Together: Random Thoughts In May

Random Thoughts In May.

Well it's the end of April and it has been Spring for over a month. We have had many rainy and cold days so it hasn't really seemed like Spring - the grass is turning green but the tree's are still leafless for the most part. The children continue to play soccer in their school league (all of them except Benjamin, who didn't want to play this year) and most of their practices and games have been on cold and/or windy rainy days. We haven't had any extreme weather like other parts of our country, like tornados in the South, and flooding along the Mississippi River. Today Cheryl has let 3 of our 4 horses free in our backyard to eat grass. Thunder had to be left in the back pasture because he's still mean to our new horse Tuffy. Cheryl has been spliting our pasture in two with a new fence so the horses can be seperated and have equal pasture space. The kids have not been able to ride much because of the weather and the wet ground. Leah has been continuing her weekly riding lessons at Greenbriar, and Cheryl is trying to get her to be more of an outdoors child/person like herself.

We found out recently that Jenna has to have yet another surgery, this time in her right ear in June. She has always had poor hearing and her surgeon wants to do an exploratory in her right middle ear to see if she can find any problems. I will do a blog post in the near future with more details. I took her to UIHC (Iowa City) to get a catscan to see if that would give them any clues as to what's wrong, but we haven't heard anything yet. Last Sunday was Easter Sunday and we attended the sunrise service that was outside in the parking lot of our church. We went to this service because Leah was doing the reading, plus she sang a song with her friend without any musical accompaniment or amplification. Since we were sitting toward the back we couldn't really hear them. Later we went to my Mom's house, where we ate lunch and celebrated 5 birthdays - Samantha's 12th, Kobe's 11th, Zoey and Alex's 8th, and Jenna's 7th with cake, ice cream, and presents. All of these birthdays have already passed except Jenna's, which is on the 12th of this month and no doubt the subject of a later blog post. Then the kids had an easter egg hunt. I have been working my usual 10 hour days - 5 days a week trying to earn some extra money. We are being audited by the IRS for a significant portion of our tax refund - which I won't bore you with the details but we are complying with their requests. Hopefully we will be seeing more sunshine during the rest of this Spring before we head into Summer. No blog post shall be complete without pictures and videos, so look out below...

This is a chiseled picture that we had made when we were in Guangzhou, China in 2007. This was when we traveled to China to pick up Jenna. They did this picture at the 'Bug Shop' on South Street on Shamian Island. It's from 2 photographs combined - one with Leah, Alex, and Benjamin, and the other photograph was of Jenna while she was living at her orphanage in Zhu Zhou City.

This is the birthday celebrations on Easter Sunday. We have here Kobe, Alex, Zoey, Samantha, and Jenna.

This is the Guitar Band with the frontman Porter and Jenna on the drums. Lots of various music coming fom this band.

Here's Ryan during the Easter Egg hunt.

Leah giving her nephew Porter a hand during the Easter Egg hunt.

My sisters Julie and Cathy, with brother Bruce roaring (or yawning).

Grandma Donna's Grandkids.

Assuming I can count correctly, here are 19 people who all know each other and are somehow related to each other. In other words - Our Family!

Grandma Donna with her 5 kids - Bruce, Brett, Lori, Cathy, and Julie.

Here's our kids beating up on their Uncle Bruce, with myself standing to the left cheering them on.

Time for some birthday cake on Easter Sunday. As I mentioned above, here's Jenna(7), Kobe(11), Zoey(9), Samantha(12), and Alex(9). Jenna is really still (6) in this picture, but she turns (7) later this month.

Porter showing off the bling bling he received on 'Fat Tuesday", I mean Easter Sunday.

Here's Leah singing at our church, Living Hope Wesleyan on May 1st, with her friend Lexi, and Sheri on the keyboards. View the video below...

Look Ma - no hands! Jenna riding our pony Lily with an assist from Mommy, and Leah is riding Thunder. Below is a short video from our son Benjamin, the storyteller...