Crazy Hair

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why (maybe just because I wanted to laugh), I decided to wet Makaela's little brush and comb and comb her hair in all directions and let it dry that way. I took pictures of course, and I definitely feel the need to share them because they are so funny.

On a more sad note, the little red spot under her nose and on the side of her nose are because she pulled one of the baby gates over onto her self (ouchie!!!). It was so sad, but after just a minute of cuddling, she was back to her busyness of scooting around checking everything out. Here's her crazy hair!!!

Yes, just incase you are wondering, her eyes are turning green.

Neither Nathan nor I have green eyes--but its looking like she will.

Playin' the Piano

Alright, Makaela has discovered the Piano--and that she can reach it if she stands on her very tippy toes. It is so far beyond cute I don't even know how to describe it. So I'm not going to try, but instead I will just put up the video. Today, she started singing while she was playing--still trying to catch that on video. She wants to be like her daddy--can't blame her. He's a great guy to look up to. She is so blessed that He is her dad--she has no idea :) Look at her cuteness!!

Christmas 2010 Letter

Seasons Greeting Dear Family and Friends,

The Fogde's decided that as we approach our 3rd Christmas as a family, we should start sending a Christmas letter. It only took us (and by us, we mean Leanna) 3 years to make it happen. A lot of changes have taken place in our family that we wanted to be able to share with those of you who may not know.

Our most significant change came in February 2010. Our precious blessing Makaela Rose was born on the 11th of February at 11:48 pm. She weighed in at 7 pounds 15.8 ounces--so the doctors just bumped her up to 8 pounds even. I thanked them for giving the appearance of having to work harder for an 8 pound baby versus a 7 pound baby. She has been a tremendous joy and blessing in our lives, and she has spoiled us rotten! Usually it's the other way around. She is preparing to celebrate her first Christmas and we are so excited to see how she will react to gifts etc. As with most babies, she will probably be more interested in the wrapping paper than the gift inside :) Our time with her is flying by, and it's hard to believe that in just 2 short months, we will be celebrating her first birthday!!

The next significant change came in Nathan being approached about a position as a Music Pastor at Christ the Rock Community Church in Port Orchard, Washington. We had served at Wayside Chapel Community Church in Rosamond, California for a little over 2 years. The Lord in His perfect sovereignty called us to minister in a different church, and as we prayed about the opportunity, the Lord continued to reveal His will to us. Just 2 very short months later, we found ourselves all packed up heading north. Every intricate detail was perfectly orchestrated by our Lord--who else could perfectly provide renters within 2 weeks, provide a home for us to rent (sight unseen), and get our house all packed up--all within 4 weeks, I might add!! Praise be to our Savior for His overflow of grace, love and provision!! It has been so wonderful to be part of this church and to see the bride of Christ functioning the way God designed.

Nathan is very thankful to serve in a church and to be employed in a role where he is doing what he loves to do. It has been his heart's desire to serve in a music pastor capacity, and the Lord has certainly blessed him in that role and job. He is grateful for the relationships he has developed with the other pastors as well as other guys in the congregation. He is also grateful for the opportunity he has to shepherd people at the church, as well as being discipled himself. What a blessing it is for him to go to work knowing that he is serving his Savior and doing what he loves!!

I (Leanna) am blessed to be a stay at home mom. The Lord has been faithful to provide for our needs in such a way that allows me to stay home. What a wonderful blessing!! We certainly know that is not the situation for many people today, so we are especially grateful for the Lord's provision in that way! I serve in music ministry with Nathan, and the Lord has decided to stretch me in the role of accompanying the choir. So far, it has been a good learning experience (it always is when the Lord wants to grow you) and I'm even enjoying that role :) I recently became an Independent Consultant for a company called Homemade Gourmet. I'm enjoying using that as an opportunity to get together periodically with ladies from church--and of course we are enjoying eating their food!!

This Christmas, we are eagerly looking forward to the time we will be able to spend with our families. We are going to be visiting them for just shy of 2 weeks!! What a wonderful and relaxing time it will be after the busyness of Christmas in a church music ministry. We love it, but we also love the break after it all is done. We have been so reminded of the joy we have in Christ, and are so thankful for God's sovereignty in sending His Son to earth to live as a man--to live a sinless life as an example to us, and to ultimately bear the wrath of His father for our sins. What a blessing it is to know Christ. We look forward to spending this season reflecting on and celebrating all that He has done and given us.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." Ephesians 1:3-10

All our Love,
Nathan, Leanna and Makaela

Her onesie says "this is my little black dress" :):)

Imulse Buy

I just had to post about this because it was a hilarous situation and a great example of impulse buying :) The Samples a Costco are great--and we have never actually sampled anything that we immediatly put into the cart until Nathan got his hands on this bad boy...

Yes, thas right--Peanut Butter Snickers. He took one little bite of that suckers and mumbled something like "oh my gosh, we have to get these" followed by walking right back to the sample stand and picking up a bag. They are a little piece of heaven in your mouth--its true.

Dada

Makaela says "dada" "mama" "baba" "guh" "naynay" (why Nathan already gets Naynay and Dada, I have no idea. It's not like I'm the one who gave birth to her) :) Totally just kidding. Its so cute :) She did once say "dog" as well as "God". She still doesn't know that I'm mama and Nathan is dada, but she says dadadadadada all the time. It used to be guhguhguhguhguhguhguh, but has changed. She also added hand motions and she just flops her hands/wrists when she is sitting and saying dadadada.

The tricky thing about catching video of her doing things now is that the instant she hears the camera, she knows what it is and she races over to us and puts on a big ol' cheesey smile. So most videos, we now have to encourage her to continue what she was doing before because we can't actually catch her in the act anymore. :)

Jungle Jumper

This jumper resides at church, but oh how I wish it was at my house! She loves to play in this thing--but pretty soon I'm sure she will be walking and her love for it will be over as she finds new things to play with. But for now, its a great way to keep her occupied for quite a while. It was super helpful to use during Thanksgiving Dinner--then we all got to have 2 hands free to eat. Wohoo!!

The Dancing Queen

During Nana Karen's visit up here, Makaela decided she would bust out her dance moves. Here she is showin' off her stuff :) Her favorite way to dance is to just rock back and forth--I think she feels safest doing that, but she got a little funky here!!

Disclaimer: We don't necessarily endorse this music, but once we saw her starting to rock and dance, we had to find some music with a little more groove to it :)



This one, both Nana and Nathan are trying to help her groove--so I tried to catch them helping. Nathan was a little less than thrilled :)

Makaela Fix

I have some videos of Makaela uploading right now, but in the meantime here are some pics of her. Crazy to think that on Saturday she will be 10 months, and in just 2 months, we will be celebrating her 1 year birthday. How time flies!!

This is actually the most recent picture of her...taken just today :)

We enjoyed a wonderful visit from Nathans mom. She came up the week of Thanksgiving and was able to be stuck in the house with us during the crazy snow storm! Hopefully next time she comes we will be able to get out and do some fun things, although I'm sure she didn't mine having such a concentrated period of time with Nathan and Makaela :)

Makaela LOVES this Jungle Jumper at the church.

She has such a good time in it and she never stops moving while she is in it!!

Yes, Makaela does have a faux hawk. She still doesn't have enough hair to do much of anything with it, so periodically after I give her a bath, I do something crazy with it. :)

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

Christmas decorating came early at our house this year--and by early, I mean before Thanksgiving. Thats right--with the snow so peacefully falling on Monday, we couldn't resist the urge to pull out our Christmas decorations. Besides, since we're going to be gone for almost 2 weeks over the holidays, we figured the sooner we put them up, the more time we have to enjoy them. So here is the Fogde Household all ready for Christmas :)

This year, we also decided to invest in an artifical tree. We thought it would be a little silly (as much as we love Christmas trees) to get a real one that would just die while we were gone. So, while we don't have the smell of Christmas trees in our house, it still feels very much like Christas :)

Winter Wonderland

So, way back in November (which feels like it was way back) we were forecasted "few snow showers". If by few, the weatherman meant a few inches, than yes, few snow showers :) Enough to keep us house bond for a few days as the snow and ice piled up making the roads a little too tretcherous for us to brave. Nathans mom was with us, and due to the weather he ended up staying home a lot more than he had planned. Also, due to the weather we didn't get to go out and do much fun sight-seeing, but hopefully next time she comes there wont be a snow storm.

The snow started falling Sunday right after we got home from church and continued to fall through Monday night. Monday night also found us with no power (which we understand is a very common thing up here). Our power was out for several hours, but came back on sometime in the middle of the night, thankfully. A good portion of the homes where we live were without power through Wednesday and even Thurdsay!! Thankfully ours came back on so quickly. It was a fun adventure to say the least :)

Here are some pics :)