Summer pics from the Tajikistan side of life.

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.

They love face-painting and the Wilbur girls (friends of ours here) are so good at it. Here's batman and dragon girl.

My neighbor meeting Annabel. She has 6 sons and no daughters so there's plenty of loving and holding the baby going on here.

The peaches in our backyard were super-ripe when we got back from Thailand.

Emmett catching some of Annabel's first smiles. Don't they resemble each other?

The kids' big chore for the summer - watering the yard/garden.

Of course with all that watering, the mud is irresistible. They announced that they are Mud Boy and Mud Girl.

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.

Me w/ Jenny and Munira and our babies. Munira's baby is three months older than Annabel & Tanner.

Rees w/ his three precious little ones.

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.

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).

What do we say about this? Thanks, Gramps, for the googly eyes you sent. They are lots of fun.

One of my earliest friends here, Mavjuda. She had her third baby at the end of May.

Myles and Emmett at our Tajik family's house in the village. Always a good place to get dirty.

The Ready and Bettinger kids.

Our kids w/ our new house-helper, Farzona. She's a gem.

Hannah and her "best boy buddies."

Picnic in our walkway.

Annabel and Tanner - 2 months old and just chillin.

Our friend took us to a private man-made lake that we didn't even know existed. The kids loved it.

Four babies born w/i 6 months amongst the 7 family units of "foreigners" here.

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.