Long Overdue Update

The past few weeks, I kept thinking there’s just nothing much to blog about, which fits nicely with the excuse that I’m too busy to sit down and actually put something blog-worthy together. In reality, there’s plenty to share, although I don’t have much for pictures. Anyway, excuses aside, here’s what we’ve been up to!

The Kids

The girls are doing great. They love the yard and the summer weather. Guildy is actually quite helpful with gardening tasks, and she’s very proud of her house cleaning skills. She got to see The Wizard of Oz live at the Ft. Peck Theatre a couple weeks ago, and that was a huge highlight of her summer thus far. She goes to summer Bible school at our church every Wednesday and loves it. I think she remembers every fact and phrase she hears, and she has a great desire to learn more about God. We have been trying to be more consistent with her discipline, as her strong will can be quite the challenge to deal with. She has responded really well and is learning to be more and more pleasant and content in daily life at home. This really is a long-awaited victory, and we give God all the glory for the changes He has made in her. In other Guildy news, she fell while running a couple weeks ago and had a concussion. Thankfully, she recovered quickly and was back to normal by the next day. But it was scary considering her history. Sometimes I wish we could just put her in a helmet to protect her little noggin!

Hadley is almost unimaginably busy. If she’s awake, she’s on the move. But I guess you need that kind of determination if you’re going to fit everything she does into a day! She talks constantly and is starting to put sentences together. She likes to chat while nursing, which makes for less than efficient nursing, but is pretty entertaining. They other day before her nap, she quit nursing and stated, “I picked radishes.” I looked at her quizzically, knowing that the garden is well fenced to keep vegetation wrecking pests like herself away. In answer to my look, she added, “Down in the garden,” as if I maybe didn’t know where the radishes are located. It’s so fun to see more and more of her sweet personality as she gets better at expressing herself. She’s also potty trained and sleeps in a regular bed. Not sure when she turned into a kid, but it happened fast!

Our Recent Adventures

The girls and I were supposed to be in Honduras for a couple weeks in July, but in light of the political transition going on there, we decided it best for us not to travel alone. I was pretty bummed about it, but we’ve had a few small scale adventures in the meantime.

One of my favorite eastern Montana pastimes is checking out old, abandoned farmsteads. A couple weeks ago, we walked to one located 3 or 4 miles from the house we live in. It was quite the trek with the girls in the stroller, but always very interesting to see what gets left behind.

Upcoming Adventures

We plan to return to Honduras for about 6 months starting in October. Josh’s roofing job will run out come fall, so we decided going there would be a much better use of our time than trying to find other work here. So we are getting things organized and getting ready to start raising our support. We are really excited to be headed back to work with old friends and contribute to a ministry that has an amazing impact on the people it serves.

In the meantime, we are remodelling a house here in Circle that my parents own with the intention of living in it next spring when we get back. It’s a cute little old farm house that suffered a tragic remodel in the late 70’s. We will get rid of the carpet and linoleum and refinish the wood floors, cover the nasty fake wood paneling, and replace the trim. Josh loves doing projects like this, and he’s quite creative, so it should be a fun. I’ll try to remember to take before and after pictures.

Well, I think that about sums things up here!!