Anniversary, Basketball and Friends

I just think this picture is too funny. JoAnn sometimes throws her pacifier out of her crib at night and it ends up on the floor under her crib. For a while now we haven't let her have her pacifier unless she is sleeping and the other day I was busy doing something while she was playing in her room. All day she had been pretty crabby, so I will admit I was very thankful for a few peaceful minutes but did get a little concerned when she was completely silent for about 5 minutes. So, I went in to check on her and this is what I found. She had found her pacifier and was hiding from me under her crib while she was sucking on it. I couldn't help but laugh and then since it was so cute, I made an exception to the rule (partially because she wasn't yelling or crying) and she kept her pacifier. I just thought it was so funny, but at the same time a little scary for me that she is already trying to hide things from me.



I guess it has already been a week now, but last Friday Daniel and I had our 5 year anniversary. (That sounds crazy to say.) Anyway, we decided that since Daniel had a group of basketball players come from the US starting late Thursday that we would spend time together for our anniversary on Wednesday. We ended up going to a nice Italian restaurant and then out to coffee. Our true celebration will actually happen at the end of this month when we are taking some of the money Daniel was able to earn while we were home last time and going on a cruise and then spending a couple extra days in New York to see one of his good friends that lives there. We decided to go all out since it is our 5th anniversary and his 30th birthday this summer. I am really excited for the trip.

On Thursday night poor Daniel had someone to pick up at the airport at 10 pm, midnight and then 6 am on Friday. So he wasn't expecting much sleep that night. As it turns out both of us barely managed to get any at all. Around 2 am I got a call from Daniel saying that everything was flooding and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to get into our subdivision. Typhoon season starts the beginning of June and apparently it decided to start off with quite the storm. We had a monsoon come through that rained for 6 straight days. I feel like I got a little taste of how people must have felt when it started raining back in the days of Noah. It seemed like the rain wasn't ever going to stop. Anyway, by Thursday things were so saturated that the floods we normally get were getting really bad. Daniel had managed to make it to the road leading into our subdivision, but the only thing that was able to get through the gate were the buses, which is crazy since that area is never that bad. The real problem was that the road he was on to get to the gate was flooded in either direction and only getting worse since it was still pouring. Daniel called me in a slight panic, not sure what to do and not sure how many more flooded areas our car could make it through. On top of that he wasn't sure how to get to either of the other two gates that lead into our subdivision from where he was. I knew part of the way to get to the other gates, but had never had any reason to take them, so I wasn't compeletly sure. Luckily with the little bit of information I did have they managed to find their way to another gate which was at the top of a hill and made it home around 3:15. It was at this point that Daniel finally accepted my offer to go to the airport at 6 instead of him. I felt so bad since he had a full day with the team on Friday. This just added one more thing to the crazieness of the week.

Also on Wednesday last week some of our friends came back from a year long furlough, so we together with another family that we are all friends with had dinner together on Wednesday and then on Friday the mothers (Michele, Val and I) all decided that we wanted to take the kids to the mall to a play place. Between the three of us we have 7 kids. It made for quite the excursion. These are the 4 older girls who decided to make a human chain as they were walking through the mall. I just thought it was so cute to see them have a good time playing after about 9 months of not seeing each other.


Daniel, Val's husband and Michele's husband all usually go on these basketball trips together, so while they are gone the 3 of us get together a lot and try to help each other out. We have done this ever since they started doing these trips three years ago when there were only two kids between the three of us. Anyway, the guys left early on Monday to play some games in Cebu so we took all the kids to another mall playground place. Here are some pictures of the kids...

JoAnn is just enough younger than the other girls that she usually just ends up playing by herself, but I think by next summer she will be right there with them. The next picture is Olivia and Bella. Then the second picture is Abby and Mackenzie and the last picture is of Seth. Some how I managed to not get a picture of Deacon. So these are the kids that JoAnn has been spending the last couple days playing with. When we all go to the mall together I'm sure it seems like an invasion of white kids running around to the other people.

As much fun as I have with the other women and their kids, we are very much looking forward to Daniel getting back, especially since I am also trying to get ready to leave for the US on Monday.