Happy Birthday Aunt Mary!!

We love you Aunt Mary!!



Luke's solo :)

Sparkles...

Before (no ear sparkles)

and After (pink sparkles on the lobes)

If you look closely you can see beautiful pink sparkles on Kara and Kailyn's ears...what fun for two little girls! Kara's friend Kailyn turns 5 today! To celebrate we went and visited this weekend and one of the highlights was getting Kara and Kailyn's ears pierced. Kara loves her new pink sparkles and is taking very good care of her ears.

We love our friends and with the transitions that are coming up in our lives we are cherishing the time that we have to spend with them.

A few other highlights:

A stroll downtown

A visit to the library

The group picture, which is always fun :)

All made for a wonderful, friend-filled weekend!

Happy 5th Birthday Kailyn!!

The Dreaded Pantry...defeated!

I can not keep my pantry/mudroom/shoe room organized for the life of me! It drives me crazy! It is the first thing we see when we enter our house and it always makes me nuts. Today Kara asked if she could organize the shoes in the pantry. You have no idea what a service this is to a mom who can barely bend down to put on my own shoes, let alone organize and put away all of the shoes that clutter up our little pantry floor. She began and worked for over 20 minutes until she had them all paired up and removed from the floor so I could sweep it out and organize. What sweetness! She thought it was fun of course, because she is MUCH like her daddy (which I adore :) She loves projects and loves to organize and sort things. I told my little 4 year old how much it meant to me, and she just kind of stared at me blankly. When she is a 7 month along pregnant mom of three little ones, she will understand...and I will thank her again. So thankful for my little helper!

July...where did you go?

I realize that I went a whole month without posting anything at all. July was a crazy but wonderful month! Here are a few pics of our month that flew by.

Blueberry picking

The Beach

A wonderful visit from family

Fourth of July FUN!!

Wycliffe

Kara's new friends who taught her how to use an I Phone :)

Time with the Tuckers

It went by WAY too fast!

Sunny Florida

We're back from Florida, and we will never complain about heat here in Michigan again :) Despite the heat, we had a wonderful time there. We just returned from our two week orientation and training with Wycliffe Bible Translators. The program was entitled "Equip" and for good reason! We truly do feel equipped for this next phase of our lives, Partnership Development. Ben and I thoroughly enjoyed being together all day every day for 2 weeks straight, and the kids had a blast in Wycliffe's kid's program. They had a wonderful staff who loved on our kids like crazy. We're so excited to be a part of this organization, and our time there just reinforced that excitement. Thank you for all of your prayers as we were away.