Heaven gained a beautiful soul last week…..

(my dear friend, Jill, on the left)

A dear friend who fought cancer is now in glory….

I can’t even wrap my mind around the fact that her time on earth is done…..

But I know, without a doubt, that heaven is an even brighter place because she is there.

During the father and son time at camp this last week, the guys built soap box derby cars! The boys had a blast doing this activity – especially because they got to race them on the last afternoon there!

It was warm and beautiful the first two days of camp.

Loading up the cars to take them to the top of the hill for the races on Thursday!

There were only three sets of tires, so they had to be changed out for each race.

Grant raced for our team. He did great until he ran straight into a sign post! I guess I should be thankful that Eliza was napping and I wasn’t there!

I thought the verse on the side of one of the other cars was very appropriate!!

This is just one of the many awesome things about camp! Thank you, Wissmans, for this awesome activity!!

A few more of us are sick this morning, and so we are home from church. I pushed through a fever all day yesterday, but actually feel worse today. Chad feels worse today too. Eliza is starting to get it, but no fever so far! The fever turns into a chest cold…..seems to me we just did this….so we are praying for fast recoveries this time around!

Praising the Lord for an amazingly beautiful fall day!!

We just spent this last week at Family Camp! As usual, it is one of the highlights of our year! Such a joy to see friends we haven’t seen since last year! We come away from Family Camp challenged, encouraged, and refreshed! It has been an energizing week!

Getting ready for camp is a HUGE job. We have been so busy that it was also a last minute job! We raced around trying to get everything packed and enough food made. We also had to get the farm in shape to walk away from it for a week. Many hands make light work!

I was taking a picture of the piles all over the kitchen when a certain someone photo bombed the photo! I think this photo is hilarious!!!

I thought I had purchased all the things the children needed for camp, until Chad came and showed me how his sweatshirt from this spring fit him. Seriously! I need to quit feeding these kiddos!

So thankful that my wonderful hubby rents us a beautiful camper to stay in while we are at Family Camp! It is such a great little home away from home! When Blake pulls into the farm with the camper, Lane thinks Family Camp has arrived!

It was so fun to have some time with just Eliza and Lane this past week. The older children would stay up later, so Blake and I enjoyed having these two littles all to ourselves before their bed time each night! Seeing the bond grow stronger between Eliza and Lane is such a beautiful thing!

Isn’t that hair flower adorable?! A friend from church made a whole pile of cute hair things for Eliza!

Eliza did not even blink at a different bath tub. She loved it!

We ate a lot of our meals in the camper. Usually at dinner time we would carry our food over to the dining hall and eat with the other families. It was fun to cook in such a compact kitchen!

In the mornings it was SO cold! Hot oats while still in bed was the way to go!

We even took our Keurig! Hot coffee to warm up was a necessity, right?

I guess I don’t need to tell you how Eliza did! She was our little happy-go-lucky rock star!!! She is still amazing us all! She slept in one of the bottom bunks, and still slept twelve hours a night and took two hour naps. This girl will sleep through anything!

We came home on a very rainy day yesterday, and half of us are sick. I feel so bad for Chad – he has been burning up with a fever and has slept almost the whole time since we have been home. I am sure this illness will make its rounds through us all – one of the joys of life with many!

As I started this post, my technical self wondered how many photos you can put on one post?! I think I better split these photos up into more than one post. There is much, much more to share about our wonderful vacation to Family Camp!

Some of you might remember back in April when we were blessed with photos of Eliza. The story behind those photos is SO awesome, and got even better yesterday!

A couple months before we received the photos, I left an anonymous comment on a blog of someone who was in China getting their daughter from the same orphanage that Eliza was from. Through the URL attached to that comment I was contacted by a gal in Florida, Hillary, who told me they also were adopting a little girl from Eliza’s orphanage as well!! Gotta love technology sometimes!!

We chatted back and forth through e-mail, and shared photos of our little girls.

In March we sent Eliza a birthday party, and in return were expecting photos and a short video of Eliza. When Blake and I opened our e-mail early on the morning of Eliza’s birthday and saw that the photos and video were already there, we were thrilled!! It wasn’t but a minute after we started looking at the photos that we realized that Hillary’s daughter was at Eliza’s birthday party!! WHAT ARE THE CHANCES???

The best part of those photos and video that day were sharing them with Hillary and her husband Caleb. Photos and video of THEIR daughter, that were TOTALLY a surprise to them that day!! It was awesome. You can read her story of that day here.

In April Hillary and her family headed to China to bring their precious daughter home. While they were there, they asked their guide if they could see Eliza for us. YES, THEY DID. Their guide knew Eliza’s foster parents! WOW. So in one day they visited the orphanage, and visited their daughter’s foster parents – which is where Eliza’s foster Mom brought her to meet them. Be still my heart!! Eliza was prayed over (silently, of course) and photos and video were taken of her and then sent to us that same day. Such a gift for us as we waited to travel to China! Still such a gift to have those photos and video of Eliza with her foster Mom.

Hillary contacted me again last week to tell me she was traveling to Kenosha to stay for the weekend this weekend. That was TOO close – we had to meet!! So Addie Mae, Eliza, Lane and I drove to Johnson Creek (about three hours away) to meet Hillary and her new daughter!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Getting a photo of the girls both looking the right direction was pretty impossible!

Isn’t Reese just precious? She will be two years old in October.

Eliza was very taken by the video Hillary had from her orphanage of some children doing a dance routine together!

Before long, it was time to say goodbye.

The connections you make through adoption are like no other. There is such an immediate bond. With both of our adoptions, not only have we gained a son and a daughter, but some of the dearest friends we will ever have.

What a blessed day we had! Thank you Hillary and Reese for making the trip too! We miss you both already!!