Merry Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas 2007!!
Well, another year has come and gone, and here I am, once again typing out our yearly update/thankful letter. I am happy to report that this year has been a really good year for us. The best thing being the birth of our sweet little Nadia Elese on September 12th. She is in the 50th percentile in height and weight, extremely joyful and so gorgeous!! We all love her and the biggest battle is who gets to hold her now.
When we started the year we were home schooling Nolen and Emma and we loved it. It was great to have all of the time with them working together. I started to feel drained and soon realized that I was expecting and that I was not going to get immediately better. My doctor relayed that I was severely vitamin deficient and would have to start taking weekly injections and that should make me feel better. It did, but the weight of accomplishing everything and being pregnant and having a little one under 2 was weighing heavily on us, so we decided to put Nolen and Emma in The River Academy (the school that Scott works at) and the adapted immediately. God has clearly given us the most easy going kiddos ever. They jumped right in without any problems, made friends and finished up a great year. What a blessing the River Academy has been to us and our children!!! Did I mention that at that same time Nolen turned 8!? I can’t believe that we have been parents for 8 years. We all then piled on the plane in mid June, and went to Florida for a month to spend some much needed time with Scott’s family and to celebrate Emma’s 6th birthday and Mia’s 4th birthday ( Emma woke up that morning and declared, “I can’t believe I’m SIX! I love being SIX!”). We connected with a church right down the road from Scott’s mom’s house and the children went to their first EVER VBS. They made some great friends and so did we. We went out fishing with Scott’s grandpa and shopped with Scott’s mom and just in general had a great time. We ate a lot of fresh seafood and a lot of Scott’s grandma and uncle’s home cooking (!!!!), Scott killed a snake ( ask him about the event next time you see him)and we spent a lot of time with family. We came back with only a month and a half before school started, so Scott started serious intense prep work for his new classes that he would be teaching. We wiggled back into our life in Wenatchee by having LOTS of BBQ’s and eating more than our fare share of Scott’s famous burgers. In mid-August Titus turned a whopping 2-years-old . My parents and sister came out to Wenatchee to help at the end of August and stayed until mid-September after Nadia was born and it was an adventure for us all. We played Nertz until all hours of the night while laughing hysterically, went on walks and drank our weight in Frapitas. Did I mention that Nadia was born (like a true teacher’s child and grandchild,) on the first day of school? My parents then came out again to help us celebrate Nadia’s baptism. We had over 100 people over for a huge Baptismal Celebration thrown for my sweet babe by her loving and adoring father in true Welch fashion. This was definitely one for the books. Enter Robin Bowe. With a new baby and the hairy pick up and drop off schedule of having 3 children at the River I needed help. So Robin Bowe, one of Scott’s former students (and an amazing singer), volunteered to help us by picking Mia up after pre-K while she was waiting to leave for Brazil on a Rotary exchange. It was such a help to us and we will be eternally thankful to her for it. We spent another wonderful Thanksgiving week with Scott’s mom.
In short it has been another wonderful and eventful year in the Welch household and the Lord has blessed us richly with laughter and many songs!
Well, I hope you are all doing well. We look forward to hearing how you are doing in your Christmas letter !
Blessings~
Scott, Jen, Nolen, Emma, Mia, Titus and Nadia

Praise be to the Lord our God of Israel because he has come and as redeemed his people!
Luke 1:68