it doesn’t take much…

…to entertain this little guy.

This is a 3 minute and 20 second video of Sam cracking up at his daddy while visiting his Daddy Bill and Gigi in West Texas.

So, in other words, this rather long video is for Sam’s doting Papa and Sassy to enjoy…

Merry Christmas!

Sam was a tad excited about his first Christmas…

twenty years ago today…

…I was baptized on a Sunday evening in front of the body at Sagemont Church, the same church where I was raised, dedicated, and married.  I don’t remember the exact day that I trusted Christ, but I know that it took place a few weeks prior to this day, twenty years ago.

I don’t feel old enough to have already been a Christian for twenty years, but I am thankful to God for what this means.  It means that I can’t really remember a time in my life without God.  I can’t remember a time in my life where my family did not worship together on a Sunday morning with the people of God.  I had no say over which family I was to be born into, but I am deeply humbled by the reality of God’s mercy over my life even before I was born. 

Not many people remember when they became a Christian, but I remember it as though it were yesterday.  I remember telling my mom that I wanted to trust Christ as my Savior as we walked down the halls of my church to the parking lot.  I remember her asking me to tell my father what I had just shared with her.  I remember my dad pulling the car over on the side of the road and praying with me to become a child of God.

I was in second grade when I trusted Christ.  Loving Jesus felt so effortless when I was seven.  There aren’t many ways a second grader can tell the world what has just taken place in their little heart, so I remember really wanting to be baptized.  One of my fears in life is standing up in front of a group of people, large or small-it doesn’t matter, but my desire to be baptized overrided my fear that day.  It felt like an honor for me to obey Christ and imitate him in that way. 

I am thankful to God that he has been more than faithful to me these past two decades, he has kept me and sustained my faith.  He has put the fear of Him in my heart and I pray that I would never turn from Him. 

I want to love the Lord forty and sixty and eighty years from the day of my baptism, only deeper. 

Much deeper.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

One year ago today, I started our family blog with two purposes in mind, 1) to announce the news of our pregnancy and 2) to keep long-distance family and friends updated on our lives with pictures and stories.  It has been so much fun sharing this past year with all of you.  We hope you have enjoyed the ride!

Here are some of our favorite monthly highlights of the past year…

December 2008: we’re having a baby!

January 2009: top 10 funny changes in my life since pregnancy

February 2009: oh BOY!

March 2009: my last day at Desiring God

April 2009: happy anniversary, ryan & melinda!

May 2009: happy mother’s day, momma!

June 2009: Baby Rigney is born!

July 2009: Sam’s first week in this world!

August 2009: Sam’s newborn pictures

September: Happy 1st Birthday, Colin!

October 2009: four years ago today…

November 2009: Happy 27th Birthday, Joe!

December 2009: Celebrating Advent with a 5 month old…

We hope you’ll join us in 2010!

The Rigney Family

four in four

Within four months of each other, these four little tots were added to our small group…

Anna, Jeremiah (J.J.), Samuel (Sam), and Nathan

Our small group also has a Micah and a Moriah, which brings our small group total to… four prophets, one prophetess, and one holy mountain!

Happy 80th Birthday, Daddy Jim!

Sam’s great-grandfather turns 80 years old today!

We love you very much, Daddy Jim…

…even if you are a Longhorn…

Celebrating Advent with a 5 month old…

Celebrating Christmas has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.  Celebrating Advent, though, has only been a part of my life for the past four years.  One of the reasons that I am thankful to God for my church is the emphasis it places on preparing our hearts for Christmas during the season of Advent.

When we first moved into the Piper’s basement, almost four years ago, Noel gave me one of her Advent calendars as a Christmas gift to our family.  Each year I would hang the calendar and everyday leading up to Christmas, I would place a piece of the nativity scene in its rightful spot.

This is our first Christmas with a child, which makes little traditions like this one really fun.  Even though Sam is way too young to appreciate Advent, we still tell him the story of Christ and then place the next piece of the nativity set on the wall…

This Advent season feels so different than any other in my life.  I think becoming a mother has just changed everything for me.  This Christmas isn’t necessarily more special than any other- it is just different- but in a really meaningful way.  Every tradition means more to me now, even the story of Christ has become more precious…and I think it is because we get to share it with Sam.

So, every night we sit down and Joe reads to us Advent scriptures from the Bible, we light our Advent candles, we sing Christmas songs and then pray.  Really simple, but really important to us.  We know that Sam will not remember any of this, but that isn’t the point, there is a lot he won’t remember.  When Joe and I talk about holidays and traditions, we always come back to this…we don’t want Sam to be able to remember a time when we didn’t celebrate the coming of Christ in this way…

In addition to our Advent calendar and our Advent candles, this was our first year to get a real Christmas tree.  Joe and I always go home to Texas for Christmas so we haven’t even bothered.  But this year we have Sam, and well, that just changes things for us!  We went to the tree farm, picked out our tree, hauled it home on top of our car, and then we began to decorate.  What we didn’t realize when picking out the size of our tree was the lack of Christmas tree decorations we own.  It’s funny actually.  We were super excited.  We set up the tree…put on the lights…

an ornament here…

an ornament there…

a strand of red beads and a pine cone here…

and another ornament there…

…and then, oh wait…we are out of ornaments!  No kidding.  We were finished in about, oh say, five minutes or less!  We have the best little tree and a total of about eight ornaments.  I have seen more ornaments crammed on one of those mini Christmas trees that you put in the bathroom than we do on our big Christmas tree.  Oh well, I think I prefer it this way instead of going out and buying ornaments that don’t mean much to us.

One of my friends even offered, “You can borrow a box of our ornaments that don’t mean anything to you, instead of going out and buying ones that don’t mean anything to you!”  We are going to buy an ornament for Sam every Christmas, so that will add to our little collection…but in the meantime, pine cones it is!

Probably my favorite Christmas decoration we own sits on our little basement window.  We bought this nativity set our first Christmas here in Minneapolis…

This Christmas we will be heading down to Texas again to spend the first part with my family in Houston and then New Years with Joe’s family in Midland.  I will be packing our Advent calendar in my suit case to do in the evenings with Sam and his cousin, Colin.  We are so excited to celebrate Sam’s first Christmas with both families this year.

All of the Christmas presents are finished and already shipped to Texas. Christmas cards are on the way.  Peppermint bark is ready to be given to friends.  I still need to get Sam a few things before we celebrate our family Christmas (the three of us) this weekend.  Sam is only five months, but I don’t think I have ever been this excited in my life to buy someone something for Christmas.  I am sure he will love the box that we put his gift in!

I love hearing how others celebrate Christmas and the traditions they use in their family.  I would love to hear what you do as a family and any fun traditions that you do with young children.  Joe and I have a list of things we are waiting to do with Sam when he is a little older, but there is always room for more.  So, please do share!

We hope and pray that this Advent season is filled with a sense of joyful expectation that our King has come and will come again!

Boiling Pot

In the past four years, I have noticed that the South tends to get teased a little bit lot up here in Minnesota, so I’ve been tempted to do a series of posts to try and redeem all things Southern in the minds of my beloved Minnesotans.  I’m not saying that I haven’t joined in the playful banter concerning the great state of Texas and its neighbors to the right, but when it comes to certain things (i.e. Food) we’ve got the North beat.  Need further convincing…

Enter Boiling Pot…one of the many reasons Joe and I love the South and love Rockport, Texas!  Over Thanksgiving (and any time we visit) we must stop by the Boiling Pot at least once.  Joe’s family has been coming to this restaurant for years and folded me into the tradition when we began dating.

I recently bought the packages of spices that the Boiling Pot sells, so when the weather warms up, I plan on having our friends over to the backyard and cooking up some of the best Cajun food in the country…

The waitress comes to your table and lines it with sheets of white butcher paper and ties plastic bibs around your neck.  It gets pretty messy eating with your hands, but that is part of the whole experience…

Then, the waitress comes with giant silver bowls of steaming spicy food and pours it on the butcher paper right in front of you.  You know how men get “meat sweats” on Thanksgiving, etc., well, Joe and his brothers get the “boiling pot sweats” and here’s why…

Spicy shrimp, crawfish, blue crab, sausage, potatoes, corn…

If you want to try and cook some of this up yourselves, here is a recipe that I have used before…

Ingredients:

6   ears of corn
6   4-inch smoked sausage link sausage
12   red new potatoes
3 lb fresh shrimp, unpeeled
2 teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning per quart of water ( I use the actual spices that Boiling Pot sells, but Old Bay will work fine)

Directions:

Fill a large pot with enough water to cover all of the ingredients. Add the seasoning and bring to a boil. Adjust the seasoning to suit your taste. When the water boils, add the potatoes and sausage. Cook on medium heat for 20 minutes. Add corn and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Add shrimp and cook for no more than 3 minutes. Drain and serve with warm bread.

Happy 27th Birthday, Joe!

Twenty-seven years ago today, you were born into the Rigney family in the little West Texas town of Odessa. Today, I am joining with your son, parents, grandparents and brothers in Rockport, Texas to give thanks to God for you today. We love you very much.

About every four years, your birthday falls on Thanksgiving day, so I thought it would be appropriate to express my gratitude for you today- both on Thanksgiving and your 27th birthday! Sam and I are blessed beyond measure to have you as a husband and father. This post could become ridiculously long if I were to share everything about you that I am grateful for, so I will just highlight a few…

I thank the Lord that you are such a gracious husband. You are so patient and kind. You are helpful to me in a thousand ways…my faith in Jesus, being a wife, being a mother, being a friend. You teach me more about the gospel than anyone I know and I respect you for leading our family so faithfully. I love being your wife.

I am thankful to God that you are the kind of father that you are to Samuel. It is apparent that he adores you every time you walk in the door. I always thought you would be a wonderful father, but you have surpassed every one of my expectations. Of all the things I am thankful for in my life, you being Sam’s father is one of the greatest.

I am grateful that you work so hard to provide for us. You are an incredible teacher, thinker, leader and I thank God for your gifts and how you diligently use them at Bethlehem College and Seminary.  It encourages me every time I hear about how God has used you in the lives of your students and co-workers.

I’m so glad that we were able to celebrate your first birthday as a father in one of your favorite places…

I think Sam is loving Rockport as much as his daddy…

Happy Birthday, Joe!  Sam and I love you so much.

happy thanksgiving from our little turkey!

Before Turkey…

During Turkey…

After Turkey…