We are leaving tomorrow to see grand-parents, uncles, and aunts. This will be Miranda's longest journey away from home by far. So far her longest journey away has been to church, which hasn't been too bad, except for one hard car ride home. Instead of driving 12+ hours in the car (booo!) we are flying (yaay!), but we are still fairly anxious to see how Miranda (and Miranda's parents) handle the plane ride. We will flying into NOVA and spending the night with my parents and the next day heading down to Roanoke to see Joel and Nancy and little Evan Wyatt. We are really excited to spend some time with them and to meet our new nephew! We will spend that night in Powhattan, Va with Beth's parents and spend a week with them. While we are there John and Amy will be visiting as well, so it should be an awesome time.
From Powhatan we will complete our circle tour and end back up in Fairfax and wrap up the trip with my parents. We will celebrate my dad's birthday on July 4th and leave on July 7th. We will also get to spend some time with Keira (my sister) and Rodrigo (her husband) who also live in NOVA and are anxious to se their new niece.
We will return back with a full report and pictures.

Also some cool news, we have started the process to buy a house out in St. Charles. I have posted a picture of it below.

Miranda doing tongue tricks

Laura, our good friend, was showing Miranda some tongue tricks, and no joke, Miranda was trying to imitate her. I caught a little bit of it on film. There will be a day when I am much less excited about my daughter doing tongue tricks but not today.

Reconnecting the Hart Connection

So we realize that we have horribly neglected this blog. Our last post was over a year and a half ago. We could blame our busyness with school or whatever, or our lack of computer blogging skills, but we confess that we have mostly been lazy. Well, we have a new motivation to blog. Miranda deserves to be seen and known by our friends and family. We can't hog her all to ourself. So we will try to post new pictures and videos regularly so you can stay connected to us and our beautiful girl. We will also reflect on the manifold grace of the Lord Jesus in our life. He has been faithful and gently leading and guiding us and we would love to share that with you as well.

So...here is a quick run down of the past year and a half.

In the fall of '08 we found out that we were going to have a baby. Although we hadn't planned on this, the Lord did, and we have found that throughout the whole pregnancy, while finishing up our last year at school, the Lord has been maturing us and meeting us at every fear and insecurity that we have brought to Him (or hidden from Him).

During our last year we have also faced the fear that comes with having to figure out what to do afterwards. The job process was not very fun. Even good interviews with churches were mixed with those anxious times of waiting to hear back, sometimes months later. But even during these times the Lord was good. The Lord has answered our prayers so gently once again. Zane got the job at Grace Presbyterian (PCA) as the Youth Pastor out in Saint Charles, MO. We are both excited about what the Lord has in store for us at Grace and we will keep you updated on all that happens there.

On May 29th at 7:22pm Miranda Joy was born into the Hart family. She has been a joy! The Lord has blessed our first three weeks with her, we are getting to see her personality more and more every day. We are learning more and more about parenting, especially how important it is to respect and listen to Miranda and to comfort her when she needs to be comforted. We will try fill this blog with much more pictures and videos of her so that you can enjoy her and pray for her.

The Lord has been blessing us and lavishing his wild grace in our lives! We are baffled as to why, since we so often fail to live faithfully before Him. We praise Him for his mercy and will continue to share stories of his amazing grace.

Miranda at the hospital