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.

Today's Family Portraits

Just some highlights from today.  More tomorrow - I have to get back to all the people here!

Sibling Pic 2013

(plus a sleeping Hallee and a future niece/nephew)

 Nicole, Tiffany, Carly, and I

on an early morning Target run

sans kids

so fun

 The Char and I

pregame

 The David and I

midgame

 The Craig and I

postgame



And the current situation

Cousin Time

Saturday afternoon...

David's family arrived first and while we waited for Carly and Craig's families, we played outside.

Peter's drawing Brody's outline in chalk.

 Charlie sharing with Hallee.

 Gigi and I and the vintage 49ers sweatshirt I found in my parents' guest room closet.  It's very red.

 David gets the box.

 Cute boys.

 Getting smashed by the bottom of Brody.

 Ah, Chase, Carly, and Cadence finally arrived!

 It started to get chilly so we went in for tea.

 And billiards.

Peter and Cade

 So fun to all be together. 

 On to s'mores

Gigi and Riley, both five years old. 

 Brody, Gigi, Riley, Charlie in the front

with Pete and Rube in back

and Cade and Granpa playing pool.

Sweet boy

 Poker lessons with Uncle Dave

And they're still playing as I type.

So Here We Are...

...in California.  And I'm just going to tell you that it's sunny and warm.  Warm.  Like, so warm Reuben wanted to know what winter was like in California.  "Um, Reuben, this is winter in California."  His cute reply:  "Then let's move to California."  That Reuben is a smart one.  So I informed him that people in California already know about Jesus and if they don't they can access the resources to learn about him.  Sorry Bud, but I hear Chicken is nice.

Let's move on to pictures.

This was a morning bike ride.

The jacket came off quickly.

The back of Granpa's truck is exciting and fun.

See all that sunshine?

My Dad was about to cut this box down to recycle

when it was rescued and redeemed as a toy.

They played with it for a long time.

Reuben's inside with a pillow and blanket.

We flew helicopters controlled by my Dad's iphone.

Maybe you can see the helicopter at about 11 o'clock from Reuben's head.

And maybe you can see my Dad's shoes?

They're kind of hard to spot.

The boys got to drink some of Granpa's Powereade.

Super exciting.

Rube seesawing with my Mom.

 Going up the parallel bars.

Charlie has organized these Jolly Ranchers about a zillion times.

I won't let him eat one so he consoles himself by lining them up and counting them.

Fun time, yes?

But wait for it.

More and better is to come in just a few hours now.

My sister's fam arrives first, then my brother's, and then my other brother's.

And we're all sleeping here for a couple days.

I've been on the brink of happy tears all day.

This is such a rare event.

So thankful to be here!