Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Welcome to our first annual Oakley family Christmas letter. I have found that the Christmas season is a good time to evaluate my life, goals, and most importantly my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is working in me to be more kind and compassionate and to live a life that points others to Him. As we give and receive presents this year, my greatest hope is that each and every one of you have received the gift of salvation by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior!

Last year we received the best Christmas presents in the form of twin boys. They were 6 weeks old at Christmastime, and I was a little busy to even think about writing a Christmas letter. People always ask me if the boys are similar and if they are identical. They are fraternal and as different as night and day. Some similarities that I can come up with are that they are both very sensitive, are both incredibly sweet, have such cute smiles which are great when you praise them for something- you can see the pride beaming off their little faces! They are on track developmentally with their gestational age (they were a month premature).

Matthew Scott Oakley is older by a minute and has a more dominant personality. He laughs all of the time, babbles, and it sounds like he is trying to copy words that we say. His vocabulary is increasing with his favorite word being mama. Ironically enough, he looks just like his mommy. Matthew crawls and gets into everything, and has even taken his first assisted steps this past week. Although smaller at birth, he is now about a pound and an inch bigger than his brother. He loves to go outside and meet new people, although he needs to get used to the person before he will let them hold him. One of Matthew’s favorite things to do is to stack his toys. He will either stack them or put his toys on any random object and the best part is that he cheers for himself. You’ll be playing with him and he will stack something, then go “Yay!” and either clap or put his hands in the air. It is best when you cheer for him and he gets so proud of himself!

Andrew James Oakley is younger by a minute and tends to be more passive. He does things on his own time frame- often will meet a developmental milestone and then not do it again for several weeks. He is crawling, pulling up to a standing position, and babbles a lot, with his favorite word being dada. Ironically enough, he is the spitting image of his daddy. Although he is more passive- doesn’t care which toy he is playing with, happy when being held, if he gets upset, it is very obvious by the gusto of his scream. It still amazes me that he was in the NICU after birth due to breathing problems because there is nothing wrong with his lungs now! Andrew’s favorite thing to do is take everything out from under the changing table or unfold laundry and pull laundry out of the baskets. You can find him taking blankets from one side of him and putting them on the other side over and over again- it is quite humorous!

Paul and I are doing well. Paul got a promotion to assistant manager at Sheetz right before the boys were born which has enabled me to be a stay at home mom. It is much harder than I thought it would be, but wonderful all at the same time. We love being parents, and are so blessed by our twin boys.

Love,

Paul, Sarah, Matthew, & Andrew