month o’ pictures

Life has been a little crazy so these pictures are mostly un-edited, but I wanted to get them online before I leave or who knows how long it would have taken.  These are pictures from several events over the last month or so.  Wish I had more time to post about them, but this will have to do.  Enjoy!

Silas’ Birthday

My Birthday

Girls Night

Amanda’s Birthday

Gingerbread Event

Family Pictures

I wanted to update all our family portraits for my mom’s wall, so this past weekend we all went downtown for a photo shoot. It was so much fun to just hang out and walk around taking pictures and … if I do say so myself… the pictures came out great.  

Christmas Pics

Ok, so this is a late follow up to Christmas, but I didn’t have any really exciting pictures, so it took me a while to get these up.  I started taking a few pictures and then kind of forgot about it. There are still a few though if you would like to see them.

More pictures of Evalyn Jane…

Last week I finally got to do some portraits of Evalyn Jane. She was asleep through all of them, but she is so absolutely perfect that you can’t help just staring

Wedding Pictures

Thanks for your patience waiting for these, but I wanted to wait till I had links to both the photographers pictures before I posted them. Enjoy!

Cait-Elizabeth’s Pictures

Christi-Ann’s Pictures

Evalyn Jane

This morning, January 13, at 4:38am, the cutest and most beautiful little girl was born to John and Deana. Little Evalyn Jane was born 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 2o inches long. She couldn’t be a more precious little baby, but I will just let you see for yourself.

Click here to see all the pictures.

Catching up…

Ok, I know it has been forever since I last posted and I have several galleries of pictures to share. I don’t have time to post on each one separately, so I will just put up links to all of them and hope they are fairly self explanatory. Now I am caught up and can post Christmas and Wedding pictures as they become available.

Back in early November, I went with Nick and Ashley to visit Ashley’s family in New Jersey.  We had a couple days to hang out with her family and we also went to a bridal shower hosted by her best friend (also named Ashley).

Trip to New Jersey – All Pictures

On thanks giving we had the whole family together. Ashley’s family was out of town so we even got to keep her for the whole day. Mom and Dad made up a turkey/photo hunt and sent us into down town Pittsboro and then out into the woods to hunt down our turkey.  Dad also made up a picture treasure hunt for Silas and with jelly beans as incentive he actually followed the pictures around the house till he found his treasure.  He was so cute!  The day after we picked out our Christmas tree and decorated the house for the holidays.  It always looks so pretty at Christmas.

Thanksgiving Weekend – All Pictures

Here are a few other pictures from a couple months back when we were hanging out at John and Deana’s.

This was our source of entertainment for the evening.


And last but not least, Silas can now calls me Mimi instead of Pipi. Which brings me much joy.  Here he is saying everyones names…it is so cute.

he said it!…sort of

So for the last few months as Silas has been learning how to talk, I have been trying to get him to learn everyone’s names…especially mine. But each time I ask him he gives me this mischevious little smile and runs away. The other night he finally said it…yeah!…but instead of it sounding like “mimi” it is actually more like “pipi.” As much as I dread the thought of being Aunt Pipi…these videos were just too cute not to share.

Enjoy!

Mexico post coming soon…

Silas thought we were taking a pictures…that’s why he is making the funny face the whole time.

Multiple posts

I have gotten behind on posting lately…my desktop was piled with my “to be posted” folders. Grandpa and Grandma…I hope you enjoy the pics and videos. I have been trying to keep up better with family events now that you are reading my blog. I hope it is a blessing to you…the rest of you who still read this, you just get an extra dose of my personal life.

Grandpa Ron…Ben just finished texturizing and painting his room. He doesn’t have it all cleaned up yet, so I have to wait to take a picture.

Life is pretty much the same as it has been. I am still working at the church and recently started up my photography business again. I have a couple photo shoots this weekend (including John, Deana and Silas) so check my business site in a couple weeks to see the new pics. (www.melissajoyphotography.com)

Our pastor asked us to read a book on Christ’s Atonement over the summer and I have been working my way through “In My Place Condemned He Stood” by J.I. Packer and Mark Dever. It has not been the easiest book to read, but is an always needed of what Christ did for us on the cross.

“The basic description of the saving death of Christ in the Bible is as a propitiation, that is, as that which quenched God’s wrath against us by obliterating our sins from his sight. God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness; it shows itself in retributive justice. But Jesus Christ has shielded us from the night-mare prospect of retributive justice by becoming our representative substitute, in obedience to his Father’s will, and receiving the wages of our sin in our place.” – J.I. Packer

Praise the Lord that Christ has taken our place…that he took our sins upon himself and suffered the wrath of God for our sins. I know that I don’t and may never fully appreciate the fullness of His sacrifice, but I pray that the Lord would continue to reveal it to me.

I also wanted to put up lyrics to a new song that we started singing at church, but since I am currently swapping batteries between my mouse and keyboard to finish this post…I think it will have to wait till later.

Boy or Girl?

John and Deana announced what they were having at John’s birthday dinner a couple nights ago. In typical John fashion…he couldn’t just tell us. He made us wait and wait and they he opened a present to tell us what it was. Since I had to find out this way…I figure you can too. Yup, you guessed it…I have it all on video.

Deana couldn’t stop laughing and kept hiding her smile trying not to give away the secret

Silas is always a ham and was in usual form that night. This first video he is hiding in the kitchen cabinets and the second he is pretending to get soap (he even holds his hand so it won’t drip) and wash Christi’s feet.

And some more pictures of this cute little guy.

Kurtoskalács

When I was in Hungary I got these really cool tube pastries…they were a lot like a pretzel, but were cooked on a fat wooden dowel over open coals. My parents either had them once also or just liked the idea so a couple months back we decided to try our hand at making “kurtoskalács”. It was an interesting experiment as we didn’t have any of the necessary items to cook these little treats, but you know my dad… In McGyver fashion he soon had the barbque rigged to cook these tube pretzels. Of course our dowels were way to small and instead of open coals we were using a propane grill, but you start with what you have. We went online and after a little research and metric conversions we made our own version of the kurtoskalács dough. Though they were not nearly as good as the ones from Hungary it made for a fun family evening and who knows…maybe someday we will start selling them at the state fair or something.
Here are a few pictures from our little adventure…

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This video is from a Hungarian cooking show, but even though most of you won’t understand …any of it, you can still get the idea of how they are made and why I think they are so much fun.