wren and her new friend :)



my handsome boy :)



one of the many wonderful things about him is that he will sleep anywhere. truly wonderful. and that means there are a few rare occasions where i get to actually sit for a minute or 2 when we go to the pool :)





silly absentminded mommy buckled neiko into wren's car seat. and had completely tuned wren out as she asked, "what are you doing, mom??" over and over while i was buckling him in her seat :)



i think he's getting a bit too big for her to hold.....



a few pictures of the wedding in kansas this past weekend.....
most everything went great that day except that the groom was really sick and it was 100 degrees outside- and an outdoor wedding.

a groomsman and the flower girl....











cousins :)





the kids did pretty well for how many hours (24 hours of travel) they spent in the van. we made a few stops along the way to break up the trip......













we got home on monday night and were thrown right back into our normal chaos.
we have our second homestudy visit tomorrow. i am waaaay less nervous than i was the first time :)
and we have the second weekend of the parade of homes to prepare for.
the first one went fine without us, but our fill-ins were overwhelmed by the amount of people that came through. hundreds.
and 2 of those people were interested in buying the house.
and 1 was willing to pay a good amount........
but we decided that no amount of money is worth our sanity. or the vision we've had for this house for the last 15 months.
so, no thank you :)

and now for a couple of cute stories....
the other day tekoa asked me if there really are bad people in this world.
i told her, "yes, there really are. but we don't have to worry about that because we have the best, most strongest GOOD GUY on our team."
and she said, "yep. daddy." :)

well, i told her that GOD and daddy are both on our team, but God is the strongest.
and then we met dave for lunch. she ran right up to him, put her little hands on his cheeks and said, "dad, you're awesome. do you punch bad guys??"
he laughed pretty hard even before i filled him in on the previous conversation. :)

and little wren, as we drove past dave's office building yesterday yelled out, "i see daddy's house!!!!"
poor girl. i can see how that could be confusing. someday daddy will live at "our house" again. except that won't be here at grandma's house. that will be at daddy's other house. then this will be grandma's house again and daddy's other house will be the whole family's house......
can't come soon enough, right wren?

and lastly.....
sometimes God just LETS YOU KNOW that He cares. it seems like ever since we brought neiko home He does this more than ever for me. and i LOVE HIM for those times. i love Him for all times but especially for those times.
like yesterday.
it was our first day back home and we woke up to NO MILK. i know some of you know the devastation of being in that predicament....
we had to rush a bit that morning because tyden and shaeya are in vacation bible school in the mornings this week. so i promised the girls we would get milk on our way back from dropping tyden and shaeya off. and we pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store right as tekoa dumped an entire bottle of juice on her lap and her car seat.
she started sobbing.
i looked at all three little kids and decided that getting the milk would be more trouble than it was worth at that point.
so i drove home with tekoa bawling the whole way.
we got home and cleaned up the juice mess and about 5 minutes later there was a knock on my front door. i opened the door and there was my neighbor standing there with a gallon of milk in her hands.
she had extra and wanted to know if i could use some......

and bam. i know my Savior loves me. and that He cares about the little things as well as the big.
He cares about things on this earth as well as things in heaven. He cares about hearts and thoughts and faith and attitudes. and He cares about milk and He cares about families.
right, buddy?