amazing

I'm looking through old pictures and started looking at the ones from our trip to Liberia to pick up our kiddos. I couldn't believe the changes in the oldest 2 between our trip to the beach in April 2007 and July 2008. It's unbelievable what a difference 15 months can make.

Christmas update

I know some of you are waiting for a Christmas report with lots of pictures, but you will have to wait a little longer. We're not done yet. Christmas doesn't end until tomorrow when we gather with the extended Dunbar clan. Tomorrow night will mark the end of 7 days of Christmas celebrations. Lots of food, gifts, and fun. Stay tuned.

love it

I absolutely love it when kids "get it" and find ways to give from the depths of their generous, compassionate little hearts. They aren't intimidated by all the obstacles that we adults see when we think about making a difference. Check out this great blog post from Andy at Lifesong for Orphans.

cool photo

I love this picture Peter took while we were walking in Fairmount Park on Thanksgiving. From left to right you see Becky, Garty, and Peter.

keeping up to date

I know many of you have given up any hope that I will ever blog consistently again. You may be correct. However, I wanted to make it easier for you to know when I do update our blog without having to click over here on a regular basis. Now those of you who prefer to read blog updates through a blog feed have the option to subscribe over on our sidebar. If I had known it would take a total of 30 seconds to set up that option I would have done it a long time ago.

prayer

This Franciscan prayer is so powerful. It so clearly reflects how I long to see myself and others energized to action by the pain in the world instead of paralyzed by it. May we all be blessed as we have the courage to pray this prayer for ourselves and others.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Thanks to From HIV to Home for sharing the new prayer of my heart.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from 3 future Grovers!

things that make you say "hmmm"

We're listening to the Mamma Mia soundtrack. When "Dancing Queen" came on, Joshua stopped playing, looked thoughtful, and commented that it "sounds like the music we sing in church." After wondering which church he's been attending, I probed to discover that he was thinking all the different voices sounded like lots of people singing in church. There are a lot of great voices in our local congregation, so I would probably enjoy hearing Norristown New Life sing "Dancing Queen." I won't hold my breath though.

be still my heart

Yesterday Peter took the kids to drop off their Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. (As an aside, we love this program and highly recommend it for giving kids an opportunity to make a difference in a way they can understand.) While we were shopping for gifts and packing our boxes, we talked about the fact that our boxes might go to Africa or Asia or South America or some other place where kids wouldn't have any Christmas presents and need to know Jesus loves them. When they got to our local drop off point, the volunteers asked the kids where they wanted their shoe boxes to go. Joshua said Asia. Patience said Liberia. Garty said...drumroll please... France! Nothing warms this mommy's heart like knowing my 2.5 year old is already a Francophile. I don't know where he picked that up, but I'm so proud.

finicky eater

Last night I moved one of the candles from the living room to the dining room table for dinner. The kids appreciate having a "fancy" dinner when I light candles. After finishing his first plate of food, Garty surveyed the table and announced that he wanted more ravioli and green beans and peppers but no candle.

a bit upsetting

Every few months we hire Kerrie to babysit our kids so we can get out of the house together for a few hours. Our kids love her, and she loves them. We'd hire her every week if she didn't prefer to be paid with money. Last night before we were even out of the door she was asking the kids if they wanted to take a trip to outer space and visit the moon. From Joshua's report this morning, it sounds like it was quite a bumpy ride, but they were safe in their space shuttle with their space suits on. I was thrilled to hear the report from last night until I went up to get Garty out of his crib. I walked in his room expecting to hear the usual joyous, "Mommy!!" Instead, he looked up and asked, "Where's Kerrie?"

one of those moments

Says Joshua to Mommy as he gets ready for bed, "I have nipples?" as he points to his cheeks. Says Mommy to Joshua, working hard not to laugh, "No, Joshua, they're dimples."

movie worth seeing

We're anxious to see Pray the Devil Back to Hell, an award winning documentary about "the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country." It's coming to Philadelphia the day before Thanksgiving, and we're planning to be there. If you're in the area, you're welcome to join us. If not, you can check to see if it's coming to a theater near you.

writing assignment

Once a week Joshua gets an assignment that requires him to draw and write about a particular topic. Tonight's topic was: "Our President elect is Barack Obama. What do you want him to do for our country when he takes office in January?" Here is Joshua's response. "I want Barack Obama to build a big church for the Liberians and Americans. I want the church to have big doors." When he was ready to draw his picture, Joshua asked Peter what Barack Obama looks like. Peter told him that Obama is tall and thin, kind of like Daddy. Joshua then drew a fancy church with nice double doors and a man as tall as the church.

more election day

The kids just went with me to cast my vote. When we finished and returned to the car, Joshua reminded us, "I voted for Obama." Patience countered with, "I voted for the little boy to come to America with his family."

election day

Our kids are vaguely aware of the presidential election, but it's not something we've really discussed with them much. Yesterday when I picked Joshua up from school he announced, "I voted for Obama. What is the other guy name?" Poor John McCain. He evidently never had a chance in first grade at Marshall Street Elementary.

take a guess

Thanks to numerous people who added their change to our Kids Walking Kids Home bucket, this was the final result. The kids and I finally made it to the bank before they closed on Wednesday to use the change machine and get a total. Peter and I were hoping for $50 or $60. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when the machine gave us the final total of $99.28! God took what seemed small in the eyes of many and multiplied it for a powerful impact. This addition brings our total raised for "our" Ethiopian boy to $470. I had personally hoped to break the $500 mark, but we are so thankful to be able to offer what we raised to a family who will change a boy's life forever. Joshua has already said several times that he wants to do this again, so we may consider making it an annual fall event. Thanks so much to all who supported us in making a difference!

ARPKD/CHF

This Wall Street Journal article is about a family facing the same disease that Garty and Joshua have been diagnosed with. It is so disturbing to realize that our boys' birthmother would probably have been advised to abort had she received prenatal care in the US with our current technology. It is also frightening to read the account of this poor child's health, knowing that it is only a matter of time until our sons' health will likely deteriorate. However, it makes me pause to realize that so little is known about their disease, and even this child's diagnosis is now in question. We are blessed that both boys apparently have mild cases of the disease, but the long term prognosis is still unpleasant. We are thankful for the ARPKD/CHF Alliance, a non-profit organization committed to research, education, and advocacy on behalf of those with this unusual disease. We are also thankful that we live close to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where the head of the nephrology department has conducted a significant percentage of the world's research on ARPKD/CHF.

the count

Thus far we've raised $281 and a very heavy bucket of change (we won't be counting that until the end) for our Kids Walking Kids Home project. If you still want to make a donation, we'll be collecting through October 22. You have 5 days left, and every donation makes a difference. You can give the money to us or donate online to our walk. If you go to the donation page, make sure you scroll down to the donate button below our family's picture so "our" boy is helped by your gift.

kids walking kids home: part 2

We found a cool little waterfall that would have been even cooler if it were not so dry. Joshua, Patience, and I climbed around on the rocks after a short snack break.

Toward the end of the walk each of the kids had a turn to ride on Daddy's shoulders.

A kind man who passed us on his bike offered to take our picture when we arrived at the end of our journey.

We enjoyed freshly baked chocolate oatmeal bars as a sweet reward for our efforts.

Tonight I'm going to count our donations so I can give a fundraising update tomorrow to let you all know how we're doing. It's not too late to change a little boy's life!

kids walking kids home: part 1

We walked 0.6 miles from our house to the trailhead where this sign told us we were about 1/8 of the way to Valley Forge. That's when Joshua let us know his legs were tired.

We had occasional views of the river.

Joshua and Patience each got 2 strategically timed short rides in the stroller to break up the walking.

Not far past the halfway mark we found a water fountain to get drinks and splash each other a bit.

quick report

We're home! We made a last minute change and walked to the trail from our house, so we walked a total distance of 4.2 miles in 2 hours and 26 minutes. We were a bit concerned when Joshua started whining about being tired at 0.6 miles, but the kids did really well overall. More details with pictures and video will be coming Sunday night or Monday morning.

today's the big day

If you don't know about our family's Kids Walking Kids Home walk today, it's because we don't like you at all. Or maybe it's just because I missed your name on the mass email I hurriedly sent out last Saturday and haven't had time to go back and check who I sent it to. It's hard to say, but don't get all paranoid about it. I'd be happy to send the email to you now if you let me know I missed you.

Anyway, there's a lot of excitement at our house this morning. It's a gorgeous fall day, and the kids are so excited to help a little Ethiopian boy come home to his new family and the blessing of good health care. We're headed out after lunch. Tomorrow or Monday we'll post pictures from our 3.5 mile trek, but for now I wanted to share a little more about why our family committed to this fundraising opportunity. It's definitely not because we're bored and couldn't think of any other ways to fill our fall weekends.

For several years now I've been following the personal story of a family who adopted a little girl with serious medical needs from our orphanage in Liberia. Their adoption story is full of drama, much more than ours. I've always been impressed by the sacrifices they've made out of love for God and an adorable little girl. Not long ago they decided to adopt again. This time they chose an HIV+ boy from Ethiopia whose face makes my heart melt. Through that process, they became more and more passionate about HIV orphan care and loving the truly hopeless. Out of this passion was born From HIV to Home.

Every year tons of new non-profit organizations emerge in America. Many of them flounder and fail over time because passion alone isn't enough to build an organization. However, I believe that Jennifer has what it takes to build a strong organization that will "pave a road home for the world's HIV-affected orphans, particularly for those children who are themselves HIV+." In a short time, HIV to Home is already making an impact. Jennifer knows that adoption won't solve the HIV crisis in Africa. In a just world, the amazing HIV treatments available here in the US would also be available throughout Africa, allowing parents to stay alive and raise their kids. But we don't live in a just world. Parents and children are dying at an alarming rate all over Africa, so adoption is a tiny bandaid that can bring hope to one child at a time.

We know that our little family can't save the world, but today we have the chance to help one 3-year-old Ethiopian boy and one American family find each other and be blessed through the love they will share. That's enough to bring joy to our hearts and tears to my eyes.

recovery weekend

After a long and exhausting week following the death of Peter's grandfather, we unwound on Saturday with Mom and Bob at the corn maze near their house. They had lots of simple but fun fall-themed activities for the kids. A good time was had by all. We even ran into our friend Michelle and her kids after not seeing them for a year!

giddy

That's the only word to accurately describe Patience when I pick her up from preschool. She loves it. The first day she couldn't stop talking about Abby. They are the best of friends. Most days Patience is so excited to tell me about school that she sounds like she's going to hyperventilate before we walk 30 feet to our car. We're pretty sure this year is going to be huge for her.

update on Pop-Pop

After a crazy day and a half, Peter's grandfather passed away early this morning. Thankfully we all had time to visit with him while he was conscious on Saturday, and all 5 of his grandchildren were with him when he died this morning. It's going to be a long difficult week for the family, so we'd appreciate your prayers for all of us, especially Peter's grandmother.

prayers appreciated

It's 5:08am, and we've been up all night. Peter's grandfather has been in the hospital all week with a broken hip. They've been putting off the surgery because of minor issues that they wanted to resolve before operating. Friday night those issues were no longer minor. Things took a quick turn for the worse, and they took him in for emergency surgery with a bleak prognosis. Our friend Em was our hero and came to stay with our sleeping kids while we rushed to the hospital. Pop-Pop coded on the table and had to be resuscitated. The surgery ended quickly because the problem they expected to find wasn't there. That means that even if he recovers from his near death experience, they still don't know what's wrong with him. The doctors have been preparing us for the worst but hoping for the best. We actually saw some improvement around 3:30am, but it's extremely minor in the big scheme of what needs to happen. I just came home to relieve Em and figure out what the plan is for the kids all day. All prayers are appreciated for Peter's grandfather, grandmother, and the rest of the family. It's going to be a long few days no matter what happens.

cute?

Garty's favorite phrase: "I not baby. I Garty." The first time he said it I was getting a sleepy boy up from his nap and asked, "Hey, baby, how was your nap?" His cute response made me smile because it was such a grown up boy thing to say. After hearing it 30 times, it was less cute and more annoying. Now the phrase has morphed and can be used many different ways throughout the day. For example, if Peter says, "Hey, pal," Garty may respond, "I not pal. I Garty." Likewise if I say, "Are you hungry?" I might hear, "I not hungry. I Garty." I never would have thought that 5 simple words from the mouth of a handsome little boy could make me want to scream. I'm sure this will be a sweet memory somewhere down the road, but I welcome any advice on how to move us toward making it just a memory.

"fun"

Patience needs to take a "fun" family photo along for her first day of preschool tomorrow. As we have no family photos since April, and definitely none that would qualify as "fun," we asked my sister to take one at Patience's birthday party last night. Aren't we cute... and "fun"?

wisdom beyond his years

Last Friday morning when Joshua was admiring the new kitchen window that Peter had installed overnight (thanks to the carpenter ants who were nesting in the old one), he saw a bird sitting outside on a wire. He pointed it out and asked what kind it was. Instead of saying, "It's a fat gray bird," revealing the true bird lover I am, I said, "I don't know. Do you know who loves birds and knows all the kinds of birds?" Joshua's response in a very matter of fact tone was, "God." I laughed realizing that he was absolutely correct, but I was going to say Great Grandmom Dunbar.

book list updates

I can't handle the crazy list of stuff I have to do this week, yet I randomly decided that now would be a good time to update our book list on the right side of this page. That's good time management for you. I'm just excited that after a long break from reading any books at all, I've been on a roll lately. The best part is that one usually obsessive reader who has been known to stay up until 4am when she's reading a good book has managed to put her books down, feed her family, and sleep at night. Most of the additions to the list, however, were books Peter read on his rainy trip to CA back in May.

new computer!

This evening we got our new computer after almost 2 years of computer issues, and I've been staring at the screen getting it set up for hours now. I can't even think a coherent thought anymore, so I'm headed to bed in 3 minutes when my last download completes. I just wanted to share our exciting news because now it will be so much easier to post pictures of our lives. Stay tuned! I might even get crazy and upload some videos to YouTube now that I can work with our videos. We watched a bunch this evening from when we picked up the kids, which we've never been able to do before. What fun!

got drama?

I owe you all an end of the week report about our Neighborhood Kids' Club, but I've been frantically playing catch up all week on all the things I didn't take care of last week. On top of that, I'm really burned out. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share that in addition to last week's hit and run accident, difficult news from my family, green card chaos, and visiting bat, last night we were watching TV when we heard a funny noise and the lights went out in the 2nd floor hallway. Peter checked out the light fixture and decided that it had shorted out, tripping the circuit when it did. While he was getting some tools after removing the fixture from the ceiling, I noticed a strange glow that looked like fire. It turns out that the very old electrical wires in our house had caught on fire and were smoldering in the ceiling. We used a spray bottle of water to put it out while thanking God for the ugly flame retardant ceiling tiles that had probably kept us from having a bigger crisis on our hands. Around lunchtime today it still smelled like we had burned a bonfire around here. Peter spent the better part of 12 hours today rewiring a good part of the 2nd floor. He just finished and will be heading to bed shortly to get 4.5 hours of sleep before his breakfast meeting tomorrow. So if you're looking for some excitement, please come visit us while we're on a roll. Maybe we can shake things up a bit for you.

the bat

Forget the previous post with all the cute pictures of our neighborhood kids. I know you really just want to see pictures of our bat.

mid week report

Our club is going really well. (It's just the rest of life that's been full of drama.) Tuesday night we had 3 new kids for a total of 13 neighborhood kids that have attended. It's discouraging for me to realize that there are 50 that could be here, but several people have reminded me that we've got a good base to start with. Tonight we were unfortunately competing with a summer camp talent show and some other activities, so our numbers were way down. It was encouraging though to hear our neighbor Isaiah (entering 5th grade) telling his mom that he wanted to skip the talent show so he could come to kids' club. It was also cool to find out after club that Jeremiah, who showed up late, was talking during my story because he was trying to learn the Bible verse from the night before that he had forgotten. Several kids have told me at the end of club that it is really fun, and there have been requests to extend it to next week. (Yeah, right!) With Kelly taking charge of my kids this morning and Mom, Bob, and Rachel helping out the past 2 nights, we're just cruising along. Please continue to pray that things go smoothly and that the kids will all be back tomorrow and Friday.

I can't believe it

If you can't keep up with the rapid pace of my blog posts over the past 24 hours, read the post below this one first so you know what's going on. If you're already aware of our green card crisis, I'm posting to report that Peter just got a call from the distribution center... (drumroll please)... and they found them! The supervisor said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but my description of the envelope really helped. Of course, she forgot to mention God. I'm pretty sure he helped, too. She said about a million pieces of mail go through their center every day, and hundreds of them get rejected. And in the middle of yesterday's hundreds was an unsealed envelope with 3 green cards. I'm totally in shock. Even when we pray for a miracle I seldom expect one. What a wonderful surprise. Peter is on his way to Panera to buy a big box of yummy bagels for the incredibly kind postal service employees. With this morning's crisis out of the way, I'm off to try to study my stories for club tonight. It helps a lot that our friend Kim picked up my kids for the day so I have a completely quiet house.

maybe we don't need sleep

Saturday night around 1am I witnessed someone fleeing his truck after hitting 2 motorcycles on the corner outside our house. I woke Peter, and we were outside with the police, fire trucks, ambulances, and most of the neighborhood until 2am. Sunday night was the bat incident that had us up until 2am (see previous post for details). Last night when I asked Peter around midnight where the kids' green cards were that he was supposed to copy at the office, we discovered that he had forgotten about the green cards and thrown the blank envelope containing them in the mail at work. That means we mailed our green cards to nowhere with no return address inside or outside the envelope. The short story is that this is very bad. By the time we did everything we could for the moment and got to bed... it was 2am. Normally 2am works well for me but not for Peter. With everything else going on this week, 2am isn't working for me. We'd appreciate your prayers for some rest very soon. We'd also appreciate your prayers for the green card situation. After several tries this morning, Peter got through to the supervisor at the distribution center where Worldlink's mail goes. I believe that accomplishment in itself is a little miracle. She was kind and agreed to hunt for it, but it's still a long shot and will take a big miracle. Our lives have been full of miracles over the past few years though, so we're praying and holding out hope.

day 1 report

Kids' Club this evening went very smoothly. I was disappointed to have only 10 kids (not including our 3) from 6 different families, but it's pretty typical with these clubs for the first day to be small. Tomorrow they get prizes for each friend they bring, so I expect the numbers to rise. Even the kids who often cause trouble around here listened attentively to the stories and were cooperative. Several of the kids said it was really fun. Mary Kay and Rosemarie were amazing. They entertained our kids all afternoon, brought dinner, and kept club running smoothly. No pictures tonight because I'm not up for dealing with our computer issues, but they'll be coming soon. Thanks to all who prayed. Don't quit!

After club was over Patience came down from the bathroom and calmly said, "Mommy, the bat is flying around the hallway." This bat had been hiding out somewhere in our house since about 1am last night when Toffee (our cat) pounced on it about 10 feet in front of me. Unfortunately, Toffee let go, and both cats lost track of it after tearing around the house for a few minutes. By the time I woke Peter up and he found 2 racquets, we couldn't locate the bat. We hunted everywhere we could think of until 2am and finally decided we'd have to share our house. I covered our fruit basket so we wouldn't be feeding it and went to bed. When Patience discovered him tonight, Peter was quick to find the racquets and knocked the poor creature down the stairs faster than I could believe. He cleaned him up with a plastic Ziploc bag and then proceeded to give the kids a detailed biology lesson about bats. Patience and Garty were really into it, touching the wings and checking out the teeth (through the bag of course). Joshua was less amused and had a lot of questions before bed about whether more bats would get in our house. Rosemarie didn't seem too thrilled either. Never a dull moment at our house. Stay tuned for pictures of the kids posing with the bat later in the week.

and so it begins

Today is the first day of our Neighborhood Kids' Club. From 6:30-8pm each evening this week we'll be opening our yard to kids for games, Bible stories, snacks, and lots of fun. I only have a minute right now, but I wanted to offer some specific ways you can pray if you're into that sort of thing.

• Please pray that God will bring the kids who need to be here.
• Please pray that the kids will cooperate while they're here and that we'll be able to truly love them. At times having certain neighborhood kids here can be quite frustrating.
• Please pray for family unity as we have a much more stressful week than normal. We all know how much easier it is to wound those we love when we're feeling pressured.
• Please pray for me as I study my lessons. Wonderful friends and supporters are making my week easier by coming to help with club, amusing the kids, and providing meals. Now I just need the brain capacity to focus.
• In regard to focusing, please pray for peace as I just received some news that weighs heavy on my heart this morning and could easily distract me from what I need to do this week. Most of all, please pray for the family and friends affected by the news. (How's that for an extremely vague request?!)

I'm going to do my very best to provide frequent updates this week on how our club is going. If you don't hear from me tonight, it's safe to assume that I'm lying on the couch staring at the Olympics and pondering whether I can make it up the stairs to bed.

you can take them out of Africa...

...but they are still African no matter how much pizza they eat. Saturday morning we had a long drive home from an overnight at Gram's house. As often happens, Joshua started making up a song that included a bunch of nonsense and lots of repetition. A few minutes later Patience started making up a song of her own. A few minutes later, without ever stopping to discuss their plans, they had a little call and response going that went like this:

• P: Do you know Liberia?
• J: Yes, I know Liberia.
• P: Do you know Liberia?
• J: Yes, I know Liberia.

The song continued for quite a while. Eventually Patience stopped singing while Joshua continued. When I was sure he couldn't sing any longer, he sang: All done for now. All done for now. I'm coming stop now.

We had a minute max of silence before Patience started singing again. The new song started with much repetition of the phrase Liberian children. Joshua evidently couldn't allow her to sing alone, so he started up again singing: I'm coming start again... I'm coming sing it again... [insert lots of senseless sounds that Joshua often uses in his songs] and on and on.

I wrote all of this down on the back of an envelope while they were singing so I could get it word for word. I was afraid that you would think I exaggerated otherwise. But seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.

feeling artistic

Peter took a long distance photo of Patience the other night at Valley Forge that turned out blurry, but it would have been a really cute shot otherwise. In an effort to rescue it, I used Picasa to crop it and make it sepia with a soft focus. I love the result. In an effort to not neglect the boys, I played with their pictures, too. I'm pretty proud of my burst of creativity, so I thought I'd share our photos with all of you. The best part is that none of these pictures were posed. I might have to try to get a better one of Joshua though since the other two were actually looking in the direction of the camera.

welcome to the neighborhood

A few weeks ago the telephone poles around our neighborhood were graced with this sign:

We were quite amused, but maybe we should be frightened.

mid summer update

I finally finished uploading some of our pictures tonight and sent Peter to bed without me so I could post here. As mentioned last week, we're having a fun summer with lots of firsts for our kids. The day school ended we kicked things off with a strawberry picking excursion. We celebrated birthdays galore in June, so we had lots of fun family time. Peter's Mom and Bob spoiled us with a day at Dutch Wonderland. We all spent a week's worth of evenings at our church's VBS where I taught the preschool Bible lesson. My parents and sister entertained our kids while Peter and I had our first overnight getaway since becoming parents in honor of our 9th anniversary. The kids saw their first 2 movies on the big screen (Clifford and Veggie Tales) thanks to the Regal's free summer movie series. We've played in creeks. We went on a wonderful 3 day vacation to the National Zoo in DC, Arlan and Marcy's house in VA, and the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. We've been improving our swimming skills and confidence thanks to friends and family members with pools and pool memberships. We had our first outing to the beach (not including our quick visit in Liberia) thanks to a speaking invitation from the CCO's Ocean City Beach Project. We've spent lots of time at our local zoo and the library. On July 26th we celebrated Liberian Independence Day with real West African food. (The Liberian restaurant ran out of food, so we had to track down a similar option nearby.) We just spent the evening at Valley Forge having a picnic, riding bikes, and watching deer. Wow! Just reading about everything we've done this summer has made me tired. I'm off to bed, but first I'll link some of our adventures mentioned above to our web albums for those of you who need your fix of our kids or just have nothing better to do.

must be summer

I follow a few other blogs of friends who have kids. Very few of them have posted much lately. They must be as caught up with summer as we are. With all the wonderful busyness of summertime, my brain hasn't been up to writing posts. We have loads of pictures to share, but our computer situation is such a mess that I can only post from Peter's work laptop when he's home at night and the battery is charged. (Seriously, we have 3 computers floating around here between ours and 2 from Worldlink, and none of them do everything they should. Peter has to plug his battery into another computer every 3 hours or so to charge it, and that's the "good" computer. We really need to purchase a new computer.) As a result, not much communication has happened. Blogging has finally made it to the top of my to do list for the week, so we'll see if it actually happens. I just thought I'd post quickly to say that we're having a wonderful summer. Since last spring and summer were such a crazy adjustment time, I feel like this summer is my first extended period having all 3 of my kids in my life full time. It's great! We've had lots of exciting new experiences, and we're all growing and being stretched in so many ways. If anyone still checks this blog, please stay tuned for some fun pictures in the near future. Peter's out tonight helping friends with their new house, so maybe I'll get ambitious... or maybe not. I still have quite a few hours to go before the kids' bedtime.

promised update

We had a great time at Chick-fil-A's Cow Appreciation Day. I'll admit that we weren't the best looking cows you've ever seen, but you should have heard our mooing. We should have gotten extra credit for enthusiasm. Plus, we had really cute tails that you can't see in the picture.

cow appreciation day

Did you know that today is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A? Click here for details on how your family can enjoy a free meal. We don't eat much fast food, but this looks too fun. I thought I should share quickly so no one is angry at me later when you've missed out. We're headed there for lunch with a bunch of friends in lieu of our usual Friday pot luck style lunch. I'll try to post pictures tonight of our little cows.

for the Grove City gang

If his insatiable appetite isn't evidence enough, here is indisputable proof that Garty is definitely Clark's boy. (Thanks, Shannon!)