Christmas Letter 2005

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! We hope you and your family are doing well, and that you know the joy of Jesus this season. We’d like to tell you about the adventures we’ve been having this past year, as God has been very good to our little family, through the good and the hard times.

Our year basically consisted of two major things: our son Caleb growing from a baby to a toddler, and the birth our daughter Alice. You can read details and see pictures and videos of these adventures on our website, which can be found at wiegersfamily.com.

In March we got to go north for Michelle’s brother’s wedding. It was such a joy to celebrate with Brad and Renee as they began their new life together. Besides participating in a great wedding, we also got to meet our twin nephews, Julian and Chase, for the first time (they are just 11 days older than Caleb). It was so much fun to see the boys interact, and we definitely had some special times with the extended family.

The day after we got home from the trip up north, we found out that we were pregnant again! We had hoped to have our kids relatively close in age, but we never guessed that we’d have another baby so soon, this time due on Thanksgiving day. So we were all abuzz with excitement and nervousness about the year ahead with two growing babies. Michelle’s pregnancy went rather well this time. She was able to keep up with Caleb, as he was cutting teeth, learning to crawl, getting into everything and learning lots of things quickly. As you can imagine, the year was filled with firsts for him, and we delighted in every one of them (except the few illnesses), even as we dreamed of another baby coming very soon.

We enjoyed some very special times with family over the summer. Michelle’s family gathered at her Aunt’s place in Delaware at the end of June. It was a fun and busy time as the boy cousins, all close to a year old, kept us running after them. We got to celebrate their birthdays early as well as surprising Mom and Dad with an early celebration of their 60th birthdays. We then traveled to Vermont to spend time with my family at the lake. It was such a relaxing time and really good to get reconnected with extended family. When we got home we found out that we were having a girl, much to our delight.

August brought Caleb’s first birthday and a nice little party with family and friends. We are truly blessed to not only have supporting and loving families, but to have such a community of friends surrounding us, and to be a part of a church body with them. We also had our 6th anniversary at the end of the month, and we marvel at how God is blessing our little family, even though we don’t deserve any of it.

As the summer ended we were starting to realize that another baby was really coming soon. Having Caleb to chase after often distracted our thoughts from the new life growing inside Michelle, but we still managed to get ourselves ready. We had hoped that Caleb would be walking by the time his little sister arrived, and he took his first steps just in time, and now there’s no stopping him.

Meanwhile I was being led to be more involved in the music at our church. This has been such a blessing to us (and hopefully to others) as I’ve had the opportunity to lead a little acoustic group that sings and plays music for the opening of our worship services. In another vein, I’ve enjoyed playing music for the Sunday school kids, as well as helping teach the 4 and 5 year olds.

When fall arrived we were getting excited about meeting our little girl. We thought that she would surely come sometime in November, but as it turned out, Alice Florence Wiegers was born on December 1st at 5:48am. She is named after two of her faithful great-grandmothers. Michelle did great during labor, and I had the amazing honor of cutting her cord as well as catching her little body as she came out. She was born with a good amount of short, dark hair and weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 20 inches long,. She looks a little like her brother and has some of her mama and daddy too. We are very thankful that so far she’s a good eater and not a bad sleeper either. We had many prayers about various aspects of Michelle’s pregnancy, labor, delivery and Alice’s first days of life, and we give thanks as God has answered every one of them. Caleb is doing really well with Alice. We’re so thankful that he loves his little sister so much as he’s very interested in her, and loves to give her hugs and kisses. He is still adjusting to a different life with less time with his mama, but so far he’s been a great big brother.

Now we look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus with our little family as well as our extended family members. God has richly blessed us more than we could have imagined, and we look forward to His care during another year. Please pray for us this next year as we learn to be parents of two small children and try to walk in the way that God has for us.

We hope that you know the love of Jesus this Christmas, and experience God’s blessings in the coming year. To see how we’re doing during the year, please visit our little family website for lots of updates and pictures and videos: wiegersfamily.com

Love,

Bob, Michelle, Caleb and Alice