Our Latvian host girls departed two weeks ago now.  I haven’t written about it because it’s taken two weeks to mentally process.  Goodbyes are always hard for me, and there really aren’t words that can adequately describe that kind of goodbye:  handing two girls back to their (wonderful) chaperone so…

One of our host daughters has some special needs, and having a calendar that shows what is going to be happening in our family really helps quell her anxiety.  She does best when she knows exactly what is happening and when it will be happening, and a calendar really helped…

Most of our Sunday night at the Beach images I am not able to share because of hosting, but here are a couple that I can post.  It took us a while to get to the beach this particular Sunday, but we had a great time looking for treasures in…

I’m a few weeks behind on posting.  Mr. SP was at Bible camp about two weeks ago.  There is a tradition at our Bible camp that if you receive a box or three pieces of mail in a day you have to sing a song, tell a joke or do…

  Someone from inside the cabin yelled out the door for be to come inside with my camera.  Usually there’s a good reason for that, so I did, and I came across Cousin Janzie giving Mr. SP a facial (for the small price of a piece of candy, apparently).  The…

Our Extended Family cabin weekend was a little bit earlier than usual this summer.  The great thing about that was that our Latvian host girls could come with us to the cabin, and they LOVED it.  They were in the water from sunrise to sunset.  Here are some of the…

Six kids in my house means big messes, but six kids can clean messes up pretty quickly actually. Inspired by one of his current favorite picture books Trapped by Ice, about Shackleton’s Antarctic adventure,  Mr. TOF and I set out to learn about Elephant Island.  We found lots of interesting…

Everyone loves swimming here, and since it’s the height of summer, at least 70% of the days of each week we have been heading to a creak, river, or the pludmale (beach).  Each and every one of those places has it’s advantages, (cold water, warm water, etc.) and there’s general…

Mr. Trouble on Feet chose donuts for breakfast in the bathtub, so one of our host daughters and I made a very quick trip to the bakery early in the morning to bring back a box of yumminess.  There was lots of playing outside and many bike rides in the…

There are SO many more pictures from Sunday Night at the Beach that I’d love to share with you, but can’t due to the rules about posting pictures of the girls we are hosting through P143.  We love our beach time, and so do they! The four girls started out…