A little over five months ago, our lives were blessed with the arrival of our beautiful daughter, Phaedra Lynnette. Since then, a magical whirlwind of excitement and wonder has filled our home. She�s getting bigger and bigger each day, and her beautiful smile and playful laughter melts our hearts over and over. While the experience of being Mommy and Daddy is something brand new to us, we�re eating up every moment. To all of you who told us there�s nothing like the feeling of holding your own child in your arms�you were right!
Not only do we have a new addition, we also moved from the north side of Jacksonville to the west side. The house we�re renting now is on a corner lot in a quiet neighborhood. It�s got a fenced-in yard, so the dogs have plenty of room to run around. Mike Davis was kind enough to fly down from Ohio and paint Phaedra�s room for us. It was great to see him again, and, as always, he did an excellent job.
Speaking of jobs, Jodi recently got promoted to manager at Claire�s. It was a tough decision for us at first because our child care situation wasn�t completely ironed out yet, but we�re happy to say we�ve been blessed in that department too! We�ve got it worked out to where the babysitter comes to our house all day Monday and for about 3 hours at a time on a few other weekdays. The best part of the whole situation is that the babysitter is phenomenal. She�s very dependable, doesn�t charge us an arm and a leg, and loves Phaedra dearly.
Aaron�s job is going well, too. He was nominated by the math department as its Teacher of the Year representative. Unfortunately, the award went to somebody better and more qualified (haha). After fourteen years of coaching, he finally �retired� this year so that he can come straight home to Phaedra every day. Although there are some things he�ll probably miss, he says there�s nothing better than coming home to that beautiful little smile.
The animals have adjusted well to Phaedra. At first, they were very curious of her. The cats pretty much ignore her (What do you expect? They�re cats!), but the dogs love her. They come up to her while we�re holding her and let her pet them. Sometimes, it�s hard to tell who enjoys that more�Phaedra or the dogs?
We hope all of you enjoyed your holidays. We miss you and love you very much. Thank you for all of your love and support, and we hope to see most (if not all) of you some time very soon. |
