Quick...

How many boys can you count in this picture?

Have I told you lately

how much fun

it is

having

boys?!

The answer, and more snow pics to come!

Haiti

Not sure how to start this post... so much in my head and on my heart with regards to the situation in Haiti. I can't do one thing throughout the day without the pictures of devastation flooding my mind.

I think of the dark, sad eyes of rubble-covered, filthy orphans when I wipe my baby's face.

I scrape the extra food off of her highchair and think of their hunger.

I cringe at a paper cut and then remember their wounds. Their pain.

I climb into my comfortable bed and pray for them to be able to sleep, somehow, under the stars.

I long for a moment of peace in the midst of a chaotic house of six, and think of those who long to have their loved ones back.

I get overwhelmed with the clutter of toys, while they yearn for the basic necessities of life.

I'm taken back to 1995, when I stood in that very city. When life was much simpler and mercy seemed to come more quickly for me. My mind wasn't cluttered with the things of this world as much. At least not that week of Spring Break, when I got to witness for the first time what life - and poverty - was like outside of my small college world.

While I was working my tail off to avoid taking out student loans, people were starving to death.

A good friend named Tyler Daugherty was on that trip too. We sat on the steps outside our apartment building together each night, listening to the Voodoo chants of the neighboring village. We sat in pure darkness; no electricity since the generators had already shut down for the night. He would play guitar. We would sing a little, then pray a little. And wonder how a place - a people - that was so lost, could ever find God.

And now, all these years and an earthquake later, I'm thankful that it's God who does the finding.

My kids are asking questions. And I don't have all the answers. So we go to His Word, and we find hope. From Psalm 46:

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way

and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam

and the mountains quake with their surging..."

"...Be still and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth."

Not that this crisis is about me, but God is doing a work in me because of it. He is answering my prayers and my pleading for His Word to come alive to me in a fresh, new way. I want to long for it like I did on those Haitian steps almost fifteen years ago. Overwhelmed with grief and the guilt of my selfishness, I sat on my bathroom floor last week during nap time with tears streaming down my face, soaking up the Psalms as I read them aloud. God met me there. And His Word did come alive.

It had been too long.

I sat a few nights ago on my bed, grabbed hands and formed a circle with my husband and three boys, and one by one, we lifted up the people of Haiti to the One who is our "ever-present help." There hasn't been a sweeter night since. These boys continue to pray - even Chase - who asks God to please help "her (Haiti) to feel better."

I watched today as Jack and Trey raided their Ziploc bags full of lost-teeth-and-birthday-money. They marked separate tithe envelopes "for Haiti," and stuffed their money in - in a most unorganized way. Later tonight we sat and looked at pictures of Haiti online, and Jack, convicted and full of compassion, brought down another dollar. Their $19 dollars seems so trite, but for the work it is doing in their hearts, priceless.

I don't want to forget all of this a week from now. When I've had little sleep and my patience is not what it should be. I want to be changed.

Don't you?

He changes lives. The very God who created the universe. Who even allowed a massive earthquake to fulfill His plan and purpose.

He'll meet you where you are. Even if it's a bathroom floor.

If you'll let Him.

Still three...

When he's not making you laugh hysterically, he's making you plain tired. But his prayers are pretty sweet lately. Things like:

Please help Jesus and God to feel better.

Please help Pa to feel better. But he already feels better. But please help him to feel better.

Please help me to obey my mom and dad. And oh yeah... and Jesus.

Thank you we had a great daaaayyyyy.

Thank you for my beautiful singing.

Help me to eat my lunch fast so I don't have to go to the porch...

:)

Thanks for asking...

...about this girl. I thought you all deserved an update on Tess's health - since we kind of left you hanging and all. We really appreciate how many of you have asked how she's doing!

For those who weren't aware, we've been trying to figure this girl out for quite some time. All Fall and early Winter, Tess battled constant high fevers and sickness. We wrote the first few fevers off and figured it was just the flu, but after several recurrences, we started to wonder if something else might be up. Lots of miserable days and symptoms later, she was diagnosed with a urinary infection.

Although not common in children anyway, UTI's are always a red flag for something bigger in our house. All of our kids have a one in three chance of having urinary reflux. Jack introduced us to the condition when he was three months old, and he had bladder/ureter surgery when he was four to correct it.

Anyway...

Tess was tested (now that's a mouth full!) for reflux just before Christmas, and the VCUG and ultrasound both came back normal. Great news! Except for the fact that she continued to have symptoms randomly. It has been hard to rule out reflux completely with this being the case.

So, the latest is this: we're a little perplexed! We are going with the VCUG findings that there is no indication of reflux. That being said, in the words of our pediatrician, we also have a "low threshold" for any kind of symptoms. What does that mean? Any time we suspect an infection, we cath her.

Guess how many times she's been cathed in the last four weeks?

Four. Ugh.

One foot through our doctor's front door, and this girl goes into a rage!

I will say that she has seemed more comfortable the last couple of weeks. Minus one of her ear tubes falling out and the ear infection that we thought was an ear infection.

That wasn't. Geesh.

Well, that only leaves one other option. She has to be getting a tooth. We moms are famous for blaming lots of mysterious behavior on getting teeth, aren't we? :)

(Tyler told me once that our kids ought to have at least a couple hundred teeth for all of the times I thought they were getting one. Funny guy.)

Oh well, give 'em Tylenol anyway, I say.

Couldn't hurt.

How's that for an answer? :)

Slacker parents...

... didn't get too many shots from Christmas this year. Not because we don't place recording memories for our children high on our priority list. We do. But don't check my baby books for evidence of that just quite yet.

There are hardly any pictures because we most likely had a child in our lap, or a gift in our lap, or a child opening a gift in our lap.

Or maybe we were chasing after small children, making sure they weren't in harm's way. You know, in direct shot of the 50 brand new Nerf bullets simultaneously flying across the room from all directions.

We might have been scurrying to pick up chocolate candies spilled out of stockings, before a certain one-year-old had them all crammed in her mouth, with chocolate dripping down onto her shirt. And probably somewhere else that I haven't found. Yet.

Not that that happened or anything.

(Check out my two cute sisters in the background... aren't they adorable?!)

There's a good chance we were fetching batteries. Or explaining why we didn't have the right size batteries. Or untwisting thousands of silver twisties from the backs of toy packages.

Ok, not thousands. But it had to be darn near close to that, didn't it? It could have been that we were looking for small parts to toys that were opened just 2 minutes prior. It's a tricky thing keeping track of miniature action figure guns, tiny Lego pieces, and baby doll pacifiers in the never ending sea of wrapping paper.

Anybody knows that. (Tip: check first in the one-year-old's mouth.)

There's the gift admiring to do. And that takes time. And attention. And conversation.

Times four.

But most of all, there are hugs to be given, excitement to be shared.

Smiles and eye contact and interest poured out to every one of our four precious gifts.

Sometimes, you have to put the camera away, and just take it all in...

Four Christmases and a birthday later...

I'm back, but barely. We're still in catch-up mode around here after all of the holiday hoop-la. It was nuts this year, I'm gonna have to admit. Exciting and heart-warming to see such wonder on the boys' faces, and just plain nuts with Tess. She's work, man. Especially in strange places, with no naps, and no baby gates. But she's cute, that thing.

Ok, moving on...

This was year number seven of overcompensating for Trey since his birthday falls so close to Christmas. His day is the 20th, which is at least better than his 24th due date. Oh, I can remember the Christmas he was born so clearly. We got the doc to sign us out of the hospital early so we could go home and celebrate Christmas with my family the day after he was born. We ordered pizza, everyone came to us, and we passed around the worst flu ever with my entire extended family. What memories! And then we nicknamed this sweet new baby "Tax-break Trey," since he was so gracious to join us before the end of the year.

He's seven now, and I'm tellin' you what, this kid melts me. All he has to do is smile, and nothing else seems to matter. The best part of Christmas break this year was spending time with this boy who is literally transforming before my eyes. God is doing a work in him, I can tell. So many things I've noticed in the last few weeks, but I have to share what happened the other day...

Chase is late in finishing up his lunch, as usual, so is sitting at the counter by himself when he accidentally tips over a VERY full glass of milk. It goes everywhere: all over the counter, dripping down the stool, and puddling over a massive area on the floor. I quickly grab some paper towels and inform Chase that he needs to help me clean it up.

Trey must hear what's going on from the other room. He runs in, grabs more paper towel, and gets on the floor and starts to help. I say to him thanks, but no thanks. Chase was the one to spill it, so he can be the one to clean it up.

Trey, with so much compassion on his face, says to me, "Mom, it just doesn't feel right in my heart to keep on playing when you're in here cleaning up. Please let me help too." I hug him tight, whisper in his ear that I see Jesus in him, and we all dive into clean-up together. And we have a blast doing it. Because Trey can make even cleaning up spilled milk fun.

We celebrated at Grandma and Grandpa Fincher's house this year since our whole family was already there for Christmas the day before. He wanted a Monster Truck birthday, and was super-psyched about the cake he picked out online. He got another cake in Cincinnati when we were there for Christmas, and just took birthday treats to school on his first day back from break. See what I mean about over-compensating?

He's worth it.

Definitely worth it.

Sweet, sweet Trey. God knew just what we needed. Love you boy!