pop's boots

sayla has a passion for shoes. 6-8-pairs-a-day kind of passion, and the bigger, the better. She was giddy to wear these boots, and just kept giggling as she tried to walk around.

mischief

 these smiles just scream "mischief times two!"

that's right...

...that's a cucumber from our garden

and squash from our garden...

and pesto from our garden!

Plus, we are days away from ripe tomatoes and I can't wait. I love tomatoes, they might be my favorite food.

So fun to have a garden!

the stink eye

sayla gives this look on demand when you ask her for the "stink eye"- what a little ham!

I know, I know...

I said I was going to do was pay more attention to the blog. I have just had a real creative block over the past couple weeks. Not just from blogging, but from everything that requires creativity. This includes, but is not limited to: blogging, photography, graphic design, cooking, any paper craft, hosting parties, sewing, crafts with the girls, gardening.

I think I was just still tired from the two week trip to Denver while Drew was in China. He got back and we were both exhausted (him from 27,000 miles of travel!  and me from single parenting.) and then we had to hit the ground running since we had been away for two weeks. I don't think we ever got to re-charge. However, this past 5 days we have been in Dallas and Drew's mom has gotten up with Sayla every morning to let me catch up on sleep. I feel so refreshed!

So- I don't have much to show for the last couple weeks, but hear are a few pics from the last couple days as I have slowly come back to life and finally feel the creative juices flowing again:

1. Did you know that caterpillars love dill? I didn't, until a family of about 15 of them finished off our HUGE dill plant in one night! Luckily, they left the other plants alone. Kead loved it and wanted to check on them 10 times a day. Kind of fun in a "lost all of our dill plant" sort of way.

one near the bottom where there were still a few sprigs

all of those stems were full of dill. hungry little caterpillars indeed.

2. It has been hot these days and we have sprinkler time almost everyday.

3. Family time in Dallas

the girls in their little shirts we made for the fourth

loving granny

Fort Worth Zoo with uncle Dan

3.Also part of family time, but we had a friend of Dave's come and take some family pics. I will post those later once I make sure again from her that she doesn't mind me putting them on the blog. :)

beautiful

kirst let me take some pics of her and her beautiful belly.  she is SO.CUTE.PREGNANT! more to come soon.

cousins

hands down, favorite picture of the cousins....ever.  It so perfectly shows their interaction. Kead and Sayla acting like wild-women and Burke loving his cousins and their crazy antics. love it.

colorado thus far

I probably didn't mention that Drew is in southeast asia for a couple weeks. He is. And we are in Denver with the fam. It has gone by suprisingly fast (thus far) and there are only 5 days to go till Drew is home. While he is gone we have gone to the zoo (going again tomorrow),  hung out at several parks (and one mall playground), had a birthday party, had a barbecue/garage building party, had a baby shower, and mostly just hung out with family. An added bonus was that keje and pat were in town for the past week, so we got some good time with them as well. It's been the best "single mom" vacation yet! Fits are (comparatively with other similar visits) pretty minimal and the girls seem to really love being here. I can tell that they are both ready to see their dad (and I am too!) but I am so grateful for so much help while he is gone! 

p.s. this website is an easy way to make mosaics of your photos for free.

prioritizing.

ok friends- i know my posting has been less than awesome lately. I just needed a break. Let me share something with you- something I don't like to admit. You ready? here it is: Sometimes I care more about how people think we are doing than how we are actually doing. Blogging can be terrible for this! I get so caught up in how you all think my life is going, that I forget to do an honest survey of how things really are.

Drew and I had a heart to heart about re-prioritizing our life with what is important and realized we are exhausted!  If you know Drew and I, you know that are favorite thing is being around people. Saying "no" to things isn't something we do...not out of a sense of obligation, but we really like being around people and involved in all sorts of things. Lately though, things have gotten a bit...over committed.... at our house. SO- we sat down and really made a list of things that are important and things that aren't.

Here are somethings that didn't make the cut:

1) The photo blog. Too much of a stress... SO- I will continue to take a photo a day- and will occasionally share them here, but I just couldn't keep up another blog.

2) wedding invites. Especially with brides I know. :) Not that any of my brides have been awful, I just have a really hard time charging people I know for my time, so time to money ratio I was only paying myself about $3.00/hour (sometimes less). This isn't that big of a deal with a set of 20 shower invites, but 200+ wedding invites is another story.

3) some church commitments. this is a hard one. I LOVE being involved and I see everything we are doing as important, so it will be tough to choose what gets to go.I still haven't figured out what I am going to stop doing.


but here are some things I am getting excited about that we do see as a priority:

1) this blog. We love having a place for people to get to read what is happening in our lives- especially with the departure back to the Middle East getting closer, what better way to stay connected with people? so I will have more time to do this!

2) "school" with the girls. I don't mean workbooks and multiplication charts, but we will be starting a weekly project that has a purpose and lesson plan. I am excited that the girls are at an age where they are ready to learn and am SO excited to get to have more planned learning times with them!

3) spending time in the Word. I think a lot of times I replace knowing God with trying to serve God and I am excited to cut some stuff to have more time to spend getting to know what the Bible says about things.

Well, I'm glad we had this little chat. I will just pick up from here as oppose to trying to do a catch- up post. That is a little overwhelming.

love you all.

30 things

Happy 30th Birthday Drew!

This year, for Drew's birthday I had friends and family write 30 things they love about Drew. It was such a blessing to read and a really special gift to hear from so many people who love him, and to hear the re-occurring themes.

The top five things people love about drew are:

1. He loves the Lord
2. He is accepting
3. He is laid back
4. He is adventurous
5. He wears sandals (almost every person mentioned his footware!)

We had a great day, and loved celebrating Drew entering a new decade!

Drew, here are 30 things I love about you:

1. Your commitment to our family
2. The way you rough house with our girls, keep em tough.
3. How I always feel completely accepted by you.
4. That you love sitting in coffee shops as much as I do.
5. Watching you “talk” to people in your head- your lips move just a bit.
6. That you are always inviting people to our house
7. That you hardly ever complain
8. Your love for good meat
9. Your big man dance
10. That you still play with my hair when we are waiting in line somewhere
11. I love dreaming with you about our life in Oman
12. Knowing that I can completely trust that you have sought the Lord on decisions for our family.
13. That you take being a leader so seriously, and do such a great job at it.
14. You are such a great travel partner
15. I love that you push me to let go of things that really aren’t a big deal.
16. I love that you truly care what I think about things and always seek my opinion.
17. I love it that so many people know you well. You are easy to know.
18. You never stir conflict
19. You love to have fun and are always coming up with crazy new fun things to do.
20. I know you hate the term, but you are a great “girl dad”
21. I like that you listen to news, read magazines and generally know what is going on in the world.
22. I love hearing you talk about the tourism stuff, you get so excited
23. You are WAY better at math than me
24. You are awesome at taking the girls so that I can be “jord” and not “mom” for awhile.
25. You are a great son and son-in-law
26. You are always pushing to look more like Christ
27. You are a great cook
28. And pretty good looking, too.
29. You are the funniest person I know.
30. I love thinking of what the future holds for us, and am so thankful for the security of knowing how much you love me. I hope you know how much I love you too.

kiddos

I took LOTS of pictures of the kids at fundaninos. At one point I heard the little boy in the first picture ask his house mom "but why are they taking so many pictures of us?" Dan and Brittany at least had the excuse that it was for the website. I am just crazy. 

The kids range from 2 days old to 18. There is also a really cool program that lets young pregnant girls stay at the orphanage as an alternative to abortion. When they have the baby they can decide to stay and take care of their baby or give it up for adoption. Either way it is a life saved. There were so many that I wanted to bring home with me. Maybe one day.  For now though- you need to sponsor these kids so they can stay at the orphanage. All adoption out of Guatemala is completely closed (they are starting a pilot program to re-open it with some countries, not the US though) so the kids will be living at Fundaninos indefinitely. As soon as the website goes public each kids will be up for sponsorship to pay for the cost of staying at the orphanage and going to school. $40 bucks a month is all it takes. Be expecting a link when the website is finished! For now though- here are their wonderful faces.

fundaninos

Here are some pics of the orphanage, fundaninos. Y'all- it was such a wonderful place. I can't even tell you how peaceful it is. The workers do such a great job with the kids and it is truly a refuge from the craziness of the city. I was talking to a girl at the church who helps in the kids area and she said that she can actually see this kids faces soften the longer they are at Fundaninos. So great.

guatemala city

Hi, friends! I promised pictures and here they come! I am breaking it down into a couple posts because the pictures are kind of overwhelming.

If you read the other blog then you know that we didn't leave Fundaninos (the orphanage) much. Which was great, because it was a really safe and peaceful place.

The rest of Guatemala City is kind of crazy. Good crazy, but when we did venture out I always felt like the people in charge of us (Guatemalans) were so stressed out for our well being and safety that it made everything a little tense. I didn't really realize how much trouble "gringos" can get in until we got in a wreck and they immediately sent 4 armed guards to the scene just to watch us. yikes.

It was also a weird experience for me because I am use to travelling with Drew and we are pretty...adventurous about it and I never think about my safety very much. I mean, I always feel safe with him and it was weird to not have that safety net.

ALL THAT to say- I didn't take the camera out much when we were out on the town. I just didn't want to draw more attention to our already very obvious group. Here are the couple I did get.

processing gutemala

What a week in guatemala! We had such a great time and if I wasn't overwhelmed with blog posts before I left, I sure am now. :) I will be spending my week sifting through pictures and trying to process emotions, but I thought I'd give you a brief intro.

We spent the majority of the week sitting in an office working on a website so that the kids can be sponsored to stay at the orphanage we were working with. It was tedious, it was stressful and it was heartbreaking. As a non-website coder my main job for the week was gathering and adding information to the website. This included writing some info, editing some info that was not written by native english speakers and translating some info from Spanish to English. There were 55 kids and 3 bio sections for each kid. There were 5 of us working on it and information was coming from about 30 different sources. Yeah, it was chaos.

It was painful sometimes how much it seemed like we were doing nothing. We wanted to be with the kids, but were stuck in a hot office trying to get this website done. We were all stressed and sleep deprived (and depraved) and maybe a little short with each other...but after long hours of writing and editing these kids stories, just when we were ready to quit, we would have just a couple minutes with the kids and be refreshed to continue working. Knowing them and knowing that by our work they could be sponsored to stay at this amazing place and not only survive but really thrive, and not only thrive physically, but know God's love for them through tangible love and the spoken word- made the long hours more durable.

 So expect many pictures to come, but for today here is one of my favorites. After helping with the bios and having to read the painful stories of where all these kids came from, after knowing her story, to see the joy in her eyes bring tears to mine. What a precious soul.

overwhelmed.

I have about 9000 pictures and posts that I want to share with y'all...but I haven't posted in two weeks and now that seems like such a task.  maybe later this week I will do one big catch up post.

I leave you with this picture from our drive home today: