water 1st

Last night we went to an auction for a group called Water 1st. Their theme was "give water, give life". It was very powerful to think how much I take our water for granted. Water 1st brings safe water in the form of wells to remote areas in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Honduras, and India. I was surprised to hear that 1/5 of our world still does not have access to safe water, 80% of all sickness in many developing countries is because their water is polluted so badly, and the number one killer of children are water related illnesses. Their goal is to bring safe water to 160,000 people in the next 5 years. Some friends of ours from our North Park community are behind the vision for this group, and I was so proud of them last night for stepping up and making a difference in lives that they may never know they affected. Check out their website at www.water1st.org ! Very inspiring!

Where are you at with the adoption?

This is a common question right now and I thought I would just give a quick update. We have passed the part when the social worker comes to our house to make sure that we are state of the art parents, which we are, by the way..........this part was called the homestudy. Then, we went into Seattle to get our fingerprints taken to make sure that we are not WANTED by any official organization (we aren't). Now, we are just waiting for a referral for a little boy from Ghana that is between the ages of 0-4yrs. old. The agency that we are using, AAI, recently began the Ghana program late this past summer. There are around 14 children in their home, called Eban House, right now, and they will continue to bring other children in when they hear of needs. At this moment, there are no children that are the age that we are looking for for our family and we are just waiting until a child is brought into their home that would fit with us. Most of the children that are in the home are referred out and are waiting for paperwork to be processed until they can go home. We may wait awhile since we are waiting for a younger child, but for our family, we feel it is important to adopt younger than our youngest bio. child right now.

When we get a referral, it could be between 4-6 months for everything to come together. Daron and I plan on traveling over, and we hope that we can bring the rest of the kids. How amazing would it be to go as a family to meet our new son/brother. The kids are so excited for this!

Still amazed!

This was our view we woke up to this morning with the fog over the bay, I am still amazed by God's beauty everyday I look out our windows!

More Birthdays!

Greta and Daron both celebrated their birthdays this month! She got breakfast in bed and she chose Capt'n Crunchberries, banana, and chocolate milk. For her party, Greta had a few friends over for a pj party. We did everything that you would do at a slumber party, but after a few hours, the kids went home to sleep in their own beds and just as important was that I got a decent nights sleep! Greta had a lot of fun with her girlfriends making pizzas, watching Lohan's Parent Trap, eating popcorn, and having ice cream sundaes. Justus was off at his friend's house, but when he stopped by for a second, you would not believe the excitement and giddyness of the 1st graders of this second grade boy already. Ughh! That is what I was afraid of and planned the party when he was busy. Can you believe that I am already having to figure out the motives of the little girls that want to come and play with Greta?

For Daron's birthday, we had our 4:56 Worship Service at Alive. The day before we celebrated with all the Oct. /Nov. bdays in our family. Happy Birthday Inger, Lola, Daron, Greta, and Ella! I think it was Snickers birthday too, but no one acknowledged that! On Daron's bday, we gave him a good hearty farmboy breakfast that he got to eat while watching the Minnesota Vikings on TV. We also made some deep dish Chicago-style sausage, mushroom, and onion pizza- his favorite! This weekend we also had some friends over after a school auction for some Starbucks Mocha Martini's. Yum!

Halloween Fun

We had a great time trick-or-treating with friends and family. Inger, Tyler and baby Elin were in town, so we went downtown Poulsbo with them. They close off the mainstreet and the businesses hand out candy. It is so much fun to run into friends of ours and the kids. It is great to see how many people you know in a town our size after 2 1/2 years here. In case you are wondering, yes the brunette Snow White is our daughter. You could hear her telling her friends, "Hey, it's really me, Greta, not Snow White!" And yes, I probably could have found a better wig for her, but I found cheap Elvira one that I cut off the white stripe and gave the wig a crop. My almost 7 yr. old loved it- that is what matters! And in case you are wondering, Ella was a ballerina and Justus, Luke Skywalker. After walking around town, we went over to our friends house for some soup, wine and fellowship; followed up by some trick-or-treating!

cinderELLA is five

It is that time of the year again when we have three birthdays and Halloween all in a week and a half! Ella just had her 5th birthday and she had so much fun. I think that she was giggling all through the day of her princess party and the next, which was her actual birthday. For her party she invited just a few friends to come and play dress up. She told them to come dressed in their own princess dresses because she didn't have enough for everyone. Then they had their nails painted, played a game or two, watched a princess movie (of course) and had some ice cream sundaes! The next day she got breakfast in bed and went on a date with her dad, to Minnesota! Yep, it was her turn to go to harvest at Daron's family farm with him. Every year Daron takes one of the kids back to the farm to go and harvest, this time it worked out on her birthday. The kids have it all worked out when they get to go and they keep skipping me! I think I need to remind them that I was the first to go and harvest with their dad 14 years ago!

Do you have a pink trophy?

Well, Greta's 1st soccer season just came to an end and it was so much fun to watch her play. It made it even more enjoyable since Daron was one of the coaches. You would think with both of their competitive natures, that they would have had an undefeated team. Instead, it was a very humbling season of no wins (of course that isn't official since they don't keep score for micro soccer). Greta liked playing, but I think she really liked the social part of talking to friends on the sidelines, dressing up in her uniform, getting a snack at the end, and running through the parent tunnel at the end of the game. Naturally, the absolute best part of this season was the pink trophy that she gets to add to her shelves!

I know my math facts.....

Today we were coming back from Cascades Camp in Yelm, WA. We had a pastor's family retreat there. Really fun to get together with all the pastors, spouses, and children and really let our guard down there! You would not believe what pastors do when they get away from their churches....... To tell the truth, which I better because I don't want to get in trouble by whoever gets pastor's wives in trouble, it was a really fun group of people and a great couple of days. We met some new friends and saw some old. I think the kids understood this year that all the kids were PK's (pastor's kids). Last year I overheard Greta inviting one of the other PKs to come to our church sometime. She is a "bringer" as we say in church planting lingo, always the enthusiastic inviter. We also got to stay in the train cars again. If you haven't heard me talk about this before, you have to check it out online. The camp retrofitted a caboose and engine and it has 16 boxcar cabins in between. Each boxcar is a nice carpeted cabin with 10 beds, a bathroom w/shower, and a desk. The meeting hall next to it is a replica of a train depot. All this and Mt. Rainer is picture perfect in the near background. Beautiful. The kids spent their mornings in "school" as Ella calls anything where they do crafts. One of the local covenant churches sent 8-10 volunteers to come out and watch our children while we were in meetings. Our kids loved it since they followed a VBS curriculum that our kids had already done so they thought they were cool knowing all the songs.
On the way home, Ella was asking me math questions. "Mom, what is 3+1?" I would tell her 4 and she would say, "Good job mom!, now what is 4+1?" She did this for about 5 more problems. Greta and Justus were in the back asking each other math questions too. Much harder, of course, trying to trick each other. Then Greta asked me, " Mom, can you tell me what 99+99 is? ....and Justus don't help her!" I guess she didn't think I could jump from my 1's to my 99's. Luckily, I impressed my daughter and son with the correct answer of 198. I wonder how much longer I will be able to answer their math questions and impress them at the same time?

Questions of a 6 yr. old

We were driving home from Greta's soccer game tonight talking about our upcoming adoption and our conversation went down like this:
Greta- "What language will our little boy from Ghana speak?"

Me- "Most likely English"

Greta-"So...like 'Hola?''

Me-"No, that's Spanish"

I guess we need to educate more about the country that we live in too!

Dad's 65th in Napa Valley!

So for those of you that know us well, you know that my family appreciates a good wine! Not necessarily an expensive wine, just a good wine. So, the 9 adults in my family + Elin(5 wks old) all went to Napa for two nights to experience the valley during the harvest season.

Vines were starting to change color and Napa was just beautiful. We toured many different wineries, some large, some small, and ate fabulously. Some of my favorites were Cakebread, Darious, Opus, Twomey, Sterling & AlphaOmega. We went to dinner one night at a place called Martini House; the chef was amazing with his sea scallops, mushroom risotto(okay, I actually didn't like that, but I hate mushrooms), butternut squash soup, and what makes or breaks a restaurant?- the BREAD. We also went to a drive-up hamburger joint called Taylors. This place had amazing blue cheese burgers, chili cheese fries, and milkshakes.

Other highlights, besides the obvious of spending some quality family time, were going running through the vineyards and backroads, stomping grapes like Lucille Ball, stopping at In & Out, staying at the Harvest Inn(chocolate crossaints every morning!), and visiting the Junkers in Sacramento.