Moving on.

There are big changes afoot.

This is officially the last blog entry on richieandbethany.blogspot.com.

It is time.

In one week from now, we will celebrate five years of marriage. In one month from now, we will close the Orchard Park chapter of our life and move into a home.

Oh, and Google has notified us that we have reached 99% capacity on our website. We take that as a subtle hint to move on.

This web address has carried us from June 2006 through June 2009.

Three big years.

The good, the bad, the ugly.

Before that, we had norcalarmstrong.blogspot.com. Not as many people read it, because there weren't any cute little boys to talk about. It was just us. Hard to imagine.

When richieandbethany.blogspot.com began, Bethany was two months pregnant with Lukey. The blog carried us--as a way of processing and recording and sharing--and you--as a way of knowing what was happening in our lives (because, if you haven't noticed, we are really, really bad at using the phone)--through a lot of The Best and a lot of The Worst. These three years have been packed.

Surprise pregnancy. Cholestasis. Answered prayers. Emergency c-section. The birth of Lukey! Botched recovery. Answered prayers. Falling in love with a baby. The battle with thrush. The illnesses. The baby sigmoidoscopy. The sleep deprivation. Answered prayers. Learning to sit! Learning to crawl! First foods. Death of Grandma. Death of Aunt Heather. Daddy's broken hip. Learning to walk again. Learning to walk for the first time. Answered prayers. Visits from Ya-Ya. Precious friendship with Tatum. Tatum is gone. Trip to Canada. Pregnant again! In-utero baby kidney weirdness. Ambulance race. Darn that anesthesia. Answered prayers. Another c-section. Healthy Boy #2! Peeing on the nurses. Ezekiel. Love him like crazy. Fabulous c-section recovery. Answered prayers. Two months of screaming. Another battle with thrush. Grins. Grins. Big thighs. Teething. Grins. Brotherhood. Ph.D. madness. Employment. Running out of money. Answered prayers.

And we missed a lot in that list. Like shampoo bottles clogging the toilet. Remember that one?

God has been faithful to us. We hope to keep richieandbethany.blogspot.com as it stands, to be read by our children someday. Not just to make them laugh or to fill their minds with how cute they were, but mostly so they can see God's hand upon them. Protecting them. Answering prayers. Working through bad situations to bring good things. Life ain't always pretty, but God is always good.

You may wonder where we're going from here. Some of you provided clever ideas for our new blog name. Believe it or not, our sleep-deprived minds worked well enough to think of our own.

Ready?

We're moving from "Richie and Bethany" to "The Armstrong Brood."

It seems to capture life these days.

What exactly is a brood? Well, just look at our new blog and find out.

thearmstrongbrood.blogspot.com

For those of you who shun change, be assured that we are keeping the new blog pretty much the same. No new template. No fancy designs. No time for such fun frivolities, as tempting as they may be for us bloggers. Just a new title and web address. Phew!

Thanks to our faithful readers! And especially those of you who post comments. The comments keep us chugging along.

Here's to another three years of blogging, hoping for more "good" than "bad" and "ugly."

Eph. 3:21: To God be the glory... throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Amen.