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!!

Life these days...

The last few months have seemed to both fly by and move slowly all at the same time.  These days I have found myself staying much closer to the house then months before, having twins has had a big part in that.  It now takes me about 30 minutes to get everyone ready and out to the car, so running lots of errands and going places doesn't happen to often.

I do feel accomplished in the fact that I have managed to find a way to go grocery shopping with a toddler, two infants in carseats and a 5 year old.  It's not the easiest shopping trip but we have found a way to get it done.  We also have what we call our "bus" that we take everywhere.  It fits both infant carseats and now has a glider attached for Gwen to ride on.  Without this stroller/"bus" I don't think i would be going many places at all, it has been the best piece of equipment we have had for the twins thus far.

This last month Neal has been tracked out of school (which means he's on break), since we have year round school here he gets breaks throughout the year instead of the whole summer off.  The month of September is his longest break and we have enjoyed having him around the house, Gwen has enjoyed having him around the most since he provides hours of entertainment for her.  We have managed to fill our days with lots of crafts, park play dates and other activities.  My favorite new routine in our home is the introduction of the chore chart.  

Why it took me so long to start this I have no idea because it has been wonderful!  Neal loves knowing what is expected of him and it is great to be able to have something set in stone that we can all refer to throughout the week in regards to helping out around the house.  Plus my house is in more order way more often with the extra help. Thanks to some fun gifts from Aunt Rachel, even Gwen has enjoyed some new chores around the house.

Who knew the duster was more fun to play with then toys and ends up being helpful to me too....my walls, tables and molding have never been so clean!

It's been three months now since we transitioned from a family of 4 to a family of 6 and we are doing well.  Babies grow and change so quickly and we are loving watching the boys change and grow each day.  Three months already since the boys joined our family, look how they have already changed...

This is how the monthly photo shoots really look

They are starting to show off their personalities a bit now and we love seeing their unique personalities start to form.  Donovan is always smiling and Paul tries to "talk" quit a bit.

The big highlight of this last month however was the chance to get away with my hubby - Kid free!! We got to go out for a night to celebrate our 10th anniversary.  Thanks to a sweet family from our church who watched all four children for us we were able to go out and see Seinfeld perform at the performing arts center, and Tyler made it extra special by taking me out in style with a fancy car he rented for the evening.  

Hard to believe that we have been married for 10 years already, but what a great 10 years it has been and a blessed 10 years filled with job changes, moves, kids and lots of great memories.