Happy Belated Birthday to my Benny!

I'm a bit late on this (one week to be exact), but happy 9th birthday to my second son, Ben!  9 years....that marks halfway to 18. Such a bittersweet age.  It also marks his entrance into tween-hood (goodness, I technically have two "tweens"!  The teen years are just around the corner).  Ben is awesome. I love that kid!!  He is such a sweet, kind, funny, and thoughtful boy.  Happy birthday to my Benny D.!

Grandpa and Grandma's Visit

Last week, Joel's parents flew out from California to visit us for a week.  We had a great time!!  I am so thankful that our kids have such wonderful grandparents (on both sides of the family).  We visited them in California last year, but this is the first time Joel's parents got to spend a lot more one-on-one time with Darya.  Below are some photo highlights of our time with them:

Darya's shirt tells the truth!  Even today, 3 days later she's still asking for Grandma or "Apa"

Darya and Grandpa at Sam's baseball game

Grandpa has endless stories to tell

The boys loved watching funny videos with Grandpa

We celebrated Nate & Ben's birthdays by our pool (Joel and his dad worked on the yard and built a fire pit!)

 Enjoying smores by our new firepit

  We went to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens

  Church

  

Darya devoured her first candybar (Twix) at the boys' baseball games

Proud of his record-breaking fish at our homeschool field trip to the UF fisheries

 Three generations of fishermen

Last day with them after visiting Lake Alice and seeing some 'gators

Good morning, Sunshine!

Darya often plays in her room before going to sleep, or when she wakes up.  She usually destroys her room by chucking everything in sight wherever they may land.  This morning was no different.  See this toy box that she's in below?  That is usually full to the brim of toys!  Ben (our almost-9-year-old) went to get her up for school and yelled at me to get the camera.  How cute is this face? She's still got the sleepy eyes, but yet has enough energy to chuck her toys out of the bin.  Oh, how I love this girl!  

Our little sunshine!

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: