have i mentioned...

that both of my sisters-in-law are pregnant with their first? and they are due within about 5 weeks of each other in the spring. josh and i are so excited to be uncle & aunty again!!

jessica & elizabeth, the sexy mamas :o)

reunited & it feels so good

you may wonder, "where in the heck has em been for the last two months? no blog posts?" call it a summer break, call it a much needed hiatus. but rest assured, i shall now make it up to you, faithful readers. stay tuned. ;o)

the first week of june, josh and i flew to philly to spend time with our grandparents smoyer. it was a sweet time of getting to know them better.

w/ grandma & grandpa smoyer & aunt judy

playing scrabble w/ grandpa smoyer

we also spent a VERY hot day (read: in the 100's, people!) downtown at the philadelphia museum of art.

yo, rocky!

then we had a yummy dinner with our relocated-from-asheville friends justin & meghann at a pub in jenkintown, and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with them at their flat. cheers for having us, guys!

justin & meghann, all "phillyfied"

we were also treated to a fun trip to the jersey shore by our uncle dan & aunt judy. we had fresh seafood at an old restaurant next to the docks! and i repeat, it was HOT outside. we all snuggled under two small umbrellas on the beach, just to be in the shade. you could barely make out the new york city skyline in the distance, across the water.

here are some photos of us at a 9/11 memorial that we visited. the base of the monument is covered in the names of folks from new jersey who died that day. the eagle is holding a piece of the twin towers' wreckage in his talons. it was a hard but good thing to take in.

uncle dan & aunt judy (they're sassy. i just love them.)

us at the "joisey" shore

9/11 memorial

god had an even cooler reason for us being in PA than we ever knew while planning the trip though. we got to spend an afternoon chatting with our great grandpa leh who is 103 1/2! (and he was emphatic about that half, though he said it with some disbelief himself. i guess he earned it. :o) ) great grandpa spent his life in the loving service of others. both times i met him, i was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of his gentleness and humility. and, remarkably, he spent all 103 1/2 of his years in his own house, with the loving support of his daughter, our grandma smoyer. (she takes after him.)

grandpa leh told us about his first sighting of a car, his wedding to our great grandma, their best friends, fishing trips, and adventures out west. he vividly remembered details, right down to the exact date he started work in the 1920's! it was a magical, bittersweet time, as grandpa leh's health was slowly failing from being unable to eat. these photos with him are the last ones taken before he died later that week. you can see how brightly his spirit was still shining that day.

josh, great grandpa ralph leh, grandma smoyer

us w/ great grandpa leh

josh & great grandpa leh

josh and i both feel so incredibly blessed that god gave us the gift of such a sweet goodbye. we will miss you, grandpa leh. but we rejoice in the life god led you to live, and in the fact that you are now safely home with him.

good news

i just heard from kat, and josiah is back to himself today! his fever seems to be gone, and he was busily eating noodles. :o)

jay & kat treated his fever all night, and decided to reschedule the follow-up appointment with the doc, since the weather there is nasty today and josiah was finally sleeping.

thank you for showing us love by your prayers. praise god for answering them so mercifully! and now for another fun photo of the smiley boy with his 90-year-old great grandma....

"like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land."

-proverbs 25:25

update on josiah

josiah celebrating with us at our wedding

the hospital put josiah on an i.v. of antibiotics yesterday, still not knowing what is causing his fever. though still very sick and exhausted, he seemed stable, so they released him to spend the night at home with his family. praise god! i'm sure he could sleep better in his usual surroundings. this morning they have to take him back to the doctor to try to determine what's going on.

thank you so much for your prayers. my family feels very blessed to know that even strangers are praying for josiah and our family. i will let you know more when i do, so you can check back later for updates.

please pray

for this little boy, our nephew, josiah. this is an older photo, but josiah is 2 years old now, and is the friendliest, happiest little boy we've ever known. some of you may have met him at our wedding. his family lives in florida.

yesterday, while his mom, kat, was driving and josiah was in his carseat, he had a grand mal seizure. they were taken by ambulance to the hospital, where the doctors determined that josiah's seizure was due to a very high fever that came on very suddenly. they ran several tests and ruled out meningitis, but his high fever has persisted; and although they can tell there is an infection in his blood, they don't know what's causing it or how to treat it yet.

will you please pray for my brother jay, his wife kat, my two teenage nieces, julia & lauren, and most of all for josiah? pray that god will give the doctors and nurses at the hospital wisdom. pray that josiah's life will be protected and his fever will be relieved. pray for comfort for them all. thank you!

catherine

continuing on in the family portraits...

this is catherine, my big sister, or my "cc", as i call her. i won't tell you her middle name, where the cc comes from, because i don't think she really cares for it too much. (sorry, mom. i like mine.) we are the closest in age of all the siblings, and therefore, have probably spent the most time together.

when i was a wee thing, catherine was my self-appointed second mom. if i got cheeky and anyone threatened to discipline me, teenage catherine would jump between, warning "OH NO YOU DON'T!" she has undoubtedly saved me from many a sore butt. for that, i'd like to take a moment to formally thank her... THANK YOU! heehee.

she has a very strong sense of justice, but also a gift for mediation--common to the middle child in a family. she is extremely nurturing and defends those whom she loves fiercely, like a lionness. i can always count on her to be my most honest critic, as well as my most loyal advocate.

the two of us share an, umm, "extreme cleaning & organizing" gene. it's handed down to us by a looong line of germans before us. we really can't help it. we also share a love for words and books, which i wrote about earlier in the post about our mom. again, do NOT challenge this woman to a "friendly" game of scrabble. i repeat...do NOT.

with a little prompting, my usually conservative sister can be convinced to do some ridiculous things. (of course, it probably helps that she's married to one of the most hilarious men on earth.) once we walked her family's two dogs around their golf community in the freezing rain...skipping merrily and wearing shower caps. LMAO! there are photos documenting this, for those of you who might require proof. unfortunately (or fortunately, as catherine might be thinking), i do not have digital files of said photos.

catherine loves jesus, and has strived to rear my two nephews, jacob and sam, to be godly men. they are some of my favorite boys, and i will write about them another time. ;o)

i love you, cc.

p.s. i stand corrected. she tells me she likes her middle name, carlene (after our grandpa, carl); she just dislikes the way southerners say it: "caar-laaaane". well, ah'll be.... :o)

jessica

from left to right: elizabeth, em, & jessica

it's hard not to lump the three of us smoyer sisters into one big bundle of mercy and mischief: the three amigas, the three musketeers, the three piratesses...YARRRR! (i should mention here that there is a fourth smoyer sister as well, suzy. we're sad because she lives far away.) but this one's for you, jess!

jessica (or jess, jessie, or sicca, depending on whom you're talking to) is the second eldest of the smoyer siblings, after josh and before keith and adam. this, by definition, means that she is a survivor, much stronger than her tiny frame and delicate beauty suggest. she survived three rough-housing brothers, and from what i hear, even managed to subdue them with her sheer force of will sometimes! can we say small but mighty? :o)

jess is mighty of heart as well. she loves people in tangible ways. she and her husband, gus, have opened their home and their lives to be shared by a succession of folks whom god has brought their way. that's right--they have a commune! (did i mention that jess can garden?) when mama d needed a place to stay while recovering from her accident, jess and gus remodeled a room for her in their home, and selflessly took on the role of nurse/companions for many months.

one of the qualities that i love most about jessica is that she strives to be real and open...real in her pursuit of god and his word, real in her struggles, real in her conversations with others, real in whatever circumstance she finds herself. it is always refreshing and challenging to have a one-on-one conversation with jess. and, like jesus, she accepts and loves you for exactly where you are, while still wanting the best for you.

i could really go on & on. just one more thing though...last but not least, she is one SASSY, sexy mama! and she can DANCE... i'm talking belly dancing here, people! if you ever need to get your party on, jess is a sure bet for hilarious good times. whew...she makes me laugh.

i couldn't love you any more if you were my own flesh & blood, jess.

family

for the past few weeks i've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a family. how we are one big, beautiful mess tied together, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. how god gives us each other to love, and to grow. how we bear each other up in times of weakness.

family is the second best gift god gives us, besides himself. we play out a parable of his love in our love for one another: father and mother to child, husband and wife, sister and brother--each role uniquely reflecting a different aspect of god's own love for us. each family member shapes who we are. when we use that shaping power for ill, it's heartbreaking. when we use that power for good, it's a beautiful sight to behold.

i love my family. so i thought i'd introduce them to you, and honor each of them for the unique role they play in the story of my life. in the upcoming months, i hope to post a series of brief portraits of my family. and whom better to begin with than my mom? let's start at the beginning...a very good place to start... :o)

barbara is shy but spirited. stubborn even. (i come by it naturally on both sides. heehee!) aside from my life itself, i owe to her my great love of words and books and reading, inherited from her. she read to me incessantly from the time i was born, feeding my imagination. thanks, mom! and by the way, do NOT challenge this woman to a game of scrabble unless you're up for a battle royale! she may look innocent enough, but don't be fooled....

her life has never been easy, but god has used it to grow faith in her. she is a faithful prayer warrior. one of my most vivid memories of mom is her waking up every morning before the crack of dawn (WOW!) to quietly begin her day reading god's word and praying on the back porch. sometimes i'd tiptoe to the doorway to secretly watch her, listening to her speaking aloud with god on our behalf.

she has mad skills in the kitchen, and always made sure that we had healthy food and time set aside to have family meals together. my love for cooking and baking is another legacy from mom. i must call her at least once a month to ask her how to make something. and she always patiently explains.

when she was young, she looked a heck of a lot like elizabeth taylor. (though she's definitely aged more gracefully than elizabeth taylor, if you ask me.) ...creamy pale skin, dark hair, hazel green eyes, and perfectly heart-shaped lips. she's quite the beauty!

but what is really beautiful is how she lays down her life for others, in a way that i only hope and pray that someday god will teach me to do. she has brought me up to love god and follow paths of righteousness, and for that i am eternally grateful.

i love you, mom.

uncle rodger

josh got a call late last night, the kind of weeknight, late-night call where you think, "oh no, this can't be good."

this post is in loving memory of our uncle rodger, who died in his atlanta apartment and was found last night.

as a family, we had been gearing up to celebrate diane's (mama d's) one year anniversary of surviving her accident. rodger is her baby brother. it seems he died one year to the day after her accident. the lord gives, and the lord takes away....

rodger bruce jennings was a wickedly funny, sweet, sensitive man. the memory with him that keeps coming to mind is from christmas 2006. i was cooking for about 20 family & friends at josh's house. from the moment uncle rodger arrived, he began asking how he could help. as i worked, he cleaned up behind me. and when he noticed that i was exhausted from mashing (10 lbs.!) of potatoes, he insisted that he take over--all the while cheerfully humming. :o)

one year ago, after mama d's accident, at the hospital, i remember rodger going in with us to see her for the first time in the I.C.U. he kept leaning over and kissing her hand, telling her, "i love you, di."

we will miss you, rodger.

will you please pray for our family as we grieve? pray especially for chad and amber, rodger's two teenage children, who still weren't able to be reached when last i heard late last night....and for diane, who is having a much harder, even than expected, one year anniversary. thank you!