my girls

just had to add these pics of my girls. me on the left in case you forgot what i look like since i am never in any of my pictures, Kourtney...my friend, roommate for much of the last year or so and my personal trainer last week, Janet...who was going to be my new best friend in Iraq but then had to go and join Julie and Kourtney, but i still love her, and Julie, beautiful and amazingly talented singer, i want to be her some day! oh yes and sutton asleep on Kourt's lap...it had been a LONG week, my kids wore him down!
oh look, i found another picture of me and Kourtney...how did we manage to sneak into two pics in one week??

the wild, wild west...or midwest

we visited our friends in Norman...the Hartsocks, the Bennetts and the McCuistions...who are all starting a church there! we stayed with the Hartsocks and went to the zoo...here are all the kids with a family of lions...the kids fit in rather well!
we also went to the Arts Festival downtown and played at this fountain afterwards!
we got to go to Beau's 5th bday party...it was a Batman party! my boys LOVED it!
riding bikes in the driveway! every night my kids slept SO great! that was one of the best things about being there, my kids were worn out after every day of playing hard and long with the Kooper, Braxton, Sutton and Preslee! There were very few fights and bonks too! we were so thankful!
Annie and Kooper saying goodbye! they have been faithful friends for almost 2 years in TX together! she will miss him greatly!

Oklahoma was a great time. While i was in Oklahoma, Tim was in Guatemala...more pics of that to come later! =) The kids and I got to see a lot of fun stuff. Kourtney kept us going. She even managed to get me to exercise almost every day i was there and low and behold i even shed a few pounds! wow! I am doing a version of "biggest loser" with my brother-in-law and i am very motivated to win first! of course i want us to both win, but i have to win FIRST! =)

Easter sunrise and Cardboard Testimonies....

got up early enough to drive to the top of a hill to watch the sun rise on easter morning...it was beautiful and cold...

HE IS RISEN INDEED!

So there is this thing, if you haven't seen it before, go to utube and look up something to the effect of "cardboard testimonies" you will cry your eyes out...tim's dad's church did it on sunday and annie got to be a part of it. basically you write something out about yourself that has been hard without Jesus (Annie's says: "cried every morning before school") and then....
you flip it over and it says something about how Jesus helped you be victorious. In Annie's case it was: "I prayed and Jesus gave me PEACE!" She did fabulously...she wasn't nervous at all. I was so proud! May that peace stay with her forever...Amen!
Then her Papa got up and said something very poignant...but i can't remember what it was because i was too emotional and happy for my sweet girl making strides all by herself in her relationship with Jesus!

The Grand Canyon...well supposedly...we didn't see much of it!

we did get to ride the grand canyon railway and it was SO much fun! some friends that work for the train, got us tickets onto the first class car, we got free food and great views as we rode to the canyon. they even had a cowboy show and a train robbery on the way home! the kids LOVED it!
toby never seemed to feel the cold. he loved every moment of being at the canyon, he threw snowballs at Papa the entire time. his feet were soaked and he never cared! he wandered and stayed at the back of the pack the entire time. he climbed this tree with a little assistance from me!
this is how Jesse saw the canyon..he never set foot outside. he was carried the entire way and fell asleep inside tim's jacket, with his hat pulled low.
this was one of the best views, except for one other time that i did not manage to get a picture of...it cleared all the way down to the bottom at one point and annie and i even got to see a rainbow over the canyon.
this is all of us on the train.

it was such a great day...toby says when he is 10 he will be back to hike the canyon with hiking boots and a bow and arrow. he can't wait!

Arizona Fun

We have been in Arizona for a week or so...longest stop yet! This is in Sedona.
This is Grammy with Toby doing his new favorite thing...bow and arrow.
My sweet Annie girl...doing what she does so well...lookin' cute!
Tim and his girl!
Jesse with his cousins, Jason and Trenton! It has been a mad house with 3 2 year olds together, but we have had a lot of fun! We have mostly gotten to relax since we have been here. We have met some new people, reconnected with old friends and been with family! We still can't believe that this is our life right now...but we were meant to have a home and put down roots and i cannot wait to find that home and put down my roots again and make it ours...our sanctuary...with a place for everything and everything in its place...then i can once again say my favorite quote, "a clean house, is a happy house!" tonight tim and i were talking about moving and we decided that no matter what happens once we move, this first year is like a first year of marriage...we have to leave our home country and cleave to our new country. We have decided that divorce is not an option, that we won't come home for "irreconcilable differences." this may sound naive and i am sure i will not want to hear this some days, but outside of hearing from God, we are going home. a friend of mine...her 2 year old son, Holden, prayed for us when his mommy asked him to pray for us to find a home, he prayed that we would get home safely. Amen!

the spring blizzard of '09

a tea party with our friend Lily...my friend Stacey's little girl! Stacey and i got to have deep dish cookies, ice cream and coffee later on! annie thought it wasn't fair that the little kids didn't get ice cream! =)
jesse and joshua...jesse's new hero. he followed joshua around the entire time! i think joshua enjoyed it too.
jesse and jonah...my best friend from when i first moved to colorado...janel...she took me under her wing and now after 15 years of not being in touch, we got to let our kids play together...okay so they played a little and stole toys a little.
so my friend mindi, megan and kansas from high school...we had this club called "girls in the box" and we had so many fun adventures together, now my friend mindi has 3 kids as well all about the same ages, just 2 girls and a boy....here annie is playing with sierra and kaia...they are as wild as we are! so much fun!
jesse fell in the snow outside the hotel we had to stay in and was not happy!

we drove into colorado and had about an hour and a half left when we ran into what the weathermen were calling a blizzard! seemed like it to us. we were stuck in limon with hardly any visibility and skidding off the road, so we decided to get a hotel there. the snow was so bad and the wind was so strong that we couldn't even see the hotel sign. we had to drive across the street later for dinner, we couldn't walk because of the wind and the huge drifts of snow. it was pretty fun to get stuck there!
from there we went to denver and saw so many wonderful, old friends! it was amazing to reconnect with my best friend from junior high and one of my good buddies from high school and lots of friends from church.
we went down south to stay in monument with some new friends! we had a great time with them as well! One morning while we were staying there God gave me a really powerful picture! i had a picture of a cover or a blanket of some sort, but it was really beautiful. it was a weave of some sort. I was praying for all the women in my life and i was in tears because i was grieving that i will not be seeing any of them for a long, long time. That is when i saw the beautiful woven colors. some of the patterns started from the beginning and were woven in a continuous, consistent pattern, some were short and beautiful, bursts of color, some came in and came in again later on. I could tell that the weaves were different women in my life. my mom's was the first weave and it was the backbone for all the other weaves to come off of. so instead of grieving my loss, i was able to see what i am carrying with me. something that will replace the dark, heavy and dirty cover of shame in the Kurdish women. because so many have contributed to my life and made it so beautiful, i am able to carry it with me to share it with the women there. i cannot wait!