Goodbye, January!

We have had several good dustings of snow but not much warm weather

Norah on her 2nd birthday

Getting ready to run the dogs with the 4-wheeler

Practicing making snow angels- that and throwing snowballs are the girls' favorite winter activity!

Oh, goodness! I haven't written in almost 3 weeks! I will begin marking my calendar again to schedule writing posts. Usually, if it's on my calendar, I don't forget, and it gets done.
We are at the end of January and I must admit that this month alone has felt like a year. The day we celebrated New Years' seems like a very, very long time ago. But I suppose being sick and not doing much will make time drag on. But I am slowly feeling better as I get into my 2nd trimester. A few exciting things have happened and I feel ready to take on the second half of winter! (If you don't live in Alaska, we don't get spring until May up here in the mountains, so it is still a long way off!)
We celebrated Norah's 2nd birthday yesterday. We had a small party with friends over to have cake & ice cream, but I think Norah's favorite part was the many balloons we blew up and released on the floor. She especially enjoyed sitting on them and bouncing until they popped. There are only a few balloons left now! My favorite part was immediately after she blew out her candles, when she tried to plant her face in the frosting on the cake. We stopped her in the nick of time but I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see a face print in the cake. :) Of course, I can't find my camera's battery charger at the moment, so there are no pictures. We were able to get a few grainy shots with our webcam when she opened gifts. We are thankful to God for giving us such a funny, tough, good-natured little girl.
In other exciting news, the sunshine is back! With gaining about 5 minutes of daylight a day, the sun can now climb high enough over Teepee Ridge to just shine in our windows for about 20 minutes each morning! That is, on days that the sun is out. When it's cloudy it's much warmer and we can play outside, so I'm not sure which I prefer.
Today one of the water lines in camp broke, and it caused all of camp except Ranch Camp to be without water. Being the wonderful housewife that I am, I was way behind on dishes and laundry and had planned to finally get them all caught up today. Not anymore! Justin and few of the other staff hauled water from Ranch Camp to the families around campus so that they could at least manage. I did attempt washing a small load of laundry in the bathtub and it did not go well. Am I ever thankful that we live in the age we do and have all kinds of modern conveniences. I would not do well as an Alaskan homesteader!
If you don't receive our mailchimp updates, Justin has announced that we are at about 97% of our support goal and while that is incredibly exciting (I honestly couldn't imagine that we would ever make it so far!), that  we now have to raise our goal slightly to $3800 per month rather than $3330. This is for several reasons-
1. Our family is growing- and our budget will have to follow suit! :)
2. We were unaware when we initially set our support goal that all families on staff are required to live at 3% less than they actually bring in. This is to provide a cushion for costs and while we do agree and appreciate it, we were not able to include that fact when we set our original goal.
3. We forgot to allow for taxes to be taken out of our monthly income (silly us- we forgot that Uncle Sam always takes his cut. :) ). While our income has still been enough to live on monthly, our savings funds and things we would like to eventually save for (retirement, children's college fund) have had to be left aside.

We want to be good stewards of the money God has so graciously provided for us and stay honest with our needs. And while it's a terrible sinking feeling to go from 97% to 85%, which is where we believe we fall with our new goal, we know that God always provides, obviously! He has done things that we will never forget and that have grown our faith considerably since arriving here. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for supporting us financially and in prayer. We love every one of you!

P.S. If you would like to receive our quarterly updates written from Justin by email, just shoot him an email at justin_scott_hostetter@yahoo.com and he will add you to the list!

January 11th Update

After recovering from surgery, the first thing Norah wanted to eat was a cookie. We didn't say no!

The girls' favorite project lately- painting fingernails together!

Norah points to her ears to show where the doctor fixed her up.

I apologize for skipping a few weeks of blogging...the  morning sickness has hit me hard and I have to say that this is the worst I have ever experienced it. It has made even basic things difficult to do!
Justin has taken great care of me, though, and been an awesome help around the house and with the girls (which is actually nothing apart from the norm...what a lucky woman I am! :) ) and our friends here at camp have been wonderful with offers of help as well. Hopefully I am halfway through and will be feeling better by February.
Our Christmas was a mellow and happy one, spent at home here with just our little family of 4. We celebrated New Years by playing board games with our friends the McAlarys and going home well before midnight because I was not feeling too well!
On the 8th we traveled to Anchorage for Norah's pre-op appointment with the doctor who would perform her surgery, and we got up very early on the 9th to go in for her ear tube surgery. The hardest part was denying her any water during the night since she wasn't supposed to have food or drink for 8 hours before the surgery. It was hot in the hotel room and she woke up begging for water and it was so tough to say no!
The surgery was very quick and Norah did wonderfully. She didn't even get upset when I handed her over to the anesthesiologist so she could go back to the O.R. When she woke up she was very mellow and not fussy like we were told to expect. The only bad part was when we got back to the hotel, she threw up in the lobby--in the breakfast room, to be exact, just as people around us were getting their breakfast! That will kill you appetite for sure!
We are thankful everything went so well and we are just going to continue to pray that there are no complications that will come of the surgery, or that she will need subsequent sets of tubes (apparently about 30% of children will need a second set).
Justin and the rest of the staff are gearing up for the Jr. High Blast, a retreat that Victory offers for youth that age over next weekend. If you have a junior higher interested in coming, check out the website at victorymin.org!
The sun is coming!! Yesterday the skies were clear up here in the mountains, and the sun rose high enough over Teepee Ridge to touch the edge of Index Lake. I am thinking that means that withing the next couple of weeks, we will have sunshine coming in our windows! It's very exciting when you haven't seen the sun, literally, for 2 months!

Some ways you can be in prayer for us right now:

-That the Jr. High Blast will go smoothly and many young people will have their hearts & minds turned to Christ over the weekend

-That Norah's ears continue to heal well and that there are no complications later

-That the morning sickness eases up soon since I'm not good for much lately!

-That Justin and I will be faithful in speaking the gospel to Evie. She definitely understands about salvation and has been talking a lot lately about what Jesus did. I'm just not sure she completely understands her need yet!