New Home

About 10 days after we arrived, we headed to language class! Had to have a "First Day" picture!

One of our favorite local dishes! We eat this alot!

 

The local outdoor markets sell these items in bags. 

Another local favorite of ours is the bread store. The bread they make is delicious!

 

We celebrated our 11th anniversary on December 22nd!

New Home PIctures

 The kids were so exhausted from the travel that they climbed into the bed themselves and were out cold!

Yes. That is a squatty potty!! Best $200 we have ever spent was to replace this with a toilet!

Jet lag for the win!

Notice I switched out the lighter colors for the darker colors, because..KIDS!

One thing I love about our new home is that they sell all sorts of pink stuff here. So, pink it is!

Party Pics

Celebrating our little 4 year old sweetie pie!

Had to laugh at this text my 10 year old niece sent me!

Happy 4th Birthday, Ilya!

 

Happy Fourth Birthday, Ilya Sue!!!

You are such a lovely little girl. You are feisty, funny, and just plain fun.

 

 You say your favorite food is cake and McDonald's. HA! Your favorite color is red. Your favorite toy is your baby doll. You love shoes and often wear mismatched pairs. You had a pair of Spiderman sandals that you had outgrown a long time ago, but couldn't depart with. You finally love to wear dresses like your big sister. You are very opinionated about your outfits. You'd choose long pants and shirts every day during the hot summer if I'd let you.

You love to make people laugh. When taking these pictures, you kept saying you were five. I had to trick you to get you to hold up four fingers! (You did this last year, too.)

When I ask you what you want to be when you grow up you say you want to tell jokes like Bryan (the morning show guy on the radio) and a mom and grandma.  You're very sweet-natured and love taking care of your dolls and baby brother. Usually you play the grandma when you and your siblings play house.

 

We love you, little Illie Billie. We're so thankful God placed you in our care. Our prayer for you will always be that you grow to love Jesus more every day.

To see how much she's grown since her 2nd birthday, click here.

Coffee and Cuteness

A few days ago, Isabelle kept begging me to teach her how to brew the coffee. I finally gave in and let her learn so she can make a nice pot for her daddy and me. She's getting so big!



These two babies wanted to sit on my lap when they awoke one morning. I need a bigger lap!



One morning, Bobby and Isabelle weren't getting along while playing together outside. Bob was upstairs and heard Isabelle call her brother "dumb". After timeout, I was asking her about it..

Me: Isabelle, why did you call your brother "dumb"?
Isabelle: Well, he called me a bad name!
Me: What did he call you?
Isabelle: He called me "Mrs."!



Bobby: Well, you called me "OLD MAN"!
Isabelle: YOU called me "OLD WOMAN"!!




Noble loves his sisters! He was leaning on Isabelle and kept switching between holding hands with Isabelle and Ilya.

Introducing Noble Silas (Almost 2 years later!)

Due to my lack of blogging for the past two plus years, I realized that I hadn't documented the birth of our fourth (but really, our sixth) baby! AH!! First a little background...

When I was about 32 weeks along, Bob and I had a planned trip to New Orleans for a conference. The day before we were to leave, I had started having some complications from placenta previa. Thankfully, later in the day I was doing better and decided to proceed with our plans. Sure enough, a few days after we arrived, my complications returned and I ended up in a hospital for 8 days. It was a long 8 days. I spent time doing homework, taking school exams, and even a little art project for the kids. I'm not very good at art, so I was embarrassed to have a picture taken. LOL

We finally made the long trip home via car and since I was put on bed rest, we moved in with my sister-in-law for two weeks. After those two weeks were up, my complications had improved enough so that we could move back home. A week later, on Friday morning, October 16th, once again, those complications returned. We dropped the kids off to my sister-in-law, and headed to the hospital. I was given an emergency C-section and at 2:18pm (and 36 weeks, 2 days) little Noble Silas Carpenter was born!

Here's the first picture of our four children together!!!