Celebrating Easter

Christ has risen, He has risen indeed!  What a wonderful weekend we had celebrating with family, friends and our church this Easter.

Tyler returned from a TWR trip late Friday night/early Saturday morning and we were so happy to have him back home.  Especially home in time to celebrate Easter together.  

I'm sure our Easter looked quite similar to most of your Easter celebrations.   Neal, was on school break and so we filled our week prior to Easter with some fun Easter traditions such as egg decorating and going to the store to pick out some easter baskets and little gifts.  As well as a trip to pick-up some food for the Easter dinner we were hosting for a few friends.

Love having all my happy helpers with me at the store

Gwen & Neal's Egg creations 

It was a bit hard for the kids to have to wait to play with the new toys and baskets we purchased 'til Easter but once they were put away I think they forgot about them until Sunday morning.

3-legged race

We enjoyed a fun church picnic on Saturday evening.  Even amidst the rain and cooler weather much of the church showed up for the fun, games, fellowship and food.  Tyler may have been trying to adjust from a bit of jet lag but that didn't stop him or Neal from participating in the games and doing quite well in the 3-legged race (until the string tying their legs together broke).



The kids were up early on Sunday morning excited to do a small easter egg hunt and enjoy some candy before getting ready for Church.  This was the first year Gwen was able to hunt for her own easter eggs and she did a great job finding them all and even helped Neal find a few of his eggs too.

We spent the later half of our Sunday morning worshiping and fellowshipping with our church family.   Coffee, doughnuts, singing together, and hearing the word preached was an encouragement and good reminder of the great gift and sacrifice of Christ for our sins.  What a wonderful Savior and a blessed redeemer we have!  

We ended our day with dinner shared with some dear friends from church and TWR.  There was lots of laughter, games and food.  You can't celebrate a holiday properly without lots of food, right?   (We enjoyed our time so much we didn't remember to take any pictures of the food or company).  

We are so grateful and blessed by the friends the Lord has brought into our lives here in NC.  While we are not close in proximity to our families we feel very loved by the "family" that God has blessed us with from our church and TWR while we are here in NC.    

Happy Easter!!!     

Turning 6

So we now have a 6 year old in our house!   Neal being six means that he is more then half way done with kindergarten, reading, and always full of energy.   We had a fun little party for him on his actual birthday this year with of few of his closest friends.  

We all had a great time celebrating and it was a lot of fun to get to meet some of his friends from school who he talks about all the time.   The morning was filled with laughter, pizza, cake and presents.

It was quite cold outside for his birthday, in the low 30's.  But with friends, jackets and lightsabers the kids didn't mind the cold.

Also, when you are having so much fun I guess everyone is to busy to eat, so we had just a bit of pizza left over...

Some of Neal's favorite things at the age of 6:

1. Star Wars
2. Riding his bike
3. Reading chapter books with mom or dad
4. Friday night movie night ("The Music Man" is his favorite)
5. Breakfast Burritos
6. Making people laugh

Happy Birthday to our sweet, funny, energetic, imaginative and creative boy! 

Home for the Holidays

Is it really 2016 already, and the middle of February at that?   I think it's about time I updated this blog with some of the many things we have been doing over the past several months.   I guess I'll just start back at the beginning of the holidays -- (get ready for lots of pictures)  

With our growing family and the unexpected blessing of the twins we had to change our plans for our ministry furlough, which in turn changed our plans for the holidays.  Instead of going back home to AK and WA over the summer (since the twins arrived this simmer) we decided to take a shortened furlough during ones of Neal's longer school breaks and visit our supporters and churches over the holidays.  This change of plans really was special for us because it meant that we would get to spend the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) back home with family. 

We not only were looking forward to seeing family and updating our supporting churches and friends about the ministry with TWR but we were also excited to finally have a long stretch of time together as a family.   Right before our furlough Tyler's travel schedule with TWR had been very busy and had traveled to over 15 different countries in the span of a few months.    So needless to say we were ready for some time together as a family, and being back home in AK was just an extra special blessing in the mix.  

We had a great time being back "home" and it felt so familiar and comfortable to us.  Our home church had a house on the church property for us to live in while we were in AK for almost 5 weeks.  This house was probably one of the biggest blessings for our family while away for so long since it allowed us to have somewhat of a normal routine to our lives and not have to be living out of suitcases.  

Lot so help feeding the babies 

A small tree for our temporary home

Loving the snow

Our evening were filled with many dinners and ministry nights with supporters and churches and our afternoon were filled with visits with friends and family.  

Ministry night sharing about TWR 

What an encouragement it was to see and reconnect with some of tour closest friends, the Lord has used the friends we still have in AK in our lives in many ways and it was refreshing and encouraging to get to sit and have coffee together again.

As close to real wildlife as we got, except for a few moose we saw in person

Fun with good friends in the snow

We also had a wonderful time with Tyler's whole family who all came back to AK for the holidays.  It was great to have his parents house filled once again with everyone, and lots and lots of kids (way more kids then last time we were all together).   Our time with family was filled with coffee, quilting, computer games, movies, lots of stories, flying and of course food, LOTS of food.

The whole Gates Family

All the Gates Grandkids 

Flying with Uncle JR 

More fun in the snow

A few days before Christmas we boarded the plane and headed down to Seattle to be with my (Laura's) family for about 10 days.  

Movie time while flying

We had a great Christmas celebrating with family and were so glad that we were able to spend some precious time with my older sister and her family before they headed back overseas for their next term in ministry.   We had lots of fun playing games, eating food, watching the kids do a Christmas play and even getting to go to Zoolights.

Gwen and her Poppa 

Grandma and Donny boy 

The cast of the Christmas play

Enjoying Zoolights

New Years day

We were gone for a total of 6 weeks and though we were away from home it felt almost like being home again.    It has been a little hard to get back into the routine of life and ministry again, but we are relying on the the Lord and remembering the encouragement and support that we received while back "home" with our support team.  Living so far away is not always easy, and I still feel at times like we are still adjusting to the transition of the twins but the time we had back home was wonderful and I am so glad that we were able to all be together for several weeks.

Birthday Girl Celebration

Last week we celebrated a birthday in our house.  Our sweet little girl, Gwendolyn, turned 2!!

We had a fun Curious George birthday with lots of fun decorations, most of which were colored and cut out by Neal.  He loved getting to choose the decorations for the party.   

We were able to have Aunt Wendy and Lauren out from Texas so it made for an extra special celebration, especially since Tyler was on a trip with TWR.  I'll just let the assortment of pictures tell the story of her birthday.   I will say that balloons and jewelry were some of her favorite birthday surprises.

Gwen has been such a joy to have in our family.  She is so sweet and kind to all her brothers.  We can already see her motherly nature as she tries to care for everyone.  She smiles and laughs all the time and can always be found following after Neal, copying everything that her big brother does.   She doesn't say much yet but can still find ways to communicate what she wants and needs.  She loves to play superhero with her brother, jump on the trampoline, brush her teeth and wear any and every pair of shoes she can find in the house, no matter who's shoes.  I can't wait to see what the next year holds for her and how she will grow and change.  

Happy Birthday sweet Gwendolyn!!

Birthday Celebrations

Last month we celebrated Neal's 5th birthday!    Five years ago Neal joined our family and made Tyler and I parents for the first time.  What a joy and blessing he has been to our family over the past 5 years.

We celebrated on his actual birthday at home with some fun little spiderman cupcakes and gifts from us and the Grandparents.

Then a week later we all got to celebrate again with some of Neal's friends with a small birthday party.   Neal chose the theme of Transformers for his party this year and we all had a fun time playing and celebrating together.  

Neal also chose to have his party at the TWR lodge, which is where we first lived when we moved her while we looked for a house.  It was fun to decorate the lodge and celebrate somewhere different then our house.   One of the great things at this age is there was no organized games or activities needed.  The kids had so much fun playing with the balloons at the party, coloring and building with legos that all the parents were able to visit and relax while the kids played together.  (we were all having so much fun I forgot to take many pictures.)

Neal is growing up so quickly and there is a lot about his personality that Tyler and I recognize in ourselves.  It is fun to hear his imagination grow and to listen to his stories and watch him play with his sister and friends.   Neal loves to play with anything that can be a robot, transformer or that he can have a battle with.   He always wants Gwendolyn to be right beside him playing along.  He loves to read books and really likes to have us read him chapter books with him before bed at night.  A few of his favorite books that we have read so far are "Charlotte's Web" and "The Mouse and the Motorcycle".  He loves to listen to Adventures in Odyssey and is always up for almost any activity that can be done with Mom, Dad or Gwen.

Neal 2010

Neal 2015

He has changed and grown a lot in the last 5 years and will be starting school the end of this summer. The phrase, "the days are long but the years are short" seems so true, especially with little ones around.