Someone remarked recently that it must be nice not to have anything on our calendar… The comment made me realise that most have no idea what is really goes on around here. The few concerts/events that are planned far enough in advance to show up on our events calendar (if anyone thinks and has time to put them there) give the illusion that we aren’t very occupied. But that is far from the case! So for those who are curious as to what the Frazers are really doing… I’m going to make an attempt at writing out an overview of what has happened during the past couple of weeks.

And here it is.

Interestingly, many of the things one would suppose were scheduled ahead of time were actually only planned 24 hours before. And this doesn’t include Daddy’s schedule, doing laundry, making meals, washing dishes, feeding chickens and ducks, collecting eggs, and countless other things…

One Sunday afternoon activity many of us enjoy is Bananagrams. Sometimes we get creative and invent variations on the game. Yesterday David and Erica came up with the idea of only using Biblical proper nouns. It was certainly a challenge and we felt that using up all but eight troublesome letters was quite an accomplishment.

And we learned a lot of new names.  Hmm… Any good baby names if the Lord should bless with another one? 🙂

And meanwhile, Elizabeth was having fun on the floor.

Thank you David and Erica for the great idea!

And I couldn’t resist a picture of Caleb from a while ago…

So this is what it is like to be in Daddy’s shoes!

A description of Stephen:

• Hardworking
• Quick to laugh
• Always willing to lend a hand
• Committed to the Word of God
• Ready to admit mistakes
• Resourceful and creative
• Looking for ways to encourage
• … and loves mowing the lawn!

We love you, Stephen! May God bless you in amazing ways this coming year.

Our last newsy update was back in the fall/early winter. Since then so much has occurred that it would take a long time to write it all out. I’ll just blitz through a few of the highlights instead.

Christmas was a wonderful season of spending time with family and friends and striving to bring joy to others. A very last minute decision was made to redo our chalk art presentation from last year at one of the homes. Thankfully, Erica was there to keep the chalk artists on track during the preparations!

We did our traditional Christmas concerts at three nursing homes. Elizabeth and Caleb joined us on the jingle bells!

We also kept our gingerbread house decorating tradition. The young ones always love this. And the not-so-young ones too! I’m not sure who had more fun – Elizabeth or Grandma!

In the midst of all the Christmas activity, we also butchered our 20-month-old steer. Weighing over 1,000 lbs, he was by far the largest animal we have done to date. It was a big job, but we enjoyed working together with family and friends. And we tried our hands at sausage making afterwards! It was certainly a learning process.

More recently, we found ourselves once again making trips back and forth to the hospital. After months of trying to cure Amy’s health problems through a medicinal route, the surgeons acknowledged that surgery was the only option left. We really saw God’s hand in it all. The timing of the surgery couldn’t have been better: we had no other outside commitments that week and Amy was doing well in the sense of having regained the weight and energy she lost last summer. We were told to expect a 5-7 day stay in the hospital. She was out in four days! We are thanking the Lord for His intervention on her behalf. And Amy is thrilled that she can now begin to eat “lumpy” food again! We still have to be careful, but she is definitely doing better! Praise the Lord!

A more recent project is learning how to use diffusing and reflecting umbrellas in photography. One of our first targets was a cake…

The first photo is without the use of the umbrellas. In the second, the sharp shadows were eliminated by bouncing and diffusing the light.

Now to learn how to use these for portraits. (And, no, we didn’t have these tools during the baby photo session.) I’m sure it will be an exciting learning experience.