Concert

Jennalee has an old phone of ours that she loves. It offers her a lot of entertainment and on occasions like this it affords us the same. Her performance would make Milli Vanilli proud.

Adeline

If it ever seems like we don't have as many pictures of Adeline as we do the other two kids that is because, well, we don't. Maybe it is because she is four, or maybe it's because she thinks cameras will somehow capture her soul... for whatever reason, she hates having her picture made. So when we get a picture of her we feel lucky. Actually, we are starting to see signs of her emerging from this shyness -- that would be nice, since we would someday like to have evidence that we did in fact raise three beautiful girls.

Vintage Jennalee

I (Reed) was helping Jennalee with her home-schooling on my day off. While she worked I was looking at a magazine. I was trying to keep her on task (which is really hard to do) when the following exchange occurred...

RSD: Jennalee, you need to keep working. Don't just sit there and look at my magazine.

JRD: Okay, but I may still look at it every now and then on accident.

RSD: That's okay, if you will just try to keep working.

JRD: You may need to get grumpy with me.

RSD: What?

JRD: Sometimes Momma has to get grumpy with me to get me to keep working.

RSD: Do you like it when she gets grumpy?

JRD: No, but it gets me to do my work.

Tarik Turns Two!

Today, our littlest girly swirl turned two. If it seems like just about nine months since her last birthday that is because it was... we are moving her birthday up a few months. So this was her first run at a December birthday and all reports are that it went well.

Our family is not spending much time blogging these days but we are doing well. Tarik continues to be a total clown (when she is not teething). She has moved to the big girl bed, which she calls the "good girl" bed. She loves her sisters and they love her. We continue to be amazed at how seamlessly she has integrated into our family. She also sings constantly. Her favorite songs are Twinkle, Twinkle; Baby Bumble Bee; The ABC's (a creative version), The WonderPets Theme (she sings "Underpants"), Ring Around the Rosy, and others. When we are lucky she mashes all the songs up into one medley.

On a legal note, one of the final hurdles to finalizing the adoption is our Missouri court date, which is set for December 17. No real change should happen, it is just the state recognizing the adoption. Seeing as how she is black, I would think the adoption is already quite recognizable, but maybe not. On that date, however, we are officially moving her birthday and changing her name to Tarikwa Teka (her original Ethiopian name - it is currently Tarikwa Reed).

That is a lot of logistics stuffed into a birthday blog, but our posts are rare enough that we needed to catch you up.

FUSSY

Bat Conservation

Jennalee loves anything that has to do with nature and she also loves to watch cooking shows. This video is kind of a mixture of both. Her style of narration is what comes from cooking shows - don't worry, she doesn't try to cook the bat! The floating sucker is courtesy of Adeline. This is not the most amazing video ever - the sweetness lies in the fact that stuff like this is happening all the time at our house.

My favorite quote is kind of hard to hear, Jennalee tells us, "Bat make'n is kinda hard, you know?"

Summertime

In honor of the passing of summer.

Evenings

One of the best things about house is probably our front porch. The coming of the fall and the cooler evenings remind us just how nice that porch really is. Here the older girls (and Frank) are watching the bats do their typical evening dance.

Tarik

Having Girls

We have little girls at our house and that fact never escapes us. This wolf is a typical thing we find lying around the house. We have no idea when some little hands put the "bow" and necklace on this poor guy, we just found him lying in a corner behind their toy box. Finding stuff like this is one of our favorite things about being a parent.

Family Update

It doesn't seem like we have written much about Tarik lately. So here is a quick update...

She is definitely in that stage of constantly pushing boundaries and is often frustrated that she can't fully express herself. This is the third little girl we have gone through this with and we all agree that this is a really hard time of life for all of us. But in the midst of that she does things that are beyond wonderful - like when she randomly asks for a "hod" (hug).

Tarik's vocabulary is amazing. The pediatrician recently asked us how many words she knows and we couldn't even fathom a guess. She will sometimes hear a word used only once or twice and then start using it!

Potty training is going well. Everything will be perfect for three to four weeks and then she will have one really bad (and messy) couple of days.

All three girls could not be better friends. Tarik is independent enough that she isn't always messing up what her big sisters are doing and the big girls are really good at playing with her. Poor Frank gets the brunt of Tarik's attention. She often mistakes him for a body pillow, a horse, a trampoline, etc.

It is a busy time and our posting on the blog is slow, but know that our family could not be better. We could be more rested... but definitely not any happier.

Glasses

Adeline got glasses today!
Before leaving the parking lot of the store, Jennalee was crying that she didn't get glasses and Adeline was crying because she had already broken the case.
Nothing happens without a bit of drama.

Tarik Sleeping

Not quite sure what to say about this picture. Notice that Tarik's lips are partially wrapped around one bar of the crib while her forehead is mashed up against another bar.

The Sweetest Little Heart

Adeline has to be one of the best little sisters in the world. Her birthday is in two days while Jennalee's is still ten weeks away. Yet, tonight in her prayers, the ONLY thing Adeline prayed for was her big sister's birthday party. She prayed that Jennalee would have a wonderful cake (made by Adeline and Lee Ann), that she would get exactly what she wanted in gifts, and that she would even get to watch her favorite movie. Of course, rather than being moved by such a selfless prayer, Jennalee was going absolutely bonkers over the thought of her ten-week-away party.

Sweet Pictures

While on vacation we got a couple of cute pictures of the big girls.

Rocky Moutain High

We got to spend one wonderful week in Lake City, Colorado this month. Some of you that read this blog have spent a good deal of time there and I hope you enjoy. For those of you who haven't been there, it is a gem of a town. It is at 8,600 feet above sea level and surrounded by five fourteen thousand foot peaks. Hard to match that! Also, there is basically nothing to do. This is not a vacation town for those with ADD; this is a place to sit and relax, and then do it some more. The days were beautiful and the nights were downright cold... that makes for wonderful tent-camping.

The sixteen hour drive seemed imposing but the girls (all of them) did great. We caught one of the most glorious moments on camera...
This is a place where many of the tallest mountains don't even have names - there are just that many peaks! The ridge on the left of this picture composes part of the Continental Divide.
This is the "main drag" of Lake City. It hasn't changed much since the mining days of the late 1800's. I assume they have better ice cream now, though - it's fabulous in fact.
Watching the two older girls play non-stop was by far the highlight. They played in a wooded area almost everyday that they appropriately named the "Clubhouse". They seemed to have a different little project going on every hour or so.
Someone (and it wasn't Lee Ann) let Jennalee buy a sling-shot. Jennalee tried to shoot the millions of chipmunks that snoop around Southwest Colorado, but when that showed itself to be too much of a challenge, she turned her sights towards Barry from Bee Movie. He begrudgingly offered himself up as great target practice and gave us some wonderful laughs.
This is a deer that hung around our campsite. If she looks a little overweight, I am sure that has something to do with the packages of Fig Newtons she consumed from our hands.
Here we are at the Alfred Packer Massacre Site. Jennalee & Lee Ann are reenacting the cannibalistic actions of Lake City's most notorious character.
We all got home safely. All of us except one, that is. The only fatality was this bird we found in the grill of our car when we were unloading. Nobody said vacation was easy!

Memories!

Lee Ann is going through a lot of old pictures so that we can actually print them out and put them in physical albums. Needless to say, it is incredible to be reminded of the sweet life we have had with these little girls. Here are two of our favorite pictures...

This picture was taken when Jennalee was two and Adeline was brand new. If you look closely, you'll see that they have on the same outfit. A friend gave Adeline these gowns as a shower gift but Jennalee could, and did, wear them all the time. Jennalee has always been so tiny. Even now she and her younger sister are the exact same weight (35 pounds at 5 1/2).This picture is vintage Adeline. She, like her sister in the picture above, is about two years old. However sweet Jennalee was at two, that is how mischievous Adeline was at that age. As she is growing up, it is fun to watch her use that fun-loving spirit for good rather than ill.
We are so blessed.

Growing Up

Every now and then you get overwhelmed at how much your children are growing up. Jennalee is in one of those stages where she looks older every day. How can this be the same little girl that burst into our lives during our second year of seminary? Wasn't that just a few months ago?

Pets: Number 12 & 13

We have some new additions to our family! But before we get too far into this we should say that we took these with the express stipulation that we will return them when/if the girls lose interest. Our eleven pets over seven years of marriage demand that disclaimer.

We have a friend who has a farm and on that farm she had 5 ducks... our girls fell in love and have brought two of them home to shower with affection.

Here is Adeline with her duck - named Duckers. Duckers is a prolific pooper and seems to prefer Adeline's shirts to just about any other medium for her artwork. Duckers also carries the burden of being loved by Adeline, which makes her pretty susceptible to injury.

Here is Jennalee with her duck - named Gloria. Gloria has more social graces and has yet to defecate on our eldest daughter. She loves people and is much more adventurous than Duckers. We should also mention that Jennalee is fantastic with this little duck. Gloria even follows Jennalee around the yard!!!!

Here is the "temporary" lodging. We know it's ghetto... but it's our ghetto. And yes, that is "duck" tape you see holding the thing together.

Frank's Labrador bells were ringing pretty hard at first and it was all he could do to not kick into Retriever mode.

But by the end, his Labradoodle genes took over and he mellowed to the idea of having roommates.

Painful Realism

We have a friend in our church who recently broke his arm. The girls wanted to draw him pictures to cheer him up, and the following is Adeline's work.

Adeline's picture, as you can tell, is quite literal; he has both tears and a broken arm!
Jennalee colored a picture of a turtle - a bit more appropriate but a little less poignant.