Guest Writer

Greetings!

All readers this week are in the typing hands of the lone male figure (well, Samson sorta counts) of the Sauder household. It's been so long since I last wrote on here, I'm beginning to wonder if there's a conspiracy to keep my man thoughts off of the blog! Let's get to the pics.

Here, Nora is getting acquainted with one of those scary owl things we found at Home Depot. She's pretty curious about everything and not really intimidated by anything (except the Chick Fil'A cow mascot, which I think we mentioned a couple weeks ago). I think it's neat that things that are supposed to be scary aren't to her. She's pretty adventurous, which is fun.

It's been a couple months since the last time teeth came in, and we knew our time was quickly counting down to the next bout of enamel eruption. Sure enough, Nora started to get whiny at night, slobbery, and not quite herself the other day. When those times come, she loves her good friends Mr. Tylenol and Noragel. However, I've been very impressed with her this time, as she's gone to bed 2 nights in a row without needing them. Hopefully, tonight (Wed) makes it 2 nights in a row of a complete night of sleep for her (& us, of course). Thankfully, she started this round of teething a couple days before we leave for vacation. It's just one of those cool little God things that we try to be mindful of.

Speaking of vacation, we leave tomorrow (Thursday) morning! We've been looking forward to this for quite awhile, as we head down to a rental house in the mountains near Gatlinburg, TN. It's in celebration of my Mom and Dad's 35th wedding anniversary. They've been awesome parents to me, and it's really cool we can all do this together. (Alissa, Nora, and I, Ben, Maria, and Owen, Megan, and Mom and Dad). I'm looking forward to doing some hiking and mountain biking, and some gaming with Ben. I'm also looking forward to a special night out with Alissa on one of the evenings yet to be determined to celebrate our 3rd anniversary, which was last week. I really can't believe it's been 3 years already! It's been really incredible to grow in my relationship with Alissa, and it's really cool to see how we've both grown in various areas of our lives. We've had a lot of fun during these 3 years! I truly believe God uses marriage to make people better servants for Him!

Well, I think I know why I'm kept off of this thing, because I start to ramble, like I'm doing now! I pray everyone reading this sees and knows how blessed you and I all are and experiences a peaceful rest of the week!

We'll report on the vacation next week. Thanks!

Josh