Happy Father's Day!

Yea to all the dads out there, but especially to my boys' dad. Chad is a wonderful husband and father. The boys' love for him and joy at seeing him is so evident that strangers have commented on their reactions to Chad.

Latest updates on us...

It's summertime, so Chad's barely working and I'm working all the time. I've very grateful that God has provided us with jobs that have an inverse relationship in terms of busy times. Works really, really well for raising young kids.

Isaac has made huge strides in several areas as he approaches his third birthday. On the speech/oral front, he is now sticking out his tongue. This is huge progress for him! He is also saying simple sentences. "Go up!" "I wub woo Gah-gee!" (I love you Daddy!) He's doing really well with words that end in distinctive sounds too. Boat, block, book. Numbers and letters continue to be a favorite topic of his. He's loving swimming lessons as well. Finally, he is nearly day-and-nap potty trained. Our accidents are few and far between now, even in public. He's so very proud of himself, as are we.

Micah turned 9 months old yesterday. He loves to talk, usually at a very high volume. The chatter seems to be on age-level, so we are praying he won't face the same challenges Isaac has. Despite no crawling progress from the Memorial Day video, he has developed an army-crawl method that motors him around very, very quickly. He has figured out how to escape a closed, but not locked gate. Obviously, gates are always locked now. He loves to eat baby food, and we are making progress towards solids. His personality is generally sunny, but I'm starting to think he may give us a run for our money. He's a stinker!

Finally, Chad and I are taking steps towards expanding our family. We are nearly done with a 10-week class to become foster parents. After our class concludes in early July, we will complete the other steps for licensure. Our ultimate goal with fostering is adoption of one (maybe two in the case of a sibling group) kid(s). Please pray for us and our boys in this journey, but we especially covet your prayers for the children in foster care. We are entering a foreign world where kids experience things God never intended for people to experience. Our hearts break for them, and we pray that God may use our family to help them in any way possible.