Wii love Bunnie...

Most of you know who I am referring to. And for those of you who don't, allow me to introduce you. Bunnie's "real" name is Barbara. She has attended every birthday party (since we met her in 2005) and calls us weekly. She refers to herself as our "backup" grandma and we call her Bunnie (pronounced Bunny). Why that name? When we first met her L (age 3) was given the responsibility of coming up with a name to address both Barbara and her husband Bob. Mr and Mrs Clark were to formal, but grandpa and grandma might offend others. L came up with Bunnie and Pockey and the names stuck.
As I mentioned before, she has come (across town or across the country) to every birthday and this year is no exception. H will be celebrating her 5th birthday this Tuesday.

L worked hard on a welcome sign that we posted in the guest room....

And this evening was spent teaching Bunnie what a Wii is and how to play it. I must say I was impressed!! She was great and loved to play Wii golf...as you can tell she was very serious!!

 

Lord, Thank you for providing us with a wise woman who loves our children. Her desire to see them grow in their faith is evident as I see her spending time with them. She is such a wonderful gift!

What goes best with a MANLY shirt?

A logical answer would be: A pair of rugged hiking boots or a mustache or maybe even a good pair of jeans. However K had a different answer...MAKEUP. AND lots of it!! While K was SUPPOSED to be napping he up got into L's dress-up makeup (a CHRISTmas gift) and proceeded to cover not only himself and his MANLY shirt but also his bed, carpet and walls. Impressed? I was!! Considering he managed to do this in the 3 minutes since I had checked on him. My friend Dodie made a good point...at least it was just makeup and not something else (ie permanent marker or bodily stuff...GROSS)!

Note to self: From now on keep ALL makeup put away OUT of K's reach!!

As you can tell daddy had to discipline our little man for disobeying Mommy (and playing in makeup)! Notice the tube of lipstick on the back of the potty : )

Lord, Thank you for my little man. Thank you for his curious and fun spirit. Help me to see things through his eyes and enjoy this time of adventure and wonder with him.

Fancy Schmancy

We are LOVING our new home here in Fort Worth. We live in off campus student housing. It is exactly what we need for this stage of our life. There are so many kids running around playing. Families outside visiting and encouraging each other. It is a 3 bedroom/2 bath apartment (we live upstairs). Most importantly our perception of things has changed greatly over the past few year. Several years ago I would have cringed at the thought of living in an old apartment. Now I can see the Lord's provision for my family and am excited to call this place our home. We unpacked quickly and already feel like we've been here for months. OK enough about us...on with the tour!!

Here is the view when you come into our front door

The living room is to the left and to the right is our dining room and kitchen.

Try not to covet our SWEET dining room chairs.

 

This is our table of pictures. Being away from home is always hard. If you don't see your picture, it's because we don't have one. Please send us a family picture (any size) and send it to us. We would like to fill our hallway with pictures of family and friends. Send them to: 5612 James Ave #203b Fort Worth, TX 76134

Check out this cool plaque we picked up while we were in Mexico (Dec 09). It says "God bless our home"..

We hope you enjoyed the tour. If you want to see more then schedule a visit!! We have a guest room...just saying. Have a great TUESDAY people!!

Thank you Lord for providing just what we need here at Southwestern. Every good and perfect gift comes from you!!

It has been our experience, in our 9 years of hopping from place to place on our adventure with the Lord, that good friendships take time. Each time we've moved to a new state (7 times in all) it takes about a year to make a lasting, true friend (sometimes a little more or a little less). And it's normally takes more time than that to find "couple" friends. Which I might add, are much harder to come by once you have children!! Mostly because every parent goes about their job differently (not better or worse, just different) and sometimes that makes it very hard. Also I have had great girlfriends that I loved dearly but when our husbands got together they didn't have much in common. OR the couple got along great but the kids fought like crazy and it wasn't "fun" to spend much time together.
All that makes me so thankful for the friends God has provided us with here! The day we were moving into campus housing we were very busy (duh) moving in boxes from the moving truck. I come out to make another trip and I hear this loud belly laugh coming from inside the truck and I also hear L giggling. I look inside and L had already made a new friend. K is 7 and her laugh still makes me smile. Her and L were dancing in the truck and pretending to move the heavy boxes. We soon realized K had an older sister too, she is also a "K" and is 10. Later that day we met their parents because our girls were invited to play at their house. Their parents have been here at Seminary for 2 years and have 3 semesters left. She is expecting a son and so they love our little man.
All that to say, we are beyond blessed. J has helped and encouraged Matt is so many ways and they rarely go the day without talking or visiting. And R and I have had many heart to hearts and just got back from a womens retreat at here home church in Canton, TX (about 1.5 hrs from here). It has been so nice to have a family who has already made a path were we are now walking.

FUNNY story...
We had the Mensingers over on NYE. While we were preparing for them to come over H was super excited
for them to arrive. Well, when they got there and rang the doorbell H jumped up and said "they're here"!! However she seemed disappointed to see them. I asked her why and she said "when are the BOY SINGERS going to get here"?! We all had a good laugh and I hadn't realized that she though we were having a group of male singers over for the night instead of our sweet friends!!

Lord, every good and perfect gift comes from you. Thank you for providing us friendship with the Mensingers and other families here at Southwestern. We have been so encouraged by your works in their lives and continue to find hope in you alone.

playing catch up

White CHRISTmas

A few weeks prior to our move to Texas it snowed. Now, normally it only snows once or twice a year. So our kiddos were pretty bummed when they heard the news. Expecting that that was THE snow of winter and they had missed it. But as you can see that was not the case. On the eve of CHRISTmas Eve it was a balmy 74 degrees outside. While watching the news that night the meteorologist predicted a chance of snow for the following day. I said YEAH RIGHT and went to bed. The next morning it was FREEZING!! Seriously, it was 26 degrees on my last minute trip to wal-mart. But no precipitation in sight. BUT when I finished my shopping and headed for the car it WAS snowing. It snowed from 10am to 8 that evening. We loved it (although we had friends that made the 2 hr drive to Abilene that day and it took them 8 hrs...I bet they didn't appreciate that)!! It was so cold that night that we did have a white CHRISTmas. The first one on record for the Fort Worth area.

Thank you Lord for allowing us the desires of our hearts, no matter how small or mundane. And allowing us to see the joy in our children as they played in the snow that YOU created. Our CHRISTmas mornings are always special only because of your gift to us.

As you know from the previous post, we just arrived here in Texas. We had been spending time in California with family while we paid off some debt and prepared for life here at Seminary. Many days were spent just like this. With our toes in the warm sand. soaking up the sun. Time spent at the beach was nice. It provided a cool place to come to in the heat of summer and many opportunities to share the gospel. The picture above was K's first time at the beach and he LOVED it. That is until we dug a hole and sat all 3 kids in it. He was all smiles unil he realized his legs were buried...oops! I guess he didn't realize it was supposed to fun. But to give him credit I can see, from his perspective, how that would be scary!!
Now that we are settled here I must say...I do miss the beach!

Who are we?

We are the Coelho's (Coelho is Portuguese and means "rabbit")! We are back in Texas and living in the Fort Worth area attending the college at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. We have 3 little ones and will refer to them as L, H and K (for privacy reasons as this is a public blog). Please follow along as we blog about our new life here at SWBTS and what the Lord does in the lives of those around us.