Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

I’m cheating this year and sending out a Christmas E-letter; forgive me!! I hope all is well with all of your families and that you are taking time this year to stop and remember the birth of our Savior.

It has been a busy year in the Prox household—we started out running (err…driving) on January 1st and just kept going! I started the year by driving to MN on New Year’s weekend so the best doggy surgeon in the country could operate on our dog’s knee. (Thanks Dr. Katie!! He’s doing great!) A 26 hour drive is long enough but I was 7 months pregnant so, Dr’s order’s, I had to stop for 10 minutes every 2 hours. That makes for a very long drive! Kyylyn was out of commission for 8 weeks—crate and leash walked for 8 weeks!! It was torture on all of us! We went through a LOT of acepromazine—for the dog not me!

Our new baby was suppose to be born on April 3rd so I quit (yes, totally quit!) my job at Animal Health Center two weeks before that. I was planning on one week of Spring Cleaning and one week of doing nothing. Well, the cleaning got done but on March 28 (my first day of “nothing”) my water broke at 9 am. Josh, who had gotten off work at 8 am, had just gone to sleep, so I had to wake him up to take me to the hospital. He made it through the day on coffee and adrenaline and at 8 pm that night we were holding a 6 lb 14oz, 19 inch long beautiful baby girl. Charys Alyzabeth had made her appearance a week early. By the way, her name is pronounced Care-iss A-lizabeth, and it means “a special kind of kindness” (ask Josh about that one). She has been a wonderful blessing from God!!

The end of May we bought a house in Ozark, Alabama, about 20 minutes from where we’d been living and from Josh’s parents. (Who, by the way, are thrilled to have one of their grandchildren near! The other is in Germany!) Josh loves owning his own piece of God’s earth. It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with large kitchen and laundry room, as well as a carpeted den. The rest of the house is hardwood floors—they are beautiful! It also has a huge fenced in back yard (that Kyylyn enjoys) and is in a nice quiet neighborhood that I enjoy taking my morning walks in.

I started Happy Tails Pet Services (Josh came up with the name) and do some pet sitting, dog training and puppy classes. This month marks 2 years for Josh as a security guard on the Army base near our home. The company he works for (CDA) was in the process of switching to a new company (Santa Fe) in May. The week before we were suppose to move, Josh (who was working nights) found out that for the next several weeks he had to do training (during the day! Who needs sleep anyway?!) and multiple doctor visits. (Of course you can’t combine checking blood pressure and a drug test—everyone from the night shift has to come at the same time on two different days and wait for 3 hours each time!!) Some wonderful friends from our church got us moved to the new house so Josh didn’t have to worry about it. When the new company took over, Josh was moved to a tough schedule 3 days, 2 nights. It was suppose to last for 3 weeks tops, 3 months later he was still on it. He did eventually get to the schedule he is on now, which is wonderful! He works Friday to Tuesday 5:30 AM to 1:30 PM. So, we get to enjoy our afternoons and evenings together.

In July we flew out to Colorado for a 10 day visit at my parent’s house. Both of my brothers and their families were there with us, so we had a wonderful time! The nieces and nephews had a great time and they all adored baby Charys. God has blessed us with a wonderful family on both of our sides!

Charys is now 9 months old and just as sweet and beautiful as can be (ok, so I’m a little biased, but she is!) She is crawling around and just last week crawled up to Josh, pulled herself up on his leg and said “Da Da”; I think she actually knew what she was saying!!!

Well, that was our wonderfully busy year--God truly has blessed us!!!


With all our love,

Josh, Sarah and Charys Prox