Happy Birthday Estela and Giovani

Our two most recent birthdays were Estela (25) and Giovani (10).



Tomorrow is a big one as Michelle turns 1!

Baptism Service

Twelve of our kids recently expressed interest in getting baptized, so they all participated in a baptism service together at our church, which was a really neat experience. Enjoy the video below. (Their order in the video is Eslin, Rebeca, Brenda, Marta, Delia, Jenifer, María, Daniel, Salomón, Elías, Rubén, Alex).

Michelle's teeth

Michelle is growing and changing in so many ways. She now has teeth! They have come in so quickly in the past few weeks -- two on the bottom, then two on the top, and now we can see two more on the top starting to come in.... just in time for her to eat a piece of cake when she celebrates her first birthday this Friday!

Happy Birthday, Eduardo

Thursday was Eduardo's 22nd birthday. It was also Labor Day in Guatemala, which meant that all of the kids had the day off of school. There is a team of college students here from Florida State University right now so they did fun activities with the kids that day. We also had a picnic lunch in the garden. During the picnic, we sang and had cake for Eduardo. One of the little guys who was standing next to him apparently became concerned that it wouldn't be as special for Eduardo if the lights weren't out while his birthday candles were lit. I saw him raise his face toward heaven and ask quietly, "Jesus, can you turn out the lights for just a minute?"

Happy Birthday, Juan David

Happy 9th birthday, Juan David. You seriously can't know this little guy and not love him.

Happy Birthday Ibet and Delia

We have celebrated two birthdays at NLCH in the last week. First was Ibet, who turned 18. For each of our kids' birthdays, we take them out to lunch and they get to invite one friend to come with them. Normally it's someone near their own age or a sibling. But Ibet chose to invite Juan David, so we had fun with them at lunch on Sunday.

The other birthday was Delia, who turned 19. She chose to attend a youth retreat from our church over the weekend, and came back after dinner on her birthday, so we had to postpone her singing and cake until the next night. All of the kids were out waiting for her to get back from the retreat, though, so she drove up to a cheering crowd, got lots of hugs, and of course, firecrackers.

20 weeks!

I have now reached the halfway point to our little guy's arrival! Hooray!! Daniel took some pictures yesterday to mark the occasion. While I feel pretty silly posting pictures of my stomach on here, I did want to share a few with you so you can see the baby's progress. The last picture makes me laugh. Daniel is so much taller than me that it created a funny angle.