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| The Dubai
airport during a late-night layover. They are delirious and took
advantage of there being few people and made up dancing shows w/ their
blankies. You can see how they can barely stand up straight they are so
tired. |
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| They love face-painting and the Wilbur girls (friends of ours here) are so good at it. Here's batman and dragon girl. |
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| My neighbor meeting Annabel. She has 6 sons and no daughters so there's plenty of loving and holding the baby going on here. |
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| The peaches in our backyard were super-ripe when we got back from Thailand. |
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| Emmett catching some of Annabel's first smiles. Don't they resemble each other? |
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| The kids' big chore for the summer - watering the yard/garden. |
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| Of course with all that watering, the mud is irresistible. They announced that they are Mud Boy and Mud Girl. |
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| Rees and the
kids play a game of trying to make each other laugh. They really got
their daddy good when they came out wearing his pants together. |
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| Me w/ Jenny and Munira and our babies. Munira's baby is three months older than Annabel & Tanner. |
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| Rees w/ his three precious little ones. |
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| Hannah
& Emmett w/ their spoils from "Eid Gardak." At the end of
Ramadan is a big holiday and the kids start it off by going house to
house wishing everyone a happy holiday (at the crack of dawn, of course)
and they get gum, hard-boiled eggs, lollipops, walnuts, money and
balloons in return. By the way - Emmett's bandage is covering his first
set of stitches. Yikes. |
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| Annabel all
tied up in the traditional "gavara" (Tajik cradle). She took to it
pretty well. Our neighbor thought she'd be extra cute w/ an Indian bindi
on her forhead (I washed it off as soon as we got home). |
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| What do we say about this? Thanks, Gramps, for the googly eyes you sent. They are lots of fun. |
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| One of my earliest friends here, Mavjuda. She had her third baby at the end of May. |
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| Myles and Emmett at our Tajik family's house in the village. Always a good place to get dirty. |
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| The Ready and Bettinger kids. |
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| Our kids w/ our new house-helper, Farzona. She's a gem. |
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| Hannah and her "best boy buddies." |
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| Picnic in our walkway. |
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| Annabel and Tanner - 2 months old and just chillin. |
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| Our friend took us to a private man-made lake that we didn't even know existed. The kids loved it. |
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| Four babies born w/i 6 months amongst the 7 family units of "foreigners" here. |
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| Another
summer-time favorite - floating down the FREEZING cold canal. As of the
posting of these pictures, the kids had just gone down w/o the
inner-tubes for the first time. When the temps are consistently in the
triple digits, a good cool-off is necessary. |
I had accidently posted this on a blog I keep just for the kids instead of here (about four weeks ago). I meant to post it here again right away but we've been very preoccupied (emotionally) with the premature birth of our precious niece and nephew - Isla & Isaac - born at 27 weeks. We lost Isaac when he was just two days old. I hate even writing that because that reality is so gut-wrenching. Isla continues to fight for her precious life. Please continue to pray with us for her, her mom - Alees and her dad - Tony. There's so much to say and yet I continue to find myself at a loss for words. I'm thankful that God understands the deepest groaning and sighing of our hearts.
