Big Break

After a great flight with Abby and an exhausting day of travel, we arrived in Panama City Beach for Big Break. It was a great week with our students and friends. During the week we were there, 2,811 spiritual conversations were initiated with people on the beach. Of these, 2,206 spiritual conversations were actually held. 311 conversations were held about the Spirit-filled life and 72 people prayed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Gospel was presented to 1,619 people and 309 people prayed to receive Christ! What a great week...and what a great God!

Joe, Abby and I shared an apartment with our good friends Jarrod, Susie and their son Josiah for the week. It was a lot of fun. It was also a glimpse into what life would be like with a toddler and an infant! Wow! :) I spent the majority of my time with Abby while Joe had a busy conference schedule, but I was able to spend time with the students a little bit each day too. The week was a huge blessing!

Every morning we went for walks in the beautiful weather!


First time at the beach!

Josiah loved to say "ABBY!" and touch her little toes. He kept us entertained throughout the week by dancing around our living room to "Boom Boom Pow".

Enjoying our balcony

So tired after a busy morning!

My little beach baby. I love her so much.



Family time!


*Fun side note: The last time Joe and I were at Big Break together was in 2005. He was a senior and I was a sophomore. That is when we first became friends (though we kind of started out the first night of the trip as enemies!) Ask me and I will tell you the funny story sometime. We kept joking on this trip, "If someone would have told you five years ago when we were both students down here that we would be back in a few years married and with a baby, would you have believed them?" haha Needless to say, neither one of us would have believed it. Even though Joe had a big crush on that trip. ;) God is so good!

First airplane ride

Abby did great on the airplane! She slept through every flight with only some minimal crying when the pilot's voice on the loud speaker would wake her from her nap. We did it!

Wow!

SO...I know everyone is waiting for Florida updates and I promise to post pictures as soon as we get home, but I just had to share what happened last night.

We arrived in Port Charlotte at Mama's house and on her first night here Abby slept from 8:30 to 7:30 in the morning! Wow! It was so nice. Can't wait to see what tonight holds...

Stylin' in her first pair of jeans

Abby was cuter than ever in her new jeans! AND just to balance our sports teams we had to represent the Yanks this time.

Sleepy girl!

Abby's sleep patterns continue to keep us on our toes! They are still pretty unpredictable during the day, but getting a little more standard at night. She is still sleeping at least 7 hours at night, but we are working on figuring out the right bedtime for her. She has started to be overtired at the time we had been putting her to bed (making it harder for her to fall asleep), so we are going to move her bedtime up. We thought that might be a good idea after she slept through her before bed bath time the other night! We thought for sure she would wake up when she hit the water, but I think that made her sleep even better. We washed her and got her to her changing table before she woke up briefly to have her nightly chat session with her daddy and then go back to sleep.

Sidenote: Every night I get her ready for her bath while Joe gets her bath ready. We bath her together (sing some fun songs!) and when we are done Joe takes her in to get her in her PJs, then brings her out to me to feed her. One of the best parts of the night is to listen to Abby and Joe over the monitor (I am working on capturing this on video). They have conversations. It is so sweet! So, you can see why Abby couldn't sleep through that part of her evening routine!



Another fun bath time moment: When we know the bath is lasting a little long and Abby is getting hungry....no tears....just trying to figure out how to get what she wants...no food there!



AND speaking of sleeping through the night...
This is how we found Abby yesterday morning when we went in. It was 7 and she was just talking in her crib waiting for us to come and get her. Can you believe she made it into this position at some point in the middle of the night without making a sound? So funny!

Good Morning Mommy and Daddy!

A Great Night's Sleep

Breaking news...

Abby slept until 6:30 this morning! Woohoo! It has been nine weeks since an alarm as woken me up. So, you can imagine how shocked I was this morning when Joe's alarm woke me instead of Abby. What a treat! When Joe went in to get her, she smiled up at him. Now, let's see if she does it again tonight... :)