Birthday photos, fun photos and some praises to report too!

Our Tuesday night Mexico Joe's  dining tradition continues with the celebration of  our two Charlie's birthdays. Since Tuesday is Esther's night to work, its our night to bless her with our presence AND a nice tip at the end of the evening. Here's Esther greeting the little Birthday Boy!

The Charlies celebrating their Sept 13 and Sept 14 birthdays
at Esther's MEXICO  JOE'S  restaurant. Sombreros are
  not REALLY mandatory,  just traditional!

The other Grandparents: Grampa David and Gramma Karen
who along with some other friends, came to celebrate



Charlie with his Daddy's Marine pal,  Chuck. This is my favorite
Charlie face of the evening!



 Charlie had been wathcing the huge balloon lamps above his head so Uncle Gideon was more than happy to hoist him up to see one  and even grab at it!!





After his favorite Chicken and Dumplings Birthday dinner at home, the King of this Castle loves  chocolate cake!
This year his favorite had  a new secret ingredient in the butter cream icing and it was a HUGE  HIT!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to MY  HONEY!!!



Jael decided that Isaiah had not hada  BIG SISTER KISS in  a while
and promptly fixed the situation!

And since it  IS the 17th of September and you never know
how much more pool weather there is going to be,  Naomi,
Isaiah and pals Winston and Uriah enjoyed a cooler water  warm weather day together

But were not very happy that I asked them to pose

Poor Noah still had some reading to do, so
while the swimming wsa going on, here was Noah....................

Not wasting the beauty of the day on school, that 's  for sure!!!
 School can be good outside too!

 MEANWHILE........................................


Daffodil got curious about how the grain gets into those coffee cans twice a day....



Much to our amusement, but I am sure not to hers,
we made a photo -op of Daffodil's  dilemma!



"Free at last  FREE AT LAST!!"
took on a whole  new meaning!!
On to tree branches, hay and other safer pursuits!

After that coffee can adventure, Naomi thought the goats needed
a safe snack of saltine crackers. Brownie got there first, and Rose second. You can't see poor  Daffodil

Here's Daffodils's Daddy: Ribs, enjoying a snack of saltine crackers
with the Boss!

From the ridiculous to the SUBLIME  to reverse a phrase....



We LOVE the math curriculum called TEACHING TEXTBOOKS
but somehow,
 "Somehow"
I forgot to order it when I ordered
all the rest
of our curriculum for the new school year.
Who knew that was God working out a September blessing???
So many expenses have popped up and the cost
of the Geometry material was not one we needed this month.
I posted a request to buy, rent, or borrow
to our local home school group,and almost IMMEDIATELY
got a response!!
A dear friend who was hoping to adopt children from
 Junior and Diamoh's former orpahange,
  who has long been a staunch prayer partner with us,
and who had wanted to help financially,but found herself tight too,
KNEW as soon as she saw my request,
 that this was a way she could help us!
She had the whole set, still in its shrink wrap,
unused, and set aside by God for someone else
at some other time.
God blessed us with brand new text and CDs  for Isaac
 and blessed Lesly  with a way to help when she didn't
think there was one!!!

******************
AND

We got  a call yesterday on our house phone...a number which usually  only gets  "official" or "junk" calls. Charlie took it and I heard him say, " I better let you talk to my wife. I might give you a wrong answer ."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........
It was USCIS and a very nice lady  told me she was updating our
171- H renewal application ,  she had all  of our documents, and wanted to verify that all we had changed was the upper age limit of the children for whom we were requesting  renewed approval. I explained that the boy we were waiting to complete the process for had been 9 when we were matched, two + years ago, he's now 11 approaching 12 and we did not ant ANY glitches with age limit to exclude us from getting him home! She said she'd figured  that but wanted to get our paperwork completed correctly
AND
that our new 171-H Advance Approval to Adopt Internationally
 would be done and sent out in the mail that afternoon!!

Hallelujah!!! When I think of  howclose I came to throwing that USCIS letter away the day it came because I thought we didn't need an extra 90 days to complete an extention............THANK YOU FATHER for my pack-rattery and that I put the letter on my desk "inbox" slot.
THANK YOU Father,  for Your prompting and that YOU made it so crystal clear to us that we DID NEED IT !
 THANK YOU Father that our dear Social Worker was able to come on September 1 to do our up-date  interviews, and that we HAD OUR NEW  HOME STUDY IN HAND on September 10 and that USCIS received it on September 14...two days ahead of the deadline to process our extension for 18 more months!!
GOD IS GOOD ................ALL THE TIME!!!