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Dear Family and Friends,
I’m not really
sure how this year has flown by, but once again, it’s Christmas! 2016 has been
a full year for our family! We are so grateful for the Lord’s blessings and
enjoy seeing your pictures and hearing updates on your families!
Callie finished
out her kindergarten year and her first year of Sparks (AWANA) and second year
of tee ball. We are so proud of her for working so hard to memorize all her
Bible verses and learning to read! Toward the end of the school year, I had to
make sure I held the book where she couldn’t see it when I quizzed her on the
verses, as she told me one day, “Mom, it’s so much easier to say the verses now
that I can read them!” J She
began attending 1st grade at Faith Christian School in the fall and
is loving it! She is our perfectionist and wants to get everything right the
first time! Both girls took outdoor swim lessons with my cousins’ children this
summer, which was a lot of fun. Callie really made huge strides in her
technique and her confidence! It’s been so exciting to see her grow emotionally
this year and learn to process through life’s ups and downs in a healthy
way.
Maggie was
thrilled to FINALLY (said in an extremely dramatic voice with hand motions-as
most of Maggie’s words are ;-)) start school this fall. She’s pretty confident
she can do most everything Callie can, if only we would give her the chance!
She continues to be our loud little tomboy, who loves to make messes and play
in the dirt, often while wearing a frilly tutu! She regularly asks us deep
questions out of the blue and has a sweet love for Jesus coupled with a
stubborn streak a mile wide. She is also a bit (okay, perhaps more than a bit)
boy crazy-crushing on her summer Sunday school teacher Mr. Button and our
junior high pastor, David. She was rather disheartened when David got engaged,
but both girls are excited to be the flower girls in the upcoming wedding!
Dave and Amy
just celebrated 12 years of marriage this week! As we look back, we are
grateful for the many blessings God’s given us, but we are also thankful for
the hard times that have forced us to rely more on Jesus and taught us how to
work as a team. Parenting two strong-willed children is exhausting. They have
fighting down to a tee! But we are so thankful God entrusted them to us and
pray for wisdom to be parents that point them to our Savior! We enjoyed
surprising them with an early Christmas present vacation to Disneyland this
month. We LOVED seeing their faces as they met the characters-especially the
princesses, and we discovered both our girls enjoy thrill rides! Other
highlights of 2016 included Dave’s trip to Israel in February with members of
our church, more time with grandparents and cousins, and Amy teaching a class
at Corban University during the fall semester. Church is going well; thank you
for those of you who pray for Dave and the rest of the church leadership and
for the pastors’ families! We know how important those prayers are and
appreciate you!
With lots of love and excitement for what God has planned
in 2017,
Dave, Amy, Callie (6 ½) & Maggie (3 ¾) Bertolini
