Firefighter Michaleigh

On Tuesday, Michaleigh had a field trip to the fire station. We decided to send her to Hope Christian Preschool this year. She goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 until 11:30. She has loved her school, her teachers and her classmates.



We all met at the firehouse and had a tour of the station with Fireman Pete. Anastin even came along. She did great! I think she was more mesmerized by the ceiling fans than the fire trucks but oh well!



Here is a picture of one of the firefighters showing the kids all of the gear and stuff in the fire engine. They also got to get in the engine and sit in the firemen's seats.



Here are a few of the girls in Michaleigh's class. After her field trip, we went to Kyle's house for a playdate. Kyle is another one of her preschool buddies.

Let me introduce you...

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting our precious little girl, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce you to Anastin Faith Shughart. She made her entrance into our family on October 1st, 2009.



The moment we laid eyes on her, we were amazed with how beautiful she is...just like her big sister. She was named Anastin (in case you were wondering...) because as we did with Michaleigh, we wanted to give her a name that was a little bit of dad and a little bit of mom so we took Andy and Kristin and came up with Anastin. Her middle name is Faith because she was born in 2009 which for our family was a year of great faith in our Lord. We wanted to remember that and share that with her.



She is a happy little girl who brings a lot of joy to our house. It is quite obvious that she and her sister love each other very much! I think they are both anxious for Anastin to be big enough for them to play together. She is now almost six months old and is getting up on her hands and knees, giggling, drooling, eating new foods all the time and grabbing anything she can and putting it her in mouth!

Backyard Wildlife

Okay, so it's been a while since we've posted anything but we've had a lot going on in our family in the last few months which for those of you who don't know all the details, we'll tell you more in upcoming posts. One of the major events has been our move from our apartment to our new home in December. We thank the Lord everyday for our home! We absolutely love it. We live in a great neighborhood here in the suburbs of Rochester in a town called Greece. It's much like any suburban town with lots of homes, stores, etc. So keeping that in mind, we've been suprised by the wildlife we have encountered in our backyard these last few months. Mind you, our backyard butts up with at least four other neighbors but despite that fact we have had some surprising brushes with nature. One morning a few weeks ago, Andy woke me up at about 6:00 am telling me to come see the deer in our neighbors backyard. I have a hard time getting up before the sun gets up, but I did my best to jump out of bed and head downstairs to our kitchen. We looked out and saw six deer (two buck and four doe) walking around in our neighbor's yard. Then we watched all six deer jump our back fence, go through our yard and jump our side fence into our neighbors yard. They then jumped their fence and headed across the street. It was quite a sight! Now today we have some new friends who seem to be enjoying our above ground pool. Most of the winter, our pool has been more like an ice skating rink but now that the temperatures are warming up and the ice has mostly melted, it has become a rather large bird bath...or should we say duck bath! Here is a photo of our new duck family, Fred and Ethel. There is also a photo of Andy and Michaleigh feeding our ducks.