Merry Christmas and Happy New Year greetings from the Pecinovskys! Our deepest wish this season is that you would be touched by the True Light of Hope that came into the world, and reached His hand out to each one of us.

2016 began with the loss of our Toyota Van when a motorist pulled out in front of Jana on the highway not far from our home. But we praise God for his protection from injury – we were able to replace the van and are well on our way to putting our typical 20K+ miles per year on it. The kids love traveling to visit “Mu-mu & Papa” and “Ba-ba & Grampa”. In June, we took a special trip to Steamboat Springs, CO for Cory (Carl’s brother) and Mary’s wedding. It was a very scenic location and a treat to spend time with family there.

Carl – Work at IBM continued unabated – no surprise. But out of the office, he enjoyed spending time with the kids and expanding the beekeeping operation. This year, we had a total of 12 hives, most of them on Carl’s parents’ property in Iowa. Carl’s dad, Clair, helps with the beekeeping, and we really are getting first-hand experience with the challenging effects of PMS (parasitic mite syndrome) and related pressures on bee health. We sold honey online in our second year of ourbrightacres.com business – helping to recoup some of the expenses of beekeeping.

Jana – Headmistress at Our-Bright-Acres-Academy. 🙂 Home-schooled Evan for Kindergarten and now this fall for first grade, while Sadie is in Preschool. Jana has her hands full with Aidan as well, and she is an “oily mama” for many others. She continues to host “make & takes”, teach classes on essential oils, and this fall has started to bring her expertise to community education classes as well. She co-led a Conqueror’s Bible study in the fall, and created a bunch of wood sign/plaques for non-profit fundraising. The garden went strong this year and we continued to share plots with several other families. Jana did a spate of canning at harvest time, and also ventured into the expanded raw food categories of Kefir water and Kombucha. Next year she will perfect her recipes. 🙂

Oliver – Turned 22 in November, and joined us on our Colorado trip in June. He continues to live at an apartment in Rochester, worked part of the year at Valentino’s pizza, and recently started working as a cook at Bakers Square. He is a super big-brother to the younger kids with such a big heart. They love him so much as well — Aidan keeps calling Oliver a “goofball”, and Sadie requests his special anaconda squeezes. 🙂

Evan – Turned 6 in February. It seems the Lego gene has really turned on full force this year. He is constantly building, rebuilding, and playing with his Legos. He likes school and is really excited about learning to write his cursive letters this school year. Other favorites include: playing with Sadie, cats (he has assumed responsibility for their care), daddy-time, Lego computer games, and Minecraft. Evan is in his second year of both Trail Life USA and Awana sparks, where he does well at completing weekly Scripture memorization.

Sadie – Turned 4 in March. She is a unique bundle of 4-year-old girl energy 🙂 and has a knack for learning. She is going to be an early reader.  Favorites for Sadie: play with Evan, do school, climb on Daddy, color pictures, be silly, have bedtime stories, play in the sand pile, drink hot chocolate, climb on Daddy some more, play pbskids.org games, and give gifts (cards and pictures she has created). She is in her second year of Awana cubbies, and is currently in mommy’s Sunday school class.

Aidan – Turned 2 in March. He is definitely the “baby” in the family and continues to melt our hearts every day with his winsome personality and cute sayings. He’s grown so much this year, getting a lot of sand pile time with Sadie, and enjoying riding around on the tricycle and other “vehicles” on our driveway. In July, he had a surgery to remove a bi-lobed dermoid from around his eye. It hasn’t slowed him down. He is still the little WB (wrecking ball) in our house, with a trail of toys and debris constantly left in his wake. He loves to “watch a show” or “have a special movie”, and jump on the trampoline.

Thanks for looking into this window-snippet of our lives! We love hearing about your happenings as well. God bless you in 2017!