The Last Hoorah

Well, it was the last Saturday of Christmas break and we ventured out to Vasquez Rocks just north of Santa Clarita towards Palmdale. The rocks' origin is connected to the San Andreas fault (or so Wikipedia says). Anyway, the park includes 900 acres of fun!
What a great place to enjoy for a couple of hours climbing the rocks, hiking, and enjoying God's creation. The day was cool and windy but we wrapped up and spent a couple of hours at the park. Ali was enjoying the climb and Isaiah was ecstatic dressed in full army gear ready for the adventure complete with the camo do-wrag! Later that night we watched Kung-Fu Panda and then off to bed for church on Sunday.

Christmas 2008 Update

Well, it only took us over 10 months, but finally a long-awaited update to It's A Small World! The year has gone by so quick, I can't believe it. The kids are in school now at Grace Community School and Brent is about to enter his final year of Seminary! Yeah! The family can't wait and neither can I. We had a great month of December enjoying the celebration of Christmas complete with our own family traditions. This year Kim planned a special event for the family. We purchased tickets to see the new Bolt movie at the El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Blvd. The show came complete with an on-stage pre-show including Disney characters, a 3-D viewing of Bolt along with popcorn and soda! We had a ton of fun and enjoyed some of the entertainment out front as seen in this picture.

Our month long celebration was filled with our traditional advent book, Grace Church Christmas concert, Grace Community School concert, fellowship with friends and a trip to see some amazing Christmas lights in Santa Clarita. We also created a new tradition this year called the "Blessings Box." Each night that we read from our advent book we each wrote down something we were thankful for and placed it in the box. We then prayed and thanked the Lord for this blessing and invited his help to keep our minds focused on the true meaning of Christmas.

The Lord also blessed us with some great gifts, toys, and much needed clothing! My wife cooked a great Christmas lunch, ham with the fixins, oh yeah. We were amazingly blessed this Christmas, and as we strive to honor Christ with our lives, I pray that He will continue to bless us in this New Year! Praise His Holy Name!

Isaiah's 8th Birthday

Well, last Saturday was the big #8 for Isaiah! What an awesome kid! Kim and I are so very blessed that God would give us a son as wonderful as Isaiah (not leaving out Ali of course, but it is his birthday). He had a full on army party complete with tent, army fatigues, guns, swords, light sabres, grenades, the whole nine yards. As you can see, he is wearing a full flight suit that some of our friends got for him at the Air Force base in Colorado Springs. He bought the hat at the army surplus, and a close friend of mine who is an engineer in the Air Force gave him some authentic patches for Christmas. He wears it every day!

Some of his best buds were there partying with him as well, from left to right, Aiden, Sam, Isaiah, Alec, and Micah. The girls had fun too, although I think they might have been the opposing forces at one time or another. The party was full of fun laughter, hot dogs, junk food, and a fully camo'd cake! He received some new walkie talkies, a new webkinz, webkinz clothes, a book, among other things, and with the help of some of you, mom and dad were able to buy him a new Nintendo DS.

Kim and I are truly grateful for Isaiah. He is a fun kid who is happy go lucky, loves life, and his heart is tender towards God's Word and living his life to honor God. He is continually asking us how he can become a christian and follow God, and we are really excited about his teachable heart and wanting to know how he can be saved and make Jesus the Lord of his life. We give God the glory for him. Happy birthday Isaiah!

The Saga Continues pt.2......

I had a few moments this evening so I wanted to post a quick update on Isaiah. He is feeling better today. The doctor we have been seeing wanted him back on antibiotics every day and that may seem to be helping again. We are still trying to get the appointment at the other doctor. Only one lady makes the appointments and she was out sick today. So much for the advanced health care system that we have!

The Saga Continues...

I wanted to write a brief post and ask for your prayers for Isaiah. You may or may not know, that he has been dealing with a stomach issue for the past five months. Last September, the whole family had what we think was a stomach virus. For some time after that Isaiah continued to have problems and we had to take him back to the doctor. Unfortunately this was a slow process of getting tests and results, but finally by Thanksgiving the doctor determined that he had a parasite in his intestine. He began treatment for that but did not get any better. On top of that, the parasite that he had was very common and is typically not treated unless one has symptoms. We finally were referred to a Pediatric GI doctor and the process with this doctor has been painfully slow as well.

This doctor performed more tests and discovered that he has an infection in his small bowel. He has been treating this with antibiotics and at time Isaiah will improve but then he gets worse again. He experiences stomach pain 3-4 hours in the morning and most nights right at bedtime. This has gone on for some months and he is getting very tired of it, as are we. The strange thing about it is that when his stomach is not hurting he is vibrant and active and you would think he is a normal kid. But when the pain hits, he is miserable.

We have approval to see a second Pediatric GI doctor. Please pray that he will get a quick appointment and that God will use this doctor to get him on the road to recovery. Also, we ask that you pray for healing and strength for Isaiah as he deals with the pain, and that no further damage is being done to his small intestine from the infection.

I will keep you up to date as we know more.

Brent

More Pictures of the Small Manor

Well, I know that I said our next post would be the "Tale of Two Pigs" but Kim and the kids are gone to our favorite place to shop "Super Wal-Mart." So, taking a break from writing a 25 page paper on the background of Ephesians, I thought I would write a quick post and include some more pictures from our wonderful home.

The first picture is from the yard looking at the house. It is a guest house sitting just behind the main house on the property. We have a great front porch that we use continually through the spring and summer months. The second picture is a view of the mountains that surround. Interestingly enough, even when I sit at my desk in the bedroom I can see snow-covered mountains off to the west which are absolutely gorgeous. Every time I look at the mountains they remind me of God's creative power spoken of in Psalm 104:8, "The mountains rose and the valleys sank down to the place which You established for them." Even amidst $3+ gasoline and housing that is absolutely unaffordable, So. Cal does have some advantages. The magnificence of His creation warms the soul with comfort and joy.

Brent

The Small's World Enters the Blog World

Welcome to It's a Small World! Yeah that is right, the Small family has finally entered the 21st century by having our own blog spot. Our hope is that this site will be a tool for us to keep up with all of our family and friends around the world. I am not a prolific writer, so this first post will be short and sweet with hopefully much more entertaining and insightful news about our small family, no pun intended, to come real soon.

Well, maybe a few details with this first post.

As many of you know, we are nestled in our little guest house affectionately dubbed as the "The Small Manor" by friends in our Bible Study. Our little shack is nestled in Sand Canyon right outside of Los Angeles. We are surrounded by hills, mountains for those of you in Indiana, and we enjoy their beauty and the solitude they offer from the big city just over the hill. Many of you know that I work at Grace Community Church which is located in the San Fernando Valley home of over 2 million people. The church is about 20 miles from our home and some days it is kind of weird that I drive from the San Fernando Valley and end up out in the hills totally secluded from the city.

The kids enjoy it out here as we live on about 5 acres and they have a large area to run, play, ride bikes, dig, find lizards, and the occasional baseball game. We are truly blessed to be in this house and all that it affords. I have included one picture in this post that shows the yard in front of our house. I need to take a picture of the house and I will include that in a future post. Also, don't miss the slide show of some pictures last summer that are at the bottom of the page.

Next to come, the tale of two pigs....

Brent