Last night I finished working my fourth Walk to Emmaus (#134), where my best friend and accountability partner was the Lay Director. It was an awesome time of serving and growing in my faith walk. This morning, Samuel decided he wanted to be a Cha (agape servant), too, as he's donning my cap.

He now has 11 teeth.

I think the only other big news was we nearly had to call the fire dept for Merrie's birthday. OK, well, maybe I'm exaggerating, but her candles did set off the smoke detector and we didn't have one for every year! She got surprised by having some of her family come over and we went bowling. Here's the birthday moose.

At 18 months and 1 day, Samuel showed us that he could scale the baby gates so yet again we've had to rearrange the house. We put him in the playpen so we could move a table and he was out of it before I could turn around. Lord, have mercy on us! Maybe he's getting me back for having him get a hepatitis A shot today that isn't required (or modifying his bed yesterday). I had to make a partial plywood door to the basement to keep Samuel out and hopefully still allow Shirley access to her food and facilities. We're quickly running out of "higher ground" for our things.

Hey, look - it's been less than a month since my last update and I didn't have to be reminded either. Amazing!

Samuel turned 18 months today. He's still a lightweight, just edging past the 20 pounds mark, but he must be healthy as he has my perpetual "wet" nose it seems. :)


He's able to climb out of his crib now though I made him upset today by replacing his mattress with cardboard so he lost 3-4 inches of height. He can still get his foot to the top of the rail but we gained maybe a few more weeks of "jail" capability. We really need that as he seems to not be grasping the concept of "No!" too well. Giggles and repetition of the bad behavior isn't the response we desire. We have a toddler bed for him, but unless we were to strap him down I don't see how we'll keep him in it. I may have to build a pen around it!

Stephan will likely continue to struggle with a moral decision for some time so continue to pray for him and us. Outside of that, he's doing well. He has a choral part in the school production of "Little Women" so he's excited about that. We just learned a few days ago that he won't actually be going to Italy now, but will be in Greece for the entire trip. He was upset, of course, but not enough to cancel. ;)

Sydney could use some extra prayer as well. He continues to just get by in school and isn't really interested in much at all, seemingly rotating his poor performance through all the subjects. We're not sure how to motivate him, and we know some children are just that way but it sure is frustrating.

We're planning to go back to Soulfeast this July after missing it the last 2 years. The summer is already getting booked pretty full it seems. I think we need to schedule some more family time off.

Thank God He is in control!