Isaac's Dedication

This Sunday we had a opportunity to dedicate Isaac to God and proclaim our intentions to raise him to know the Lord. It was a wonderful moment of remembering all God has done in bringing Isaac into our family, how He has blessed us so amazingly with knowing this great little guy. This adoption journey has brought us so much closer to Him and this chance to publicly give Isaac back to Him was very emotional for us all. The Lord has been so faithful, as He always is, and His promises fulfilled have been so beyond what we ever anticipated. I loved spending this time meditating on Him in this way. Sunday was another milestone that we dreamed about these years waiting to have Isaac with us at home.

Here he is all ready for the big day:

Sheri

4th of July

Happy 4th of July! We had a great time, celebrating our first Independence Day with all 4 of our kids. We were in Lander, WY visiting with Jeff's family; parents, grandparents, aunt, brother, sister-in-law, and neices. It was a lot of fun. We had a picnic at Sink's Canyon, fed the fish, lit fireworks and sparklers, saw lots, and I mean a lot, of fireworks. The town and many of its residents put on big, lengthy displays of fireworks, very cool.

The big kids collected a lot of candy at the great parade:

The girls

The boys

We of course had a hard time getting a good picture of all the kids. Each additional child has made it harder to get a shot of them all smiling, so please imagine one photo with the best shot of each kid :)

Happy 4th!

Sheri

Pizza

So, we did it. We finally had pizza last night for dinner for the first time since we returned from Africa. And it was good. I think I have mentioned a dozen or so times on here already but we had a lot of pizza on our trip. Literally we had pizza twice in one day, lunch and dinner, at least once and we had it often day after day during our last week in Rwanda. The great thing was we weren't annoyed by it, we loved it. We just needed to partake of some other options since we have been home.

The great thing about the pizza is the wonderful reminders from our trip. After many long, exhausting days we would arrive back to the wonderful Chez Lando and be free to spend the rest of the evening as we choose. I think with the stress of the days we fell into a routine that was so comforting. We could have eaten at the hotel restuarant or ordered room service but we just never tried that. Almost always we would head back with our best friends, the Stengels, to our adjoining rooms to clean up and discuss what kind of pizza for the night. Then Jeff and Dillon would head out for the walk to the wonderful Sole Luna to pick up the pizza. While they enjoyed the walk, the time to chat and the people watching, Adrienne and I really enjoyed the hotel. We would sit in the Stengels room usually, as we could see the courtyard from there and the guys coming, and just visit. We could just talk about the day, the frustrations and the joys. And best of all we could watch the kids play. For over 2 years we dreamed about the times when our kids would be together, hoping but never truly believing we would be blessed with traveling together. But here we were. And it was awesome. Some of the best parts of the entire trip were those evenings watching the kids play. Dillon and I have been friends for over 24 years and Jeff and Adrienne a bit less so this was such an amazing gift from God. We are so grateful for these wonderful friends and I loved remembering those evenings last night while we enjoyed our much inferior pizza.

Here is our sweet Isaac and the beautiful Addy playing in the hotel room:

Looking forward to the day all 7 of our kids will play together, and maybe we will have some pizza that evening as well.

Sheri