Parties and other things

It's been a crazy week! Thankfully, today is a holiday and I am using it to relax! My dear husband even let me sleep in and let's just say I had to look at the clock 2 times to make sure I read it right when I woke up. :)

We've had the normal school and work routines, I've had 3 cakes to decorate so far (and 1 or 2 more tomorrow), 2 parties so far (and one more on Saturday), extra errands to run and I'm sure there was more. Yesterday I had to ask myself why I let life get like this??? Then, at the end of the day I am thankful for our friends and the celebrations we're able to have and it (kinda, mostly) seems worth it.

Today is Independence Day and last night we had a BBQ with our MAF family, which was a lovely way to celebrate. We walked down the street a bit to watch the fireworks in town and enjoyed what we could see of them. You can see a picture of our lanterns here.

Thank you to all of you who have let us know that you are praying for Mom. Robyn is doing a good job of keeping updates on her blog, so I won't repeat it all here. I do want to say that I feel a tremendous amount of peace about this all, in spite of being so far away, and I give your prayers and God's grace the credit for that.

The party we were at yesterday noon was to celebrate the long-awaited and much prayed for adoption of our friends' little boy. (Remember him? He's here, too.) It has been a long, hard road for them, but all of us around them have clearly seen God answer many prayers on their behalf. I found myself so choked up yesterday thinking that God put us all around them to pray for them and support them during the hard months, and now we get the joy of celebrating with them. It was a moment of realizing how God really has given me a sense of family here.

It would be a lie to say that I'm not a little bit stressed about our very-quickly-coming departure. When I am faced with a large to-do list, it's likely that I just feel overwhelmed and avoid it at all cost. Well, it's time to face the list...

Here are photos of A and S with the crafts they made at school for Independence Day. I thought it was so nice of their teacher to include the Canadian flag.



Ok, a few weeks ago I was seriously trying to instruct L in the way she should go and just in the middle of my lecture, she looks up at me and says, "There's two mommies!" I couldn't help laughing out loud. She was doing this:

Now, I think we have got it into her head that it's not a good idea to do that when she's in trouble for something, but she still loves doing it at other times. And we can't stop laughing every single time.