The 4 Grandkids pics

Dad,

There are pictures on the LAF website in the Family Photos under our (n8 & bEt’s) album, under Eli’s album (“The Second Child Counts Too”), on the first page, entitled “02-09-06 The 4 grandkids on the couch1&2″. They were taken when the Thompsons and us came out to MT in early February of this year. If you need the bigger photo, I can email that to you. I’m not sure how well that one transfers from website onto your desktop, if it’s fuzzy or what.

We’re doing well here. n8 has caught the cold that is going around the youth group. We have started working with the youth this year, taking turns. He does the big events, I do the weekly meetings. We’re enjoying it. The teens make espressos and the like every Sunday morning, and n8 has been organizing and supervising that the last month plus.

Hannah turned two! We kept her birthday small and simple. No family members were really able to come. My sister Anna and her boyfriend came on Friday, but she promptly got engaged that day, which did a lot to remove the attention from Hannah’s big day. We don’t mind, and I don’t think she does either at this point. Hannah does think now that every package that comes in the mail is another “bifday pwesent!”

Hannah talks more and more every day, telling me stories, teasing her daddy and me, singing songs, reciting books… She knows all of the 1st verse and chorus of “Jesus Loves Me” along with the ABC song, though “L, M, N” tend to run together and she skips “R” because “Q” has a hidden “R” sound to her, I think. Yesterday she read hers and Eli’s name off a sign, but I’m not quite sure yet if that is coincidence or if she can really read the names. She is n8’s daughter, though, so I guess I should not be surprised. She recognizes and names all the letters, capital and small, and has for several months now, so reading is probably not terribly far off for her. She has gotten 2 of the 4 2-year molars in, and the process sometimes makes her crabby and whiney. She also has begun experimenting more with nasty phrases like, “No, Mom. I can’t” and “It’s MINE, Eli!” To balance it out, she also says cute things like, “Oops-Daisy” and “Oh-oh, spetty-clothes!” (oh-oh, spaghetti-O)

Eli will not be the early linguist that Hannah is. We’re still working on signs with him. So far he can nod “yes” and shake his head “no.” He’s really much more interested in getting places, in taking things apart or breaking them, and in stuffing EVERYTHING into his mouth. This morning he chewed off a corner of a wooden trunk we have. I know because I found it in his mouth. He cried when I took it out.
Eli is trying to pop out all of his teeth at once, hence the beaver-like behavior, I think. I can feel at least 4 little pearlies under the skin, working their way up, and it has made him a little testier than usual, and quite a bit more drooly. He has 5 teeth right now. Hannah did not have this many teeth until she was 14 or 15 months! Eli is 10. He is also on his way to walking. He can stand for a few seconds, and is working his way from furniture piece to furniture piece. He power-crawls at an incredibly speedy rate, so I’m not sure if he really will walk in 2 months, or if he will find crawling much faster and more efficient for him.

In case n8 has not passed this on, we are tentatively planning on being out in MT for post-Christmas. We’ll likely get there the morning of the 26th and leave New Year’s Eve night. Now that the kids are past infant stage, we’ll likely do a lot more night-driving!

bEtTtttttt.

Answers and stuff

Dad – We may have pictures of the 4 grandchildren from Christmas, but at the moment we can’t get our laptop to stay on for longer than 20 seconds.  We have the files saved on another hard drive, so when we get a chance to borrow another computer to bring home and get those documents, I’ll look through them.  The other option is to scan in a picture from our professional ones.  I’m not sure what happened to the proofs.  We don’t have them with us in Peru, and I think we only kept the ones we bought.  Did anyone buy one of the four grandkids?

Miki – Thanks for the stories of the kids.  We really do like hearing about those little daily things.  It makes you guys seem closer.  Keep them coming.

And now that Dad is on, maybe we can start using this more often to keep updates?  How about pictures, Mom and Dad?  Got any motorcycle pictures you could load up?

Who knows…

Hello everyone.

Dad, Sorry we don’t have any pictures of the 4 grandkids together. The only time would be Christmas last year that they were all together. You could try to put pictures together in a collage and put that as your back ground. I hope to get more pictures of the kids onto the site soon and get Christmas pictures done so I don’t have to think about that come December.

Well, right now, we don’t know what our plans are from month to month. We don’t have any plans to move right now. We were hoping to get out of here by the end of last month as many of you know, but I think God has other plans for us. The job Mark was hoping for fell through so now we don’t know what we are going to be doing. Please keep us in your prayers. Pray for God’s guidance and directions. Pray also for our patience as we wait for God’s leading.

In other news. I have finally started working with Trenton on some preschool stuff. He loves it and asks to do it on a regular basis. Today we worked for about 1 1/2 hours before I realized it was way past naptime. He got up from his nap and immediately started asking to do more. He knows a lot of the letter sounds already. I have a feeling that if I did send him to a preschool or even kindergarten down here he would be bored because he’s ahead of his class. He is also starting to learn John 3:16-18. He’s gotten verses 16 and 17 okay so I’m seeing how far I can get him to go. It also encourages me to memorize more myself.

KelleAyn is getting big really fast. She just got over a boil this past week. She was almost hospitalized for it because it got really big really fast. It was about the circumference of a golf ball when we went in to the doctor. It was about the size of a dime when she went to bed and the next morning it was huge. We had to take here in 4 days in a row for a shot to make it drain and put a cream on it 3 times a day plus give antibiotics 2 times a day. She dreads the doctors office now. I had to take her there on Thursday to get it checked again and she started to cry when the doctor walked into the room. Thank the Lord she is doing much better. She is also working on breaking tooth number 6 right now so that just adds to her pain and clinginess. She does not like me out of her sight right now so it makes nursery very difficult.

Kelle has also turned into quite the climber recently. I cannot keep her off of my dining room chairs. I have even found her on my table a few times. Hard to believe she’s that big already. She mastered the stairs and now she climbs everything possible.

Well that’s all the news for now. Love you all.

Miki

Picture of Grandkids

Does any one have a picture of the four grandkids all together that is or could be put on this site?  I want to download it on my office computer as my screen background.  I have one on now but it only included Trenton and Hannah.  Thought it would be nice to get it updated.

Love you all,

Dad

P.S. Now that I know how to do this, I’m really getting into this blog thing.

My First Attempt at Blogging

This is responding to James and Cindy’s lattest blogs.  James – I attempted to watch the video you linked on your latest blog, but I didn’t get a very good feed connection because the video was really jerky.  I watched about half of it and got tired of waiting for the video to continue.  Any way to improve this?  I do have good computer speed at the office (I think it is DSL connection).

Cindy,  I was at a Gideons dinner on Monday evening, and there were a total of about six other Gideons there.  Sitting at the table next to me was an individual who is a cousin to the teacher who is living in Lima and comes from Bozeman.  When I said I had a daughter living in Lima, Peru he mentioned he had a cousin living there also.  He started talking about them and said they had been living in Alaska before, and were now back here to adopt a baby.  What he was saying was too coincidental and we put two and two together and found out they work in the same school as you.  I guess this is what you could refer to as “Gideon Bingo”?

Anyway, thought you might find it interesting.

 Hope all of you are doing well

Dad

My First Publicly Available Production!

So, while it’s not the best example of my work, it’s what came out first.  Check out the Head Automatica music video.  If you scroll down a ways to the blog section, you’ll see the link to the video announcement.  Then just click on either “Windows Media File” or “Quicktime.”

 Enjoy!

 James

Christmas is coming!

Hey guys! I finally was able to track down my username for this website after digging through some old emails. So, here I am.

Yes, Christmas is coming, though not for a couple months, but James and I had the great opportunity to send home gifts with a couple of people. One girl is flying back to Minneapolis, and another family is flying into Bozeman, of all places! There is a teacher and his family who are adopting a baby from a woman in Billings, and the teacher’s wife is originally from Bozeman. How ironic!

So, we’ve sent some gifts along with them. I call them Christmas gifts, because they are the only gifts that you will get from us before Christmas. If it were up to James, he would say you have to wait until Christmas. But if it were up to me, I’d say open them when you get them. So you guys decide. And because there are some similarities between gifts, it would be appropriate to decide together if you’ll open them now, or at Christmas.

Hope you enjoy them!
Cindy