Adios shark tooth!

Today Nate had his beloved shark tooth removed.  He did really well (not that the laughing gas had anything to do with his bravery and relaxed disposition! haha).  Click here to see it before, and another video here.  I hope the photos below don't make you queasy!  Yeah, I do have a thing for quirks and oddities like extra teeth and webbed toes.  There ain't nothin' wrong with that!  Now for your viewing pleasure:

Birthdays, oatmeal, "I love you", and Francine

I am so sporadic when it comes to posting on here.  Thanks for bearing with me :)  So it's going to be a hodge-podge of a post hence the weird title.

Today is our youngest son's 7th birthday. He's been counting down for ages! He was surprised when he was greeted by a load of friends from church at the local Natural History Museum.  We all went inside to play and explore (15-20 of us maybe?) then went out for a delicious lunch.  I think he feels pretty special.   Happy birthday, Nate-Nate!

Here he is in front of a megalodon jaw at the museum (I'm so glad these are extinct!)

This morning Ben put Darya on a barstool to eat her oatmeal.  Here she is demonstrating her spoon skills (which she usually begs for us to feed her or she tries to use her hands, so she must have felt like a big girl sitting there and wanted to eat like one).  The words she does verbalize aren't always super clear and are usually one or two syllables, though she tries to repeat.  Just recently she's made progress in saying "I love you" which I'm quite impressed because of its multiple syllables!  Listen for it at the end of the video (though she added an extra syllable - but I'm super pleased nonetheless!). We must say it to her a million times a day, so she's quite familiar with the phrase.  I do love that girl!!

And lastly, if any of you have followed my blog for a while, almost exactly a year ago I posted about some of those children left behind.  One sweet girl who stole my heart, "Francine", now has a wonderful family adopting her!!!  I confess that when her English-speaking nanny at the orphanage asked me (and another adopting family who was also smitten by her, too) to find her a family, I wasn't quite sure it was really going to happen, to be honest.  Not that I didn't think she was special, but because I just didn't think I was able.   But God is bigger than our doubts and abilities!  I certainly wasn't able to find her a family, but God does answer prayers!  Whenever I see updated posts and especially videos/photos, it makes me smile.  What a sweet little girl and she has found the perfect family.

Well, that's my hodge-podge post!  

Sweetness

I peeked in on Joel and Darya resting on Sunday afternoon and this is what I found: