Benicia

You know, we never planned to live in a sea side community in CA. We never even hoped for it. We never even contemplated it. But somehow, Benicia is what God has for us.

The weather is fabulous. We actually get all four seasons as there is a lot of foliage here in northern CA. But at the same time, the temperatures are so mild. We've had more days in the 60's here in December than not yet it still feels like Christmas and winter. How can that be? I don't understand it, but I'm enjoying it.

This is our street. I love trees.

The Lee family is back in CA. I'm curious to see what God has in store for us in 2014. 2013 was the craziest year ever.

I'm so thankful the sun is setting for 2013. And by His grace, I'm starting to look forward to reaping the fruit of what He grew in our character through the trials of 2013 and starting to anticipate how His all wise sovereignty will work itself out in 2014 by bringing us here. I think the healing has truly begun.

Carlsbad Caverns

The other part of our trip with White Sands was Carlsbad Caverns. If you haven't been, you really should. I highly recommend it.

Granted, I LOVE going into caves. And this one was HUGE! It really is a lost city in there. Pictures cannot begin to show what it looks like and feels like in person. Amazing place.

Monster huge stalagmites and stalactites were everywhere in ginormous caverns.

Even though it was hot and sunny outside, it was a cool 50 some degrees way down deep. We were thousands of feet underground.

Matt even got to be part of the tour with Ranger Foz.

The Lee family had a blast.

 We also stopped in Roswell on our way home. Aliens truly are welcome here.

We felt right at home...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

the desert?

But doesn't it look like snow? Life has been so crazy I never posted our pictures from our trip to White Sands National Park. It was very, very hot.

Miles and miles of pure white crystal sand. We brought some sleds and treated it like snow.

It was fun to go down the hills in shorts.

But sand has a bit more friction than snow so the sledding wasn't quite as good.

It was amazing to see and the boys and girl had fun as usual. We went camping nearby in the mountains too but I forgot to take pictures of our campsite.

This is the best we got. Emery was a great helper.