More Family Pictures

First off, thanks to our friends who came to the girl’s baby blessing!

Kedl family, Audrey O., Lara O, Puckett family, Lee Family, Ware Family, Bryan H., Dubinczki family, Tedestedt family, Chen family, Wu family, Gaylord family, Carol H., Lee famiy, Brookhart family, Stone family, Hua family, Reid family, Gena F, Wendy W., Christmas family, Silvie Eng family, Dru J, Edna, Hilliges family, Mai.

 

This was just a random picture I found and loved.  AnnaLeigh had been with us for months, and Sharly was living just one street away before she joined our family.  I always knew we would have two little chinese girls, so when I bought their clothes (legwarmers, shoes, clothes etc) I bought them in sets of two.  Here, Sharly is wearing a pair of shoes that AnnaLeigh also had a size in.  But I thought it would be too weird for everyone if I told them I had matching shoes for the girls (with the secret hope that Sharly would be ours forever too!).  Sharly joined us just 2 weeks after this picture was taken, above.  She actually came on Barry’s birthday!  Makes me teary just thinking about that.  Every year since Barry’s passing we’ve dedicated July 28th to him.  We would celebrate his bday by trying to do what he would do, serve others.  Seems this year he gave us a gift back.  Thanks Barr, you are loved and missed every single day.  Glad you are still around though… .

 

Sharly and AnnaLeigh were best friends from the start.  They ate at the same time, slept in the same room at the same time and couldn’t stand to be away from each other for a moment. 

 

A picture of the family on the baby blessing day.  I love the way Tim and Sharly look like they are having their own little party in their corner of the picture.  I have too many pictures that look like Tim and Shar have some sort of inside joke going on.

 

This picture is the reason why you always check the camera after the snap shot to be sure everyone smiled at the same time.  I was having a wardrobe malfunction (not Janet Jackson style, whew).  Nonetheless, here is the family supporting Tim on year #3 of bringing gifts to his employees dressed as Santa.  I think my ADD wears off on him.  He got bored this year with his usual look, and came in with a Chinese Communistic hat.  See why I married him?!  Right there, baby.

 

These were family Christmas Card pictures taken by our friend Fabio… who has taken our pix almost every year.  I couldn’t find cute Christmas dresses here in China.  So I snuck upstairs and stole these from my little workshop.  Just thought these little divas looked quite dashing in their little get ups.  A bit too over the top, maybe.

 

This is us at the World Expo hosted in Shanghai this year.  We met so many friends through expo and had some amazingly fun potlucks with people from around the world.  One of our truest friends was David Dominguez.  He had surgery while here, and so he got to stay with us for a short time, just as Sharly joined us.  He predicted ‘Sharly will be yours forever, you just wait and see’.  Thanks to David of Angola whose faith saw what at the time was a near impossibility.

 

This is just a funny picture.  Tim gets TONS of free logo shirts and jackets from work (is this just a China thing?).  He even has one that says ‘I love to read’.  Certainly things an adult male in America would not be caught wearing in public.  This jacket (above) I have relentlessly teased him for.  And because he enjoys a good tease, he wears it just to be funny.  Caught this picture of him holding the girls.  Too funny that I happened to catch the whole inspirational phrase in the frame.  Bwahahahahaa….

Here’s Tim and I following our dreams of many years ago.  Somehow the impossible became possible.  I think we might have had a particular angel pulling strings for us on the other side.  What do you think?