Gardening

I bought some ranunculus flowers last week. They were so pretty and I've never lived in an area where they did well. I put the pots in the backyard and planned to plant them the next day. The next day they were spread all over my backyard. My puppy Howie had a lot of fun. I wanted to cry. I picked up the pieces of my ranunculus and gingerly planted what was left. We went out to run some errands. When I got back, he had dug them up. Planted them again, and put dead rose branches upright next to the poor little limp flowers. He dug them up. They had nothing but a few roots left but I planted them again. He left them alone for a few days and one got brave enough to put out a few shoots. He dug them up.
I ordered a motion sensitive sprinkler online and put it near the flower bed. So far it has soaked me 4 times and the dogs not at all. I've had the sprinkler for a few days so yesterday I had enough courage to buy some more plants. I took all the girls to a nursery close by and we had fun shopping and picking out plants. I got one of those flat wagons that nurseries provide and all the girls rode on it while I loaded plants on. They had fun taking turns being the tour guide. They'd pretend to hold a microphone and say something like, "And over here we have a big green plant that will turn into flowers..." I have no idea where they get this stuff!

Today during nap time, Karianne and I cleaned out the flower bed and planted our flowers. I thought I'd get a picture of them before he digs them up again. Notice the nice sprinkler behind Karianne just waiting for Howie. Hopefully my flowers will still be there tomorrow. But if not, I'll always have the photo.

The Pheonix Zoo

The girls and I went with some friends with our local FCC group to the Phoenix Zoo. I am so glad for a GPS because I would have never been able to find it by myself. I had to get on 5 different highways across Phoenix!
It was a beautiful day, the girls had fun, and we made some new friends.

My kids say "CHEESE" but never look at the camera at the same time.

"Momma, GEE AHFF!"



Amy at the Little People Play area



The girls trying very hard to milk a cow.


Karianne and Amy at the petting zoo. I tried to get a picture of Angie petting a goat. I told her to go pet a certain big goat and she just stared at it. I said, "Go on, pet the goat so I can get a picture of you. She looked at me and said, "mom, it's pee peeing." Sure enough. Angie wasn't interested in petting goats after that.



Riding a camel with our friends.



Yes, that's Lucy climbing in to an Aligator pond while Momma takes a picture. Just kidding, I didn't actually see any Gators...

the Princesses and pink pancakes

I set the table and Brent made pink heart shaped pancakes for the girls for dinner tonight. We went big and put whipped cream, chocolate chips and cherries on their pancakes. They ate them up and wanted to know what was for dessert.

"I'm almost like an expert of everything"
--Karianne

Happy Chinese New Year

Today we got to attend our first event with Families with Children from China- Arizona. We went to the Chinese New Year celebration. We usually go to a CNY dinner every year, this is the first year we got to go to a CNY Picnic at this time of year! This is a great group and they really go all out for Chinese New Year. They did a great job. The girls got face painting, balloon animals, and made tshirts. They tried the rock wall, jumped in bouncers and played a lot of yard games. There were two inflatables and the smaller one was for 2 and under. Lucy had no interest in the "baby" one and tried over and over to get in the big kid bouncer.



There was a Province Parade, where kids came up as their Province was called. We told Amy there are not a lot of kids adopted from here province so she may be the only one, sure enough she was. Angie as usual, had several little friends from her province.




There were several dance performances, a kung fu demonstration and our favorite, the lion dance. I love the Chinese drums and All the girls got to give them a try. Angie was so serious trying to get the rhythm just right.



We met new friends and look forward to a great new year.

Hiking in our backyard

You know how they used to say that Ginger Rodgers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire because she could do everything he did backwards and with high heels? I kinda always feel that way when we go out to do things that eveyone else does with a baby on my hip and preschoolers in tow. I remember when Karianne and Angie were 3 years old we went hiking in a cave. It was a mile straight down. Brent carried Karianne and I carried Angie. Did I mention I was 5 months pregnant with Lucy too? People have no idea what a workout is unless they've tried it holding a baby.



Anyway, we went hiking today on on of the mountain just a few minutes away from us. It didn't look as steep as some of the other trails around so we brought all the kids. I still haven't gotten a good picture of our view out here, but it is just gorgeous. We are in a valley with mountains 360 degrees all around us. We got on the trails and did pretty good. We got a lot of stares from the serious joggers and walkers as we toted our kids up and over the trails. We only had one scrapped up knee and Lucy and Amy gave up about halfway through. I took Lucy and Amy back to the car and we drove around the mountain and waited for the rest of the hikers to come off the trail.

Update on Orphan Alert

The Boy I posted about a few days ago, J.D. has a family. Praise God!

Hudson Taylor is one of my heroes. He was a giant of faith serving out his life as a missionary to the Chinese in the 1800s. A friend shared this quote on Facebook and it is so good I just had to share:

“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.” (Hudson Taylor)

Happy Birthday to me

I had a fun birthday yesterday. A sweet new friend brought me a cake and was merciful enough to get the number candles instead of individual candles although Lucy would have loved to help me blow out all those candles. She kept trying to blow out my candles but she had her binky in her mouth so I got to do the honors.