MERRY CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! WE LOVE YOU! LOVE, COREY & JENNI & OUR BEAUTIFUL SANTA BABY!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!!! We are so grateful for all of our family and friends that show us so much love! We are especially thankful to the Lord for all that He has done for us and continues to do. We serve an amazing and unfathomable God!!

Elin had her first turkey experience and boy did it knock her out. Right after she ate her first Thanksgiving dinner, she fell asleep in her high chair. It was so funny! She loved Thanksgiving though. Jenni's parents and sister Kristi came and spent the holiday with us. Jenni's mom is an amazing cook and does such a great job with Thanksgiving dinner. It was delicious! We had a good time and we are so happy that we could spend Thanksgiving with our family. Does anyone want to come all the way to Kentucky for Christmas?

A Rough November...

This month has been a rough one to say the least. After Halloween, Elin had a high fever and was struggling to breathe. We took her to the Dr, and sure enough she had croup. Of course she couldn't just have normal croup though....nope she had a croup that wasn't responding to any treatment, which landed us a 3 day stay at the children's hospital. Elin was really sick and our experience was very scary. We want to thank everyone for their prayers. We felt them and we knew that the Lord was taking care of us. We have never felt so helpless. Our little Elin was just sooo sick. It's hard to see your child like that. A couple of things helped Elin get through her difficult time... BABY EINSTEIN. I think we have Baby Einstein memorized. It was on repeat for 3 straight days! Jenni's boss Darla was so sweet...she brought Elin a Teddy Bear while in the hospital and then sent her gourmet cupcakes as a get well present. This teddy bear made Elin smile, which made us smile! Elin's nurses were incredible and they took very good care of her. After leaving the hospital, it took a good week for Elin to return to her normal, happy, full of energy self.

If croup wasn't enough, Jenni caught the SWINE FLU and it took her out for a good 10 days. Even after isolating herself and taking extra precautions, Elin got the swine flu and so did Corey. We all got on Tamiflu and we all felt better. Then once off Tamiflu, Elin got another high fever. The Dr thought that she might have a hidden pnemonia, so Elin had to get another chest x-ray and then she was put on high dose antibiotics. Poor thing!! We are hoping that we had our share of illness all in the month of November. We should be good for a year right?!! We are hopeful:)

Elin's First Halloween

We endured the cold and went to a trunk or treat for Elin's first Halloween. Elin hung out in her stroller most of the time trying to stay warm in her very insulated lady bug costume....she did have a small resemblence of an obese child!! Super cute! We ended up with a big bag of lady bug treats to take home. It was a fun night and we are glad that we did her first trick or treating at a local church. It was a fun and safe environment. We will return for another round of trunk or treating next year!! By then, Elin will actually get to enjoy her treats instead of her treats being graciously eaten up by her parents:)

OUR LITTLE LADY BUG!

Happy Halloween! We are so excited to take Elin to a "trunk or treat" tonight at church! She looks so adorable in her lady bug costume! I am sure we will have tons of pictures to post after tonight!

An Unexpected Pumpkin Patch!!

We went for a walk yesterday and found ourselves in the middle of a pumpkin patch! Elin absolutely loved the pumpkins. She kept trying to lick them! She always makes us laugh!

We love the fall weather here in Louisville. All of the leaves are starting to change colors! It is so beautiful. It makes us miss the mountains in Utah. Utah is so beautiful in the Fall!

Elin is crawling now. She can move so fast. She has retired the head crawl for now. I guess she figured that this new and improved crawling with your knees and arms actually gets you places fast! She also loves to pull herself up to stand. She loves to use OUR legs to balance herself...and she likes to PANTS us at the same time! Very funny as long as you are at home alone! She is so much fun and we just love her more each day. She loves to say Dada all day long...her little voice is so cute!

This last picture shows Elin with her very first cold. She had a cold for 4 days last week and was miserable...look at those eyes. But still looking adorable!

Summer Days

Surprised...shocked? Did the Duncans really update their blog? Yep! Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. We thought it might be nice to update our blog since it has been 6 months! Time sure flies, especially when you have a little baby. They are little time suckers that's for sure! We are just loving having our baby girl! She is now 9 months old. She is full of energy, smiles, and giggles. She loves to eat and is really enjoying all Gerber stage II foods! She is on the verge of crawling. It will be any day now that she will just take off. I hope we won't lose her since she gets around so fast. The only thing that is holding her back from crawling is what we call the "head crawl." Everytime she does it we think she is going to break her neck. She puts her hands in the air, brings her back off the floor and balances herself on the top of her head and then crawls/hops backwards. It is hilarious. She is very mobile this way and this has made her not want to crawl the normal way. This is all changing now...she likes switching between the two! She's getting so big.

Elin LOVES the water. She loves her baths, she loved the ocean in CA, and swimming at my Uncle Raymond's house. She is like a little fish and never wants to leave the water. She looks so dang cute in her bikinis. It just makes me smile and giggle all day. I could just eat her up!!!!




This summer has been crazy! We have been all over the US visiting friends and family. It started Memorial Day weekend in California with family pictures and visits to the beach. Elin had her first plane ride and everyone on the plane shared in her experience. She struggled to say the least. It must have been the pressure change and I think her ears were hurtin her. Next trip was with my sweet Dad. We (Dad, Elin,and I) spent a whole week together in Kentucky to find a place to live. We had many memorial moments. We are happy to report that Kentucky has a wonderful icecream place that is right down the street from us!! We taste tested a couple of times and they got the stamp of approval! It is called the Homeade Icecream and Pie Kitchen. My dad is awesome with maps and directions. I was quite impressed and he was the PERFECT person to take with me on this trip. I think we went down every possible street, and it got pretty discouraging. By the end of the trip though, God blessed us with a beautiful cape cod home....I love it!! Thanks Dad for sharing in that experience!!! It was fun:)



We moved to Kentucky in July for Corey to attend Southern Seminary to get and Master's Degree in Divinity with a Missions concentration. School just started last week and he is loving it. The seminary campus is beautiful, which is a good thing since he will be spending so much time there!

Right after we moved, my (Jenni) grandma, we call Momo, went to be with Jesus. It is so hard to say goodbye to loved ones, but so wonderful to know that she is no longer suffering. She is with the Lord for eternity and that helps ease the grief. I miss her terribly already! We were able to go and say goodbye to her a week before we moved. It was such a wonderful time to be with her and celebrate her near arrival of heaven and meeting Jesus face to face. It will be a time that I will never forget. Since she became sick so suddenly, she had to retire from Disneyland. She worked there for 42 years, so we threw her a retirement party at my Uncle Raymond's house. I am so happy we could be apart of the party before we moved!


When she died, our family came together and celebrated her life with a memorial service on the beach where we shared memories of her. It was a beautiful time. Then, we ate dinner while looking out at the ocean. She had put money aside for all of us to come together and do this. So amazing! She always was thinking of us. She was so thoughtful, kind, and expressed unconditional love to all of us. Miss you Momo. The funeral was very emotional, but in a good way. She was very loved. I had the privelege of speaking and sharing the gospel and as I looked out at the audience I was overwhelmed by the amount of people attending to show their love and support. Momo meant the world to so many people. I am grateful that the Lord provided the means for us to go to California to be with my family to grieve and be apart of such special services.


On a lighter note, we are liking Kentucky! The people here are very nice. God has shown his love to us through many people here. We LOVE our new house. We are renting a house in the city, but it feels like we are in the wilderness! We are on a acre of land and it feels so relaxful! I started my job right after we came home from my grandma's funeral. I am working with children with cancer, which I love! Adjusting to a new work environment has been a little stressful, but I am hopeful that it will get better.

One of my favorite things that happened this summer was seeing my sister get baptized! God has really been working in her life and it has been really neat to see God changing her and molding her. She commited her life to Jesus and asked Corey to baptize her in the ocean. It was a beautiful ceremony with our family at Delmar and to top it off, that night we went to a Christian conference/concert Spirit of the West Coast and rocked out to Toby Mac. It was a great day, one I will remember forever!






A GREAT BIG THANKS to Jake for taking a roady with Corey and helping move all of our crap across the country! You are a great best friend, and this was one of his favorite times this summer! While they were crossing the country I was able to spend some wonderful quality time with my BFF Trisha! God knew that this was exactly what I needed. I didn't have a chance to worry about Corey. I had such a wonderful time with Trish. Another favorite thing, we were able to spend some time with our friends that we met up with in St. Louis. God blessed us with a great friendship with a family that is ministering in East Asia. We met them when we lived in Virginia for mission training. They are family to us and we love them. We got to enjoy the St. Louis zoo, and visit the arch. We had so much fun catching up and relaxing.







So that's basically it. We are still working on our southern accent :) and settling into a different culture. We are starting to adapt to the humidity and the "severe thunder storms that have a scary chance of producing tornados...aaaah!" We found a wonderful pediatrician that we love for Elin. We are still battling her ECZEMA issues. Sure wish it would just go away and never go back. Oh well...another important thing to do...we need to find somewhere that resembles Cafe Rio! Cravings are starting to get stronger each day!

We have roommates for the moment and so it really feels like school life around here with everyone studying (but me!). Our friends from Utah, Jared and Amie, moved here with us to go to Seminary as well. They haven't found a house yet, so they are living with us. We are still looking for a church, but haven't found the right one for us yet...

Hope all is well! Thanks for being patient for 6 months! We will update, HOPEFULLY again really soon! I know I promised many of you that would happen and I will try very hard to keep current on the blog:) Until then...enjoy some fun new pics of Elin!