Save the Last Dance

Definitely taking more dance classes in spite of my sweet girl's lack of coordination. She pretends to talk to people on the phone about her dance class. She asks about the dance class several times a day. Sad day today since it was the last class. Not sure how to bridge the gap until the Fall's new schedule - not sure I'm the dancing type (I can do dumb-wedding dance type of dancing, but nice ballet type ain't gonna happen). In this photo she is playing with a baton, but they got hula hoops, scarves, wands, tiaras....the works! God bless the rec center!

Schmidty Bitty Fun!

My friend Andrea Schmidt just visited with her sweet (and incredibly fast) boy, Caleb. Fun to show them Portland with fountains, berries and Tillamook ice cream.

5 year anniversary - the year of the B

B for Beautiful overnight away with the kids

B for Bend, Oregon - woah that is pretty up there

B for Breaking the budget just a little in honor of 5 great years

B for Bold coffee at Sisters Coffee Company

B for Beestings - 5 of them on Lukas (B for big bummer)

B for Black Butte Ranch - going back there despite the bees!

B for Blueberry bliss - rumor and treasure of a cheap U Pick patch

B for Bonding time for family as we all suffering the consequences for too much blueberry bliss!

Memory like an Elephant

Lukas told me he was going to make a coloring book. He had been asking me for weeks for a specific coloring book, but I had no idea what he was talking about so he had resigned that I wouldn't find it. Now he was going to make his own. I said "fine." (ie..."whatever kid...you draw all day long...make whatever you want"). So, he colored for while and left the room to play something else and I found this picture (pictured left). I was impressed as I was pretty sure I could tell what at least 4 out of the 5 characters were according to our Nick Jr. favorites (Dora, Diego, Backyardigans, and Wonderpets)....so I went searching for anything I could to have him verify what these characters were and in the very bottom of our craft box was the LOST COLORING book (pictured right). Wow - okay. I showed it to Lukas and he said, "You found it - the coloring book!" and he confirmed that it was this coloring book he had drawn. What is wild is that he hasn't seen this thing for weeks, but he remembered the characters on it. I know who I am now remember where we park and it isn't me!

Last note - another strange bit in it all is that Lukas' speech has recently had a strange downward turn toward stuttering and lack of word retrieval. It has been incredibly frustrating for him and super sad for us to watch. It is confusing to ever understand if some of these things could ever be related. Or perhaps it is just a gift that he has this outlet of art midst speech struggles. I don't know.

Blessing of the Blessing

WOW - we had Adelaine's Dedication ceremony today after church and it was amazing for us. We just hoped a couple of friends could stop by after church and ended up having pretty much our whole care group there. (There was a friend from Kenya there to perhaps represent our friends that are IN Kenya that are always missed these days). Good friends Lindsey (from Sunset) and Moses (who goes back to Uganda in a week) did the ceremony for us and Sarah (one of Adelaine's godmothers) was there to give a blessing too. Really amazing and makes it really hard to conceive that we could be leaving Portland here soon.

Black Eye and Stink Eye

Lukas jumped onto a turned over bench to amazingly miss completely popping out his eyeball. However, he did end up with an enormous swelling, screaming, bleeding sore above his eye which has now drastically reduced to just a bar-fight black eye (thank you to Arnika natural cream - I don't know about all homeopathic stuff, but that one is amazing stuff!). The sweetest moment of it (besides the "Praise you God that he didn't lose his eye.") was this: Lukas' friend Grant was over that morning and just as the trauma began, I was in my crazy calm crisis mode of decifering to go the E.R. route or "wait and see" route, and Grant just calmsly says, "We need to pray for him." Well of course! Embarrassed I didn't think of that. We then did pray for Lukas and wonderfully Lukas stopped crying and we were all able to cope! Grant will be hopefully coming over more often and teaching Lukas to memorize scripture.

The second photo is of Adelaine's practicing one of her many rascally faces. She often says, "Look mama" to show me that she has just mastered either rolling her eyes or pouting lips or whatever. The pride wells up within me.