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We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church. We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get … Read more
Yesterday, on our day off, we dropped Sarah off at Grammy and Pappy’s in Williamsburg on our way to Altoona, where we had some things to do. We also thought it would be a good time to spend with Ethan (next week, we plan to drop Ethan off and spend some time with Sarah). After … Read more
We got up and left early this morning for a district pastor’s gathering with the Bishop in State College. Shortly after arriving home this afternoon, it was time for the kids’ afternoon naps. Later, we got the kids up in time for a quick dinner before both of us headed off to evening meetings (we … Read more
On New Year’s Day, we had photos taken at JCPenney Portrait Studios. (See a couple previous episodes when Ethan turned 2 as well as our first time, when Ethan was Sarah’s current age). Yesterday’s experience wasn’t the smoothest, but we were somehow able to get a few decent shots. Below are our favorites, honorable mentions, … Read more
Our family leave (8 weeks plus 2 weeks of vacation) ended Sunday, and Monday was our first day back to work, so we thought it might be a good time to write an update on how things are going with our bonding and adjustment. It’s been a little while since we’ve posted an update. For … Read more
Our first Christmas as a family of four was a lot of fun. Christmas morning began early when Ethan got up around his normal time. We woke Sarah up earlier than her normal wake-up time (which could have been risky!) so that she and Ethan could experience Christmas together. Grandma and Grandpa Willis were also … Read more
We haven’t posted too many photos in a while, so here are a few from the last couple weeks, leading up to our first Christmas as a family of four.
Today, I connected my laptop to the TV and Ethan (wearing his backpack, at the time) helped us choose some gifts. As we’ve written about before recently, we’re enjoying involving our kids (mainly Ethan, at this point) in our mission giving. We usually do some extra giving at the end of the year and one … Read more
Earlier today, Ethan described the past weekend, saying, “I had a big weekend.” Well, we’re a little over seven weeks through our 10-week family leave (in connection with our adoption of Sarah) and we finally took a couple days for the four of us to go out of town (most of the time has simply … Read more
We’ve been home almost six weeks and it’s hard not to compare our current bonding experience with Sarah to our first one with Ethan. Some of the differences are no doubt related to the differences between Ethan and Sarah, but beyond that, they’re just different experiences. With Ethan, he was pretty much our sole focus … Read more