Christina's 12th Birthday Memories with her family

Christina blows out her B-day candles after we returned home from dinner. Her favorite Black Forest cake. Angela is in the background.


Christina tried on the family birthday hat. This hat must be worn at some point during your birthday.


Christina eats homemade gnocchi with red sauce at Boscos, an Italian Restaurant. For those that do not know what Gnocchi is, small pastas with potatoes in it. Major carb loading....:)


Christina goes to the spa after school on her birthday. She has one lady doing her pedicure and one lady giving her a facial. She also got a manicure. After that, Stan met us for dinner.


This is Christina on her way to school on her birthday. She wore a tiara at school. She got a lot of attention. Some high School boys said, "Hey Princess", when they passed her in the hall (her middle school is on the same campus as the high school). After that she took the tiara off.

Mom's reflection: Where did the time go? It seemed like only yesterday that I had an emergency C-section in a hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabic. Christina was born in 1997, the same time that Princess Di died. I remember the nurses all standing around the TV in my hospital room watching the news. She was the only non-Arab baby in the baby viewing room. I should of known then, that she would always stand out. She was also born 2 days before my birthday. I continue to say that she was the best birthday present I ever rec'd.

I remember friends visiting me in my hospital room for my birthday bringing gifts, balloons, etc. and all I could think about was, how much pain I was in from the surgery and wondering when my next dose of pain medicine was coming (I had some complications, after the delivery).

The end of August records many worldly happenings such as Princess Di's death, Hurricane Katrina (on my exact birthday), and Michael Jackson's birth (the same day and year, I was born). But the most important (to my memory) was the day I had our first child, Christiana Grace Shilling. A heritage from the Lord!

Stan and I waited 7 years for Christina to come into this world. Before then, we were both focused more on ourselves then others. God brought us to Saudi Arabia, to change our hearts, and grow us in Christ. He was preparing Stan and I to be parents (thank goodness for that).

Many of our friends had children already and their children were even in elementary school by the time we had our first child. Our friends, told us that, "children would change our lives (which scared us at the time)." Little did we know that having a child would be one of the biggest blessings in our lives (the other blessing was having our second child, Angela which is another story).

Christina is 12 now and becoming more and more independent every day and depending on Stan and I less and less. We are now her life coaches, guiding her as she makes many of her own decisions. My helicopter Mom tactics have had to cease and I have landed my helicopter. I now stand on the landing pad and praying for Christina and her heart. I pray that she will grow closer to the Lord, and seek Him as she goes through her day. I pray that she will have a servant's heart and focus on Jesus rather then herself. Stan and I learned that later in life, but we hope and pray that Christina will always have her best friend Jesus by her side and will turn to him during the storms of life.

Stan and I have started praying together every day again and most of our prayers these days are focused on Christina and her heart for others. It is so easy for pre-teens to focus on their outer beauty with all the media messages that present themselves as well the modeling from some of their peers. We pray for Christina's inner beauty and that others can see that as well. We pray that Christina's faith would be her own and not her parent's. A lasting faith that stays with her throughout her life.

We thank God for Christina and her life. God has big plans for Christina. Stan and I continue to stand at the helicopter pad and pray, offering guidance, whenever we can, with hopes that it will be accepted more times then it is ignored.

Mauritius Memories and other Shilling Updates

We just returned from a relaxing week in Mauritius, an Island country close to Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. We were the only Americans there at the resort. Most of the guests were either from India or Europe. The employees at the resort spoke mostly French and some English. We arrived Saturday early evening, and settled in.

On Sunday morning, I ventured out onto the volcanic reef and walked out quite far. I was taking in the beauty and lost my footing and fell. I ended up scraping up my leg. My leg was bleeding quite a bit, so I decided to walk back through the sea which was about knee deep. I was still enjoying the beauty of it all and noticed some beautiful blue sea urchins on the coral beds in the waters. I must of taken my eyes off of, where I was walking for a minute and stepped on a sea urchin. Two of the spines went right through my pool shoe and into my bottom of my foot. At first I did not realize what I had done, but soon figured it out. I managed to walk on my foot all that day and by the evening, it was really hurting (I found out later that the spines go deeper into the bottom of your foot, the longer they are in there).

I limped to the hotel infirmary (first aid room) and the attendant there said that the two spines had to come out and that if they stayed in, it would become infected. By that time it was too painful to pull them out without a local injection in my foot. The doctor was called and arrived at my hotel room about 9:45pm that night. He had to inject two very painful injections into the bottom of my foot to numb it so he could pull the two spines out.

What a relief to get the spines out of my foot. I had to stay out of the water for 24 hours and once I could go back in, I stayed by the pool and enjoyed the sea from a distance. The last day I went hunting for shells with the girls in the sea after I got my nerve back.

A few days later Stan got stung by a yellow wasp after telling Angela that if you do not bother them, they will not bother you. I mean seconds after he said that a wasp landed right on Stan's neck and stung him. He ran to the infirmary and had it treated. You should of seen the welt on his neck. I think we were on a first name basis at the hotel infirmary. They were probably mumbling under their breaths, "those crazy Americans"... :)

In spite of my foot and Stan's neck, we still had a lovely relaxing time. We never left the hotel grounds. Stan did his daily jogs and I worked out in the pool with my Aqua Jogger belt doing my deep water exercises. I read 3 books while I was there and Stan read a book as well. It was good to see him relaxing. The kids had a blast. They went snorkeling off of a glass bottom boat, went for a ride in an inflatable boat pulled by a power boat, canoeing, and they spent a lot of time in the tide pools formed by all of the volcanic rocks finding lots of treasures. Angela did some solo dancing on the dance floor that overlooked the pool and both girls did a lot of pool swimming. The food was all inclusive, so all we needed to do was remember what time was breakfast, lunch and dinner. 7 days of this. :)

The girls start school in a few days. I think we are all ready to get back to our routines. It is almost Spring in South Africa and everything is staring to bloom. I love to watch the bright yellow weaver birds weave their nests in a tree outside our kitchen window. They are busy birds.

Christina will be in her first ice skating competition here in South Africa at the end of Sept. Stan and I went on a wonderful date last night to a live theater and also a wonderful restaurant before the show. We received complementary tickets from the U.S. Consulate. I am now the American Society liaison for the American International School. It is my job to make sure that American families that are new to the American International School are aware of the American Society and have the necessary information to join. They have many American activities throughout the year for families, like Thanksgiving, 4Th of July, etc. I will also be volunteering at the Middle School with the school counselor helping her with many of the programs to encourage virtues, etc.

I cannot believe that we have been here for 6 months now. Time has gone by fast. I feel like I have lived here a lot longer then 6 months.

We are now settled into a church where the girls are happy in their Sunday school programs. Christina attends a Friday night youth group at our church and Stan and I are taking a Wed. night marriage enhancement class. that includes dinner. We are looking forward to getting to know the 15 other couples that will be there.