Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I debated on whether or not we should write a Christmas letter since so much of our year you can already see on the web site, but I figured there might just be a couple of things to add to our already exciting year!

JP has been busy working on his Master’s degree this year in Mass Communications so he can go into Public Affairs. God opened some doors in miraculous ways in June 2005, and now JP is heading into his final semester. It has been wonderful having him around home so much to spend time with Olivia before “real” life begins again next summer. JP & Olivia have fun being silly together! JP has been such a diligent and faithful student. Several of his school papers have been published and he was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi honors society—way to go JP!!! This last semester will be his busiest as he will be working on his thesis in addition to normal classes. JP has loved working with the children at our church Grace Community. He gets to be the story teller for the older kids some Sundays, and has even come to the nursery to play his guitar for the little kids—they love it! We're also loving the small group we've gotten involved in!

I love being a stay at home mom and I have to admit Olivia and I get far more play time in during the day than work time. It’s a little stressful at times watching piles of laundry waiting to be folded, but then I sit on the floor and laugh with our baby girl and it just all disappears. I haven’t been freelance writing since Olivia came along, but I am still seeing some fruits of my labor from the previous year. A book I helped write is being published next year, a book I contributed to was published this last summer, and a curriculum I helped write for the local Pregnancy Center was sold to enough programs that it actually turned a profit. I’m looking forward to coming out to Colorado in February for a Christian Writer’s Conference, and maybe if I keep ignoring those piles of laundry I can get some more writing done between now and then! I’ve also loved working in the nursery at our church. It’s a brand new start up church (9/2005), and it’s been fun helping to get the program off the ground.

Olivia is growing and changing every day! She is now 8 months and 3 weeks old. She’s just starting to cut teeth number 7 & 8, is so close to crawling if she can just get her legs coordinated. She loves to stand (occasionally even briefly all by herself with no support). It’s a blast to watch her personality come out more and more. She still tends to be a very serious little girl around people she doesn’t know, but for mommy and daddy (and all the animals) she has lots of smiles (o: She seems to understand tons of what we say to her. The other day she was playing with Tigger Cat’s tail while he was getting a drink of water and I said, “Olivia, please don’t pull Tigger’s tail,” and she stopped! It happened twice (her understanding is coming along great, but her long term memory is still under development)! We just pray it keeps happening!!! She seems to already be saying words like cat, dog, duck, all done, and dada (nothing even remotely sounds like mama) and actually associating it with the object or action…but I guess that could just be proud parents dreaming (o:

All the animals—Mickey Dog, Sammi Cat, Tigger Cat, and Lucy Dog—are doing great with Olivia. The cats love to come around when we’re snuggling and get in on some of the attention. Lucy let’s Olivia grab on her, climb on her, and will come lay down by her when she’s playing on the floor—we lovingly and jokingly call her Olivia’s nanny. Mickey likes to be close, but not too close. The dogs keep improving their golf ball catching skills (check out the link to our home movies), and the cats are doing a fabulous job at perfecting their napping skills.

But I guess the most exciting thing right now is the other day I picked up Time Magazine to see who the person of the year is and discovered it's me! But it's funny, when JP picked up the magazine he insisted it's him (o:

We look forward to what next year will bring us! We’re still waiting for Olivia’s adoption to be finalized and praying for God to show us the right time to start the process all over again. We can’t wait to continue watching our family grow!

We’d love to hear from everyone! E-mail us at jpnamy@juno.com.

May Christ be in your Christmas and coming year!

Love,JP, Amy, & Olivia Hope, along with Mickey Dog, Sammi Cat, Tigger Cat, and Lucy Dog