Fast and Flying February!

We knew this month would be a busy one, but it has truly flown by! We began with our KU Navigators annual Jerry Bridges Conference, with the theme,"Why Holiness Still Matters". Jerry is perhaps most famous for his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, in which he writes these challenging words: "Many Christians have what we might call a 'cultural holiness'. They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God." Challenging words indeed, and the conference gave me a lot to reflect on.

February 14th was Elisabeth's second Valentine's Day, and her cute dad bought her an "I love you" frog balloon (frogs are a favorite of hers). She is still enjoying him!




A few days later we left for Orange County California as I was a bridesmaid in a dear college friend's wedding. A broken starter out of Kansas City meant we missed our connection in Denver, so once we arrived there we were re-routed through Reno/Tahoe and finally on to LAX (just in time for L.A. rush hour!) Three flights and many hours later we arrived at our hotel with an absolutely exhausted baby. (I think we're now sold on direct flights whenever possible!) She really was amazing throughout the day and made lots of new friends by waving and flirting. Reno was a particular adventure as there is gambling inside the airports (I've never been to a casino so this was quite a culture shock!) Elisabeth enjoyed the slots, the bear, and the carry-on bag check! Who knew an airport could be so entertaining?!





The wedding was wonderful and we were able to see many dear friends in the area as well, so it was a special and memorable trip. This was our attempt at a family picture in the midst of wedding excitement:


The month is ending with another conference for students in our region, and we are hosting it here in Lawrence. Following the conference we are having a staff retreat for all staff who will join us in Jacksonville, FL this summer for our summer training program. Our sweet baby has come down with her first real cold so she and I are hanging out at home for now. We're thankful she's been so healthy and definitely don't want to take that for granted!

Happy February!


With love,
The Rosses

Cookies and Crayons

What do you do when it's 14 degrees outside? Go walk around Walmart, of course! Last Sunday afternoon we took Elisabeth to Walmart to let her walk around a nice big open space, and she sure had fun! Below is my attempt at uploading a short video clip from a new favorite website, Smilebox.

This free slideshow made with Smilebox

On that same trip we bought Elisabeth her very first box of Crayola crayons. For some reason, as her mom, I feel this is monumental in her life. Coloring is such a big part of childhood, so her very first box of crayons is extra special! Her first drawing is already hanging on our refrigerator! On our way out back into the 14 degree weather we stopped to buy a box of Thin Mint cookies from two frozen adorable little Girl Scouts and their moms. What troopers! I remember going door-to-door to sell cookies so I'm not sure what selling them in front of Walmart would be like. Either way, 14 degrees is too cold to be selling Girl Scout cookies!

Children's Mercy

We have great news to report! Elisabeth was born with two heart murmurs that required us to take her to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City when she was a week old. She was diagnosed with an ASD and a VSD, but the doctor really counseled us to treat her normally and pretend they weren't even there and then just bring her back in a year for a follow up.

Over the past year she has been as active as ever so it's been easy to act as if the murmurs weren't there. We took her for her follow up appointment this past week, and after an EKG and an echocardiogram, her doctor reported that both the ASD and the VSD are gone! In his words, her heart is "normal". YAY! We are so grateful for this good news and are thankful to God for our little girl's health.
We just had to take a picture of her in her cute little pint-sized hospital gown last week. You can see she's not too impressed with her new duds! She can make any outift look cute, though! She was a trooper through the echocardiogram, which took about 20 minutes. Dad entertained her with toys and she watched some of Monster's Inc. on the TV they had playing. We were so proud of her!


Coincidentally, I learned on the radio last week about the baby son of a Christian recording artist who is battling a serious congenital heart disease. I briefly glanced at their website and thought it was appropriate to share with our posting. Please pray for success for their upcoming surgery!
http://bowensheart.com/

We hope this finds you having a wonderful start to 2011!
Love,
The Rosses

P.S. As of January 5th, we officially have a toddler! Elisabeth has been walking nonstop ever since!

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

What a great year 2010 was! As I scroll through blog posts from this past year, I am grateful for so much God has done in our family!
Earlier this month, on December 9th, Elisabeth Anne turned one year old! We had so much fun recounting her birth from the year before (36 hours before finally meeting her via C-section!). We celebrated her first birthday with a small family party at our apartment, and Elisabeth had so much fun opening presents, playing, and eating cake! I contemplated making her a healthy birthday cake, but then decided to just order a small one since I didn't think she would actually eat any of it. She hadn't taken an interest in feeding herself up to that point, but then the day after I ordered the cake she started feeding herself Cheerios. Sure enough, she devoured her cake at her party! It didn't make her sick, so I was thankful for that!
Here she is, pre- and post-cake!





Elisabeth's Grandma Kester made a special punch for the party, and it was actually the punch served at our wedding in 2007! I made cupcakes, and we used the cupcake tiers from our wedding as well. The cupcakes at our weddng were a Martha Stewart monongram recipe:




My mom gave me a Martha Stewart cupcake cookbook last year for my birthday so I made cupcakes for Elisabeth's party from this book. I wanted to make homemade frosting but ran out of time, so Jason saved the day with cupcake frosting in a can. (I didn't even know they made that until recently!) Didn't he do a great job decorating them? I like to call them "modified Martha" cupcakes!



Speaking of Martha Stewart, my friend Kristin introduced me to her pom poms as an easy and inexpensive way to decorate for a party. I gave them a try for Elisabeth's party and they were a fun project! They are easy to make and I was able to "modify" them to make them even easier than the website:

http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/article/pom-poms-and-luminarias



Over Elisabeth's first year we took her picture every month with her stuffed animal friends, each month adding one more to correspond with how old she was. We included them on every blog update, and her final picture includes 12 friends surrounding her in her new big girl chair she received for her birthday:



We returned to Lawrence last Wednesday from Wichita where we had a great time celebrating Christmas with family. Elisabeth was able to be with all 7 of her cousins at her Grandma Donna's house on Christmas Day! It was a special time to be together. She also had so much fun with her Kester Grandparents.

Jason and I look forward to this new year with eagnerness and anticipation. We are approaching our final semester here in Lawrence and have been reflecting on what a neat season the past three years have been to begin our marriage and ministry here at KU. We are so grateful for this opportunity! We will post soon with updates on our next assignment!

We are also directing the Jacksonville Summer Training Program this summer and will be preparing and planning for this neat opportunity throughout the spring semester as well.

May you have a joyous beginning to 2011. We are grateful for your love and support of our family!

First Fall!

Elisabeth turned 11 months last week and we are excited to plan her first birthday party! We're going to make it low-key and have it at our apartment here in Lawrence. During her 11 month photo shoot last week she had so much fun with all of her friends. (And by "photo shoot" I mean mom bustling around trying to contain a squirming baby for five seconds to get a posed shot!) She is too fun! We did manage to get one posed shot:

And a few unposed:



Her eleventh month began with a trip over KU's fall break to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ross in Arizona! We all had such a great time, and Elisabeth had a blast with her grandparents. We went hiking on South Mountain in Phoenix and this was her first hiking trip. Dad was brave to carry her in the Ergo carrier:


She also went swimming for the first time in Grandma and Grandpa's beautiful back yard:


We look forward to going back one day!

Lawrence has been bright with fall colors, and Elisabeth has enjoyed our daily walks. We watch the squirrels scurrying up and down the trees while the trees gracefully drop their beautiful fall leaves on our path. We have a favorite tree on our route that looks like it has been painted red. Set against a beautiful fall blue sky it makes a winning KU combination of crimson and blue! Kansas is always so beautiful and fun in the fall, and to celebrate this season we tried to take Elisabeth to a local pumpkin patch here in town. The farm also had animals you could pet, and Elisabeth is wild about her furry friends, so we thought it would be a fun field trip! We also recently purchased Elisabeth's "big girl" carseat and our pumpkin patch field trip was the first time she rode in it. She was so comfortable in it that she fell asleep on the way there! (This was monumental because she doesn't really sleep in the car at all). Rather than waking her up we just let her sleep and tried again the next day. When we arrived at the pumpkin patch the next day they had just closed their gates for the season! I was determined to get her picture with some pumpkins so we drove to a garden center and had a lot of fun! Elisabeth was even dressed like a pumpkin thanks to a cute outfit from Grandma and Grandpa Kester! Here is our cute little pumpkin in her own private pumpkin patch:





The first Friday in November the KU Navigators hosted our annual "Barn Bash", which is the main outreach event of the year. I've blogged about it before, and this year there was a new cowgirl on the scene:

What a fun evening of eating chili, dancing, and hearing about how Jesus has changed students' lives here at KU!

Another event with the KU Navs is a new monthly meeting called "Greekside", which is a gathering for Greek students desiring to grow in their faith and reach out their friends around them. It's at 9:30 on a Tuesday evening, and we are grateful for one of our former students (now a graduate student here at KU), who comes over to listen for Elisabeth on the monitor so Jason and I can partner together for this meeting. We've had a lot of fun meeting some new students and bringing everyone together. Our last meeting we watched a powerful video by Francis Chan, a California pastor who wrote the book, "Crazy Love". The book's website has some neat videos, and the one we watched and discussed with the students is called "Just Stop and Think". Check it out:
http://www.crazylovebook.com/videos_stop.html
Our final meeting for the fall is tomorrow evening and we are excited to continue into the spring semester.

With Thanksgiving approaching I am always reminded about how much I have to be thankful for, and may the season do the same for you! We are continually grateful for your love and support!

Double Digits!

Elisabeth turned 10 months old on Saturday, October 9, so she's now officially double digits! At her nine month check-up she was in the 30th percentile for weight and only 9th percentile for height! She's a little bug! Don't tell her that though, because she's got big plans and is going big places! She currently will stand up on her own in the middle of the floor, unassisted, and does her "surfer" stance (as we call it!) We're just waiting for her to take a step any day!

During Elisabeth's tenth month we took Elisabeth to the Kansas City zoo, and she was joined by her cousin Abigail and Uncle Kevin and Aunt Laura. Our favorite animals were the meerkats, who, upon seeing Elisabeth, started scurring around and posing for the camera. They were putting on quite the show and were such a delight.


We also went to a fall festival in Baldwin City, just outside of Lawrence, hosted by some friends who go to our church, and Elisabeth picked out her very own pint-sized pumpkin. She also went on a hayrack ride, and of course Mom thought about how that was her first time to ride in a moving vehicle without her carseat!


This past weekend the Heartland Region for the Navs (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa), hosted our fall conference, The Main Event, and it was attended by nearly 1,000 college students! What an impactful and life-changing weekend as these students had the opportunity to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus, or maybe to begin that journey for the first time! Exciting stuff indeed. Below is a shot of our KU group:


Speaking of going deeper, "Go Deep" is the theme for the Jacksonville Summer Training Program for the summer of 2011, and Jason and I have accepted the role as program directors. Our family will spend the summer living on the University of North Florida campus, side-by-side with students and going deeper in our faith. This is also exciting stuff! Below is a picture of Jason and me in front of the Jax booth at the Main Event conference this past weekend:


I've been buying summer clearance items for Elisabeth and she already has two swimsuits for her summer in Florida. (-:

We continue to be grateful for your love and support!

9 on 9-9!!

Nine months, that is! Our little girl is getting so big! Just today she stood for about three seconds on her own without holding on to anyone or anything. She has us laughing nearly all day long with her adorable and inquisitive personality. When she hears us laugh then she'll start laughing, too, which only makes us laugh more! There's a lot of laughing going on these days. This reminds me of a Psalm we printed on our wedding program: "Our mouths were filled with laughter,our tongues with songs of joy...The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy." (Psalm 126: 2-3). Speaking of our wedding, we just celebrated our three year anniversary on September 15th and are truly filled with thankfulness and joy!

The first month of school has been filled with lots of excitement and activity. The Welcome Back BBQ in August included a massive game of tug-of-war, which just seems painful to me!

Our first Nav Night (the large group gathering on campus) was on the first day of class and meets in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union (easy enough to remember at the University of Kansas!)

The first few meetings centered around the story of the Prodigal Son (the son, the older brother, and the father), and Jason spoke on the son. I had a babysitter that night (thanks Grandma!) so I was able to go and hear him speak. He did an amazing job and really is an excellent public speaker.

Two of Elisabeth's student friends, Roshni and Kaitlynn, saw her this past month and I wanted to post some "then and now pics" of her with them. The first set are when Elisabeth was about one month and the second set are of her at nine months. It's so fun to see how much she's changed!

Kaitlynn and Elisabeth:



Roshni and Elisabeth:



Happy Fall!
With love, The Rosses