here goes nothin'...

everything is ready...

school clothes laid out?...check

name written on p.e. clothes?...check...

backpack packed?...check...

camera ready?...double check...

abby is fast asleep...i'm pretty sure i won't be all NIGHT!!

tomorrow morning...do or die...we (and i DO mean WE) start pre-school. why is it that i have more first-day jitters than the pre-schooler!??

one hot dress-up mess!

here comes the sun...

it's been a cold rainy week...but check out the double rainbow it brought outside our window a few days ago...

beautiful!

one GIANT little step...

since we moved here i've been hoping and praying to find an all mongolian pre-school i felt comfortable putting abby into...the Lord answered and led us there about a month ago.

today was the open house...stop by...meet the teacher...look around...leave...

i could tell on the way she was getting nervous...she wanted to bring a familiar toy with her and was silent on the ride (it's then you KNOW something is not right).

we got there and met her teacher...

silence...

she showed abby all around the awesome facilities...

silence...

a couple of other teachers even spoke english to her...

still...silence.

as we left i could see the the wheels churning in her head...change...again...just when she thought she had it down! for the most part she's excited...but these big steps are hard for any kid...

throw in the added hurdles of language and culture...and well...

once again i'm praying and hoping...

random

just some fun pictures of late:





two peas in a pod!









hard core kid!







the beauty of camping...








precious little girl....

MOST of the time...(definitely her mother's daughter!)

MORE adventures in camping...

we decided to take some time this summer to check out some towns, see what God is doing there and whether He would want us to join Him.   so this week we headed to harhorin, the ancient capital of mongolia.

we were late heading out of town and decided to camp on the side of the road the first night (i love mongolia!) and get to the town the next morning.  the next night we decided to "splurge" and stay at the nicest ger camp in town called "dreamland"!  we were the only ones there...and though it was a little unnerving being followed EVERYWHERE by bored workers...it was a beautiful place.

we were all exhausted from the long trip over bumpy roads and settled in early for a nice long night's rest.  before long, we started to hear the click-clacking of little black june bugs falling in through the hole in the top of the ger.  we shrugged it off, hoping there were just a few.  but the sounds only grew louder and closer together as bug after bug plopped onto the floor (and every once in awhile on to our heads...THAT was a rude awakening!)  what were we to do?  we hunkered down and hoped for the best.  at one point i swear i was hearing at LEAST ten of these things fall in in as many seconds...and the quick mental math told me we would be DROWNING in them by morning.  

we tried to sleep...while sweeping them off our beds and from our faces...this was NOT going to work.  cj started fussing and we turned on the lights for the first time...oh...my...WORD!!!  it was disgusting...there were bugs crawling everywhere...absolutely COVERING our beds...crawling into cj's crib...it was SICK!!!..like being in the middle of an egyptian plague!

chris went to find someone from the office...to no avail...and by then it was nearly one in the morning.  he worked and worked and finally figured out a way to cover the hole, and with no other options, we simply had to suck it up and spend the next hour and a half flicking hundreds of bugs off walls, ceilings and beds and whacking them with a rolled up brochure.  thankfully abby did NOT wake up through all this or the drama would NEVER have ended!

to top it all off...in the middle of everything...chris happened upon some wild hedgehogs scouring the camp!

we settled in to salvage as much as we could of our "long night's rest"...but it took me awhile to unnerve enough to get any shut eye...

dreamland my FOOT!!!

we did have a good trip though.  we got to visit again with the family of adzaa (the pregnant lady we had taken to the hospital to deliver her baby on our previous trip), and found out that mom and little baby boy (no names given here until they are a month old) are doing great.  we left them with gifts and a book written by one of the local pastors on his decision to accept Christ, and walked away with bottles of sour horse milk and an invitation to return next summer.

we learned a lot about the town and the surrounding areas and will simply keep praying and seeing where and how God leads.  and i guarantee we will not soon forget our "bug invasion", or that horrid "click-clacking" sound as they did!