Just some pictures of the kiddos

Thought I should put up some more pictures of the girls.  I get to see them everyday, but there are some people who do not!  Mercy is growing so fast and seems so big to us already!  She is smiling a lot and starting to make little baby noises.  Charlotte loves talking to her and making her smile.  :)

 Obviously, Charlotte is not making Mercy smile in this picture....

 Mercy fits into her "One Size" diapers that can be readjusted to fit her until she's potty trained!

 I think this is the only family photo of all four of us since the hospital when Mercy was born!

 Goofy face!

 Sister love.

 Daddy and Charlotte hanging out in a tree at Quarry Hill Nature Center.  They are holding apples in their mouths!

 Charlotte pretending to be a turtle at Quarry Hill.

After a nice long hike at Quarry Hill we went out for ice cream at the DQ thanks to the gift card that Grandpa Randy sent in the mail!  Yum!

Charlotte's 1st Race!

In mid September, Charlotte ran her first race!  She likes to run with daddy sometimes at home and they had been talking about finding a race to run in together.  The perfect opportunity came up to run in the Beaverdale Beaverdash for SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) in Iowa.  Our niece Qian Yin (Charlotte's cousin) has SMA, so it was for a great cause!  Charlotte and daddy ran the 1 mile race while Auntie Kate ran in the 5K, which also happened to be her first race too!  It was a beautiful day and perfect running weather.  It was also Grandma Cindy's birthday, so it was a special day all around!

 The morning of the race Charlotte woke up at 4:15am and asked "Is it time to run yet?"  A true runner!

 Birthday girl Grandma Cindy with the runners pre-race.

 Walking to the starting line.  You can see the Beaverdale Beaver mascot in the background.

 The runners waiting for the big start!

 The littlest runner at the start line!

 And the littlest runner at the finish line!  Daddy said she ran the entire one mile, and they finished in about twelve minutes.  Not too shabby for a 5 year old in her first race!

 Ta-Da!

 The three runners after they had all finished.  Kate did an awesome job in her first race!

 Daddy, Charlotte, and cousin Liya at the finish line for the 5K (the one mile had a different finish line).

The cousins (minus Mercy).  Liya, Qian Yin, and Charlotte.

ECHO Conference

We just put up a new post on our Ethiopia blog--check it out!

http://floreksinethiopia.weebly.com/blog.html

In other news, Mercy has been smiling for the past couple of weeks and we were able to finally catch a good one on camera this week.   Isn't she darling?!