Turi's B-day

It's Turi's second birthday with us. She turned 11 today! Hurray! Happy Birthday, Turi!

She woke up and opened all her presents almost right away, which is unlike her. She likes to spread stuff out. She got a doll she can take a bath with (she's been asking for that for a year!), some fun yarn (she loves to crochet), a kid's digital camera (something to expand her into the adult world...slowly) and her VERY FIRST BIBLE! She was so excited. She plans to start reading it right away. It's an adult Bible but a New Living Translation (easier to read) and large print so we hope it'll go well.

We went to a park for swings and lunch and the girls are sleeping outside in the tent tonight. They are SO excited!

We are so blessed to have her!

Water

Carmen LOVES water. He loves taking a bath. In fact, just 2 days ago, he got up enough over the bathtub from the outside to dive head-first into the tub and nail him head on the bottom. All because there was water running. So, yesterday, while making dinner, I gave him a pot of water to play with. Hours of fun...

Hanover #7

For those of you who do not yet know, we are expecting our 5th child on December 10th (via C-section, so, yes, really December 10th :)). We are pretty excited.

Please pray for the health of the baby. We will be having an ultrasound in a week to finally see him/her and find out if it's a boy or a girl. Everything has been fine so far but we would still appreciate your prayers!!

Redemptive Moments

There are times as a parent (and I still hesitate to call myself that. It has been such a short time), that you wonder if you are doing anything right. I wonder that a lot and I rarely think that I do things well. Sometimes I have "good" days but they are few and far between. That's why I'm glad that God redeems in spite of us.

Turi has been reaching teenage-hood. (Is that a word?) There seem to be a lot of emotional roller coasters in our home these days. I knew constantly being annoyed at my mom from about 13-18 yrs. old would come back to haunt me one day.

This particular evening, I asked her to do an extra chore (cleaning up a spot of juice on the floor) and you could see the irritation on her face. I told her just to go downstairs and get ready for bed and I did all her chores in her place. As I was getting Bitsu, Tihi and Carmen ready for bed, I asked God what to do. He told me to talk to her. I was tired and thought to leave it for the morning. He told me to talk to her. I put all the kids down, including Turi, and left and started cleaning up the office. He told me to talk to her. So, I did.

We had a great talk in which I told the story of the prodigal son and we talked about which brother we were (we are both the older brother, in case you couldn't tell). In the end, she hugged me and said, "I am so glad that you adopted me. I think about it a lot. I think, 'Out of all those kids in that orphanage, you chose me.'"

I love that God works in spite of us.

We are back!!

Pics: Turi and Bitsu with watermelon on the 4th; Curt and the girls splitting wood at my parents, my Mom and Carmen

Well, I know you have been anxiously awaiting this post :). Finally, after a week and a half home, I am able to sit down and write a bit. Here's the run-down:

Chicago: 5 days. This is where my brother, sister-in-law and nephew (2yrs.) lives.
Ohio: 4 days. We got to see Curt's parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece (4m.) and had a big family reunion and re-connected a bit with the church that supports us.
NJ: 4 days. Just a stop-over at my parents on the way to ME.
ME: 4 weeks.
NJ: 5 days. Hung out more with my family and re-connected a bit with the church and supporters that support us there.
South NJ: 2 days. Hung out with some old friends.
VA: 4 days. Visited some old friends and re-connected with a few supporters from VA.
Curt and the girls drove the 36 hours home. I flew out of DC with Carmen.

The trip was good overall. Carmen (my main concern) did excellent. He still napped well (despite noise and heat in different homes) and slept well at night. In the beginning, he was waking early (4am!!) and not going back to sleep. Finally, he decided that wasn't going to work and started sleeping until 6 again. I thought I was going to die for awhile :). The main worry with him was constantly trying to find a quiet place for him to nap.

The girls did great. They enjoyed the traveling, meeting all their uncles finally (they had never met my youngest brother or the brother that lives in Chicago) and their cousin. Two of the weeks that we were in ME, they spent in NJ with my parents. They had a BLAST. They spent a week at the beach and a week at my parent's house. So much fun.

ME was really fantastic. Curt and I learned a lot about ourselves, our marriage and about Lifelines. We have never really gotten to see Lifelines modeled to us. This summer we did and it gave us great vision for what we want to see happen here at NAU. The main thing we learned about was using the concepts in the book "Changes That Heal" in group. If you haven't read it, we suggest you do. It really challenged us with the areas of life that we haven't matured yet. And we want to bring that to our students with adding God to it, of course. I am personally really excited to use this with my sorority girls. We will start off with the concepts in "Changes that Heal" for the first couple of weeks and then jump right into storying. I can't wait.

More to come 'cause this is long :)