The Great Trade-In

This past Saturday Nora FINALLY moved up in the world and got a new car seat. It was a little sad as we said goodbye to our very worn out stroller that we bought for about $50 from Wal-mart when Adela was about a year old. Some good friends personally brought it to us in Czech. It has seen many places including Brno, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Asheboro zoo.... :) and had a few rough plane rides. It even took a trip to Greece without us when some friends borrowed it for their vacation!



I left our forlorn looking stroller at Babies R Us and received 25% off the purchase of this car seat from Britax. The discount gave us about $50 off the total price of the carseat, so the stroller truly served us well! :)



As you can see Nora was so excited about her new ride. I think she really liked being able to see the backs of her heads instead of the back of the car!

God Sightings

At VBS this past July, we talked about "God Sightings." These are various ways that the Lord speaks to us or shows us Himself throughout the day. Well, today the Lord used a stranger to remind me to count my blessings instead of grumbling. A lovely lady was standing behind our family in line at Arby's. She commented on how sweet the girls were and we started talking. I discovered that she had never been able to have children. She had married at 31 years old and only 11 days after the wedding was in a near fatal car accident and she survived a terrible head injury. Unfortunately, her marriage did not survive this and her husband left after 2 years. I don't know how many years it has been since all this happened, but what truly amazed me was her attitude. She had no bitterness and praised the Lord that she was alive. She most likely has to choose joy over bitterness everyday. This impressed me to not take having children and a wonderful husband for granted. There will be trials and hardships, but I want to have the joy of the Lord as my strength! (Nehemiah 8:10)

It's about time...for some new pictures!

This is a short and sweet version of August for our family. We celebrated Adela's 4.5 birthday :) on August 3rd at the Winston-Salem Dash game. Nora just turned 18 months on the 19th. It's been a hot and not so relaxing summer, but awesome times together as a family. We are very blessed and praise the Lord everyday for Leo's new job.

"I Can't Wait" video of Nora's first 5 months

Leo is teaching me how to combine video clips so this is my first try! I hope you enjoy it. I made it using the shortcut where the program cuts/edits each clip for you. It takes a lot of time to really make it just right, so for now I'm satisfied with the shortcut.

We had a great Memorial Day and spent the morning in Thomasville watching the parade. We arrived about an hour before the parade started and we got to actually sit in some Vietnam helicopters and see some other planes. It didn't start to rain until after the parade. We spent the afternoon just playing with the girls and had tacos for supper (not real appropriate for Memorial Day, but we did at least have lunch at Waffle House. he,he.)

Some Recent Havhaps

Here are some fun pictures from the month of March! Nora loves to make funny faces and has recently starting shaking her head to say "NO" especially if a stranger wants to hold her! Adela is wearing a mask cut out from a Czech preschooler's magazine from Babicka. Other pictures include: the big move to the booster seat, fun on the playground, sisters with toothbrushes, funny hat night at AWANA.

Jak je chytrá Norinka? Táááááááááák je chytrá!

Já vím, já vím. Chudák naše děti budou mít strašný přízvuk jako jížní američani. ALE aspoň budou mluvit česky! Tohle je pro vás, rodino a kamáradi v česku. Ještě jsme češtinu úlplně nezapoměli. :)

Birthday Cake Practice and Silly Nora

When I was a kid, my mom had this great Baker's "Cut-Up Cake Party Book." We got to pick out which birthday cake design we wanted and then Mom would make that cake for our birthday. I thought I'd try to carry on the tradition, so we "practiced" making one of the cakes today. We chose this butterfly pattern because it was fairly simple. Adela enjoyed putting food coloring in the frosting the most.

Nora is quite a character and has already learned many ways to get our attention. One of them is squealing. Today she did this. I think she's already developing a sense of humor and she even looked to Leo and Papa to see if they were watching!