Reconciling the stories..

Top 10 of the Week

1) relaxing, long mornings. waking up when when we want to because that is what arabs do. they stay out late into the night, and sleep the morning away. so we have been experiementing with that, and so far so good. After her first feed we bring bear bear to our bed to snuggle and to sleep in with us...sometimes our little layla-bear does not get the memmo so she wakes up and sweetly coos and strokes my face and arm until i start playing with her. that is all she wants....for me to play with her!

2) The cool front that came in and has kindly surrounded us for almost a week. making our lives just a that much sweeter, that much easier. cooking is not miserable, snuggling is a must =), and our energy is high around these parts because no heat is zapping us.

3) Loving how joyful our bear is...that she is now in a stage where she tries to make herself laugh. probably because she loves the sound of it, and the attention we give her, and she just gets such an epic response from her daddy and mommy when she starts laughing.

( our KU girl...thanks dad!!!)

4)Claire’s new jabba-the-hut phase. where she sits upright and moves her arms all around her and just waits for us to enter the room and then flashes this bright smile or peers at us with such deep concentration.

5)meeting up with Leigh-Anne, a courageous woman raising her 4 kids here, over ice cream. just gals, love that dynamic. She is just so fun to connect with and share stories about our lives here. talking with her can spur me to daydreaming of years ahead with our families. and she handles her life here with such joy and grace, it a blessing to spend moments with her.

6)Connecting with our neighbors here and getting to share about the amazing things we saw in Lebanon. loving the feelings of missing them when we were gone..that they have slipped into real freindship...watching them love claire and claire return their love...

7)Watching the World Cup soccer game...late at night with all the friends...dressing up to support the USA...and being sad that we lost. but what better team to lose to then..Ghana...we LOVE AFrica!!!

8)Stay-in date nights with drew. i love the conversation, laughter, and silliness we share. our mutual love for survivor has us watching another season...and of course debriefing every episode!

9)Father’s day take 2- the first one sort of took me by suprise, and i had not unpacked or recovered from Lebanon. So one week later claire and i put our minds and hearts together ( picture care-bear stare) and tried to communicate to daddy how much we LOVE him and he is 100% perfect for us!

10) the feeling of being home. that Amman, Jabal Hussain, our apartment has become such a launching place for us. It is where we relax,let down, recieve, bond, and love on each other. That we can go out with joy and peace from this little apartment of ours. with all it’s quierks (like running out of water last Tuesday- literally no water in the house for like 8 hours.) it is our shelter and our home. where we are building our family culture and rythyms together.