Christmas Letter 2002
Merry Christmas!
This year has been a full year for the Stones, but we have seen the Lord’s direction and provision every step of the way.
The year started out with Nathan looking for a job in the Omaha area. During this time we would go to Omaha for a few weeks at a time, then come back to Chicagoland to take care of some things, then go back to Omaha again. This continued until the end of March when we finally decided to pack everything up and move to Omaha with Christy’s family. The day after we arrived back in Chicagoland to start packing Nathan received a call asking if he would be open to coming back and working for the Institute. Later that morning it was decided that we would indeed stay. We then went home and began the process of unpacking. :-)
The next big thing was the birth of our first child, Abianne Christine Stone (pronounced Abby-Anne) She was born on July 16th at 4:00am at home after a quick 5 hour labor with Grandma and Katie Stearn in attendance. For those of you who haven’t heard, here are the “specs”: girl, 20.5 inches, 7lbs 4 oz., some dark hair (though it is getting lighter all the time), and blue eyes. She has been an easy baby to care for and is a lot of fun! On November 1st she rolled over for the first time and on Thanksgiving morning she got her two front bottom teeth, just in time for some turkey! And of course she has her own website: www.abianne.com .
In October we flew out to attend Katie Stone’s wedding. Katie and her new husband, Nathaniel Talbott, will be living in North Carolina. During this time Nathan was able to spend a few days showing his good friend Matt Holt his old stomping grounds, we made a trip up to Seattle to visit some friends (and for Nathan a tour of Microsoft) and of course we had a great time with the Stones. It was one of those perfect vacations.
Christy has been busy playing with her new doll. When she isn’t doing that she is buying items and reselling them on eBay as well as selling wedding pew bows via the Internet. She has also been involved with outreach at church.
This year we have been able to get involved in a wonderful local church, Independent Baptist Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois. This has been a real joy as we get to know many of the other families and are able to participate in the different church functions.
We had Thanksgiving at our house this year. The Stearn’s were able to come as well as a few friends that we work with. The Stearns have a tradition where everyone gets to pick a pie for thanksgiving so this year we had a total of 11 pies, and of course they were all different.
Let’s see… we also had a trip to Ohio for a wedding, Pennsylvania to visit friends, and went camping for our first anniversary at a state park here in Illinois.
We hope you have a wonderful time celebrating the Lord’s birth and may God bless you in the coming year.
Nathan, Christy and Abianne Stone