Brace Your Self for Another Birthday

Posted by Timothy

There is one thing you might guess from the title to this post, and one thing you might not.
The obvious is that someone in the Hellwig family had a birthday. Many of you know: that special someone is Gabrielle! Happy Birthday Gabrielle!
Now it is time to break the not so easily guessable news: On her 16th birthday, Gabrielle came home from the Orthodontist with braces!

Here you can see her shiny red braces. And Benaiah, mesmerized by the candles!

Benaiah's First Solid Food!

Posted by Gabrielle

Today we fed Benaiah his first solid food, egg yolk and milk. He didn't make any 'yuck' faces like some of us others did; he liked it.

After his first spoonful he wasn't quite sure about it yet. "This is something I haven't tasted yet."
And now, he gets frantic for more while Mommy is trying to clean his face from the previous spoonful. The first few times, more of it got on his bib and face than into his mouth.
Now he definitely likes it, big smiles all around.
And more big smiles; he loved it and I think he liked the attention too.

Ready for Winter

Posted by Gabrielle

The Hellwigs are ready for winter, although there is no snow yet. Below the little boys don their stocking hats. This one shown in the pictures was not handmade but the rest of us have ones that our grandmother knit for us several winters back.Benaiah, five months already, being exceedingly cute! Though he is exceedingly cute in anything!

And Tobias, 3 almost 4, being cute as well, or maybe handsome.

Six years and the Sixth child!

Posted by Gabrielle

On December 27 Jedidiah turned 6 years old! Of course we had the usual Hellwig family birthday celebration, peach tart and all. Jedidiah is definitely a character, as you can tell from the picture below.Arianne made a beautiful blueberry pie, below:
On top are his initials, Jedidiah Nathan Hellwig, then comes the dog, his favorite animal and the 6, his age. Of all the pies we have made in the fairly recent past I think this one definitely turned out one of the best.
Jedidiah (beloved of the Lord) and Nathan (gift) definitely summarize how highly we prize him.
He was a most precious gift from the Lord 6 years ago and we wonder how we ever lived without him. Indeed, when each new one comes along we wonder how we ever lived without him.
We pray that he will grow up to be a mighty and beloved man of God and that God would use him for his own good purposes in years to come.

The Year of Our Lord, 2008

Posted by Timothy

The new year has come. The year of our Lord.
Hopefully this last year was a year of learning. Maybe your perspective on certain things has changed with experience! Mine certainly has, in more than one way!
Yesterday we found and created an interesting optical illusion, based on perspective.

Above is a quick film of it.

After reading the instructions, click here for another perspective changer. Here are the instructions: Sit up fairly close to your monitor and stare into the center of the animation for a minute or 2 (the longer the better). Once you've done this, look at something else, and your vision will go haywire! Things will really look as though they're shrinking and growing!
You will need Flash installed to see this.

We hope you haven't lost your sense of perspective this year, that you may not gain the the wrong perspective of life. Or fail to remember who God is, who we are, and why He has placed us here!