Family- one of our greatest loves

Whenever asked, I tell people that living overseas doesn't really require much sacrifice. I love the adventure, new food, new people, etc. But for sure the hardest thing is being away from family and friends. Well this year God has taken extra special care of us and we've had more visitors than we would in the states. It's been especially wonderful since it's been Sam's first year.

This week we saw all of our family except for my brother-in-law Matt. We finished out our time in Malaysia with a great birthday celebration for Mom and took this pic all together.

Also, we had studio pics taken of the kids- it's amazing how professional lighting can make such a difference

Here's the one we decided on for real...

But most of the pics of the four of them looked more like this, since we had a really hard time getting Sam to stay in one placeThen we got prints of a few of just Sam- I never thought I'd be a studio portrait girl, but...






then we got back to Morocco on Thursday and my sister arrived the next day with her daughter Lucy. She is 2 1/2 months old and such a joy- I had so much fun doing little exercises with her hands and feet and dancing with her. I am so glad that we had a chance to meet her before leaving.
Sam and Lucy took naps in baby carriers sometimes
Sam is still sending out 100Watt smiles
It was great to see my sister too and she had fun with Sam in her Lucy-free moments
I'm not sure if I'll have another chance to blog before we leave or not. We're flying Tuesday afternoon to Brazzaville and the plan is to stay with folks until we find our own place- we're hoping to do that pretty quickly. We'll be trying to send out an update too. Please pray extra for us regarding malaria because we won't be protected for the first week (couldn't get the right meds here). We'll be using repellent and other stuff, but malaria is pretty prevalent and it's a serious illness.