A Little Baby Girl and a BIG Girl!!

There's so much to share, and so little space! So here's the most important stuff:
Rebekah Grace Girdler was born on June 22, 2010 at 12:31 pm. She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces, and was 21 inches long. I was in labor for only 5 hours - was checked in to the hospital at 6:30 am, and started the induction around 7:30 am. By about 12:25 I was ready to push, and at 12:31 we welcomed our sweet Rebekah into the world. Both she and I were doing great, so we got to go home the very next day! Praise God for his grace and mercy!! The whole time we were at the hospital, Katie was at home with my parents and Tim's parents. What a blessing to have them all so close by - Katie had a blast playing with her grandparents, but she was definitely ready to have Mommy and Daddy back home! What a great girl!!
The following Friday morning, we awoke to a knock on our bedroom door (at like 3 am). It was Katie, who had climbed out of her crib (for the first time ever), opened (and shut) her own bedroom door, and was wanting to be with Mommy and Daddy. So that solidified the decision to get her a big-girl bed! Now she sleeps in her little bed every night, and gets up and plays in her room in the morning until Mommy or Daddy comes in to get her up!
We've been enjoying our family time this summer -- lots of changes, but we're loving every bit of it! We are so blessed to have two happy, healthy girls. Katie has been learning to swim in our pool, and she has had fun playing on the playground in the park - swinging, sliding, playing on the bouncy toys . . . . what a fun time for her to show that she's a big girl!

Always Playing Catch-Up

As is so often the case, it seems, we are once again trying to catch up on the past several months. You'd think I'd have time once a week, or once every couple weeks to sit down and do this, but things never seem to go that way. This way, though, there are so many things to show you!

The new school year started for me in August. I am teaching High School English at Faith Christian Academy in Martinsburg, WV. The kids are amazing, and the faculty and staff are so much like a family. The challenge for me is that there have been several English teachers there in the past couple years, so creating consistency is one of my primary objectives. It's going great, and the kids seem to be really receptive.

In September, we had both Tim and Katie's birthdays -- Katie turned 2, and Tim -- well, let's just say he's 2 times 18!! We had a lot of fun, and the pics are here to prove it!!


When she's done, she's done!! Sweet sleep!! What a girl!!



Ketchup is our new favorite food. Tim's mom found this shirt while they were on vacation, so she brought it home for Katie!! Katie would eat ketchup on ANYTHING!!


And that's most of the newest news. Later this month, we'll be moving from our apartment into a house God has provided for us to rent. We'll post pictures later. But be on the lookout for yet another new address for the Girdlers!! God is blessing, and we couldn't be happier!!

New Pics -- Finally!!

Accomplishing our Mission

Well, life here in Hagerstown is still going great! We're certainly not complaining about any part of it -- we love being here. We've been here for just about 5 1/2 months now, and we're beginning to look back to see what we've done in that time.
At church, we've managed to see attendance grow from an average of about 30 people each week to somewhere between 40-50 people each week. We've started, and regularly continued, a weekly Bible Study, and we're well-into our second course of study with that. We've moved from meeting in a school to meeting in a church building, where we're paying less per week for about 3 times the allowable time to be in the building. And, we've sold the acreage that the church had purchased with the original intent of building, but that a reality-check revealed might not be a real possibility, maybe ever. So, God is certainly blessing out work at the church. We will absolutely maintain that it is not of us that these things have happened, but because God is working, and His people are willing.
I finished out the school year at Grace Academy, teaching 3rd grade. This was a special privilege and challenge for me -- my background and experience is in the middle school / high school realm, and this opportunity showed me that God's grace is sufficient for whatever task He calls me to do. I really enjoyed my time with those kids, and they taught me so much about myself and about life in the short time I was with them. I was not offered a contract for the upcoming school year, "not as a reflection of you as a teacher, but because of the difficult budget cuts we had to make". That's fine -- not what I wanted or expected to hear, but it just means that God has another adventure planned for me somewhere else! And exactly a week after I turned in my keys at Grace Academy, I was officially hired as a High School English teacher at Faith Christian Academy in Martinsburg, WV. WOW!! YEA, GOD!!!!! That was not me, that was God moving me where He wants to use me!
Then, there's Katie. She's 21 months old today, and already talking in sentences, singing songs with tune and rhythm, and being amazing in so many other ways. She loves going to the park to swing and slide, and walking -- well, bring it on!!! She loves to walk and to go up and down steps! She's able to do steps by herself (but we always follow close behind -- there will be no huge tumbles down the stairs -- not yet). She loves to do puzzles, look at books, and go "shopping with mommy". She loves to tell what "doggie says" (woof, woof), or "piggy says" (oink, oink), and she can also tell that a ducky says "quack, quack", a kitty says "meow, meow", a cow says "moo", and a rooster says "cock-a-loo-ooo" (it's really cute to hear, in person). She parrots everything anyone says, so when Mema (grandma) Girdler sang "Ooo, Eee, Ooo, Ahh, Ahh, Ting-tang, walla-walla big-bang", Katie sang it too -- except it was Ooo, Eee, Ahh, Ahh, Tang, Allallalllallla bang" -- awesome!!!!!!!! She's the cutest thing ever!!!! And when daddy went to look at new glasses frames, she told him, "Dado silly goose with glasses!" And she tried on some glasses and remembered the purple glasses, and wanted them on the next time we went back there. She tells us where we are when we pull into Target, Martin's, and WalMart, and she knows what's coming when we're in the Chick-Fil-A drive through "Chicken and Fries?!?!?!?!?" These are the times to remember . . . . .
And so . . . things are going well -- we are doing God's work in God's place, in God's time, and He is blessing in amazing ways. And in all this we say, "Not to us, Oh Lord, not to us, but to You be the glory"

Please excuse our extreme lack of blogging

Wow! I hadn't realized that it has been this long. Ghhhh! It's not that there's nothing to post, just that there's not enough GOOD time to do it. Even now, I'm sitting here wondering what else I SHOULD be doing, rather than futzing around with the computer.

Just in case any of our followers were unaware, we moved from Louisville, KY to Hagerstown, MD at the end of December. Tim took a pastor job at Real Life Community Church, and I am teaching 3rd grade at Grace Academy.

Katie is amazing. She has made the transition FAR more smoothly than we thought she might, and she is already well-acquainted with most everyone at the new church.

It is fantastic to live so much closer to all the grandparents. Tim's parents are only an hour away, and my folks are only about 5 hours away. This makes seeing them all SO much more convenient.

My sister has just had her baby, as well. Rayne Elle Perry was born on March 31st. She was little, but then, so are her mommy and daddy. Everyone is doing great, and they have made the transition to "familyhood" quite easily.

Our Katie is becoming so much more vocal -- not that she wasn't before, but she's really starting to talk well now. She talks in phrases and short sentences, and she repeats just about everything she hears us say. She knows the names of most everyone at church, and she greets them all each time she sees them! She even sits at home and runs through the list of names of people she knows -- Butch and Laura, Hi Bob, Joe, Henry, Dave and Connie, Phyllis, Gaylon, Elaine, Jesse, Mark, Stacy, the list goes on and on!

We've recently begun holding church services in a local Seventh Day Adventist church building. They have agreed to let us rent their building on Sundays and Thursdays during the week -- which is much better for us than the school building we were meeting in. There, we only had about 5 hours on Sunday mornings. Palm Sunday was our first Sunday there, and we had a remarkable turnout (about 80 people) on Easter Sunday! God is so good!! We're eagerly awaiting what He has in store for Real Life Community Church -- all we know, is that it's been 11 years for RLCC as of Palm Sunday, and He's certainly not finished with us yet!! Praise God for who He is and for all He does!! May all we do bring honor and glory to Him!!

More Pictures

Catching You Up!

Well, well. The prodigal blogger has returned. But all joking aside, there has been so much going on, that keeping up with this blog has been the last thing on the list. This morning, though, while it's just Katie and me sitting here, trying to decide what to do with our day, I thought I should at least add SOMETHING.

We celebrated Tim's and Katie's birthdays in September. My parents were here, as well as Luke and Lucinda. Although we didn't get to spend as much time together as we would have liked, it really did turn out for the best, since that is when we had the huge windstorm that knocked out power to most of Louisville for several days. It was better for everyone that plans were changed prior to all that!!

Katie had such a good time with her cake! It was the first time she'd had sugar like that, and at first, she seemed a little skeptical, but that didn't stop her from going back for more, and more, and more! On her actual birthday, we took her to Build-A-Bear (they actually had power). She didn't really know what to make of the whole thing. The loud sounds of the machines scared her, but she really liked her Kitty Cat we made her -- we named him Nenno (that's what she calls our cat, Fresno).

The last weekend in September, we went to Hagerstown so Tim could candidate at Real Life Community Church. After he preached that morning, the congregation voted, and it ended up 100% positive for us to come! So, by February, at the latest, we'll be ministering at a small church in Hagerstown, MD! Now we just have to sell the house here . . . . But God is bigger than the housing market, and He'll take care of it perfectly, just at the right time. We also got to celebrate birthdays again that weekend with Tim's parents -- more presents and more ice cream cake, oh boy!!!

Last week, Tim and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. Fortunately, it was Fall Break at school, so I wasn't even working that day! Unfortunately, I woke up feeling REALLY bad that morning, and was diagnosed with strep a few hours later. So, on antibiotics, but still dealing with a horribly sore throat, we went to The Melting Pot for dinner that night. The food was SO good, even though it hurt to swallow -- at least I didn't have a cold, or something that affected my ability to taste the food!!! Then, because I'm such a generous person, and marriage is supposed to be all about sharing, my poor husband woke up the next morning feeling as crummy as I was. So, now we have matching "His" and "Hers" bottles of antibiotics!

This weekend, Tim is in Maryland, at the University of Maryland's 100th homecoming celebration. He's getting to play in the band for their Homecoming game (you know he's loving that), and he's also getting to catch up with some of his old friends he hasn't seen in a LONG time. We miss him here, but we're glad he's having fun!