Quick Update on the Family

I don't have much time, so this will be fast. Our camera has had dead batteries for the last two weeks so I don't have new pics of the children. However, I pulled this wonderful family photo from Petra's adoption day.

Thomas and I are starting a new workout routine in the morning at 5am - so I need to get to bed soon. The most horrible part of the day was look at our "before" photos that we took. Uggh. Lots of room for improvement I guess.

The children are fantastic. Jasper has been on this new formula for 2 weeks now and it is definitely helping. He doesn't wake up any more in the night screaming and scratching his head. I'm loving that. But his eczema on his cheeks is worse. I'm not sure why, or what to do about it, I'll keep trying things. The doctor said he still may be allergic to this formula, but just to know that this is as good as it gets ... if he was on anything else he would be worse.

Petra is good. Her favorite words are "up, please." It sounds like "up-py." She is doing really well with her alphabet and numbers. This week we realized that she recognized that print was letters. She went up to Thomas' license plate and pointed at the letters and started saying "E, A" and other random letters. She can't identify any letters, but I was glad to see she knew that it was print. Same thing happened with the sewer plate on the street. She squats down, points at the letters, and starts naming off random letters.

This weekend I worked on our garden. I am so happy to get this started. The past two years I've been so busy in the spring due to work. This is the first time we have planted anything since moving into our house. I planted tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, stevia, basil, lavendar, oregeno, leeks, cilantro. I still have to left squash, more zucchini, carrots, and watermelon to find room for somewhere else in the backyard. We are planning on putting them on the hill around the pool ... there is plenty of room there ... once we get weeds cleared out. We also planted a fig bush and blueberry bushes. And I ordered some plants for our shady front yard from Springhill Nursery in TX - they are giving away $20 in free plants - you just have to pay shipping.

Our loquat tree is full of fruit right now also. I'm trying to decide what to do with them. We have hundreds ripe at the moment. The past two years the birds ate them all, so far I've only seen two birds in tree this year. Below are two pictures of the tree, its about 2 stories high, and covered. The fruit is sordof a cross between an apricot and kumkwat. Petra and I can eat dozens straight off the tree, but just one seems to tear up Thomas' stomach. I'm considering trying to make a cobbler - but it seems like so much work to deseed them all for something like that.