MARCH BIRTHDAY PARTY

Between my sister and I, we have 5 kids born in a 10 day period in March.....instead of individual parties, we just get everyone together for 1 big celebration.

Josiah turned 4 this year!

everyone waiting for the gift opening to begin!

Janae and Julia opening up a gift together.

Becca opening up her favorite gift....a puppy in a purse.

oh my. this is SO her.

we bought Jeremiah and Josiah a set of 3 little dart guns (so all 3 little boys would have their own gun)....pretty sure my sister was happy about that. :)

little fireman

Happy Birthday Josiah, Janae, Rebecca, Jeremiah, and Julia!

We love you!

ST. PATRICK'S DAY 2011

John took a week off in mid-March to install a radiant barrier in our attic (supposed to help reduce the heat that gets to your house -lowering your electric bill). the kids were so inquisitive about daddy's ventures into the attic that he let them go up with him. :)

(Biruk had chosen to go on an errand with me, therefore he's not in the attic. :) he got to go on his own afterwards!)

and of course, you know you live in the desert when you can go swimming on St. Patrick's Day!

We had 90 degree weather (even over 100 2 days) in mid to late March -so swimming sounded awfully inviting! The pool is about 70 degrees.....still too cold for mom and dad!

MARCH ~PICNIC IN THE PARK

We've had gorgeous weather the past 6 weeks or so! The first day of March, I decided to surprise the kids with a picnic at our little community park. I made them go outside and play while I packed up their little lunchboxes. :)

here's the baby girl.

LOVE her shirt-it says "who you calling shrimp?" -perfectly fits her. :)

our park has a ton of grass to run around in!

love their little piggy toes!

HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY BECCA-BOO!

how in the world did my baby girl get to be 6?!

Becca spent the morning with grandma, Elizabeth, and all the girl cousins at a play (heaven for Becca to dress up AND hang out with her cousins!). This evening we will go out for Ethiopian food (she begged for it. :)) and come home and open presents and have cake.

We had our family's big March birthday celebration ~my sister has 4 kids born in March! ~last Sunday...I'll get picks from that posted soon too.

Rebecca Anne~

You are an amazing gift to all who know you, but especially to daddy and I.

Your precious tender heart coupled with your sassy attitude make you the perfect blend of 'sugar and spice'.

I love how you love Jesus and want everyone around you to know Him too.
I love you how you love babies, puppies, kitties, and the elderly.

I love how you talk and text on your cell phone like you're a teen-ager ~even though it does worry me!

I love you Becca-boo.

love-mommy

LOTS OF UPDATES

I've just spent 1/2 my Saturday uploading pics and updating the blog. :)

It was LONG overdue and since we finally have a cold blustery winter day down here in the desert, I figured today was a good day for it!

Please scroll down as there are 4 or 5 new posts!


~and ~
I've had a few questions left in the comments (or on my Facebook :) ).

We do not know exactly when Elizabeth's surgeries will begin. We already have a pre-surgical consult with an oral surgeon to extract her molar....but our insurance doesn't cover this specific surgeon. SO, the cranio-facial surgeon's office is trying to find someone else, within our insurance, to do the surgery.

We are hoping her tooth extraction can happen in the next month, as it will take 3-5 months for the bone to grow into the space left by the tooth. Once the bone growth is confirmed, we can schedule her jaw surgery. We are hoping and praying her jaw surgery can happen in September, so that we can get the apparatus completely removed by Christmas!


Also-I was asked how Elizabeth's attachment was going, especially now that Biruk has been home nearly a year.

Thanks for asking. I should probably do a whole post about this....but in short, she is doing really well. There are still (and probably always will be) certain things that trigger her insecurities and she/we has really rough days. But God has given us the grace and strength to get thru those days, not to mention tools via our counselor to help guide Elizabeth back to feeling secure and loved.

We were quite fearful of how adopting Biruk would affect Elizabeth. She did struggle quite a bit right at first, but we think his addition to the family has actually served to help Elizabeth heal. She saw another child come into the family...and lo and behold...she was STILL loved...STILL here....nothing changed. We have seen huge improvements in her in the last year. We can't help but think that the security that came from her place in our family remaining constant even with Biruk's addition served as a catalyst for her marked improvement.

ANDREW-BUG

why in the world do they have to keep growing up?

I love this boy to pieces.

and this precious little man has hit a few milestones in the last few weeks. :)

see that big ole gap in his smile now?!

my sis was able to pull one of his top teeth out this past week-man that tooth was loose for a LONG time! In fact, it was hanging by the teeniest of threads...it was literally hanging out of the gum on one side!

If you can click on the pic and blow it up, you can see the other top tooth is about to do the same thing -it's quite loose as well! That one will be gone in a few weeks too I'm sure.

and my little math whiz is working on 2nd grade math already.

he finished 1st grade math on 1/21 and started 2nd grade math on 1/24.

he just really "gets" math. and he's good at it.

I love to see him excelling at something he enjoys!

CHINESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATION

a few weeks ago, our local Chinese Cultural Center put on a New Year's celebration.

we hadn't ever been, it was a beautiful day, so we headed downtown.

the celebration was OK. the kids loved it. John and I were a bit disappointed though ~maybe it's because we've been to China and have seen the real thing? For example: the food booths were serving fair food -like churros and fry bread. Really? that's so American! We wanted booths serving dumplings!!

oh well, we still had fun. :)

there is a Chinese market in the center so we grabbed some food to-go and picnic'd.

my 2 beauties.