My New Favorite Blog

I have a very sarcastic sense of humor.
So does Kris...so we work well together.
I love reading The Livesays Blog (see left side), because their family also has a very similar sense of humor and I like living vicariously through them since I loved my time doing Missions oversees. Anyways, they had a link to this blog and I am totally hooked. The guy is HILARIOUS!

I'm sure you need to have a similar sense of humor to enjoy it (do you enjoy movies like the Princess Bride and Office Space? Then you'll probably enjoy it too. )...and you have to be able to see the humor in some of the silly things we do and like as Christians. And you have to admit, some things we like and do are pretty funny. I couldn't stop reading (I was stuck in the chair feeding a baby...so I had nothing but time) and Kris read a few of his other blog's posts which are more serious but also incredible. GREAT writing!

So, the name is stuffchristianslike.net (I put it on the left hand side too) and I would start with a few of my favorites ;)

#231 Drinking Coffee In Church
#216 Precious Moments
#245 The Casserole Of Hope
#242 Developing Highly Sensitive "God-dar"

GOOD STUFF! :)

Dancing Queens

The girls had their dance recital tonight. They were SO excited and it was definitely a success. It was THREE hours long. Yes....three hours! Mia and Bazzy enjoyed it, despite how long it was...and we celebrated (with a majority of Hastings that had the same idea) afterwards with ice cream at Dairy Queen.
We took a few pictures before we left of our little Dancing Queens. Still in Crocs and minus their fancy hair pieces. ;)

Exciting Morning

I went to bed around midnight last night after laying little miss Charlotte in her crib next to our bed. I woke up at 6:45 this morning when I heard some tiny cries coming from the crib. That is 6 hours and 45 minutes of uninterrupted sleep people!!! That is HUGE!!! I'm a happy, well rested Mama this morning! :)

I dozed off for awhile with the baby and woke up a bit later to Kris coming in with Sebastian. Bazzy excitedly told me that he went pee on the potty! This is also huge. We've been trying for a LONG time to convince him that potty training is a good idea and I think Daddy may be the key to convincing him. ;) Yippee!!!

The ZOO

I met some Friend's at the zoo on Friday in Omaha...and besides the weather being icky and Sebastian being WAY too tired and not in the best of moods~it was very fun! :)

It was great to see you guys and hopefully it won't be too long until we can hang out again!
I'm sure it will be warmer next time. And Bazzy will have had a nap! ;)

Mia and Ava enjoying the fishies and sharks.

Part of the gang checking out the jungle.

Sebastian was overly tired this day...but that didn't keep him from enjoying some "boy time" and running around with Ben and Josiah! They were all very cute together!

Smiley boys! :)

Please Pray for the Chapman Family

I've had a really hard time even blogging about this...and I'm sure many of you already know, but I feel I need to write something simply to ask for PRAYER for the Chapman family. Last week, their youngest daughter Maria, age 5 who was adopted from China, was tragically killed in the family's driveway after being ran over by a car driven by a family member. I can't even imagine the pain their family is experiencing and this is really hard for me to grasp why this would happen.

The Chapman's have touched SO many people through Steven's music and through Shoahannah's hope and their adoption ministry. We have admired their family and ministry and we were so thankful for the grant given to us to help bring our Sebastian home.

Please say a prayer for this family~ that they will be able to go on with life after losing their little Maria.

Quick Visit to the Karen Family

I headed off to Omaha on Thursday. We slept in (yay!) and then left late morning, met our friend Jeni for a late lunch (she's moving soon :( now that her hubby is finally done with residency) and ran a few errands and then decided to call to see if the refugee family was home so we could stop in quick. It's always a little tricky to stop in "quickly" with them...because no one wants us to leave and the kids never want to leave either. But we haven't seen them in SO long, so we decided to stop in so they could meet baby Charlotte. It was late and the kids were all tired, but everyone was so happy to see each other that they had a GREAT time!

They LOVED baby Charlotte!
She got hugged and held and snuggled the whole time we were there.

The kids of course were outside with each other right away. They found a baby bird and I had to try to convince them to all go inside and wash their hands. ;)

I just thought this picture of Baz was way cute. :)

Here's me and Grandma Nah. She is such a sweet lady.

Mia, being swung by the girls.

Most of the kids together. I love how they can just jump right in and play like they just saw each other yesterday. They were SO happy to be together again.

They were really into taking pictures WITH me this time. I kinda prefer to be behind the camera, but it's nice to actually be in some pictures too. :0)

Mia is definitely loved when we visit. Here she is being swung....again.

They can always come up with some sort of game to play. Here they are limbo-ing under the jump rope.

Other fun things included singing High School Musical 2 songs together. :) They just got the movie and they know ALL the songs. It was fun to be able to talk about so many things this time. Their English has gotten SO good!

I will be happy to be able to spend more time with them again soon. It was great to see them again, even if it was only for a short time. :)

First Doctor's Appointment

Charlotte had her first Dr's Appointment this afternoon.
I shouldn't be surprised, because she LOVES to eat...but she now weighs 8 pounds 4 ounces! She gained a whole pound! My goodness! The Dr. said "obviously she's not having any problems with eating." ;)
She's 50% for weight and head circumference and 25% for height. We're not a very tall family, so that didn't surprise me. :)
She's healthy and happy and all is good. The Dr. commented on what a happy and laid back baby she is. I said thank GOODNESS, cuz we have WAY too much chaos going on already in our house to add in a high strung baby. LOL!

Charlotte

This is the outfit that Kris's Mom made for his sister when she was a baby.

It's normally on a Cabbage Patch doll that the girls carry in the parades. :)

It was still a little big...but it looked awfully cute on her!

I think she was very tired of pictures by the end of the day.
She needs to get used to being so popular and having everyone want to hold her and take pictures with her. It's a tough life to get used to! ;)

Mommy had to sneak in a couple pictures with her in front of the tulips.

I think she was much more interested in thinking about eating than pictures at this point.

"Mommy, PLEASE say we're done and that you will take me out of this costume and feed me!"

We THINK she may be one (if not THE) of the youngest tiny people to wear a dutch costume at the Tulip Festival. Only 1 1/2 weeks old! She may actually be featured in a documentary that someone was doing about Dutch Festivals in the US, because they stopped everyone (I was shopping in the Fair Trade store in OC :) ) and asked if they could tape her for the movie. Kris's Mom should be able to get a copy when it's finished, so we'll see if she's famous yet or not. :)

Airplanes and "Archie"

We woke up this morning to what sounded like an airplane TRYING to hit our house. We realized after the third "pass" that it must be a crop duster and it was spraying the field next to our house. Very weird sound to wake up to as it was flying very low and close to our ROOF!!!

Do you guys have a favorite to win American Idol? Mine is definitely Archuleta. We like to call him "Archie" to alleviate some of the David confusion. ;) Kris really likes David Cook, but by the end he had agreed that Archie should win. He was amazing last night! What do you think???

Bazzy

I absolutely LOVE seeing Bazzy in his Guatemalan shirt and his Dutch Clothes. We want to honor his heritage and also celebrate our family being Dutch, so I'm thankful that his Guatemalan shirt matches our Dutch Costumes so well. ;) I don't think his shirt will fit next year though, so I'm going to have to come up with something.

We showed him how to wave at the people while he was in the parade and he did SO good. This was during the "Heritage Walk" and his little feet were tired of walking in wooden shoes...so he hopped in the buggy with his little cousin.

Aren't his wooden shoes the cutest thing you've ever seen?!? :)
He loved clomping around in them on the cement, but it's much easier to run in the grass without wooden shoes. ;) I had to paint new ones for him this year because his feet finally grew.

This is Bazzy doing the "crazy eye thing".
You can ask him to do it... and he will. :)

He has become quite the character. He was very happy to be FREE for a little while and he was doing this very goofy run for awhile in the grass. Silly boy!

He REALLY wanted to get into that water!

This one cracks me up. I think he thinking "are you all waving at ME? Wow! Thank you. I hardly know what to say!" :)

Mia

Mia has a bit of a cold, so we had to do some convincing at first to get her "into" Tulip Festival. Once we got down to the parade route and she started walking and waving...things got MUCH better. She of course wanted to take pictures with baby "Charlee" (as Mia likes to call her) throughout the day too.

Mia is SO happy to have a baby to hold whenever she wants to!

Playing in the water between walks in the parade.

We didn't scrub streets this year, but normally the little boys dump water all over the roads with buckets and then the girls and women scrub the streets clean with brooms so that the Tulip Queen and her court can come down the road to start off the parade. It's very fun and the kids get all wet, but by this time the kids had walked the parade route twice for different things and we didn't want to wear them out too much .

Mia loved waving to all the people in the parade~ even though she wasn't feeling the best.

Mia loves attention! :)

Sofia

Sofia got to the be the one to push the antique buggy in the parade with her little cousin inside.

This buggy was actually mine when I was a baby and it used to be painted bright orange to match my dad's work truck. I love that we get to use it every year in the parades now! :)

Here's our smiley Sofia~ still smiling after all the walking in the parades.

Resting in the grass before more walking in the parade.

Waving at her adoring fans in the Mode Show.

SO proud to be pushing the buggy! :)

New Zoo Exhibit

I'm crazy excited to see the new Butterfly exhibit...but Kris just called to tell me that they are planning to open a HUGE Madagascar exhibit in the location of Rosenblatt in the next year!!! Many of you know that I spent a summer in Madagascar and it is still very much in my heart. I loved Lemurs before I went to Madagascar and I loved them even more when I got back.

If you go to www.omaha.com you will see the information on the front page. Now I'm even MORE excited to be moving back to Home-aha!!! :)

Katryna

I think I'm going to post pics for each child....because in the grand tradition of how I take pictures, I have about 50 million of them and there's NO way I could share them all. ;) So I'm going to pick some for each kiddo and start with that.

Katryna is ALL about holding her baby sister right now. She wants to hold her constantly and we got lots of cute pictures of the two of them throughout the day.

The Tulips were GORGEOUS this year. Last year they had been blown to bits by a storm before the festival even started, but this year they couldn't have been any prettier.

Wearing Papa's hat.

Getting ready to walk in the parade. The costumes we have are from Marken, a small fishing village in Holland. We always walk in the "mode show" to show the costumes from the different regions in the Netherlands. Wooden shoes and all! :)

This was early in the day and everyone was all smiles!

The kids did great in the parade and I had fun being able to watch and take pictures this year. :)

Back From Tulip Festival

We are back and very tired...but we had a GREAT time at Tulip Festival!

I will write all about it soon, but here are a few pictures until then. :)