Happy Birthday Andrew!

Our big boy turns two today! We'll be celebrating with cake and presents and all the other fun birthday stuff, but most importantly we are thanking God for Andrew's life and that He chose to bring this precious child into our family. What a great two years it has been!

Giggles

Isaac, Caleb and Andrew love to make Naomi laugh. She usually smiles as soon as she sees one of them, and then they will break out in a silly song or dance to try and get the giggles going. Here's a short video of Andrew getting her to laugh last night:


The quality of the video is horrible, but her giggles are priceless!

Ode to Andrew

Isaac wrote a funny tribute to Andrew on his blog tonight. You might want to check it out....here.

Yes...we're still here

I know it has been a really long time since I have posted on here. Honestly, I have wondered at times if I should even keep this blog going since I just don't have the time to post much on here anymore. I don't think I need to explain why I don't have much time to write on a blog, but I do have four good reasons. (And if you want to know the names of the four reasons, you can look at their adorable pictures over on the left sidebar.)

But even though my four adorable reasons don't allow me much time to sit down and write blog posts, I've decided to keep this blog going. Luke and I enjoy this blog, and it's been really fun to scroll back through the archives and see how God has worked in our family over the last few years. So even though it might be a while before I get back to posting regularly, I'm going to try my best to stick with it.

The last time I posted pictures, Naomi was barely a week old. Now she's three months old and totally adorable:


She is smiling, talking, and sitting up in her Bumbo like such a big girl! We have all just fallen in love with this little gal.
Andrew is almost two(!) and growing in leaps and bounds. He is saying a lot of words now and tries to copy everything his big brothers do. He loves Naomi, and gives her dozens of kisses every day. Here he is in his stylish new glasses:
And here he is trying to "do school" like his brothers:

And last, but not least, here are the big brothers of our crew. Isaac and Caleb have been very busy this school year with their 2nd grade and Kindergarten work. They have also been on lots of field trips and stayed busy with our homeschool co-op. Their last soccer game was this past Saturday, and they were very sad to see the season end. They're quite a pair, and (most of the time!) are great buddies.


So even though our four kiddos don't allow me time to do much blogging, I wouldn't trade them for anything. The past few months since adding Naomi have been soooo busy, but I love being the mother of four. God has been very kind to us, and I'm thankful for the privilege of being a very busy wife and mom.

Girl time

The past few days have been pretty laid-back for myself and Naomi. Naomi has to stay in St. Louis until the court date tomorrow, so Luke and the boys headed back home on Sunday for a few days while Naomi and I stayed behind. At first I wasn't real excited about three days stuck in a hotel, and was counting down the days until we could go home. I knew I was going to miss Luke and the boys, I had no car, it was 100 degrees outside, and I thought, "This is going to be a long. three. days."

But then the Lord convicted me of my grumbling heart and I realized what a gift this time was. I have had three days of total relaxation (which every mom needs once in a while) with no distractions from enjoying this new little one God has given us. I thought of how someday I'm going to look back on this special time with her as a gift from the Lord, not a burden that had to be endured. So I decided I was going to relax and just simply enjoy this time.

It's been wonderful to have these three days with our sweet little gal. God is so good.

Finally....some pictures!

I know I promised to post pictures soon...but as you can imagine this has been an extremely busy week. And since most of the people who check this blog are also on Facebook, I haven't been in a big rush to post pictures on the blog.

I'm not going to recap our entire week, but let's just say it's been very, very busy. We drove home from vacation in Iowa on Tuesday night after we got "the call." We woke up early Wednesday morning and drove to St. Louis where we got to meet our little Naomi Marie. The days since then have been kind of a blur filled with doctor's appointments, meetings with our attorney and adoption agency, and taking care of a newborn away from home. Whew! We will rest well when all this is over, but we have to say that God has been so good to us through it all. He has provided in so many ways, so we are not going to complain about the busyness of our week.

Here's a few pics from the last two days:















We have a few more busy days and then all the adoption stuff will be taken care of and we can start settling into life as a family of six!

An Exciting Announcement!

About two hours ago we got "the call" and learned that we have a little girl! She was born on Friday and we will be driving to St. Louis tomorrow to pick her up. We'll probably have to stay in St. Louis for a couple days until the attorney gets the legal stuff taken care of, and then we'll be back home until the court date sometime in the next week or two. This has all happened soooo fast, but we are super excited and so thankful for God bringing this little one into our family.

We'll be sure to post pictures soon.....