Recent February Pictures

February has been a good month for the Stocks. In Georgia, the weather has been fantastic and we have been taking advantage of it. We have learned one BIG thing about Lydia this month: She loves the outside as you can see from the first pictures! Here are some snapshots of this month:

Lydia's favorite place to stand! She watches for birds, cars and everything else!

After work on Friday, while mommy is making dinner, daddy and Lydia are outside discovering God's creation. We are looking at birds in this picture... a Lydia favorite!

This was Lydia's first "outside" play day with mommy and daddy. You can't see it in the photo but she having fun kicking a little ball.

When Lydia is inside, she loves to read books!

Eating and having fun are what I like to do!!!!!

I am ready to go outside again!

A New Plan

Since January, we have neglected to update this blog and the readers on an important event in our life. After the aftermath in January settled down, we have reschedule our vision trip. Through our correspondence with our team leader and parents to watching Lydia, we have booked our trip from May 11th to 21st, 2011. South Asia here we come! We have applied for our visas and await their approval. We ask for pray for this major aspect of our trip. We also have a greater wherewithal on the importance of this trip. If the trip planned for January brought excitement to us, this trip adds a weightiness too truly count the cost of being missionaries in another country. We ask for your prayers as we prepare (again) for this vision trip and see where Christ to calling us to take up our cross and follow Him.

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UPDATE: We have just received word from the Consulate that our visas application have been approved and we will receive them in a few days! We give thanks to the Lord for He has opened doors for His salvation to be known to all peoples!

ANOTHER UPDATE: our trip is actually May 11-22. I hope Brian is with me for that last day. :)

A Song For My Sweetie

Valentine's Day does not turn boys into poets and song writers, a girl does. Here are the lyrics to my feeble attempt in writing a song for my wife on Valentine's Day.

A Day in January

A little while back on a January day

I saw a young lady and asked her play.

As the time went by my love grew bright,

She was my sunshine, filled up my life.

The leaves turned color and I asked her, “will you?”

A little while later, on a bright spring day, we said, “I do?”

On this (that) day, I said “I do!”,

I began to truly love you

I said, “I will never leave you!”

Or let you go

A little while later on another January day

Our hope and dreams hit some gloomy days

We were both without jobs and our marriage began to fight

But on a day in March our “I dos” stayed bright

We walked through hand and hand our ups and downs

And we kept together with love sealing us bound

Five years later and January comes

This time with our little Lydia in our hands

A new adventure with joys and laughter we have seen

As our family has growth from two to three

For mom...and all the other Lydia fans

So, my (Mandy's) mom is in Afghanistan. That's right. My 50-something, knitting, Grandmother-of-Lydia mom is strapping on body armor everyday to walk from her apartment in Kabul (surrounded by guards with big guns) to the "Green Zone" where she works on the military's human resources stuff for 12-18 hours a day. She will be there (and a few other middle-eastern countries) for about 6 weeks. Needless to say, this isn't a glamorous vacation. I can't imagine what "war-torn" really looks like, but I suppose it's not very fun to walk around in.

Anyways, we miss her. And I know she misses us (especially Lydia). So, here we are posting this video of Lydia just having fun on a Tuesday afternoon...dancing, crawling, waving bye-bye, etc. Hope this brings a little light to a dark place, mom.

Valentine's Day Prep

Love stories always have their "really" moments. [You should read the "really" like the SNL newscaster does on weekend update]. This post explains one of my "really" moments with Mandy. It begins great and ends up, not with "at least my sweetie tried", but "really?". And Mandy is not the only one saying this, but I am as well.

Here is the following true story:

It is our first valentine's day as a married couple. I knew I had to plan something good and so I have been thinking about the evening for a couple of months. Cultivating romance is a life long quest and so I have been taking notes on Mandy's delights. I read a book about how to love one's wife well. The author explains how the husband needs to study their wife, listen to them, and then plan according. The husband studies when the wife has that twinkle in her eye, that excitement in her speech, and that spark in her step. Then, the husband makes notes of what he observers. All of this is great and every wife would love for her husband to passionately pursue her with the things she likes and loves. Husbands, we are called to love your wife and the things she loves. The husband loves to love what the wife loves because he loves her. The typically example of this is, "If the wife like to go antiquing, then the husband like to antique not because he likes to antique (and who really does), but he loves her."

Back to the story...

So, as I have been studying Mandy and her delights, I want to give her something that I knew she would surprise her. I had two things to plan: a date with dinner. Valentine's day fell on a weekday so I decided to stay home. This limited my options but this wasn't a problem. The date part of the evening was simple: a girl, romantic chick-flick. The dinner was the part where the surprise was (suppose) to happen.

Mandy's dad lives up in Cincinnati. The city is known for many thing, but most importantly, Cincinnati chili. Mandy's loves Skyline Cincinnati chili (you can already see where this is headed). I mean Mandy really loves Skyline to the point where when we visit we have to go there at twice if not three times on a couple day visit. For myself, I love it as well. I could go there almost everyday. This is one of Mandy's "twinkle in her eye."

Being the good husband, I noticed this and planned that our dinner would be Cincinnati Chili Cheese dogs [Really?]. I went online and bought the Skyline chili packets (they are expensive) and went to the store and got shredded cheese, hot dogs with buns, and oyster crackers. All of these ingredients are necessary for a Skyline experience. Then, on Valentine's day, I prepared the meal before Mandy got home and awaited her arrival.

I won't bore you with all the details but lets just say chili dogs and Valentine's day do not go together. Actually, I found out that the Skyline Chili packets make Mandy sick to the stomach. I don't even think we made it through the movie. It was a"really" moment of our romance. Hers is one of the lessons husbands should learn:

So, to all the husbands out there, yes, study your wife, but really... think before you act so that you won't have a "really" moment.