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!