"Labor of Love"

This is my Christmas wish to each and everyone of you. That this song and scene would replay over and over again in our hearts this Christmas season.

Merry Christmas!

Before Christmas Get's Here...

So I realized we are way too close to Christmas and I haven't even let you all know how our Thanksgiving was. As some of you may know Randy & I have every Thursday & Friday off, those are our two days a week in which we don't work. Well as you all know Thanksgiving fell on a Thursday a couple weeks ago. We requested to work Thanksgiving so that we could spend the day with our girls. We were so blessed to have this time with them.




We had a writer from the International Moose Lodge request to spend the day at our home. He wanted to write an article in next months Moose magazine as to what Thanksgiving meant to us and what traditions we had. I would encourage you all to read about it on Moosehearts web site, http://www.mooseheart.org/news/2008-Oregon.asp.








One of our girls building a tower of cheese before it melts away in our home made Mac 'n Cheese.

The girls suggested we create a chain of links. We wrote on each link things that we are thankful for. A few things listed were.... Make up, Family, Hot Water, Friends, Mooseheart, Food, TV, Beds, Thanksgiving Meal and on.

Sara & Randy getting ready to cut Tom the Turkey.










Another one of our girls cuddling up for an afternoon nap after a full tummy of Thanksgiving food. Oh let me mentioned she crocheted this blanket all herself, it's so pretty!












This past Tuesday, December 8th Randy & I had our first ultrasound. It was such a beautiful miracle to see, it was hard to hold back the tears. Here is baby Riggs debut.



10 weeks and 4 days











Baby Riggs due date has been changed to July 3rd. After they measured the baby out it was measuring smaller then 11 weeks. So it looks like we'll be having a July 4th ish baby! Good news is you all should have time off work around then to come up and see us and our new little one. *smile* We expect and hope for visitors.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Baby Riggs

October 23, 2008: 10:08pm

Randy & I had just come home from Target after I carefully selected "the right" pregnancy test. I carefully read all the instructions and rushed myself to the bathroom. The next 3 minutes Randy & I were leaning over the bathroom sink waiting for that life changing moment. Would it read, "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant? Before we knew it our 3 minutes were up and the test read, "PREGNANT"! I couldn't believe it, we are actually pregnant! I quickly responded as I did when Randy proposed. I backed up into the hallway away from the test and started flailing my arms and squealing... quickly followed by tears as Randy continued to stare at the test over the sink. We quickly hugged and praised the Lord for blessing us with such a beautiful gift.

November 13, 2008: Thursday

We finally get to go home and tell our friends and family! We kept quiet for 3 weeks until we could tell our parents in person. In the 3 weeks of silence we made a quick trip to the Carter's Outlet store where we purchased our first baby item(s). Two sets of bibs that read, "I love Grandpa" and "If mom says no ask Grandma". We put these in gift bags that we presented to our parents as we shared with them our exciting news. Our families were so very supportive and excited for us as were our siblings. Our friends were rather shocked but also responded with great excitement and support. This weekend I caught a cold and started to experience a little bit of nausea for the first time in 8 weeks of pregnancy. Thankfully the Lord has been good to me as the nausea has stopped and the cold is passing with little unpleasantness.

November 16, 2008: Sunday

Tonight we tell our girls. We shared our news with our co-worker and shortly after called a "family meeting." We all sat together in our sitting room as Randy breaks the news to our girls that, "we are getting another kid in our house." The girls eyes widen in concern as our house is at full capacity right now. Randy follows up with, "yes, Hannah & I are expecting." Still at this moment the girls are thinking, "You guys are expecting.... WHO? Who is moving in?" Randy responds, "Girls, Hannah is pregnant!" Quickly the girls respond with, "Are you guys joking, you've joked before... you better not be joking!!!" Once we assured the girls this was not a joke they were all very excited. We assured them this didn't mean that we were leaving but that they would get to share in this process with us.

Tuesday 18, 2008: TODAY

Well, we have found an OB/GYN and will be scheduling our first doctors appointment today. Again, we suspect that I'm in my 8th week and possibly due June 27th - 29th. We will be sure

keep you all posted on our progress and post photos of baby Riggs as we get them. We appreciate you sharing in this exciting time with us and ask that you would pray for continual health and safety over myself and the baby. Would you also pray that the Lord would prepair our girls for this time of adjustment and for us to be as aware as possible of any of their anxieties, that we may calm them in any way we can.

stay posted.....

Autumn Is Here!

So I absolutely love Autumn! It's safe to say Autumn is my favorite season. I love how it's kicked off with all the back to school items in August, yes I realize August isn't fall, it just simbolizes to me that Autumn is around the corner. Then slowly we start having some cooler weather. The sweatshirt and shorts weather, the jeans and t-shirt weather and you bring a jacket or sweater with cause you know by the time the sun goes down it'll be chilly.

Slowly the leaves start changing color and out of no where you start craving Apple Cider. You start looking in the paper and around the serounding towns to see what Fall Festivals are happening. I love that we have a fire place and can wind down our evenings with Randy working diligantly to make us a nice, soothing and relaxing fire. I love the sound of leaves crunching under our shoes as we take the girls for a walk every afternoon around campus.

Here are some pictures of Mooseheart in the Fall.

I also love that this Autumn brings the end of this election year. Inspite of the excitement that this election year has brought I must say I'm ready for this to be over. I love that I've been able to follow this election year of firsts; Hillary Clinton as the first female to have a legitimate chance to win the Presidency, Obama as the first black person to hold a major parties nomination for President and Sarah Palin as the first female running as the Republican parties Vice President.

Here are a few pictures from the first McCain/Palin rally the Republican National Convention held in Cedarburge, WI.

We woke up at 5am on our day off and drove 2 in a half hours to this little town of Cedarburg, WI with a population of 11,298. The town was not expecting more then around 3,000 to come out and support the McCain/Palin rally that day. This charming town had over 6,000 more then they expected that people were miles down the street just hoping to catch a glimps of McCain and Palin. It was such a site and I'm so glad Randy drug me out of bed for it.

So Autumn may not be your favorite season but what things do you look forward to in the Fall?

Blessings from God

We continue to find ourselves blessed here at Mooseheart. We are working with these 10 girls and among the daily frustrations of balancing school, home work, athletics, outings, house hold chores and relationship building among all 10 girls we can't help but count our blessings.

• Randy & I have the blessing of spending our days together.
• Daily we see these girls changing their family tree for the better because of their success here at Mooseheart.
• We have down time in which we can fellowship with other Family Teachers/believers here on campus.
• God conintues to develop us in new and exciting ways.
• We don't drive often so we are protected from dealing directly with the crisis in our economy at this time in the way of gas.
• The Lord provides for us a balanced meal 3 times a day and then some.
• One day Mooseheart will provide a way for me to work and be a stay at home mom.
• The Lord has been good to us and allowed us time off to be with family and friends for important events in life.
• We continue to see God bringing believers to Mooseheart and I are so excited to see what the Lord does with all of us here.
• We have been so blessed to have many visitors from home, that we miss dearly, come up to campus and visit us.

What things are you thankful for? In what ways is God blessing you in your life that all too often get over looked?

Randy has new blog!

Just a note to let everyone know that I am starting a new blog at rariggs.wordpress.com. Hannah and I will continue to use this blog to keep everyone updated on our life at Mooseheart and general news in our lives. My new blog will be focused on the discussion of fighting the injustices of the world. I'm just getting it started but feel free to check it out!
Randy

My First Half Marathon

Many of you know that I've been training for the Chicago Half Marathon. Over the last few months I have run a few 5k races in the Chicago area and have been doing as much running, biking, and strength training as possible to train for it. I was doing really well at first but then the last few weeks of training I kind of slacked off a little bit so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. The half marathon (13.1 miles) was this past Sunday in downtown Chicago. It also happened to be the rainiest weekend on record in Chicago with 10 inches of rainfall. It rained the entire race so it was somewhat miserable, but I finished and beat my goal time. I had hoped to run it in 2 hours and 10 minutes and my actual time was 2 hrs. 4 mins. and 31 secs. so I was really happy with that. Unfortunately because the weather was so bad Hannah wasn't able to get pictures so I am going to be ordering some that were taken by a company at different points along the race. I will put those up when we get them. I hope to run the Indy Mini-marathon in May and my long term goal is to train for the Chicago Marathon (26.2 miles) next October!
Randy

The End of Summer

Another update anyone?

> August 11th - 15th: The Oregon Home goes to Green Bay!

Our co-worker Sara is from Green Bay so she invited the girls to visit where she's from and her father kindly hosted us at his home. Our first stop on the trip was to the Jelly Belly Factory.

Packers pre-season game at Lambeau Field!

The following days we went to Heritage Hills. Heritage Hills is a plantation of old homes, a village of old homes really. The girls got to tour and see how they lived in the pioneer days. Then we went to the Green Bay Moose lodge for dinner that evening. The girls went around greeting and thanking the Moose memebers for all they do to keep Mooseheart running.

The next day, Wednesday, we went to Bay Beach where they had a little amusement park. I, Hannah, got sick from all the spinning rides and had to sit out the rest of the morning. Then that evening we went to a local water ski show. We ended the trip with a visit to the beach.

All in all we had a wonderful time. We ended each evening by watching the Olympics. We just had a very nice restful time relaxing and bonding with the girls and were greatful for safe travels. Oh! While Randy & I were in Green Bay we recieved the news that we are now approved drivers. So we helped our co-worker by driving home from the trip.

> August 29th - September 1st: Labor Day weekend at Lincoln, IL

We just got back from a long weekend away with the girls camping. The Illinois Moose lodges hosted a camping trip for our campus down in Lincoln. We had beautiful warm days and nice cool evenings. They had all kinds of games Saturday morning...

Water Balloon Toss

Sack Races

Balloon Walk Egg Toss

That evening we enjoyed a little karaoke and a lot of dancing.

The rest of the weekend we hung out and visited with the other homes from campus, had a camp fire and roasted some marshmallows, went to Church in Lincoln, went swimming at a lake in Clinton and just had a great time. So summer is officially over now and school has started. Now we have girls volleyball and football games to look forward to. Autumn here we come!

Some have requested photos of our quarters and house on the inside. So stay posted and we'll try to get that taken care of. Well I know this was quiet a general update. Randy tends to be better at giving detail so maybe he can post the next post. We thank you all for your continued prayers and support and look forward to catching up with all of you in the near future.

-Hannah

Update by Randy!

I guess I've been slacking on my postings on here. There is quite a bit to catch up on so this one could be a little longer than usual.
One of the things that has been consuming our time lately is running. Hannah and I are both training for races on September 14th in Chicago. I will be running the half marathon and Hannah is going to be running the 5k. We have been training with Mark and Rebekah, some friends of ours here at Mooseheart. As part of that training we have been running in some local 5k's. The area where we live is pretty active and running is huge in this area. It seems like there is a 5k in the area just about every week. It's definitely been nice to be able to be more active. It's been a lot of fun so far, but 13.1 miles is still pretty intimidating. If anyone wants to come up on that weekend to cheer us on let us know!

Mark and I proudly wearing
our t-shirts from our first 5k,
the Windmill Whirl in Batavia.

Our group grew for the Viking Sunset

5k in Geneva. A couple of girls on campus

went with us and ran the one mile fun run.

A couple of weekends ago we were able to take the Oregon Home girls to Wisconsin Dells for a weekend of camping and waterpark fun! Special thanks to the Wisconsin Moose Association who paid for Mooseheart Day at Noah's Ark, the world's largest waterpark. We had a great time and it was just another example of the extreme generosity of the Loyal Order of Moose.

We were able to go camping, visit local shops, spend a day at the waterpark, and go to a drive-in movie. I really wanted to go bungee jumping while we were there but it didn't work out, maybe next time!


Trying on some pretty cool hats at one of the shops in Wisconsin Dells.

Hanging out at Noah's Ark waterpark.

Posing before the movie starts at the drive-in.

This coming Monday we are leaving for a home trip to the Green Bay area. While in Green Bay we will be visiting several Moose lodges. The Moose members always appreciate being able to visit with the students that are supported by thier financial generosity and commitment. We will also be going to a Packers game, (Hannah wants to wear our Colts jerseys but I'm not so sure that would be a good idea), going to the beach, and touring the Jelly Belly factory as well as visiting a few other local attractions. It should be a great chance for the girls to be able to have some fun before going back to school.

Speaking of school, Mooseheart school begins on August 2oth which means that our girls who have been visiting thier guardians for the summer will be coming back soon. Some of these girls left shortly after Hannah and I started here so we haven't had a chance to get to know them real well. We are also going to be getting a new girl into the home who we haven't met at all. This will put us to full capacity with 10 girls in our home for the school year. Please keep us in your prayers as these new relationships are formed.

In one of the last posts Hannah mentioned our desire to be able to give the girls a Bible translation that they would be able to easily understand. A few weeks ago one of the girls noticed me reading my Bible and started talking to me about it. She told me that she had a
Bible but didn't really read it because she had a hard time understanding it. She brought her Bible to me for me to see and even though it was a fairly modern translation it is very difficult for our girls who have no church background at all to make sense of what they read. Our students are also on average a year behind where they should be academically so that just adds to the problem. We just found out this week that Hannah's mom has ordered The Message paraphrase bible for each of our girls and want to thank her for that!

Once all of our girls are back we hope to be able to implement a bible study of some sort once a week. We have discussed purchasing some Nooma videos to use as part of this. If anyone has ideas of video or other materials that you think would be useful for this we would love to hear your thoughts. We are also excited about receiving our clearance to be able to drive the girls soon. We have to wait for the Department of Child and Family Services to approve us but once we have that we will be able to take our girls to church off campus every once in a while. We are praying that we will receive clearance soon!

Wow, this was even longer than I thought it would be! I will try not to take such a long break between posts next time!

-Randy-

July 4th, 2008

Okay, so I'm going to make another post however this might be my last cause no one appears as interested in my posts as they do Randy's (look at the ammount of comments, I mean the lack of comments).

So a couple weeks ago Randy & I were able to make a trip up to Michigan to visit with our friends back home for the 4th. We had a great time visiting and relaxing on lake Michigan. The first day we enjoyed kicking back and hanging at the beach, floating on the lake, kayaking & flying kites... yes flying kites! OH AND SAILING!!!

That afernoon we took a dune buggy ride and finished the evening with a camp fire on the beach and repeated the day after.

We ended the trip with a nice walk around town and a dinner together. We couldn't have come up with a better way to celebrate the freedom of our country then with a fun weekend away with friends. We love you all and can't wait to see you all again.

July 7th, 2008

So what's new with the Riggs? About three weeks ago Randy & I were able to make a trip home to Indy for a suprise Anniversary party that the Riggs children have been planning for the past 6 months or so. Yes, Dale & Vicki Riggs celebrated 40 years of marriage this past month.

It was so wonderful to celebrate a marriage that has held together through keeping their lives centered on the Lord. We praise the Lord with Mom & Dad Riggs for their hard work and commitment to the Lord and their marriage. God is Good!

While we were in town we also had the pleasure of visiting with our friends from Indy, Knightstown & church. We joined our First Church group in Indy to watch an Indians game. We had such a great time catching up with everyone. We are so blessed to be surrounded by such great friends. We see God at work in each of their lives and it's so exciting to share in that with them.

We were also able to visit with Randy's old co-workers at his Hinsey-Brown boss's surprise 40th Birthday party. It was so wonderful to share with them how our ministry at Mooseheart is going. Randy checkes the obits often to see how they are doing. Although he has changed profession his heart is still with them and we pray for God's blessing on Hinsey-Brown. Happy 40th Kevin!

I admit it was difficult for me to re-adjust to life back at Mooseheart after such a great visit home. The Lord has been great to us and provided us with wonderful friends right off the bat. I just find myself home sick for our Church and Church family. I just have to keep reminding myself that this home sickness for our Church is the very reason we are here. To share with these girls what that would/could feel like. To find a love that's so great they don't know how to live without it. The love of the Lord that never fails and grace that is new every day.

Please continue to be in prayer with us that we may see every opportunity to show Gods love to these girls. That we would find a church off campus that would fill a void in their lives that they can't help but desire the Lord to be a part of their lives. Also pray that we would be able to implement more activities into the home that would image the Lord, i.e. Christian video's, bible study, prayer time.

On that note; I know some of you have been asking if there is anything the girls here are in need of that you could buy and donate. In all honesty these girls have their every need provided for. However, if you would want to help in regards to our minstry here we would like to have a bible for each girl here at the house for their use, The Message translation that is. The girls have access to Bible's but have a very difficult time understanding even the more modern translations, as they have no background to base their reading on. One of the girls just recently made this complaint to us and we would like to make something available to them that would encourage them to read. We have a total of nine girls in the home. Also we would love to start a collection of Nooma video's by Rob Bell to watch with the girls and any teen girl related devotionals or books (even fiction would be great).

-Hannah-

Update by Hannah

So I feel there is a lot to catch all of you up on. so I'll go date by date.

May 24th
Mooseheart Graduation. Oregon home had one graduate this year. Her fun personality has been missed by all and we are excited to see where her future takes her.

That afternoon our home entertained Oregon Moose members for lunch. The girls did a great job expressing their appreciation to the Moose members and all that they provide us to keep our house up and running. The Moose members presented the house with and their state flag.

This is the whole gang except for our graduate and one other girl who went home for the weekend, this particular weekend.

May 27th

We had a new addition to our house this day. Some of you may remember that we asked for prayer as our house adjusted to a new youth in the home. She put forth a good effort and we look forward to her return this fall as she is visiting with her grandmother this summer.

June 13th

RANDY'S 27th BIRTHDAY! We enjoyed a Friday night celebration with few friends at Mooseheart at the Roundhouse in Aurora, http://www.walterpaytonsroundhouse.com/ . We had a great evening having dinner, watching a stand up act and then enjoyed some live music in their outdoor garden/patio.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RANDY!

June 14th
Batavia Moose lodge put on a fishing clinic for all the youth at Mooseheart at our lake. So we took all the girls to go fishing for the day and believe it or not ALL girls fished and caught a fish; multiple times! All the girls got to keep the fishing poles so you can trust we will make many more trips across campus to the lake so Randy can get in his man activity as he's dominated by much girly time.