Baby Dedication (and more)

After almost two months of silence on the blogging front, I am shocking the world with pictures that were taken just a few hours ago! This morning at church was Sam's baby dedication. He was the oldest one up there by over a year. :-) It was a blessing to be in front of our church family (and many of our Nav students and staff) to publicly affirm our desire to raise Sam as a man who loves Jesus. We know that this dedication has absolutely nothing to do with his eternal salvation. It is our prayer that one day in the future he will make his own decision to trust and follow Jesus. But for now (and always), we will do our best to tell Sam about how much Jesus loves him and to spend time reading the Bible and praying with him. What a high calling to get to spend time each day with this little man who we pray will one day be a warrior for Christ! Here are a few pics from this morning:


While I have my blogging inspiration going (and while Sam is napping), I'll share a few other recent pics as well:
This is us in Atlanta celebrating Thanksgiving. We are so thankful to be a family of three this year! Ben was growing a beard for No-Shave November with The Navigators (which is another story on its own), but is back to his normal beard-less self now. I did get pretty used to the beard by the end of the month, and told him I wouldn't mind if he grew one again. I don't think he wants to.

What do you get when you cross a little boy tripping over a toy with a metal queen bed frame? A five-hour ER visit and nine stitches! Three of them are underneath holding together the lower layer of skin, and six are on the top. It was a rough afternoon for all of us--the day before we left for a ten-day trip to Wisconsin and Chicago. Sam is healing really well though. It just looks like a scratch now, and we are told that if we use sunscreen every time he goes outside for the next year or so, it should heal so we can hardly see it. Like a friend of ours at church told us, "If a scar's not on your face, it doesn't count!"

The Andersons came to Florida to celebrate a late Christmas over New Year's weekend. Of course, the highlight was watching Sam and his cousin Isaac play together. They did great sharing and having fun together. And they kept each other entertained so the adults could talk without interruption once in awhile. Of couse, we wish they could see each other more, but we made the most of our time together! (Notice how great Sam's scar is already looking!)