Family photo shoot

While in Charlotte, North Carolina for the last two weeks we had a new friend take a bunch of pictures of our family.  We haven't been good about getting pictures with all four of us, so we remedied that on this trip.  Charlotte and Mercy were both very good for all of these pictures with no tears from anyone!

Our time in North Carolina was for SIM orientation, and we had a great time.  The weather was beautiful--in the 50s and 60s and sunny most days.  It felt like September in MN; the leaves were still on the trees and the grass was still green!

There were 20 people in the orientation with us, all going to different countries, and we made some good friends who are in very similar life situations as us.  We stayed up way too late most nights just talking to people.  Every day we had classes about a variety of things, everything from computer security to effective storytelling to learning a program for tracking fundraising to personality types and working in a team to how to be safe and many many other topics.  It was really useful stuff and we are still processing all of the information.  Charlotte went to a kids program every day with another 5 year old and three 3 year olds.  They had bible stories, crafts, play time, reading, field trips, walks, and even focused their reading and craft projects on Ethiopia and Kenya, the countries these particular families are moving to.  Charlotte had so much fun!

Belated

I forgot to post these pictures back in early September--oops!  Grandpa Randy came to visit and we took the girls to an apple orchard.

 Who is peeking out of the hay bales?!

 Oh!  It's baby Mercy!

 We rode on a wagon pulled by a tractor out to the apple trees.

 Then we picked our own apples!

 Charlotte and Grandpa had lots of fun picking apples.  It didn't take long to fill up our bags!

 Mercy wanted to help, but she was too sleepy...

Grandpa and his girls.

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?!

Just a few pictures

I thought I should get a few pictures up on the blog since it's been awhile.  You're probably all going through Mercy withdrawal...  :)  In no particular order, here are some pictures from the last week or two.

These next two are from Charlotte.  She made them in kindergarten.  I think the inspiration behind it is a combination of her love of cats plus a new baby sister who seems to be nursing all the time.  I need to ask her teacher what she thought when she saw this!

First day of kindergarten

How can it be that we have a little girl old enough to go to kindergarten?  Didn't we just post pictures on this blog of her as a newborn?  Five years has flown by!

Yesterday was Charlotte's first day of kindergarten!  She was so excited to go and had no anxiety about it at all.  She is going to a small neighborhood public school that is kindergarten to 5th grade.  It is less than a mile from our house, so on nice days we are going to walk at least one way (I may not walk there and back to drop her off and then there and back again to pick her up 2 hours later!).  She is going half days, every day, in the mornings from 9:15-11:50.  Her teacher is Ms. Gerth, who is fabulous.  This is her last year teaching as she is retiring after this year, so we are lucky to have her!  She goes to our church which made it easy for Charlotte to feel comfortable since she knew her already.  

She picked out her own clothes for the first day--a khaki colored dress with a pair of khaki shorts underneath it (both of which are actually supposed to be part of a school uniform!).  Those were from Grandpa Randy for a birthday or Christmas present a while ago.  Grandma Cindy got Charlotte new school shoes with velcro a couple of weeks ago--Charlotte was so excited to wear them! 

 We were there just in time to snap a picture in front of the school and then line up with her teacher and class by the front door.  They started walking in just as we got there and I forgot to give her a hug in all of the excitement!  She didn't seem to notice!

 She walked with her class to her room without a moment's hesitation!  It helped that we had been to her classroom twice already for meet the teacher and a kindergarten orientation.

 
She hasn't told me too much about what they did other than read a story and have a snack.  She tends to mention things at her own time and pace.  If you ask her "How was kindergarten?"  or "What did you do today?" she will give you short one or two word answers or say "I don't know."  But slowly she will tell you things in great detail when she is ready or when something reminds her of something that happened at school.  She has two girls in her class that I think will become her closer friends, Claire and Eva.  Eva lives just down the road from us, and they are already trying to set up their own play dates! 


These are pictures from today, her second day of school.  When I picked her up yesterday she wanted me to take a picture in front of this sign, but I didn't have the camera with me, so we took one this morning.  The other two pictures are of her class lined up and waiting to go in the door.

As she tells me more about school I will write more!