Happy Birthday Bekkah!

Today is Laura's sister Bekkah's birthday. Zamara had a very special message to give to her auntie...enjoy!

Disneyland Pictures

THE PICTURES WE PROMISED

We have been having problems uploading pictures to our blog. Hopefully this will work. More to come...

pictures!

Hi. Sorry it has been so long since we have updated our blog. It has been crazy here for us. We just got back from a BIG trip to Los Angeles with our high school students. Craig took a week off and we brought Zamara along. It ended up being a good trip, but Zizi had a hard time with her mommy working long days. Craig was the pastor's husband the whole week. It was kind of funny because a lot of youth pastor's bring their wives and kids...so Craig was the "house husband" last week. I think he decided that he couldn't do it full time though. It ended up being a good week for our students. God moved in a powerful way.

We flew out a couple days early to spend some family time together. We went to Disneyland. Zizi was too small to really enjoy it, but she was very exicited to meet Pooh Bear. When we got up to the front of the line to meet him, she got very scared. The rest of the day she kept yelling "mickey!" and "pooh!" It was so cute! Our friend JJ had a year pass to Disneyland so he met us there. He is Zamara's self-proclaimed "Godfather", although I have to say that JJ makes a good godfather. She loved him and snuggled right up after only a couple of minutes.

During the week we also went to the beach a couple of times with the students. It was Zizi's first time at the beach. She LOVED the sand, but was a little unsure about the water. She like to point and say "wader", but she wanted nothing to do with the real thing.

The last picture (or maybe the first) is of Zamara's giant puke in the middle of the night. I was out talking with students and Craig woke up to her crying. She had puked in her bed and had gotten it EVERYWHERE! It was very impressive. Craig got a few really good pictures of it. Basically all the food from dinner and her snack had just sat in her tummy waiting to come back up. Craig had to give her a shower in the middle of the night. He said she kept falling asleep in the shower. It was not fun, but now that we can look at the pictures it is kinda funny. Even after the shower, we found puke pieces in her hair the next morning. Poor thing was all huddled in the corner of her pack and play trying to get away from it, but by that time she had already cover herself in it.

On Saturday we went to our little local 4th of July Parade. It is the typical small town parade. Zamara had a great time. She loved every minute of it.

Today I got an email from a friend who had found Zamara on someone's web page. It is for a scrapbooking store in town called "About Memories and More". Someone had snapped a picture of Zizi and put it on the webpage. It is an amazing picture!

Here is the link to the site: http://aboutmemoriesandmore.typepad.com/were_so_much_more_than_a_/2009/07/the-4th-of-julyin-pictures.html#comments

More pictures of our trip

One of the awesome things we got to do while in Indiana was visit with Sean and Tisha Cox. We traveled to Ethiopia together last august. We picked up Zamara and they picked up thier son Wesley. We had planned on meeting at a park on Memorial Day, but (of course!) it was raining so we ended up meeting at a Pizza Hut. Craig's ENTIRE family came with us. I am sure we overwhemled them a little. It was great to see Wesley, though. He is only a month older than Zamara. He is so darling and quite little character. I can't believe how big he is. We had a great visit and it brought back all the memories of our trip to Ethiopia. It was as though we picked up right were we left off. Zamara fell asleep at lunch so her and Wesley didn't have too much time to interact. It was so fun to have a little reunion. AWAAEthiopia has a reunion this Labor Day in Branson MO, but we won't be able to make it. Perhaps next year...

Our trip to the Midwest

Hello Everyone! We took a trip to Chicago/Indiana over Memorial Day weekend. We had the best trip! Craig's grandparents live in Attica Indiana. We took the trip to see them. It ended up being a big family reunion of sorts. Craig's parents came, his sister Ashley, and his other sister Angie, her husband, and their 2 boys also showed up. Craig's aunt, uncle, and cousin arrived, and then Craig's great and aunt and uncle came for a day. We basically took over the tiny town of Attica. Here are a few pictures of the trip. We will post more pics and more info about the trip later on.