Family Photo Shoot

In preparation for today's photographic extravaganza, Paul had me practice my smiles...

 I call this The Charlie.

He tries to get as close as he can to camera so he can immediately see the pic.

Here are photos from our time of being professionally photographed this afternoon.

I was trying to catch images of what we're really like

when we're not all standing still in a group and smiling at a camera.

 Steve and Coleen being sweet

and very well coordinated.

 Practicing for our 'couples' shots.

 Pete helping wrangle the Charlie.

 Samuel was doing his best to annoy Paul

when Paul got him with a surprise attack.

 Oh, you have candy?

I'll be cute for candy.

 Getting some wiggles out.

 Eight kids all looking (preferably smiling) at the camera will be...

There's no way.

Steve and Coleen feeling awesome that they aren't managing any children.

 Two-year-olds and photo shoots...

uh-uh.

Absolutely not

and no way.

Try to give commands to a two-year-old,

Ha.

Charlie refusing to smile.

 When we told Charlie to smile he would blink both eyes

with much force and exertion.

This is me 'smiling' too.

The Last Bit About CA

The last of the magical winter trip to California with every family member except my husband...  Everyone!  All my siblings and all their families.  My heart overfloweth.

 Poker Night #2

I love the generations here.

 Rube conquering the playground.

Necessary trip to In-n-Out. 

I'm doing the advanced maneuver of eating with a 26 pound unconscious Korean in one arm.

 Doesn't my dad look great?!

Leukemia, what?

Granny and Granpa with 3/4 of their grandkids.

Three Hermans in the back seat.

 Saddest picture ever:  Saying goodbye to Granny at the airport.

 Those of us who are two quickly recovered and became very excited about being on the airplane again.

He's got M&Ms to count.

 Reuben's latest style is buttoning ALL the buttons.

And now we're all home cherishing the memories, 

and preparing to make more.

Dad's 100th Day Party

Paul's at the bar tonight, two boys are in bed not sleeping, and Peter's playing a video game.  So I get to blog!  Here are unpublished pics I found on my camera from our last trip to California - January 28 to February 5th.  These all show our day at Sue and Paul's where we celebrated my Dad's 100th day since his stem cell transplant.  Lots of extended family.  It was fabulous.

The Sisters (my dad has four of them) gave my dad a bag of presents

that his new DNA would really enjoy.

His sister Jo was his perfectly matched donor, so now he has her DNA,

or something like that.

So naturally he would like to read about Will and Kate.

 And he would want a framed picture of Jo's dog.

 And he needs a little purse to carry the dog around.

 Sister Carly with my next niece, Charlotte.

Brother Craig

And then my dad gave a touching speech about being thankful to be here.

We are all abundantly thankful too.

My three sibling are in here along with our cousins who all live in So Cal.

 This is Max, my cousin's son and platelet donor extraordinaire.

He entertained Charlie a long time.

It was a nice break for me.

Paul wasn't on this trip, remember.

And then it was time for the 49ers to win the Super Bowl.

Except they didn't.

We all hung out here, watching a TV you can't see in this picture.

Aunt Cheryl and Charlie

 Granny making the most of the thirty-minute power outage during the game.

Chase and Charlie in their private lounge.

 Peter helped Aunt Jo keep track of the score.

 The Niners must have scored at this point

since Dave is kissing his moneymaker.

Brody and Charlie saying good-bye.

A Letter to my Brother

My younger brother emailed me today.  And I emailed him back.  And then I thought I could post that email here so you could have a glimpse of what's going on in my small life.  Because I can't get to this space very often these days.  Twenty-seven days until a jet plane swoops us away.  A new blog will be started once I come up with a catchy name for it.

Hey David,

I hope your apricots were tasty.  Izzy is known for its fig production, if you ever happen to buy some figs.  We had an amazing, powerful time at a conference in AZ last week.  Met about a 150 people who are interested in Chickens like we are.  I loved hearing Chicken believers share from their hearts.  We pray for the spirit to use us and guide us.  I have a lot of peace about moving, even though we are still homeless once we get to Izzy.  I met a woman in the bathroom at the conference who said she'd take care of finding a place for us to stay while we look for a permanent home.  Workers in Chicken are pretty awesome about helping each other.  I'm hoping Mat Kearney makes a return trip to Chicken AND lets us know about it.

Paul's last Sunday is this next one.  Then we're appearing/meeting with tons of folks at our big supporting church a couple states over, then a Sunday off, then preaching at G'castle Church, then we leave 2 days later.  We have lots of dinner/lunch appointments with friends and family in the next month.  Our house is pretty bare.  I'm having a hard time letting go of children's books that I want to bring.  Homeschooling requires a lot of books, but books are heavy.  Paul keeps telling me I have to move more of our learning to online, which is true, but I still think a love of reading is encouraged by having books around.

We had a neat encounter with a Korean worker who wants to plant blueberries at her retreat center an hour from Izzy.  She offered us land to plant them.  I hope to write about it on my neglected blog.  I have much to write about, but I'm in a tired funk.  But!  Tonight a 70 year old lady in our town invited us for dinner and she specifically fried chicken livers for us - for the sake of my iron needs.  Ha.  I ate three, yes I did.  So I'm looking forward to much energy tomorrow.

How do you add a search for Izzy on your news feed?  That's such a great idea.  I check their weather about everyday.  It's warmer than here.

I miss you tons.  Thanks for writing.

Stacey

The Cousins

Let's revisit California for a moment.

Here we have all the west coast cousins.

Riley, Gigi, Peter, Reuben, and Brody on the fence.

Cade holding Cadence, Charlie crying behind the tall grass, and Hallee wondering what's wrong.

What's wrong is that just a few moments before this picture was captured in my parents' backyard,

Charlie was like this...

I moved him here from here...

He hasn't quite built up his stamina for California fun. 

Here's how Baby Cadence prepped for the photo shoot.

Fixing up her pedicure and stretching her hamstrings.

Multi-tasker in training.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Look what we did today...

A friendly Korean church about an hour from us

invited Korean adoptive families to a Lunar New Year Celebration.

They made Bi Bim Bop

and it was so good!

Charlie preferred the oranges.

Reuben slurped three bowls of tofu soup.

Peter enjoyed the main dish.

Oops, too close.

The woman in the brown shirt back there...
She has been waiting to be matched with a Korean child for three years.
She and her husband started the process the same time we did for Charlie.
We feel so blessed to have Charlie home with us.

After lunch we began our instruction on how to properly bow to our ancestors.

Here's Reuben practicing his bowing.

I didn't do any bowing, but it felt awkward and

kind of wrong to be bowing down to anything other than God.

When we were in Korea to adopt Reuben we happened to be there for the Lunar New Year and we saw WooSeok's parents create a shrine/alter to their ancestors and bow to it/them.

It's a piece of their culture that I don't fully understand.

On to a Korean hacky sack competition.

These Koreans are very enthusiastic game-players,

including kids and adults in their sports.

I only hackied the sack two times.

Holder of the hacky sack.

Hold on.

I'm going to look up the Korean name for it...

Jaegi.

But, you should have seen Paul!

He pulled out his secret jaegi skills.

A Korean man said to me, "I bet he's a really good soccer player."

Ha.

Ha, ha, ha.

He might be.  He probably is.

Of course, he would actually have to play soccer in order to find out.

Paul was clearly the best nonKorean jaegi player.

And he was very handsome.

Fun day.

As for the Gung Hay Fat Choy title... when I taught first grade I was handed some curricula and asked to teach about Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year.  It said you're supposed to shout, "gung hay fat choy!" and it means "happy new year!"  Fast forward to that one time when we lived in China... when Lunar New Year came around I confidently called out a hearty gung hay fat choy to my Chinese friends and they had no idea what I was talking about.  Sorry to all those first graders I totally misguided.  I hope that was one of those lessons that nobody remembered.