Year In Review (Better Late than Never!)

Last Saturday my mother in law watched Madeline and Rivers for a little while so I could go and run some errands. I am a little behind on my "reading the Bible in one year" plan so I went to Starbucks to catch up. I was reading in Genesis about Jacob meeting God and setting up a stone as a reminder. Before I left I did a little journaling, and started remembering how much God did for us this past year. 2009 was a BIG year of changes for the Frantz family and God has been so faithful to guide us to and through every change. Just wanted to share some of God's faithfulness to our family last year as a testimony to him for his sovereign loving kindess.

The greatest blessing was the healthy pregnancy and birth of Rivers in June, and the healthy development and growth of Madeline. What a joy they both bring to our family! I was a little worried about being a mom of two under two. Although it is extremely busy, the transition has been fairly easy and we are overjoyed that God has given us these two precious children! Also this past spring Mike stepped out in faith and started his own lawn care business. God provided in many ways for the expenses to start this business and it is growing successfully!
In the spring we started feeling God calling us to move from our much loved church at Clifton Baptist to a new church in the Southend of Louisville. It is a church that was small and the majority of the members were over 70. They called a professor from SBTS, Jim Hamilton (yes, just like dad), to be their pastor in April and we started attending right after that. We became members in June and God has given us ample opportunities to serve since then! I have to be honest and say that despite my hesitancy at first, moving to Kenwood is one of the best decisions that Michael has made for our family! We completely love serving and being part of the fellowship there.
After we started attending Kenwood, we figured if we really wanted to jump in serving and ministering to Southend Louisville, what better way to do that than to live there. So three weeks before Rivers was born we put our house up for sale. Within a week we had an offer on the house, and a couple of weeks later God had provided a house for us close to Kenwood! In this crazy economy we can only credit all of this to the Lord's faithful provision for us.

We can only anticipate what God has in store for us in 2010!!!!!!!!!

To leave you, here are some of my favorite pictures of this past week:
I have been teaching Madeline to "help mommy" lately. Its just simple things like helping me pick up her toys and helping me by entertaining Rivers when I need to get lunch ready. This past week she was playing with Rivers (telling him what animals they were playing with) and I look up and this is what I see...

What a SWEET big sister... and Rivers just adores her! Its such a blessing to be a mommy to these two!


Our sweet smiley baby boy... doesn't he just brighten up your day!

Shai Linne with "Spread His Fame." from Grace EV Free on Vimeo.

Nov - Dec (M 18m, R 5m) (79 photos), by Mariah Frantz

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos

A BIG Week!

I am not even going to try and catch up since the last post. In summary, we has a fabulous Thanksgiving. Dad, mom, and Susan visited that week, and we hosted Thanksgiving at our house with about 23 people, including both of our families and some great friends from our church! It was a blast. The holiday season was pretty busy for us (as you can tell with no posts). We celebrated Christmas for about 10 days with all of our family. We had a really sweet time celebrating the birth of our King with our church and both of our families. One of the sweetest things for me was reading books to Madeline about Jesus' birth for the first time. One book in particular she loved and wanted to read it all of the time. Whenever she was ready to read it she would hand it to you and say "Sheshus".

Sorry about the brief catch up. Here are some of my favorite pics from the holidays... if you want to see all of them, the two posts under this one are my albums from Nov and Dec. Feel free to check them out!



Burr! Its been frigid... our little cuddle bugs trying to stay warm.

All the cousins on the "Hamilton" side together

and playing for the first time

The Frantz family 2009 Christmas morning

Rivers excited about the Giraffe that is bigger than

him that was under the Christmas tree

Our pretty "Big" girl ready to go to church

Little man has started eating all kinds of solids

and has gained 1 lb this month!

Ok now for current news....

This has been a BIG week for the Frantz kiddos. Starting on Tuesday afternoon Rivers finally rolled over! The doctor at his 6 month check up told me he had all the muscle tone to do it but our little guy is just so content he hadn't been motivated to do it. All of the sudden on Tuesday he was trying to get a stuffed monkey toy that was out of reach and just did it. He has been rolling back and forth, back and forth ever since! Check it out....

Also on Wednesday we started potty training Madeline. Its challenging, but she is slowly getting the hang of it. Most of the time she says "potty" or "tee tee" as the "tee tee" is running down her leg and she is walking toward the potty. We have used probably 3 full rolls of paper towels cleaning up accidents in the past 2 days! Last night we had a major break through though. After she was done eating supper last night she said "tee tee" and got down from her high chair. About 2 minutes later she started squealing "tee tee, tee tee" and I look down and sure enough she is sitting on her potty going potty. The only problem is that she had shut the lid of it first, so the "tee tee" was running all over the potty and onto the floor. She was so proud of herself clapping and squealing that we just acted like she did it perfectly for the first time! Needless to say Mike removed the lid to the potty so it won't happen again.

Also on Thursday morning we woke up to a snow covered ground. We took a brief break from potty training to play in the snow. We didn't think that Maddie liked it at first but she wouldn't come inside. We played for a while sledding and making snowballs in our back yard. It was a blast.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and your New Year has started out great!

Dec - Jan (M 19m, R 6m), by Mariah Frantz

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos