On the Twelfth Day of Christmas: A Recap of 2014

Every summer our church (Sojourners Mennonite Fellowship) joins with the Mennonite church in Rochester to have a worship service in Letchworth State Park. This past summer, the Rochester church asked us to learn the hymn "Thou True Vine." While the hymn is great for many reasons, the phrase that has stuck in my (Rebekah's) head ever since is "make us sane and simple." While our lives often feel anything but sane and simple, we are renewed daily by the true vine that heals the nations. In this season in which we celebrate our savior's birth, we are again awed that the Creator of the universe humbled Himself and came to us in the simplicity of a baby, dependent upon His earthly parents for all His needs, to live and die as one of us and to conquer death that we may live in Him.

We have been especially reminded of just how humble babies are this year as we welcomed our daughter Junia Ivonette on May 25. She's named Junia after the only woman in the Bible who's called an apostle (Romans 16:7, NIV and some other versions) and Ivonette after her Great-grandma Yates.

Judah, who turned 2 in April, has been a big fan of his baby sister from the beginning. He loves to "laugh her" and report on whatever she's doing to anyone who will listen. She's a very content, happy baby most of the time, so she has many fans wherever she goes.

I'm in my sixth year of teaching math at Houghton College, and Ryan is in his fourth year of a computer science PhD program at the University of Rochester. His advisor is on sabbatical this year, so Ryan's only heading up to Rochester once a week, which is a nice change from previous years (though last year it was only twice a week most weeks). We're surviving the challenge of our jobs while parenting two small children, and we are grateful that we have babysitters who love our kids and take good care of them!

With the goal of keeping this post sane and simple, I'll just end with some pictures. If you're interested in a significantly larger volume of pictures and funny Judah quotations (he keeps us laughing every day, and Junia's starting to hold her own in that department as well) and you're on facebook, be our friends. If you already are our facebook friends, then we apologize if we've overwhelmed you with such items!

Judah discovered his inner Clark Kent last Christmas.

Ryan and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary this summer. It's not the greatest picture, but this is not something that should go unmentioned, I suppose!

We visited Grandma and Grandpa J in PA in August and got to go on a firetruck!!!

Judah's favorite pastime this summer was going to see "the construction" (Houghton built a new field house, among other things).

We can hold both kids--we're totally competent parents.

"It has leaves for eyes. I'll call it Levi!"

Christmas kids. Note: Junia's head looks almost as large as Judah's in this picture. This is an accurate representation of reality.

Happy 2015, everyone!