Remember Grandma

Hi girls,

This messages is mainly for the Bloomington girls, but it would apply to any of the rest who come to visit grandma. After spending 5 days with grandma, i realize she is doing really good. In fact, she is physically doing amazingly well. However, in order for an older person to keep going and not to stiffen up, she needs regular exercise. While i was visiting, we went to the Bloomington church at least 3 times to let her walk. She loved it and it did so much for her attitude! She is not ready to start driving yet...which may be wise; however, i know she would love to be taken to the church to walk at least 3 or 4 times a week. This is where the grandkids can help. If one family could take her once a week and another family another time etc. ... it would be wonderful. She would be blessed and so would you! It could be anytime of the day or evening and your kids could run around the church with her! it would take maybe 45 minutes to an hour out of your day by the time you pick her up and take her home.

Mom will never ask for you to do this, but I know she would love it. Just call and say, "Would you like to walk tomorrow? I'll pick you up at 10:30am or 7:30 pm or whatever works best!"
I don't mean to be bossy and I know it may be a struggle getting her into your vans...just pray about it.

Love you all,

Aunt Barb

MEET TARA HOHULIN

Meet Tara Hohulin. Hey all you Bloomington people and Roanoke person, I would like to introduce you to Tara. She is starting her first year at ISU and will be attending Bloomington and Roanoke churches. Please make her feel welcome! Tara is from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and is not going back home until Thanksgiving break. Tara's mom is Faye, a first cousin to Mark. Her dad is originally from Roanoke and is a brother to Tim Hohulin. We want her to love the North so we are hoping Central Illinois will be a good fit for her. Of course, Mark wants her to settle in Bluffton so do not introduce her to any single guys. Mark, never got one of his nieces in Bluffton, so now he is working on his first cousins' kids!!

I am heading to Bloomington on Friday to spend a few days with Grandma. She is coming home from Manor Care Friday morning. Hope all goes well. Pray for us!!

Love you all,
Aunt Barb

Enjoying our summer

Aaron and I have spent the last couple weekends out boating and generally enjoying the summer. We're having fun NOT STUDYING for this month. Next month Aaron will be back into a tougher schedule but this month is total freedom! So we went to Mom and Dad K's one weekend and spent Saturday out tubing with Carmen and Mike Rassi and Amber and Tim Lehman. Then this past weekend we went up north the Lake Houghten. One of Aaron's med school friend's Dad had a cabin on a lake, a boat, tubes, skis, 40 acres of undeveloped land, dirt bike, four wheeler, and paint ball guns...which all equals tons of fun...just a note though if you girls are thinking of playing paintball with your husbands...we bruise much easier then boys! The boys spots are little red welts that have already dissapeared....Kendria and I on the otherhand are still nursing our wounds a week later...but it was worth it! This weekend we're off to Alto for a wedding and baptisms...life is good! Hope all are doing well, miss you and love you tons!
Booxy

PS is everyone (or anyone) planning on going to the Hoffmann/Walder Reunion?

Hey all...

Hey all! How is everyone doing? I know it has been a lonnnnggg time since I blogged. I must say that I am a faithful reader of this....Now I am at my parents and have a little time.
Thought I'd post some pics...




We went to Hilton Head a few weeks ago with Klint's family. We had alot of fun! (we are really shiny in this pic)


In July-- Michael, Jane, Klint and I went to Holmes County for a short weekend. The two guys planned the whole thing--we were really impressed1 We did ALOT of antique shopping---it was awesome!!














We were finally were able to visit Grandma
It was nice to see where she is living!














I have no clue how this layout is going to look like b/c I have never posted this many pictures at one time. Hope this isn't confusing. Have a great rest of the week. Loveya all, Sarah

Labor Day 2007!!!

Hello Ladies,

Just wanted to remind you all that we have made reservations for the next Hoffmann vacation for Labor Day Week-end 2007. So please mark your calendars. I hope everyone can come, because we will have plenty of room. We have rented an entire inn for 3 nights (Fri, Sat, and Sun). It is called Grand Beach Inn and it is in New Buffalo, MI. (www.grandbeachinn.net) The inn has a heated outdoor pool and is a 5 minute walk from Lake Michigan. It also has a pool table and ping pong table. We are hoping this all works out well as it isn't too far of a drive.

Love you guys bunches! Aunt Bonnie

Good Evening, Ladies! Well I just made a FOOL of myself!! My Hoffman Family has a blog as well, and I had checked it, then went to check this one. I posted a little note, and entered it, then "viewed blog"...and it brought up MY families blog with my post for you guys!!! OOOOOHHH I am LOSING my mind!! OH well, at least all it said was something like this:

Those pic's were GREAT Rebekah...especially of Darci...what a sweetie!! That is so funny how she fell asleep. We just got Kelsey back tonight from Tim and Christa's. They had Paige and Kels out for a few days...they had alot of fun!! Not much else new around here...OH! I do have some good news...My dad had another scan last week and it was clear!! SO thankful for God's healing!! Well, I'll try to do better at posting, sleep well, and I love you all!!
Kristy

A few Pictures

Hi Ladies! Thanks for the picture Booxy! It was fun to see all of the girls together!

It inspired me to post some pictures of my family. Matt and I just realized that besides the picture of our family that we had taken at Booxy's wedding, we don't have a single family picture! Isn't that pathetic! We were going to an open house farewell thing for a family in our church and we were supposed to take a picture of our family and we couldn't find a single one! So, we've decided, we need to start asking people to take our picture (kind of an awkward thing to do all the time) or learn to use my mini tripod! So, these pictures are once again with me behind the camera.

Here is Matt on Sunday morning with the kids. He likes to play the piano...unfortunately, the kids like to play whenever he does too. But I think in this picture, they were actually letting him play alone! I love this picture because it's all three of my sweethearts in one big hug!
Here is Josh. It seems like he always has a bruise or something on his face! This one was from falling on the corner of the coffee table. I heard it from a couple rooms away. He was pretty happy in this picture though. He loves to have me take a picture and then look at it right away. Here is little Doozer laughing. She is growing up so fast. Can you believe she is almost one years old!?! I can't!! She is such a wonderful baby. I love being her mom. Josh is always so happy to see her in the mornings. They just laugh when they see eachother. It's so cute.
This is a picture of Darci on Tuesday. I had gone to Bible study in the morning. By time we left, Darci was ready for her nap. Unfortunately, I had to go to the grocery store. So, she wasn't able to go to sleep for another hour and a half. She was a perfect angel in the stores. I didn't realize how tired she was until I got home and started feeding her. She got more and more sleepy until she seemed to fall asleep while continueing to eat! She was Sleep-eating! She would pat her tray to find more food and then put it in her mouth and chew it up. The whole time her eyes were shut and she was practically snoring! Finally she just laid her head down and went to sleep. The picture below is when she finally went to sleep. Josh and I thought it was so funny we just laughed and laughed. It is so fun that Josh is starting to understand humor. It seems like just lately we've started finding the same things funny. I love it when we look at eachother and just burst out laughing together!
Well, that's all for now. Love you all. HOpefully, we could start hearing from some more of you soon. You don't have to post pictures or have anything important to say. Just say something! Even if it's just BLah! Just so we know you're still out their reading and breathing!! J.K.

Love you,

Rebekah

Mom's Birthday Party

Hoffmann girls had a great time this weekend for Mom's Birthday! Love you all!

I am Still alive

Hey girls!

I just got onto this blog again after probably 1 month 1/2 absence so I just thought I'd write. It has been fun catching up on your lives, even though as I sit here, my kids are probably destroying my house!! :) Oh Well!!

Last night I was sitting in church, appreciating Uncle Denny's sermon - talking about faith and God's will, and I starting thinking about our adoption. Then it hit me! I've been always talking about getting our referral (the picture of our child) in the distant future. But the future is quickly becoming the present! We have all of our paperwork compiled and are just waiting for Immigration to approve our homestudy. At this point, we have to get our documents notarized, authenticated, and legalized and then we are ready for our referral. We could be looking at a picture of our son, in less than 1 month!!!! AHHH! Can you believe it?? I can't! :) It's a little scary, exciting, unknown, scary, exciting... you get the idea.

Please pray that God will show us clearly who our son is - we can accept or decline any referral. Pray that we will have continued confirmations as we go along in this process. God has called us to be faithful and we are excited to be in this position but we definately have some anxieties. I'm a little nervous about his medical background. We are supposed to get complete medical history but obviously things could go differently. Also, I'm a little nervous about having 3 children!! We will not be going to get him until on average 4-6 months after we get the referral. Again, anything could happen, it could be 3 months, it could be a year. Another concern is that the birthmother sees him 3-4 different times throughout the process to sign papers and can stop the process and take him back at anytime. Once we choose our referral, we will have our hearts set on him and that would be hard.

Adoption is so unknown and things can change at any time. We plan for the best but have to be realistic too! Please pray for us and we soon enter this new phase of adoption. I thought the paperwork was stressful but once we know who our son is....it creates a whole new dynamic! It is pretty awesome though. I already love him as my boy and pray for him everyday.

Paige talks about him a lot too. She insists that his name IS Guatemala. We are going to name him Hudson David but she told me yesterday that we can call him Hudson but she will call him Guatemala! Some friends asked her if she prays for her brother, she said - "No! I pray to the God of Heaven!!" I love my girl! :)

I love you all too! Sorry for such a long post. I'm making up for lost time! Have a great day!

love,
Jami

I am Still alive

Hey girls!

I just got onto this blog again after probably 1 month 1/2 absence so I just thought I'd write. It has been fun catching up on your lives, even though as I sit here, my kids are probably destroying my house!! :) Oh Well!!

Last night I was sitting in church, appreciating Uncle Denny's sermon - talking about faith and God's will, and I starting thinking about our adoption. Then it hit me! I've been always talking about getting our referral (the picture of our child) in the distant future. But the future is quickly becoming the present! We have all of our paperwork compiled and are just waiting for Immigration to approve our homestudy. At this point, we have to get our documents notarized, authenticated, and legalized and then we are ready for our referral. We could be looking at a picture of our son, in less than 1 month!!!! AHHH! Can you believe it?? I can't! :) It's a little scary, exciting, unknown, scary, exciting... you get the idea.

Please pray that God will show us clearly who our son is - we can accept or decline any referral. Pray that we will have continued confirmations as we go along in this process. God has called us to be faithful and we are excited to be in this position but we definately have some anxieties. I'm a little nervous about his medical background. We are supposed to get complete medical history but obviously things could go differently. Also, I'm a little nervous about having 3 children!! We will not be going to get him until on average 4-6 months after we get the referral. Again, anything could happen, it could be 3 months, it could be a year. Another concern is that the birthmother sees him 3-4 different times throughout the process to sign papers and can stop the process and take him back at anytime. Once we choose our referral, we will have our hearts set on him and that would be hard.

Adoption is so unknown and things can change at any time. We plan for the best but have to be realistic too! Please pray for us and we soon enter this new phase of adoption. I thought the paperwork was stressful but once we know who our son is....it creates a whole new dynamic! It is pretty awesome though. I already love him as my boy and pray for him everyday.

Paige talks about him a lot too. She insists that his name IS Guatemala. We are going to name him Hudson David but she told me yesterday that we can call him Hudson but she will call him Guatemala! Some friends asked her if she prays for her brother, she said - "No! I pray to the God of Heaven!!" I love my girl! :)

I love you all too! Sorry for such a long post. I'm making up for lost time! Have a great day!

love,
Jami

Study Break

Check out the beautiful job the workers did on my car. Now when my lights are on my car has one I open and one half closed (check out the headlights!)









As a Study Break I wrote you all a little song:
I'm a little sippy cup
Short and Stout
I don't have a handle
But here is my spout
When I get all filled up
Hear me shout.
Kids tip me over
But I don't pour out!

I found this little sippy cup under our couch....yes still with milk (well I think it was milk) in it......YUCK!!! Talk about good quality sippy cups, I can't believe it didn't smell! So if anyone is missing a cute little sippy cup from April (yes 3 months ago) let me know...I'll bring in home next weekend.









I take my certification exam Tomorrow (Friday at noon) and Aaron takes his Step 2 Boards on Monday (all day), so if you have a moment we'd appreciate a little prayer! Love you and miss you all!
Booxy

Back from Canada...

...And my hubby's already planning the next one. Good greif! Maybe some of you didn't even know, but yeah, we went to Canada. It was nice...beautiful weather, fun times, decent fishing, but it's good to be home. It was much needed, the relaxing, quiet, not a care in the world schedule. And guess what...I caught the biggest fish! =) (hehe...Chad doesn't like hearing that) I'll just throw a few pic's on here from it. I also want to say, Matt and Rebekah, I can see how you would feel bad about this, but it honestly could have happened with any of our kids. (esp mine) We are always having to tell them to be careful and slow down around older people. One Sunday Kelsey just ran and jumped up into my Grandpa Farney's arms, and Praise the Lord that 89 yr old man caught her!! But I couldn't believe it! And Sarah...you certainly shouldn't feel bad about Josiah's rock incident. That was completly a freak thing!! We love you all, and are thankful she's doing well. When my Grandma Hoffman fell 5-6 years ago, somehow she banged up her face bad! My uncle sent out an email of her picture, and "UFO: Unidentified Fallen Oldie" So compassionate! But she even laughed. I still can't figure out how she could have looked so bad from a fall. Grandma looks great! :) Well it's getting way too late, so I'm gonna sign off. Good night, girls.
Kristy

My precious car!

Just thought I'd share with you the nice dent job on my car! It was more of a hassle than anything this last week. But I did get a nice rental car (2006 Mazda) for the week...stay tuned to see the new and improved Ford Contour!



Aaron and I watched "While you were sleeping" last weekend and I'm glad to share with you that Aaron is a fan. He was a little apprehensive of a "chick flick" but laughed alot and will now be joining us on our fequent quotes from the movie.
Love you all and miss you tons!
Bekah

We are SO Sorry!

I just wanted to make an apology to the whole family for our major role in Grandma's accident. We feel so horrible about it. We know that you aren't all furious with us but we are with ourselves! Anyway, I think Josh has learned that he can't push Grandma. He keeps saying, "No! No! Pushing Grandma josh!" So, I hope he understands.

Anyway, I wanted you to all know we're very sorry for what happenned.

Love,
Rebekah

I'm not sure why I can't move these pictures around to put them in the right order! Oh well...
this is a picture of Matt and me on Sunday in Washington D.C. Don't we have a lovely A.C. church in D.C.?! :) Actually, this is a "side door" to the National Cathedral. It was very beautiful. We went there after church on Sunday.

This is Matt and me at Arlington Cemetery. There was this beautiful garden area around Lee's home at the top of the cemetery. But since we tried to take this picture ourselves, you can't see any of the beauty...just my greasy face! Yuck! I was so dumb and didn't wear or even pack my tennis shoes for this trip. I thought my "comfy" sandals would be good enough. Not so much!!! Walking aproximately 7 miles in sandals will make any sandal feel like a torturing machine!! But I still enjoyed all the sights. Matt said next time we are going to have to think about practicality before fashion! I said, I wasn't even wearing my fashionable shoes!! He just shook his head...poor man. I think he thinks I'm crazy!

This is us posing on the North side (I think) of the Washington Monument. The Lincoln Monument is way behind us. Unfortunately, we weren't thinking and posed right in front of it.

I took this picture of Darci a couple days before we left for D.C. I would pull out my camera and look at this picture every time I would get lonesome for her on the trip. This is one of her favorite things to do. Whenever she sees me loading the dishwasher she crawls at top speed towards me and stands up next to it and tries to pull everything out that I'm trying to load. It can be frustrating, but I still like the picture.

Here is the capitol. We had gorgeous weather the whole time we were there. The only time we had rain was when we were sitting in the airport ready to leave. Then we had a horrible storm which made our flight late, which meant we were going to miss our connecting flight in Atlanta. So we ended up staying one more night in Washington D.C.

On Saturday, we went to the Holocaust museum. I think it's a must for anybody who has time to go there when they visit Washington D.C. It was so moving and sobering. We were there for 6 hours and still didn't read or see every single thing. They finally had to kick us out because it was closing time. I still think about it everyday...sometimes multiple times a day. Matt and I said that after being there we feel like we should never complain again. It's pathetic how quickly I fall back into complaining again. We had so many emotions and thoughts after being there. WE just talked and talked afterwards. WE had questions like, "What would we have done in that kind of a society?" "Would we have been courageous enough to stand up for the Jews even if it meant possible death?" "Why did God allow such a horrible thing to happen to them?" "What must God think throughout history as He was watched the 'church' persecute the Jewish people?" "Are there people in my life that I look up to so much that I hardly question anything they say? (like the people of Germany did with Hitler)". Anyway, those were just some of the things we talked about.

Well, I don't want to be depressing. I was just sharing what we did there! We felt so thankful for our country after being in Washington D.C. It makes you proud to be an American!

Well, I better go now. Love you all!

Love,
Rebekah

Hey, good lookin's!

How are the hoffmann gal's, on this beautiful Friday Morning?? it hardly seems like a friday-seems like the week just started with the 4th stuck in the middle of it! Bekah, that pic of Aaron is hilarious!! You take some great pic's! ('course your hubby gives you plenty of opportunities!) :) Is everyone having a good summer??
OK...here's a question for ALL of you! What has been your highlight so far of this summer?? I think our's might still be coming...we're leaving for Canada thurs. the 13th! We haven't really done much so far, except for camping this past weekend. It was certainly a highlight, but not a very good one. :) It all started when we got there and had a hard time trying to level the camper. It took a long time, & tried our patience. We got a dent in our van from this, as when we re-hitched it to move it a little, it slipped off the hitch and hit the van. It was so hot, and the a/c unit on our pop-up went ka-put last summer, so we were regretting not getting that fixed first! Oh, and our awning broke because there was so much wind one night! Abbi got a tick on her head and Chad had one on his leg! This was the last time using our camper! It's just too much work, and with the ages of our kids, it's not worth it. Camping is more stressful, than relaxing right now! Now that I think of it, I don't know how much we'll get for our camper...sounds like we have some repairs to make! But we need the money right now, instead.

Alright, enough of my rambling...sorry for boring you all. Hope you have a great weekend!
Kristy

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Aaron and I spent a relaxing couple days at the Sleeping Bear Dunes. If anyone is looking for a nice place to stay at a bed and breakfast for a get away let us know. We stayed at a wonderful home just 20 minutes from the Dunes. The owner of our B&B recommended a conservacy area just 5 minutes away from the B&B that had just been acquired by their group. The No Tresspassing signs were still up but he told us to have at it. So we explored the area a ton. We also spend an afternoon kayaking on the Platte river, which goes from Platte lake to Lake Michigan...and is as warm as bath water! The weather was perfect and enjoyed having a few days before the business of studying sets back in. Hope all is well!
Bekah

Tree Down

Hi all,

Thought you would like to see a picture of our beautiful Ash tree! We had quite a storm Thursday afternoon. I went to the basement until the storm was over. I came up and this is what I saw! It was so disappointing. It was such a nicely shaped tree. Now we have a mess to clean up. It could have been so much worse. There are several trees closer to the house. We are very thankful it wasn't one of those!

love ya,
Aunt Barb

Cute Pic's

Thanks for posting those, guys! Looks like you had a great time! That's great that you pushed Grandma up Laurell Falls - bet she loved it. Well I gotta keep going...have a Great day, everyone!
Love you all, Kristy

More pics...