-way!

What a fun weekend we had! Jordan thought it would be a great idea to take our new 8th graders on a little leadership get-a-way to Arlington! It was AMAZING! We took 2 suburbans and a tahoe and ventured up to Jordan's parents house (thank you Ferguson's) Friday night... in the rain. It was a long trip, but we made it safely in one piece. I got to have some GREAT conversation with one of my FAVORITE mom's. We got there, unloaded, got comfy and started some of the activities Jordan had planned for the kids. I had no idea what we were going to do, so it was a surprise to me to! Can I just brag on my husband? He is so amazing and has such a heart for the kids in our youth group!!! He planned some great activities and had a great heart-to-heart with them. We headed off to bed around 1... some didnt go to bed until closer to 2! We all woke up the next morning to Jordan and Mr. Butler cooking breakfast for all of us! What a treat! Of course it was still raining! Now you're thinking.. there's no way you actually took 14 crazy 8th graders to Six Flags in the rain?! OF COURSE WE DID! And we had a BLAST! We rode rides, froze, got soaking wet... but it was AWESOME! I got to know some of the girls that I didnt really know that well and all the guys now think that they are my favorite! I do have a little prayer request to add to this... A cousin of one of our 8th graders is starting chemo today. I'm not going to give his name because I'm not sure how public they are making this situation. Just pray for his family and his health. God will know who you're talking about.
Here are some pictures of our fun little get-a-way...

Here we are... in our PONCHOS!!!