Somebody's Six and Four Days Out

Somebody turned 6 today. Somebody, but not just anybody. That little body is a cutie pie, a lover girl, and our oldest. Yep, Ally is 6.

So that begs the question: How do you go from this:

To this?

A good friend emailed me today and mentioned how quickly kids grow up. He's got 4 daughters himself; fortunately I only have to worry about running backgroung checks and fingerprinting one boy before he's acceptable to marry my daughter; he has to do it 4 times. Yikes. But it's true- time does fly, and especially when someone special in your life makes it fun. Sorry in advance for the pic of you in your PJs Ally, but I love the joy in your face and your incredibly magnetic smile. It's one reason of many that people are drawn to you, and we are SO blessed to have you in our family! Happy Birthday!

Four days until our flight leaves. On Tuesday, Beck and I made a quick trip to Chicago to get our visas, so we're set to go! We have a 10:07 am flight out of Grand Rapids to Newark NJ, on Monday morning, and then we go directly into Bogota from there.We haven't started packing yet, but the floor in the corner of our family room is beginning to fill up. We'll be working all weekend double-checking and triple-checking paperwork, plane tickets, packing lists, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and suitcase weight. We got busted on that when we adopted Ally, and it cost us an extra $125 to get one of our bags home. Awesome. That won't happen again- we'll have the bathroom scale downstairs to weigh each one!

This may be the last post until Bogota (I may have said that last post as well!), but it's getting close. I can almost hear Juanita's laugh (and taste her lasagna!), see Guillermo's dancing moves, and see the faces of the children of Los Pisingos. That's always the most touching part of the journey there, and you NEVER forget it. We're blessed to be the parents of three of their children. What an amazing God we serve.