Nonna and Pop Pop need more prayers...

Pray, Pray, Pray...

Welcome Baby Jude!!!

We were very excited to meet 4 week old baby Jude on our trip to Austin last weekend. He is adorable and everyone wanted to hold him and give him kisses. Look at all our beautiful kids! Here is Emily trying to get some quality time with the baby.

And here she finally managed to get a little alone time with him. "Mommy, he is so much better than a doll!"

Waving Goodbye to Daddy

With Chris travelling so much, the kids have made big productions of sending Daddy off to work and welcoming him home. I think he likes this a lot. ;-) Here are the little ones waving goodbye in the dining room window as Daddy pulls down the driveway for work.

David's Handwriting and Drawing

My handwriting practice session with David last about 5 minutes. Maybe less. I generally ask him to make me 4 capital letters and 4 lower case letters as we work through his handwriting book. Then he copies a short word two times and if that goes well, he copies another short word two times. This is all I can get out of him. We are pretty consistent about doing this every day and he has made a lot of progress. If I push him too far... he throws the pencil. If left on his own, he would crumple up his work and throw that too. We had tried the Draw Write Now book several months ago and just found it to be too frustrating for him to folow the simple drawing lessons. The other day he did remarkably well with this drawing of a hen. His work is above and I am pround to say he needed no assistance from me.

First Communion Dress

We found Emily's first communion dress at Dillards. She tried on three dresses and this was her favorite, hands down. It wasn't terribly expensive at $65 and we are hoping Lia will wear it one day as well. Due to a conflict with a family wedding, we had to change her first communion mass to Sunday, June 12. That Sunday happens to be Pentecost Sunday, which is when we celebrate that God sent us all the Holy Spirit. How appropriate. I got Emily the book called, The King of the Golden City, after reading my friend Blair's blog. Emily read the book straight through and then proceeded to read it over and over again over the next few days. Yesterday, I went over some of the study questions with her to see if she understood the symbolism used in the parable... She doesn't really care to "talk" about books. Too much discussion annoys her. Imagine her Mommy rolling her eyes at this. So she filled out the questions on her own and proved to me she understood it beautifully. Now if I can just get my hands on it... I can finish reading it myself!

Neighborhood Duck Hater?

We went on an evening walk and found our little ducklings all piled together for the night. Mysteriously, there was no Mommy duck around. Well... apparently there is a duck-hater in our neighborhood! We ran into our neighbor the next day scooping up two baby ducks and putting them in a box. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied that a neighbor had taken the Mommy duck away to another pond. We can only imagine she did this to leave the baby ducks unprotected so that might die. Apparently when this neighbor was confronted, she confessed the location of the Mommy duck. So my duck loving neighbor was attempting to take two of the baby ducklings to this other pond to try and locate the Mommy duck to bring her back! Is that crazy?

We think my duck loving neighbor was successful because we saw all nine ducklings and what appeared to be a mother figure with them. I'm still hoping to see her to find out how her escapade went! I'll let you know.

Nonna is in Rehabilitation

Nonna is healing and receiving therapy at a rehabilitation center. Next week they will seek a 3rd opinion for her treatment plan. Please keep praying.