Hi, it has been a while! The reason for this post is because I want to update on our now 7 year old Gracie! But first I will give a quick (very quick) run down of the last six weeks and hopefully you will understand why I haven't been as quick to this post as I would have liked.

The week after Jubilee was born Jordan started drivers ed, and she passed all her tests! We now have a student driver who asks to drive everywhere. I have hardly had to drive since she is trying to get as much windshield time as possible. Then when it is time to drive on her own, she is ready. She is doing a great job and I can't believe we have a  driver. It seems impossible! On March 9th we celebrated our 5th adoption anniversary (I hope to write post on this soon), our second church membership class, some elder training, doctors appointments, my mom's birthday, shopping trips, new flooring put in, Lifegroup nights, a new wood stove, Jubilee meeting great Grandma and Grandpa Mertes, and of course just the normal day to day. Throw in there a carbon monoxide scare, or should I say a fun eventful night for our boys. After our detectors going off for awhile we decided it might be good (I say this somewhat sarcastically and yet this is what actually happened) to call and have it checked out. After about a minute of Fire Chief Lou  being here he told us we all need to get out, NOW. Well, you try and get 7 kids out during dinner time, in the cold very quickly. We did, and our boys pulled up some seats and got to watch all the action. Fire trucks with their lights on pulled up in our driveway and several fire fighters got geared up with gas masks and went in our house. It looked like a scene out of Monsters Inc. when they would need to be disinfected from touching a child. It made for an eventful night. But, we are so thankful for modern day detectors that who knows what would have happened if they had not gone off. Once again, God protected and we can thank him.

Now, on to Gracie. She was seven years old on March 6th. She wanted "Better Than Swimming Cake" for her birthday (yes, that is what we call it in our house) and had a meal that someone from church had delivered since we were only a week out from Jubilee's birth. She is such an outgoing, smart, motivated, and willing young girl. She loves to help out with her siblings and is so sweet to her little baby ones. She is now reading chapter books and it is so fun to listen to her. She is sandwiched in between two older sisters and three younger brothers, so depending who is around she will either rise to the occasion of being a girly girl, or you could find her playing storm troopers from Star Wars with her brothers. She loves to sing and can really carry a tune well so it is very fun to listen to her. Her latest songs to sing are from the movie Frozen, which she loves, and she is good at repeating phrases from the Chronicles of Narnia series. She has an amazing ability to memorize lines from movies or songs, as well as her scripture memory from school. She is going through the Proverbs, gaining much wisdom, as well as memorizing the books of the bible. She is very contemplative and loves to process life with Eric and I. She has such a kindness to her and she is so good at showing interest in others and not being completely focused on herself. She will go up and give compliments to people at church as well as in our own home and will ask very mature questions inquiring about the world around her. We are so thankful for her and could not imagine life with out her! Happy Birthday Gracie.

On another note we have been enjoying our house this Spring with some long anticipated home improvements. Our home projects have been a welcome distraction for our family. Not that we NEED distractions, we have a lot. But, there will always be difficult situations this side of heaven and some times it is just good to clear our heads of them. It is fun to work together as a family to make our home a sanctuary to return to and relax in. I read the other day some thing that made a whole lot of sense out of situations that don't make much sense, to me anyways. What I read was that God uses suffering to slowly pry our hands away from things of this world. Otherwise, we would set up camp and want to stay here on this earth without looking forward to our heavenly home and eternity with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I did not do the quote justice since I did not repeat it as eloquently as the original author said it, but hopefully you get the point. We have much to be thankful for this side of heaven (the pictures will prove this), but I have been asking the Lord to not let me serve the god of comfort (the things that I love in this world) but to love and serve him more. Here are some pictures of our latest and greatest as well some updated pics of Jubilee with Great Grandma Mertes, Grandma Jean, the kids drinking hot chocolate on a snowy day, and a few extras.

 Our new living room with the new fireplace. We are so happy with it!

 My much awaited black door.

Love, Miriam