mid-September trip to Asia

We were So Blessed (thank the Lord for His provision!) to go see Liz and her family in Asia. We were there for Lydia's 3rd birthday (Connor will be 3 in Dec.) the 2 little girls are 3 weeks apart, and Jacob will be 5 in March. So we were quite busy. The Lord's provision was obvious even with the kids being sick. We had a great time. Below we are enjoying Lydia's birthday cake (Liz and I got to make it).

Yummy Western food for Lydia's birthday - pizza!

The cousins sure did love on each other.

Feeding the fish. A big highlight for all the kids!

One of the highlights was visiting the Panda preserve. We saw quite a few pandas including 4 or 5 babies (less than 2 months), a few toddlers (1 year olds, wrestling), and some red pandas.

We tired the kids out pretty much every day and they slept when they could (and we just didn't at all try to worry about a "schedule"). God provided.

Any foreign children attract attention, but 5 under age 5 - and BLONDE! We got a lot of comments and stares.

The kids did great on both airplane flights (thank you everyone for your prayers!!). Jeremy's juggling skills with the Katie and the food are quite impressive! Connor's a little bitter about being woken up (he FINALLY fell asleep for the last 2 hours of an 11 hour flight. We departed AFTER naptime, but he still pushed through for 9 hours. Crazy! We had to wake him up for the descent - he had been sleeping on the floor).

"I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

Meg captured this shot at just the right time. That's my girl!

Happy Moments

I have had 2 particularly happy moments as of late.

The first happened yesterday. We were singing together for family devotions and Connor requested "Rock I stand" (which took us a while to understand the words he was saying) and we then thought maybe "wise man built his house upon the rock." But no, he wanted to sing my favorite "The Solid Rock" - "On Christ the Solid Rock I stand (which he emphasized each time) all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand". What a joy to my heart!

The second has been an ongoing happiness (almost repressed at times by an ongoing nausea). We are going to (correction, we do) have a 3rd baby. We are only 8 weeks along, due mid to late March. Boy, are we going to be busy... and blessed!

Video!

Our video camera is HD (which is awesome, but if you're technologically as un-adept as I am, it is tricky to get it to post). So I made sure to take this video with our regular camera so we could share it. Katie started doing this a few days before she turned 1. This was on her birthday (I think!)

Katie's First Birthday, etc.

The successful finale to Katie's first birthday (shortly followed by a good face wash and bed time! It had been a busy day)


Katie's friends: Sarah, Connor, Brendan, Sam. We had a fun time playing!


Daddy and Katie at the park where we played for a while before heading to our home for a birthday BBQ.

On Katie's actual birthday, Mimi made strawberry cake. It was delicious!

"Super Katie"

Connor showing Katie how to do the stairs (she doesn't need help, but the thought is nice...) in their 4th of July outfits.

The view outside "Thomas the Train" (see some of the posts below)

Mimi and Katie enjoying the train ride on Thomas the Train

Papa and Mimi took our family to Snoqualmie (a whopping 10 minutes from our home) for "A Day out with Thomas". They hook Thomas onto the end of the train and make a carnival of it. Connor always enjoys a train ride, and we all enjoyed being together.

Our little blueberry bushes in the backyard. They're doing pretty good and holding their own (probably would do a little better if we were faithful at watering them!)

Pool! Well, North Bend's version of a pool ;) We had a great time in Mimi's backyard. Somehow I couldn't find the picture with Jeremy in the pool with the kids... wonder if that got deleted some how!?!

Katie can't walk yet, but she sure can bounce on the trampoline - and boy is she proud of herself!

Oh yeah, baby, July 4th in the northwest. We had a good time and thank the Lord for canopies, umbrellas, jackets, etc.

Family Picture

We never seem to get pictures of all of us (especially not the parents), so here's our attempt. Poor timing, though. We'd been sitting for about 30 minutes (eating) and so Katie was wanting to crawl and it was well past naptime. A for effort??

Our Home - front view

This is a side angle view the front of our house. As you can see below, Jeremy successfully removed yet another enormous tree. We like to be able to see out (and have people see our home). Slowly but surely we're taming the jungle!!