Steve and Jenny Valentine

I am a needy person.  Most people don't want to admit that about themselves, in fact, I don't really like admitting that about myself, but I am.  Even worse, some people fool themselves and say they are not needy, so therefore wouldn't need to own up to that fact about themselves.  Of course we do this...we live in a culture where we do not "need" anything from anyone.  We can literally provide for ourselves (given that we have the proper resources)... We have stores very close to our homes, where we can buy all the food, clothes and anything we need and/or want.  Or we could just stay in our home and order what we need off the Internet and have it delivered to our home, how about that for service! We have restaurants to serve us Entertainment at our fingertips Theme parks (especially for us Orlando folks) Cell phones (most with Internet access these days) Social media (where we burn up hours of time looking at peopl...

Karis is ACTIVE...and that just might be a slight understatement!  Anyone who tells you that life goes by fast and appears to be a blur when you become a parent, seems to be telling the truth.  As I'm reflecting over the past couple months, I can't help but wonder how did they go by so fast!  I'm really learning what it means to enjoy every moment with my daughter and can't seem to thank God enough for allowing us to be her parents.  She has been learning and trying to perfect several new skills and it's fun to watch her personality really start to emerge! Month 6 The biggest news of month six, was she started crawling (and not just army crawling).  Steve and I celebrated our anniversary and took Karis along to Jekyll Island; after being in the car for 5 hours, she was ready to be out of the car seat and showed us by crawling once we got her out of the car.  We could not believe it was actually happening!  (As you can imagine, we are tr...

Well month four and five have come and passed in our little daughter's life and we couldn't be more thrilled with each new day we get to spend with her. Some of the amazing new abilities she has learned are: babbling non stop squeeling noises - very high pitched noises I might add perfecting many other types of noises with her mouth - it seems when she learns a new noise, she repeats it over and over until it's perfect! sitting up without assistance - still wobbly at times, but mostly because something gets her so excited and she can't seem to sit still! rolling like a champion - she perfected the tummy to back first and it seemed like several weeks later she mastered back to tummy rolls...ever since then she has been a rolling machine and uses this as her primary way of "getting around".  This also makes for some very interesting sleeping positions we find her in when she's in her crib :) army crawl to reach for objects - toys, mom, dad, paci, et...

Karis 5 months Valentine Family Since we have been married, Steve and I enjoy writing a Valentine letter (instead of a Christmas letter). We have always picked a word that we feel has been relevant for our past year as our guide of what to write about.  GRACE is our word choice this Valentine's day.  Enjoy! G-Grace. This could easily be described as the one word that we base our lives around. Grace is a Greek word which if transliterated into English, would be Karis. God has shown us much grace by sending his son to be sin on our behalf and save us from our sin. We also see God’s grace in the day to day life experiences. One of those ways was by gracing us with our daughter in August, whom we named Karis because we wanted to give her a name that would reflect what God was doing in our lives. Jenny has picked a favorite hymn of ours to sing to Karis on a nightly basis as part of a bed time routine. It would be our hope that Karis will know the meaning of her ...

Having a baby drastically changes your life.  This is a statement that several people told me before the birth of our daughter.  When people would give me advice about parenting and life after children, I would try to glean from the wisdom that was given.  Obviously, some people give you more than you want to hear most of the time, but I tried to respond with grace in most cases and thank them for what they had to say.  One of those ways that having a child 'drastically' changes things is your sleeping habits (or lack thereof)!  I can't say I haven't had a full nights sleep because Karis is sleeping through the night now (on most nights) but it never seems like enough.  It's like my body is trying to recoup from the sleep I wasn't getting after Karis was first born - even tough I know that's not how the body operates, I like to think that's what's going on!  So I try to catch a nap when I can on the weekends.  Steve and I have diligently trie...

It seems like this season of our lives is passing by so fast! There have been many changes, joys, frustrations, victories and things to praise God for...one of those is our wonderful daughter and the joy she brings to our lives. She past the three month mark a few weeks back and we are in awe as each new day comes and goes with the new things she learns. I constantly find myself fascinated with her more and more and cannot believe this little miracle has been given to us, entrusted to our care, from our heavenly father. She has quite the personality and I have a slight feeling she might be kind of a people person...gee wonder where she might get that from! She smiles all the time...seriously...this child of ours barely cries. Don't get me wrong, she does fuss and cry, but those moments are few and far between. We feel very priveledged to spend life with her. Besides smiling and cooing at people, during months 2 and 3 she started "singing" along with mommy and daddy wh...