celebrating the small things.

with things going full throttle in these parts, i am really really really trying to take the time to smell the roses. sometimes i feel like i am packing up our gear and hauling little bear from one meeting to the next (especially this week!) but it is in the in-betweens that i am trying to just soak in her awesomeness. her adorable-ness. her silly self.

last night after running, a 4 1/2 hour visit, coming home and making dinner...i had me some bear-mare time. the two girls on my bed just playing. man, it was so good for my heart. like water to my soul. her giggling and cuddling, and crawling, and talking. i tried to take a picture to capture the moment...alas...they did not turn out great.

she played with these two things for over 20 minutes folks. waving them in the air, hitting them together, the whole time crying out "ba-ba-ba ba ba!" she was having fun.

she is loving ANY song right now. and dancing-a-long. so, of course, i am singing ALOT these days. =)

and she is brave brave brave. she tries all sorts of stunts with no fear. silly bear.

but on to some things that i want to celebrate this week:

my cutie LOVES avocado. thata-girl.

i had a taxi driver ask me (after i spoke to him a bit) if i was Arab. victory!!! drew gets that almost every day, but me...this is the first time!

learned how to make the most delicious tabbouleh ever!

Layla bear has a friend. i mean a real-deal, she will follow him all over his house, cuddle with him, laugh with him all the time. it is our 11 year old neighbor, Zaid. he is in-love with her and convinced that she is saying his name. she played with him for 2 hours straight on Monday. i was there, but she would crawl right past me to follow him wherever he went!

while she was entertained with Zaid, i had one of my deepest conversations with wafa'a. mid-way through she exclaimed "isn't this amazing that we can be talking about these type of things! your Arabic is sooo much better now!"

got some Arabic dancing lessons from an AMAZING dancer. now to internalize it. hard.

the gals took Reem to chilis to celebrate her passing her huge test after high school that determines if she can get into university of not. It was their first time at chilis, and it was really fun to show them free refills and Tex Mex.

the "building" shot..all if us who live in the same building!

all the girls came out to celebrate riim!

Claire has decided to start studying now, she has heard a lot about how hard formal arabic is in reading and writing.

and lastly, we met with the Lebanese buissness man who is working on getting our long-term visas for Lebanon. He is going to help us in starting the language center and we are going to help him in various ways with the ministries he is already doing. We have CRAZY favor with him, and are so so excited to see what God unfolds for us in Lebanon.

and of course Claire and Dad were decked out for OU-TEXAS game day!