14

Saturday, June 19th, we celebrated Amy and Elise's 14th birthday. We give God thanks for the beautiful gift of our two sweet girls.
Amy, always full of fresh wonder at God's amazing world; always thinking about how to engineer some new invention.
Elise, always considerate of others and their needs; always thinking about how to design some new gorgeous thing for people to enjoy.
You both bless us every day. We pray that you will never know a day apart from God.

On the 18th, Michael and Barbara zipped to the market on a trike to find mga bulak (flowers) for the girls. We spent the equivalent of $2.50 (don't tell the girls!) and brought home a huge bouquet of 2 dozen roses.

We decorated with balloons and tissue paper (there are no streamers here!) to surprise Elise and Amy when they came home from VBS with a friend. Here they are walking in the door. (I know you don't like this photo girls, but I think it's cute!)

It's great to have a home we can decorate for celebrations!

And it's such a blessing to have two delightful daughters to celebrate!

The morning of their birthday we went to Garden Oasis, a hotel and convention center tucked away in a very unlikely area of town - a true oasis. Here we enjoyed a morning at the pool, which we had almost entirely to ourselves.

We did some swimming, and it was also a great pool just to play around in.
It was a fun morning.

We tried some of their chicken skewers and rice for lunch.
They look pretty!
We probably won't eat there again soon...

Amy and Elise baked their own two layer chocolate cake in the afternoon, and decorated it for all of us to enjoy that evening.

Happy Birthday, Elise and Amy!

"I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers."
Ephesians 1:16

"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen."
Hebrews 13:21

p.s. we are STILL without a phone line at the house! Mark visited the phone company a couple of days ago, and they promised it would happen soon. We just don't know what "soon" means. So please be patient with us in answering emails and posting blogs - things are moving much more slowly without the luxury of a phone line!