Valentine's Day surprise

I forgot to show you all what Jeremy got me for my valentines day gift. Someone at work couldn't keep it and so they offered it to him. He was going to fix it up a bit first.... strip the old finish off, sand it, restain it, and refinish it, but after considering it for a bit he decided not to. We cleaned it out and it is now waiting for the tuner to come and make it sound decent again (He comes Friday the 6th). I have been having fun playing around on it anyway and look forward to picking up learning again. I find it very therapeutic!

is it a roll top desk?


being a good girl and waiting with my eyes closed


No Way!!!!!!!!!


I have a piano!

It is supposed to be 75 years old, and the outside is pretty beat up. It took us quite a while to clean it off good enough before we could bring it inside. Hopefully there are no problems with the insides. All the keys work, although some are sticky. I'm so excited! Even if the tuner can't fix everything I am so going to enjoy playing around on it.. I already have and it sounds like it hasn't been tuned in years! What a wonderful blessing from God to receive a free piano!
(The piano tuner came today (March 6th) and fixed it and it sounds great. :D He looked up the maker and model and told us the piano was made in 1948, so it is 61 years old, not 75, but hey, it sounds great and is a wonderful gift!)

Wow, life has been hectic lately! My living room usually looks like a toy store exploded and Jeremy has been gone a bit so the boys are starting to drive me nuts. I am really looking forward to my older sister, Mari, coming to visit me for the month of March! Jeremy has his advancement test on the 5th of March and has been trying to study a lot and then as a reward he gets to go on the men's retreat that weekend. I am excited for him. I am praying he is able to connect with some of the guys and start forging some strong godly friendships. It has been hard for us here, but we were so spoiled in Okinawa with our wonderful church family! :) God has a reason for everything, though, and we know that it is through hard times that we grow stronger, so we continue to look forward to what God has for us.
I finally have a nephew! Brittani and my brother Tom had their first baby boy, Aiden James, on February 19th! His picture is at the bottom. I hope I will be able to make a trip out to Texas sometime soon so that I can meet him and my new niece Isabell, and my soon to be new niece Kaitlyn (not sure of spelling). Goodness, our family produces a lot of girls! I have 6 nieces and one on the way and only one nephew. The girls outnumber the boys 7 to 4 :D We're very proud of our family and love all our precious babies!

Oh! and Joshua is finally potty trained! I say 'finally' but really it is a blessing because this is 6 months sooner than James was trained.... it just took Joshua much longer once we started, but it has finally clicked and we now only have one in diapers... for the time being anyway!

Playing 'ring around the rosey' with the boys


James balloon scuba mask


My favorite nephew (and also my only nephew :)


Proud new Papa with his little angel

6 years and running :)

Jeremy and I have been married for 6 years now! It has been a wonderful experience and I am more in love with him now than when we first got married. He is such a wonderful man! Praise God! What a blessing to have a marriage founded on Christ! For our anniversary Jeremy tried to surprise me with tickets to see the Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Unfortunately he gave me one too many clues. :P That's ok. I was uber excited and he got to see my excitement for a week. :D A friend of our watched the boys all weekend long (God bless her!) and we were able to go spend some time with the Orpillas on Friday night and Saturday morning (the graciously offered to let us stay the night). It was fun staying up and playing games with them. I have missed them a lot! They let us stay in the Master bedroom...... WOW huge tub, huge room, it was like a honeymoon suite! ;) Nice bathtub :D
We left Saturday afternoon and rented a hotel near the theater and had some nice one on one time at dinner before the show. I have always wanted to see Phantom live and I really enjoyed it! They did a fantastic job and it was nice being with my best friend to see it :)
Now life is back to normal and we are frantically trying to get the house ready for our home inspection on Monday. After that we will be one step closer to having our little baby girl! The next step is just to wait for a Mom to choose us. Please continue to pray. We have had a really good experience so far (minus some minor issues with our portfolio but, praise God, He worked it all out). God's timing is perfect and so we will wait on Him through the rest of the adoption process. :)

Almost a month

The boys love to play on the piano together.

Their big Christmas gift was an easel. They love it and it is so nice to do James schoolwork on it.

We spent Christmas morning on webcam with my sisters in Ohio. It was so nice to be able to share with them like this!

The boys opening their stockings

Grandma and Papaw got Joshua a drum for Christmas! Praise God, the noise isn't too bad!

Well, it's almost been a month since I've posted anything. This has been a full month. It was nice to have Jeremy home for a few days at Christmas and at New Years. It was also wonderful to see all of our Oki family this past Saturday at Derek and Allison's wedding. We miss you all so much! We are still doing well and are encouraged to continue on with what God has called us to here in the desert. It has been difficult at times. but a good growing and stretching experience. I am enjoying homeschooling James and hope to start working with Joshua more often. It is harder to work with him since Jonathan wants to do everything his brothers do. I usually do James' school work while the younger two are asleep so we don't get interrupted frequently. Please pray for wisdom for me as I try to find a way to teach Joshua and James both while taking care of an 18 month old at the same time. Jeremy is doing well and is always very busy at work. He will be gone the first week of February for training and then he will leave again on his 30th birthday (the 16th) for a week of preventive maintenance at one of the branch clinics attached to 29 Palms. Praise God his 'deployments' (if you could even really call them that) are short and within driving distance of here. I am doing well and slowly getting into a routine. The house is almost completely put together, finally. We got everything out of boxes and pictures up on the walls, finally, and are just working on the piles of papers and small trinkets that we have acquired in our various travels. My older sister, Mari, is coming to visit us for a month in March and will be using our spare bedroom which is currently storing our piles, so i have good incentive to go through it all within the next month. :) The boys are also all doing well. James is learning to write his letters and numbers rather quickly, which is nice, and Joshua has shown an interest in learning to read his letters, so I am going to try to start working on him soon. Jonathan finally weighs 20 lbs and is steadily growing, Praise God! Thank you all for your prayers for him. We are waiting on the references to be turned in for our adoption so are at a standstill temporarily, but will hopefully be able to start the homestudy process very soon. We appreciate your continued prayer regarding that. After we complete the homestudy (a month long process) we will begin the waiting for God to bring us our daughter. We are praying that he reveals who she will be quickly, as we will need to finalize the adoption -a six month process- before moving again. I will try to keep you all updated as to how we are dong. I'm sorry for the month lapse. Hopefully I will be able to post at least every other week from here on out. Thank you all for your prayers for us! I will post a few pictures of Christmas and the wedding, but I have many more. If you are interested, let me know and I will email more of the pics that we have taken over the last month.

The guys

The girls

Okinawa family reunion ;)

Still in love after almost 6 years, praise God! Our 6th anniversary is the 25th of January!

The beautiful bride and groom

Some things never change :D We miss you guys!

snow day

It has been so long since we've seen snow! God blessed us with an unusual snow day yesterday. It had been raining all morning so everything was wet. I looked outside and the raindrops looked a little strange... They were snow flakes! I was thrilled just to see that and didn't expect them to stick, but they started to. I got the boys all bundled up and brought them outside not knowing how long it would last and had a blast watching them stare up into the sky in wonder at the big white flakes falling from the sky. They've never seen snow. This is the desert, so I didn't expect it to last long. God had other plans. It started snowing at about 10:30 am and it didn't stop snowing until around 6pm. By that time we had about 4 inches of snow sitting on the ground! :) It's kind of funny to see palm trees and cactus covered in snow! :) How cool our God is! I am so excited to see snow again, even if it is only for a day or two!

The Walton Zoo

December already!

It's hard to believe it is December already. We had a quiet Thanksgiving, but it was nice. We were supposed to go visit my Uncle Bob and Aunt Diane but Jeremy got really sick the Monday before Thanksgiving and we didn't want to get anyone else sick so we stayed home and had a small dinner for just us. It's just as well because we have all been on again off again sick for the past two weeks :P The boys are still amazing me with their imaginations and observation skills. Last night Jonathan (17 months old!) grabbed a diaper off the floor (Daddy took it off of him before bath time and was still trying to get kiddos dried off so had not had time to put it in the diaper pail) and walked it from the bathroom to the bedroom and over to the diaper pail and shoved it in the little hole, turned the lid and threw away the diaper. We have never asked him to do that before and didn't even know he knew how. The other day he wanted in Mommy's lap, but she was at the table on the computer. No problem, he picked up a step stool, walked over with it and put it in front of my chair, climbed up on it and climbed into my lap. Pretty scary when our 17 month old is already problem solving and learning from his older brothers. He still looks too small to be doing any of that! as of two weeks ago he still didn't weigh 20 lbs!
Our adoption paperwork is almost complete now! Lord willing, we will be able to start the Homestudy process in January! wohoo! please continue to keep us in your prayers!