If Only They Knew...

 If only only my children knew how much we love them.  Oh, they know, but one day they will have  a week like ours has been and then they will realize how much we love them...more of that story later :)  Benjamin saved up his money to buy a hamster. It took a little convincing, but I have to say the little guy is pretty cute. He had planned to buy two (in hopes that they would have babies) but we were spared from that when the extreme heat in our city killed all all of the hamsters in the store except for one.  So, the lucky fellow has a new home with AC!

 So, meet Burt, the cutest and luckiest dwarf hamster in the entire city :)

 Not to fear, Doggy Bones is still in the picture.  Although we have the hamster in a different room because the internet suggested to do so.  We don't want the little guy to have a heart attack.

So, back to the "if only they knew" story.  We have been planning a little weekend vacation for several weeks now.  We had planned it at the time we did because we did not want to interfere with end of school performances, etc.  We bought our tickets last week and had hotel reservations.  Everyone was (and is excited) to get away for a few days.  Well, I go to pick up Lauren from school on Monday and her teacher informs me that the dance recital, the one that my dance lover has been talking about all year and the one we had already bought the outfit for, is going to be Friday afternoon.  Our tickets to leave are for Friday morning.  I have never seen such excitement and such devastation on a 5 years old's face in such a short amount of time.  It broke my heart.  Needless to say, her daddy loves her more than she will ever know.  Jonathan spent teh next day and a half on teh phone trying to do the impossible in our country...change a ticket.  But he managed to do the impossible and delay our trip for a day.    

 She did such a good job and was so happy to be able to perform her dance for all the parents.

 One happy girl :)

I am working on getting the video uploaded for you to see. Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_dCvL9MuCo&feature=youtube_gdata  If you want to skip straight to her dance and not watch the intro...go to about 3 minutes into the video.  I may be a little prejudice, but I think she  has to be one of the cutest dancers of the day! :)

A Full Heart

 The past several weeks have been extremely busy, but my heart is full because of all the new friends we have made.  This little old man posed for a picture.  I told him that I like his goatee and he just smiled so big.

 We also ate at many new places.  This cafeteria had the biggest pan of rice I have ever seen.  Benjamin thought it was really cool (but then he wouldn't eat any of it)

 We had some friends from America come and visit for a week.  We had a great time!  They got to experience many things in our city including some tea drinking.  You are supposed to sip it, but the guy in the back drank each cup in one "sip" so they kept refilling it.  It was hilarious because after about 5 cups, he just started pouring sweat.  The people at the shop thought it was funny to see him drink it so fast.

 Typical Benjamin trying to be apart of every statue we see :)

 This was another of our friends that came to visit.  The little girls call her "The Catcher" because she loved to chase them around.

 This picture I took for proof when Lauren is 21 and will tell me that she was not spoiled.  This is the epitome of being spoiled.  We are eating dinner, she is sitting in Ayi's lap playing a game on the phone, while Ayi is feeding her her food!  THAT is spoiled rotten!  Normally, we would not allow this, but it had been a hard week for little bit so we let it slide this time....she was loving every second of it :)

 We went to visit the oldest Temple in the area.  It is no longer a temple, but a museum with tons of really cool artifacts.  They also had many talented people that worked there making arts and crafts things that you could buy.

 We also visited a "working" temple.  It was very eye opening.  It broke my heart to be there.

 The heat and humidity is very high now.  We have had one air conditioner (in the girls' room) that has been broken for 3 weeks now and all the other bedrooms we leaking water into our downstairs neighbor's apartment.  The guy that cam to fix them scared me to death.  We live on the 9th floor and he just tied a rope to our balcony and then to himself and scaled the wall like Spider-Man.  He assured me that the rope would hold him if he fell, but I was not so sure.  He fixed all of the air conditioners so now we can sleep better at night :)

 Katherine had her first piano recital.  She was very excited!

 She did an excellent job.  She is just beginning, but I think she has found her "thing"  Piano really fits her personality well and she is good and following the instructions of her teacher and practicing.  I love seeing the kids try new things until they find that one thing that they are good at and passionate about.  No two are alike :)

 We had another fun day playing with the kids at the orphanage.  Regan and Benjamin have a way with these kids.  They have such compassionate hearts and there is always "a kid" that will take to them.  Praying that each one finds a forever home.

 This little guy was a cutie.  He loved everyone!

This little girl stole everyone's heart, but she only smiled for Regan.  Praying especially for her to get adopted quickly and get the medical help that she needs.