Leia

Last week Dan and I bought Hannah her first pet. A fish! We had wanted to purchase her a turtle, but it is illegal to sell turtles under 4-inches in the USA. And we don't have room for the 7-inch turtle tank, so reluctantly we opted for the next best thing. A fish. Hannah named her new fish Leia (pronounced: Lay-uh) I know you are thinking, but that is a male Betta, and Leia is a girls name...Hannah loved the name. We thought Leia was a very pretty fish, and tried to enjoy her as much as you can a fish. But she(I am going to use "she" b/c that is what we referred to her...Hannah was obsessed with having a girl fish) didn't eat her food and than tragically died this past Monday night while we were sleeping. So Dan drove all the way to Indiana at 130am when he got home from work to attempt to replace the fish. They only sold female Betta's there, so he came home with a gray fish. And as you can imagine Hannah noticed it right away Tuesday morning when she came in for breakfast. Needless to say...it was probably the worst and longest breakfasts in the history of breakfasts!! "Where is my Leia? I want my other fish back! Why was she sick? Will my new fish die?...ect...ect..." than she would ask me all over again to tell her about it.
We told her the truth the whole time. It was actually a great experience for us. We were able to accurately witness to her using Leia as an example. We explained to her how God had created Adam and Eve in the garden and then they sinned and brought death into the world. And now all living things will die b/c we now live in a sinful world. We also explained that that is why God sent Jesus to earth to die on the cross for our sins! She completely understood and accepted what we told her and has been great with it ever since.
And it does help that our new fish "Tabby Jr. Princess Leia" is a spunky girl and eats like Bubby!! She follows us around in her bowl and will stare you straight in the eye. She loves to watch us. She is fun to watch eat too, b/c she will slurp up her Betta bits then spit them out to where they fly across the bowl. After seeing the way our new fish is acting Dan and I have concluded that our first fish was already pretty much dead when he bought it.
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Hope you all had a great Christmas. We did.
Last night Hannah and I went to a Christmas Eve service at South East Christian Church. It was very nice. Hannah was a little too obsessed with her candle. "when can I turn it on?"..."If you ask me one more time you won't!!!!!" Other than that it was nice (Jen-you should go check out their nursery!!!!! It is amazing!!!!)

I made my first Ham today! I am a pro at Turkeys now so I decided it was time to try something new. The Ham turned out great but as we were cooling it the pyrex I cooked it in broke all over the place.
Also, I found out talking to my mom that we had not seen a $25 gift card for Calvin in one of his packages!!! So I had to dig through the trash to find it...it was on the very bottom of the bag. And actually had our friends not stopped by to visit last minute, I would have had lunch made an hour earlier and Dan wouldn't have been running so late to work, and he would have taken out the trash. PRAISE God!!-he was late to work, $25 is a lot to lose.

A BIG thanks to everyone (Family) for our presents!!!
Hannah had a blast opening them. This was the first year she has got into it. She opened them so fast I am not sure who bought her what, so our thanks in a general one this year...I'll do better next year!

Pictures to come!!