Forts and Frogs..

We have had a busy, busy week! This past weekend, the boys and Mike had an amazing opportunity to go to the Eufala Athenaeum (over $13 million worth of first edition books, civil war documents, and other cool documents signed by different Presidents), spend the night on the USS Alabama, and tour Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines. It was an exhausting, but very fun weekend for them...cool Dad/son time! Because the boys are doing a research project on it to present to our cover school, I told Mike "Please, please take pictures!!"...he did...over 100!?? Hopefully, this is the only picture we will ever have of the boys in jail. The girls and I hit the zoo while they were gone. I thought Abby would go crazy with all of the animals there (she is a huge animal fan)...but she wasn't too impressed with anything EXCEPT the monkeys - she LOVED them!! It was so much fun to watch her laugh and scream at the monkeys and gorilla. The zoo was insanely busy because it was spring break here...it was like Disney World on a smaller scale. Did I mention that we are potty training Maggie? So, imagine me with a double stroller, standing in quite a few bathroom lines so that we didn't have any accidents - that was fun. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post because I had to borrow a camera (mine was being abused, I mean used, by the boys at the time :-)

Today, we went to a family's home to learn about running a business and tadpoles (I know, I know...2 very different things...I mean, who would have thought you could make money mailing tadpoles?). They run "Ribbits Galore" - shipping tadpoles to kids who have habitats to put their little tadpoles in and watch them grow into frogs. The husband/wife team also have their own toy company, so the kids were able to learn about how to take an "idea" and turn it into a "product". It was pretty amazing. The kids had a GREAT time, but of course, we had to come home with 3 tadpoles of our own...."Yoda, Princess, and R2". Hopefully, they will live longer than a week.

Cardiology Appointment

Well, we went to see Dr. Romp down at UAB on Friday for Abby's cardiology appointment (the picture is of Abby and me before leaving for her appointment - I had to wake her up...she wasn't thrilled). The whole hospital was awesome, and Dr. Romp's office couldn't have been more helpful or professional. Dr. Romp looked over Abby's records that we had received from China. We had an EKG done, and then went to the room for a sonogram to be done on Abby's heart. She was SUCH a big girl!! The only time she cried was when the nurse told her "No M'am" (because Abby was trying to take off the wires they had put on her chest). Bless her heart, she just got her feelings hurt. Dr. Romp said that he could see no trace of an ASD anywhere! He was very thorough and said that the only thing that he could find was a slight mitral valve insufficiency...he said that he wouldn't even have mentioned it except that he was "backing in" to another doctor's diagnosis. So, she has a healthy heart!! We are truly overwhelmed with thankfulness. My heart ached the whole way home because 3 days before our visit, a friend of ours took her little boy (also adopted from China), Kevin, in for an appointment with Dr. Romp. They knew that Kevin had heart issues, but the diagnosis was much worse than anticipated. Kevin has VSD, only one ventrical (a healthy heart has 2), an enlarged heart, and another problem not detected in China. The doctors are not even sure if he is a candidate for surgery because of the severity of his condition. The whole way home, I couldn't get this family off my mind...while we leave Dr. Romp's office with intense joy and thankfulness, our friends were overwhelmed with heartache and just trying to process their emotions. Kevin will be going in for a heart cath on Tuesday - please keep this little guy (and his family) in your prayers. God already worked many miracles to get these children home - healing little Kevin's heart is nothing for Him!

"Hey Mom, I can wink!"

So Abby has been able to wink since we met our little sweetheart, but it still continues to amaze me. I have also posted a picture of Maggie, who (prompted by her DADDY) has decided she is "Maggie Dog"...rapper extraordinaire, singing very loudly to Toby Mac. If her speech therapist could hear her now...

I decided that I am going to answer a question that I seem to be hearing a lot lately. "So, now that you have 5, are you guys done?" As if 2, 3 or 4 children weren't enough, we just had to have another? I would like to say that after Emily was born, we thought we were "done"...But God. I love that phrase. We moved to Birmingham, had 3 awesome kids, a good-size home, Mike had a good job - things were comfortable. But the Lord changed our hearts, and we had the desire for another child. Enter Maggie. We really thought we were "done". But God. We still had a "comfortable life". A little less room but still plenty of room, still had a good job, and now 4 awesome kids. The Lord then changed our hearts again - reminding us how amazingly blessed we are, and reminding us of the 147 million children who don't have a loving family, who don't have "plenty of room", who often don't have enough to eat, who often don't feel safe when they go to sleep at night, and who, most importantly, don't know of an amazing Savior who loves them more than they could ever imagine and who died so that they may know and have life abundant and life eternal. So, are we done? We live our lives for His glory - we feel "done", but our future is entirely in His hands.

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" James 4:13-15