Fun in the Barn!

Yesterday, one of our friends from church took Isaac and Rebekah to their house for the afternoon. It sounds like they had a lot of fun!

Thank you Mr and Mrs. M!!

Fun with Signs

Who says you can't communicate using signs?? Not Elijah!

Today I (Sarah) was sitting on my bed, and Elijah came in after waking up from his nap (actually I don't think he ever slept). He signs "sleep" over and over and climbs up on my bed, crawls under the covers and pulls the covers up. Then he signed "lights off please" and told Rachel (who had also just gotten up) and I to be "quiet". He laid there for a couple minutes and kept closing his eyes like this:

Then he sat up and signed "wake up" and "all done sleep". He got out of bed and told us bye, turned the light off and shut the door on us. I opened the door to see him running away laughing. Stinker!

Merry Christmas!!!

I know, you are saying, "Jill, it's long past Christmas. You are a little late."  Well, if you live in America, that may be true. But if you live in Ukraine, you are waking up very soon and it will be Christmas Day! So, Merry Christmas to Mama Tanya, Papa Igor, and my missionary friend, Max. :-)

Here's our Christmas letter.  (And no, I did not have it done before Dec. 25th. Oh well.) Happy New Year!!! I pray it will be a blessed year for all of you. (You should be able to click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Just a side note...when compiling this letter, I looked at what I wrote last year for each child. Not a lot has changed. But Jonathan's said something about being a very laid back baby. HA!  That is so NOT true anymore. :-) And I thought Elijah was the stubborn one... Jonathan has definitely learned being in a family has many, many advantages. One of them is being able to express your opinion about life. As his OT says, "Not all stages of development are pleasant ones." So true. We love him through it all though! Each one of our children are true blessings in our lives.

Playdate & the faces of Rachel

Sarah here - Tonight we had a playdate/get together with our local Ds group...

Both Elijah (right) and Jonathan had fun climbing around, and I think everyone else did too!

Mr. Monkey got a bit bored at times, but when you aren't big enough to climb much of anything, wouldn't you too?? (Helping him through was kinda outta the question, he's a chunk! Besides when we tried to, he freaked going over the netting.)

Anna and Jonathan, with Isaac and Elijah in the back...

 Anna and I (Sarah) also spent some time playing with and helping an adorable little girl with Ds around the playset. It's been awhile since I got to play with any girls with Ds (love you and miss you Bug and Bean!!), and Anna and I are both in agreement we need a little girl with Ds in this family!!!

After, we had some shopping to do, so the littles and I hung out in the van for awhile.

Rachel imformed me that she and Jonathan were holding hands nicely and wanted me to take a picture. ;)

She was asking me about the cars that were parking or leaving in front of us and who those people were, and why that car has it's lights on, etc. I finally told her when she said "Sarah?" for the 100th time that the answer is going to be I don't know. She told me that she wanted me to know so I could tell her. Good gravy does she like to talk! ;)

 She also makes pretty amusing faces.

Happy face

Sad face

Silly face

Grumpy face

She's a hoot. But don't let how sweet and innocent she looks fool you!