Keirah's Caring Heart

This is one of the funniest things that has happened in a long time!! Keirah historically has had a very sensitive heart for people or pets that are injured or hurting. She is a nurturer and we are thankful for the heart she has for others. On that note... here starts the story of the day :))

Aubryn, Keirah and I went for a morning walk this morning to check out the neighborhood garage sale. One house down from us in the middle of the street was a small cottontail rabbit that had obviously been hit in the middle of the night and was lying in the street. Keirah was fascinated by it but didn't seem to take too much notice of it. When we got back home, she was excited to go show Leif that there was a rabbit in the street. She proceeded to lead Leif outside to show him while I set the mail down. I never thought to warn her about not touching it (she's 6! she knows this right?) but a minute later she is walking in the house carrying the stiff dead rabbit!! I started screaming, telling her to put it down!!!! She did... right here on the front porch!

Later she told me that the rabbit must have been in the middle of the street and a car stepped on it and she didn't want it to be stepped on again. She said that she wanted to hold a rabbit that wasn't dead! I'm not sure if she thought she could nurse it back to life or if she wanted to give it a proper burial :)) Anyway, we did get to say farewell, took a picture, bathed Keirah down, changed her clothes and Daddy disposed of him.

I know this is kind of gross but for some reason, this story has made me laugh all day long! Why did I not think to tell Keirah not to touch the rabbit?? It makes perfect sense now that Keirah WOULD touch the rabbit! And come carrying it home. That's the way she is. She cares.

Speech Therapy in the Car

We've been around speech therapy long enough to spot a habit when I hear one :) Lately, I've been increasingly noticing Keirah and Emry's mispronunciation of the letter "R"... so we decided to do a funny drill in the car. It was too cute! Thought I'd share :))

Conference in Florida

We are so blessed to have had many opportunities throughout our married life to attend conferences! These present themselves as great opportunities for spiritual renewal, inspiration and time away for the two of us! We went to Florida (my first time :) for the Exponential conference and attended with our friends, and resident planter for our church, Marcus and Sarah. We enjoyed getting to know them better!

One of the coolest things we did was attend a hip hop church in Tampa! So neat to see how many different people attended there. We got to hear "Play" from Kid and Play tell his story of coming to know Christ. It is so encouraging to hear how God has strategically put people in every walk of life to tell of his greatness. The entire experience was diverse and beautiful! I love how creative God is and how he gives us all different expressions of himself. We ended up leaving with a sampler of Florida and wanting to go back some day :) The conference took most of our time, but here are a few of the things we did there as well.

Possibly Nick's fav... ESPN!

Marcus and Sarah... so sweet together!

Sarah and I couldn't help ourselves :) We were in

Downtown Disney and had to have a picture with Cinderella!

At Universal City Walk, Nick attempted to surf...

the kids still can't figure out if he was really surfing or not!

All you can eat lobster... awesome!

At Clearwater Beach, we stayed until sunset!

On the way back from the airport, Daddy rode in the

back with the kids. Always good to be home!

Easter Pics

Better late than never... right :)

All looking at the camera? Wow!

Sweet joy!

Love having Aimee with us! The kids absolutely adore her :)

Don't Get Too Excited!

I'm not even sure what to say. It's been so long since I've blogged and some of you have not been very patient with me :) I know, the patience ran out over a year ago! I can't believe that it's been over a year since I've updated and I figured that I could at least report that since surgery... Emry has not stopped talking :) It's a good problem but the whole speech concern for cleft palate kids does not apply to her! She is such a joy and we are thankful for how wonderfully God provided for us in that season.

So for now, I'll update a new pic for each of the kids and tell you that we've enjoying a sweet season of homeschooling the girls! We were feeling stretched by too many demands on our family and needing to find relief somewhere and am so thankful for the Lord leading Nick to bring the girls home! Aubryn is enjoying the extra work she gets here with the ability to customize her pace to fit her highly active brain and Keirah is getting more one on one especially in the area of writing. She is doing amazing and is really loving the structure and sameness of our home. We have a street full of little girls so our social life is not suffering either! God has given us so much joy in having more time to pour into the kids and celebrating their achievements together. Leif is joinging Keirah for some schooling and then entertaining Emry as they play together. This mama is truly blessed!