Two Incredible Happenings...

1) The Tennant family was in the cement city of Dallas, Texas, at a little yuppie neighborhood park on the sunny and cool afternoon of December 16th visiting Simone's relatives and having an early Christmas celebration. Their Cannon PowerShot S3 IS Digital Camera in its fancy camera bag, loaded with rechargeable batteries and a $60 memory card, was mysteriously stolen after a certain Tennant parent set it down to push two excitable boys on the swings. Lest you have seen exactly how vigorous the pushing of Cad and Eli on a swing is, you know not the intensity of swing pushing in the Tennant family. Much sorrow and grief followed that day. One Tennant parent with a name starting in "S" even asked God to severely punish that suspicious woman (yes, another MOM in the park, can you believe it?!) suspected of stealing our beloved camera we had saved up for. Despite the number on the bottom of the camera, the Tennants did not receive a call reporting it lost. Both Tennant parents were not feeling very celebratory and the long drive back to Austin was a quiet and rather mournful one.

WELL... just this week a small box appeared on Simone's doorstep in mid afternoon. She carefully opened it, wondering what could be inside. Tears came to her eyes and a grand smile escaped her lips. It was a new Cannon camera, even better than their last. She knew who it was from and felt completely overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciate.

HERE IS THE SCOOP: Upon hearing our sad story and desiring to bless us and the work we do here, another set of Tennants that live on Long Island in New York, bought and sent us a new camera. Nathan and Cheryl Tennant and their son Jacob visited us this Christmas and we had many little adventures here in Austin. They are very generous and we feel very blessed.

2) Ben had TWO snow days this week. It snowed only a tiny bit, but there was freezing rain and an inch of ice formed all over the city. Austin shut down, literally. Not even the mall was open. No one went to work... except maybe the Wal-Mart employees. They always work. So we had Ben home a couple extra days and had ourselves a little vacation. We went sledding down some neighborhood hills on boxes. The boys were ecstatic. It is actually COLD. No worries, supposed to be back up to 60 next week. Ben went around helping neighbors carve their cars out of mini icebergs with his ice scraper. No one knew what an "ice scraper" was and Ben had to explain. They were all using hammers and screw drivers to scrape their cars. Exciting, exciting, exciting.

Pictures to come again... as soon as the memory card comes in the mail...