Dedication

 Our little Lucia Gloria was dedicated to God at our church on October 14, 2012

We promised as Lucia's parents to show her God's love, demonstrating what it means to trust and follow Jesus and with the help of our family, friends, church community and God's grace, we will try our best to do so. Our hope is that she will someday understand Jesus' love for her and she will decide to be baptized as a symbol of new life and her decision to follow Him. Hopefully it'll go something like this...

"Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. " Ephesians 3:17-18

And, you know, this part will take awhile to really grasp, like, the whole rest of her life. But we'll be there to help however we can (and maybe she will even help us grasp it as well).

 Here she was when we were waiting to go up in front

 The Johnson family. And, incidentally, this is also an accidental picture of four generations of women on my side (my grandma to my left, me, Lucia and my mom on the right). Too bad everyone wasn't looking.

 She did great up front and entertained the crowd.

 Then things went a little downhill when she wanted to grab everything in her sight so Pete asked me to hold the book while he tried to keep her away from his mic.

 Presenting Lucia to the congregation. One of my favorite moments (not pictured) was when our family came up to lay hands on us and Lucia, covering her in prayer.

It was a special day. It made me think about my own baptism, done in that very same spot when I was a baby by Pastor Art Nelson, who happened to be preaching the Sunday Lucia was dedicated. And a very good sermon it was. The text and sermon focused on the rich, young ruler who was unable to cast off everything and follow Jesus. I pray that we parent Lucia in a way that she has the least possible to cast off when the time comes for her to decide to follow Jesus; that we will be a help and not a hindrance to her loving Jesus. But we know that we will fail in one way or another since we are human so I also pray that God will help us out on that end too (you know, being able to apologize when we're wrong and admitting to our own faults).

 And to make it even more special, grandma Debbie was in town to celebrate with us. Somehow this is the only picture I took from the whole week but it was a great week having her here.

Now she's got to get busy writing some thank you notes!

Thanks for taking the pics, Greta!

Lucia lately (7 months)

 

Lucia is a little over 7 months now and changing each day right before our very eyes. She can get herself up and down from sitting, she's crawling and starting to become more and more interested in things up high and out of her reach so it's only a matter of time before she's standing as well. 

She loves to move around, kick her legs and make noises. She still loves to find the tags on all her toys and she continues to sleep holding onto a sock every night and every nap. She seems to enjoy sleeping and keeps a pretty regular schedule these days. And lucky for us, her eating habits have gotten a lot less messy. She is starting to get more interactive with others, especially her cousins, squealing and kicking when she sees any of them.

Here are a few pics of things she likes to do these days...

 She loves her exersaucer

 Showing off her skills

 She also got sick for the first time a few weeks ago. She just looked so sad :(

 I love this face she does

 One of our favorite little things she does is tilt her head to the side. This picture kind of captures it. It's one of those things that seems so little to others but to Matt and I it's easily THE cutest thing we have ever laid eyes upon, like ever.

 Oh man, she loves riding in shopping carts. She pretty much looks like this the whole time while making eye contact with every single person we go past and kicking her legs.

 And she loves hanging out in the Johnny Jump-up

 We've been going to the park down the street from us a lot lately. She loves the swings but I think she likes watching the other kids at the park even more.

 It is so fun to watch her grow!

Our New Place

 We moved to a new place almost 3 months ago so I figure it's time to post some pics. Above is our street; I love all the trees!

 Moving day went well. All the furniture and boxes were lovingly schlepped down 3 flights of stairs then up 3 more flights in 100 degree plus heat. Phew, we have some great family and friends! We loved our old place for many reasons: it was a fun spot, walking distance to tons of great stuff plus there was a man across the courtyard who played beautiful piano music and it wafted in through the windows all day. It was fitting that as I packed up the last of our things, Lucia took a nap to the music of the 'piano man' one last time.

There are a lot of positives about the new apartment...we have more space, Lucia gets her own room and we have a dishwasher, finally! We love living in Evanston. It's neighborhoody with a city feel. There are lots of parks, it's close to the lake plus on the walk to the grocery store you pass 2 antique shops, perfect!  Taking a walk the other day, I realized that this is my most favorite place we have lived so far. And that is saying something since we have lived 6 different places in the 6 years we've been married. 

If you know me well, then you know I like to arrange things in a particular way and I keep rearranging until I get them just right. This means that some things in our place have moved around even since I took these pictures. There are more projects planned but I'm getting there :) Here's a peak...

 Our street with our building on the left. What's that I see? Ooh, parking spots right in front! Definitely an improvement on the last parking situation.

 Our building

 Welcome to 3W

 It was obviously meant to be...check out our front door key :)

(Unless you read it as "Panic, Johnsons"

And now a little tour...here's the entry way

 Into the kitchen (and the backdoor)

Kitchen

 Table from my grandma and grandpa's house

 Dining room

Looking back into the kitchen from the dining room

Looking from the dining room into the living room. These two rooms are basically the same layout in our new place as in our old....just a little more spacious.

Living room

 

Our little office area. (Does the desk look familiar, Julie?)

Lucia's room

 

Our room looking down the hall into Lucia's room. Plus the bathroom is in that hall but it's kind of boring right now. I've got some ideas for it though...

Our room

One of my favorite things about our room are the windows and all the light that floods in. I'm pretty sure I gasped when I first saw it.

Love waking up to this!

Our building

This is the playground/park just one block away

And the lake path is about a 15 minute walk

There are a ton of beautiful, old churches all around Evanston. This one is down the block from us. And in it's backyard of this church is another beautiful church. I noticed that the parish houses for the two churches neighbor each other.

And two blocks away is this lovely rose garden/park.

And here is Lucia waking up in her own room for the first time. Apparently it was tough on her since she seems to have bags under eyes (didn't know that was possible for a baby). And to bring it full circle, Lucia now falls asleep to the sounds of a flautist practicing across the courtyard instead of piano.

So there it is...come visit us! Seeing all these pictures makes me think the walls look bare, time to get to work on some those projects...