Father's Day Then and Now

In 2005 Paul worked overtime and saved every penny to buy me a nice dining room set, and he bought himself a leather rocker recliner. We had both always wanted one to rock our babies, but we never had the money until then. He wanted me to get a picture of him with the boys in the recliner on Father's day. We've taken one every year since then. Finding and posting all of those pictures would require more time and energy than I have at the moment, but here is the first picture, taken in our living room in Tennessee in 2005 and the most recent picture, taken this year in our living room in Michigan. The photographer in me is cringing at the quality of photo number 2, but I'll just say it was a stressful moment, but we really wanted to get the picture.

Favorite Photo Friday: Some Pictures from our Weekend

We have celebrated the 4th of July with our next door neighbors for the past three years. We always swim in our pond, cook out, and do our own fireworks. One year we even had a family volleyball game. We all look forward to it and decided that since our family would be in South Lyon on the 4th, we would celebrate on Saturday night instead. While Paul and Dan were making their annual trip to the fireworks stand, Nikki and I watched the kids swimming in the pond. One of Paul's co-workers gave him a little row boat, and the kids have had so much fun with it. Here are a few pictures of the kiddos swimming and on the boat. I plan to get some portrait style pictures of a few unsuspecting victims children in the boat tonight. :)

Grace on a raft.

Love that I captured Ben's signature look of concentration in this photo.

Will rowing the boat

The twins and Chase

I actually caught all 8 of them together at the end of the night. Playing the color game.

Sam rowing Makayla



Somehow I took 100s of pictures but never got a good one of Paige or Joe.


Check out more Favorite Friday Photos at my teacher Lisa's blog:

The Face of Waiting Child Adoption: Spina Bifida

We adopted Grace through China's Waiting Child, or Special Needs Adoption program. There are thousands of waiting children in China. Needs range from mild and correctable to much more severe. I don't often talk about Grace's "special need" of Spina Bifida, because it has been a total non-issue.  She has a milder form of SB (meningocele) which required major surgery at one time, and could cause problems later on in life, but has required very little from us.  When we had our final homestudy on Tuesday our social worker told us that unfortunately she sees too many adoptions end in disruption. She feels that parents are going into adoptions hoping that everything will turn out perfect, and often times it doesn't.  We made the decision to adopt Grace no matter what we found her condition to be once we got to China.  However, we also did our research.  We knew that Chinese health records are often not entirely accurate.  While her prognosis appeared to be very good, spina bifida can range from very minor symptoms to complete paralysis from the waist down, incontinence and several other issues.  We are grateful that Grace has been so healthy, but we believe that she would be every bit as much of a blessing to us had her special needs been more severe then they turned out to be.

Sunday Snapshot: Good Friends

Some of my dear friends are moving far, far away. I am really going to miss this family. They let me come over and practice my photography on them last week. They were great sports and I got to take some pictures of them all around their beautiful property. Now they will have these to remind them of their home when they move. All of these were taken with my Canon 5D MarkII and my 50mm lense.
Settings: f2.8, SS1/160, ISO3200




For more Sunday Snapshots visit Stephanie at:

I Heart Faces May Photo Challenge: Hey Girl

This month's Photo Challenge is titled, "Hey Girl." It wasn't difficult to come up with many, many, pictures of my girl. This is definitely one of my favorite photos of Grace. To see more fun photos go to:

Sunday Snapshot: Photo Sessions!

This picture was taken with my Canon 50mm lense. f2.8, SS1/200, ISO 1600. I edited it using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Florabella Classic Workflow.


I am taking another fun photography Class from Lisa at the Long Road to China.  I took Grace out for a lifestyle session on Friday, and Joe out for some posed shots last week.  These all relate to my assisnments for my class.  So far none of the other kiddos have been willing, but I think that Sam and Ben may cave soon!  Haha.





For more great Sunday Snapshots visit:

not JUST statistics

*Number of children in the world

   

2.2 billion

*Number in poverty

   

1 billion (every second child)

*For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:

640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)

       

400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)

270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)

*Children out of education worldwide

   

121 million

*Survival for children worldwide:

10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)

       

1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation

*Health of children worldwide

2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized

       

15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)

And even more staggering:

The following groups of people do not have the Gospel:

• 865 million unreached Muslims or Islamic followers in 3330 cultural sub-groupings
• 550 million unreached Hindus in 1660 cultural sub-groups
• 150 million unreached Chinese in 830 groups
• 275 million unreached Buddhists in 900 groups
• 2550 unreached tribal groups (which are mainly animistic) with a total population of 140 million
• Forming a smaller -- though important -- unreached group are the 17 million Jews scattered across 134 countries

What does this mean for our family?  We are still figuring it out.  BUT we haven't been living like we believe this:

32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And this:

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. 23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

Or this:

Proverbs 21:13 Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.

Or this:

Proverbs 28:27 Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.

Proverbs 31:9 Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

And finally:

Luke 14:33
In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

It has been too easy for our family to live our very comfortable lives, with all of our "things" and pretend that the 22,000 children who die of starvation and preventable disease a day do not exist. But at what cost? I would like to beg every Christian I know to read the book Radical by David Platt, Paul and I are both reading it and God is using this book and some other circumstances to change everything about the way we think.  As I said before, we don't know exactly what this will look like.  We don't have a list of things we can check off to make us more responsible for the poor and the lost.  What we pray for is changed hearts and we beg God to reveal to us how we can obey him in radical ways, and that we will have the faith to obey radically.  Finally, we pray, that he will radically change our lives. (And when I say we, I mean it, Paul and I are on the same page, and that is a huge blessing.)