We're home!

We "road tripped" it to Texas and back for Christmas and loved every minute spent with our family and friends while we were there!  I was so worried that Grace would have a hard time leaving when it was time, but she did great!  I, on the other hand, cried like a baby when we left our parents.  It's just hard, you know?!  We love them so much!

On our way back to California, it began to settle in that we LIVE here!  I think that my brain may have actually thought we were on vacation from October until now.  Our trip back "home" made us Californians.  It was kind of weird and really great all at the same time.  It's good to get to the point where you can call a place HOME!  The best part of the trip back was when we started up "our mountain."  That's when I knew, this is my new home for sure!  I got excited about getting back to my house, getting things put away, starting school back up in a week...yep, it's HOME!

We had been home for two days, and the snow came again!  It was just a light dusting, but you know that we were still excited.  THEN...it started snowing again!  It is beautiful up here, even more so than the first time that it snowed.  Take a look!

This is on the road into the state park.  I love this property and it was so pretty today with the snow!

A perfect little family of trees!

The trees were absolutely beautiful, covered with snow.  My picture does not do it justice!

This is my driveway!

We have a group of missionaries here right now, and the children made this awesome snowman.  He was at least as tall as Grace!

Even though it was snowing today, we headed down the mountain to go to church.  We are still searching for the church that will be home to us.  We visited a smaller "church start" today, and were really impressed with how very nice everyone was!  Micah said it could have been because we were the only visitors among the 20-25 people there.  (I mean I guess that would make everyone come and visit with us.)  Really though, the people were so friendly.  

On our way home, there was a rainbow going across the snow covered mountains into the valley.  It was beautiful!  (And no, I did not have my camera to get a picture.  Ugh!)  Then, when we got up to the top of the mountain, where the snow was falling, we looked out over the valley and the ocean was reflecting the sun as it was setting.  I have really not seen anything that beautiful in a long time!  (Maybe ever!)  

So, it's good to be home in this amazingly beautiful place with our wonderful staff family (whom we greatly missed while we were gone)!  Thank you Lord, for filling our hearts with a love for Palomar Mountain and for giving us a passion for Palomar Christian Conference Center that allows us to leave our families to serve here.  We can't wait to see what God has in store for 2013!