The Palace

Earlier this month we were privileged to travel to another country (about 6 time zones and a 10 hour plane ride away from here) for a terrific week with other people like us.  The time itself was a wonderful experience, but better saved for personal conversations with us.  What I wanted to share here is about the absolutely incredible blessing we received while we were there.  It was held in this huge, very nice hotel.  When we arrived (after leaving our home at 9pm the night before and traveling all night) it was still too early to check in.  So we waited while some dear friends occupied the children's attention.  The kids did great on the 10 hour flight, by the way.  It was an amazing plane where we each had our own personal screens and tons of movies, shows, and games to choose from.  The boys were ecstatic.  Mercy pretty much slept in my arms the entire flight, so it doesn't get any better than that for an active under-the-age-of-2 year old.  Anyway, we arrive at the hotel, wait for a while, then are finally assigned to a huge suite with 2 enormous rooms.  We were like, "Wow, this is great!"  We got settled, unpacked a little bit, then headed to lunch in the hotel restaurant.  Buffet with 4 small kids is always an adventure.  While at lunch, a guy comes up to us to inform us that the hotel has discovered that the heat in our room doesn't work and that they were going to have to move us to another room.  The staff was kind of embarrassed to have to move us, so they were going to "upgrade" us for free.  We couldn't imagine how we could have a nicer room than the one they already gave us, but oh well.  A few hours later we have all our stuff packed, the bellhop comes to get us and take us to the new room.  He's totally taken with our 4 children and is even letting the 3 boys ride on top of the luggage on the luggage cart as he pushes it down the hallway.  They were hooping and hollering like they were on a ride at the fair.  Fun times.  We get to the new room, also knows as the "King's Suite", and our mouths drop open as we walk into the nicest, plushest, fanciest suite we have ever seen.  I still can't believe they put us in there with our kids, but they did!  When the bellhop guy left he said to us in broken English, "You came here with 4 children, maybe you will leave with 5!"  I turned beet red and couldn't believe he said that to us!  :o)  There was velvet everywhere - on the wall, the curtains, the bedspread, the pillows.  It was basically 2 absolutely enormous rooms again, but much, much nicer than the previous suite.  Seriously, it was almost as big as our apartment that we're currently living in.  One room was a huge living room area with a dining room table and chairs, couch set, and huge flat screen tv on the wall.  All the lights and lamps looked like chandeliers.  There were also 3 extra beds in there for each boy to sleep in.  And there was a little bar room off of that one where we put Mercy's pack-n-play for her to sleep in.  Then there was the ridiculously huge bedroom with a king sized bed, large desk, and another flat screen tv.  Off of the bedroom there was a huge balcony that looked out over the ocean.  Really beautiful view.  Okay, THEN there was the biggest hotel bathroom I've ever seen.  Complete with jacuzzi.  It was absolutely amazing, really.  The whole thing.  I just kept thinking how much we didn't deserve something that nice, but what a huge gift it was to our whole family.  We stayed there for a week and never had to pay any extra.  The boys kept referring to the room as The Palace, and indeed it did seem like one to us.  The whole week would have been fantastic without it, but it was just a sweet gift, kind of icing on the cake for us all.  Thank you, Father!  Here are some pictures so you can try to get a glimpse of what we enjoyed...

The boys were falling asleep each evening around dinner time due to jet lag.

 

Sunrise

There were mountains off to our left.

 

Sunset

Fun times at The Palace!

 

18 Months Old!

 

It's so hard to believe that she is actually 18 months old already, really.  Wasn't she just born last month?  Actually, that was July 19, 2010, which means she turned 1.5 years old yesterday.  To say that Mercy is the joy and delight of our entire family would be an understatement.  Her brothers absolutely adore her and continually shower her with hugs and kisses, sprinkled with a little "tough love", of course.  Her smile is absolutely infectious, and one can't be grumpy when around her smiles and giggles.  She is at such a super fun stage right now where she is learning to say lots of words, dancing, imitating others, and just demonstrating her own fun, sweet personality.  As soon as she wakes up, she's standing up in her bed, looking out the door to see who else will come to her room to visit her.  And often when I think the boys are just being a little too overwhelming, she's just giggling away.  Not that she doesn't express her displeasure with them (and with us) at times; she does have her grumpy moments.  She is also toying with boundaries lately to see what she can get away with, but overall she is so sweet and really hilarious.  She's still taking two good naps a day (much to Mommy's delight), and has an incredible appetite (hence the cute big belly!).  Playing with plastic spoons from the drawer (she always picks the pink one first unless it's not there, then she must choose a lesser color) and plastic bottles in our recyclable bag are favorite pastimes.  She has recently begun running into her room, closing the door (that has a huge glass frame in it which is covered by a curtain), getting behind the curtain so she can see out the door, and just standing there until someone "finds" her.  If she's there for a long time, she will eventually start banging on the glass for someone to come rescue her since she can't get the door open.  Her vocabulary is increasing daily and includes important words like "purple", "brother", "mommy", "daddy", some version of each of her brother's names (though those are still pretty indistinguishable), "here you go", "thank you", "welcome", and pretty much any repeatable word we try to get her to say these days.  She can sign about 5-7 words, which she uses all the time to communicate.  Recently she acquired a cute stuffed lamb which she calls "Ba-ba" and now sleeps with - so sweet.  I need to get a picture of her and Ba-ba together.  She still is an ambidextrous thumb-sucker, which is sometimes so cute I just can't stand it.  When she's really sleepy she will put one thumb in, then turn her head and switch to the other thumb, then turn her head and switch back.  It's really funny.  Her hair is getting longer these days, too, and is often quite unruly, particularly when she first wakes up.  We sometimes have to take a wet hair brush to it a couple of times a day.  Sometimes it curls up at the back of her neck, but sometimes it just sticks straight down.  I think if it were more humid here, her hair would be curlier, but for the most part it's probably straighter than curlier.  You'll be able to tell in the pictures how big and blue her eyes are, which the local people here absolutely love and always comment on (since they all have brown eyes).  We all just think she's so beautiful.  The boys will sometimes talk about how cute some other baby is, but they always follow it by saying, "but not as cute as Mercy".  They will always defend her, that's for sure!  One of the sweetest things she does that absolutely melts my heart every time is when she gives one of us a hug and pats us on the back or rubs our back.  She is such a sweetie, and we all love her to pieces! 

This picture was actually taken today when she woke up from her nap and her shirt was like this.  I tried to get the picture while she was still in the bed, but she didn't like waiting to be picked up, so she started crying (hence the red face). 

 

After breakfast we will each get in our special places to say the Pledge of Allegiance before we start school.  Mercy is always quick to put one (or both) of her hands up so she will be ready to do it with us. 

Mercy will often do silly things to make us all laugh.  This was her "Mary" look. 

This is a very typical "Mercy" look.

Mercy Joy, you are greatly loved and adored by your whole family and many others.  May you grow to be a beautiful, loving, godly girl who blesses everyone.  You certainly have blessed us!

Christmas Fun

We really had a sweet Christmas celebration recently.  The kids always enjoy the month of special family devotions based around the Jesse Tree ornaments as well as our terrific advent calendar.  We also had lots of guests in our home throughout the weeks before Christmas that we were able to share the True Meaning with.  It was a busy, but very good month for us all.  Christmas Eve was a special time in our home with those we worship with celebrating Jesus and sharing good food and fun times.  Christmas day (or Christmas Adam, as Joshua calls it) was a quiet fun day for just our family.  We began the day reading the Christmas story from Luke and Matthew before we had our yummy blueberry coffee cake for brunch.  We scattered opening presents throughout the day as we listened to Handel's Messiah and played with new toys and games and lots of new Legos.  :o)  Thanks to our family members who sent gifts to each of us!  We had a light lunch and made a scrumptious but easy traditional meal for supper (including the Wideman cornbread dressing - yum!).  It was a leisurely, non-stressful day for which we are very grateful.  The Lord has so greatly blessed us!   Here are a few pictures from December for you to enjoy...

One of the boys received this hat and scarf in a mall that he was in with Daddy one day.  Micah proceeded to adopt it as his own and wanted to wear it every day!

 This is the very cool Trio Batcave set that the Morrisses gave the boys.  They love it!

 Lots and lots of Legos...

 After all the new toys Mercy got for Christmas, she still just wanted to play with the plastic recyclable bottles.  :o)  

 We hope you all had a blessed Christmas as well!

Return to the Blog World...

It's been too long to simply say "sorry for not posting lately".  Seriously.  But I do have many blogs rolling around in my brain and I intend to post as many as I can extract.  :-)  In my defense, we did have to change proxy servers to be able to access my blog and that took some time.  But enough excuses for now and on to stories and pictures (what you came here for anyway).

Grandparent Fun

For the past two weeks my parents have been here visiting us. It has been such a huge blessing to have them here for this time; they flew out early this morning. Once again, saying goodbye always stinks. We knew when we began this line of work over 10 years ago that being away from our family would be difficult. The difficulty level was increased greatly when we had kids and brought them into a life of having to regularly say goodbye to people they love. We always knew this would be part of the cost, and we have weighed the cost and counted Jesus as worthy of it all. He is worthy of our lives and anything He asks us to do. Goodbyes are still hard. And it's not just that we have to say goodbye, it's that our kids go for years sometimes without seeing their grandparents and other family members. So all that to say that these past two weeks were not taken for granted. It was a sweet time with Grandma and Grandpa and I'm eternally grateful for the time spent and memories made. We did our best to make the most of the time with them. That included seeing some of the cool touristy sights in our city, but it also included just letting them in on our lives here in this foreign country. Eating the food, interacting with some of our friends, worshiping with us, experiencing how we shop, watching us do home school, riding the subway, playing on our playground with the kids, walking LOTS more than they're used to, staying with the kids for a night to let my hubby and me have a night away, and just hanging out playing games late at night and talking - this is the wonderful time we've had for 2 precious weeks. Every moment we get to do things like this with our loved ones, we count as a gift from God. He was been so faithful to work in my parents' lives and they have such powerful testimonies. I'm so proud of them, and proud to be their daughter. And I'm ever so grateful for time together. Thank you, Lord, for this priceless gift. We don't deserve it, and we're thankful.

Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa for all the special times we had together. Thank you for the financial and physical burdens that you carried to be able to bless our family with your time and energy. We're so glad you came, and we love you!