Barlow Visit!

-

Our "adopted" niece and nephews came to see us over New Year's. They stayed for nearly a week before they had to head back to Nevada. It was delightful to have enough babies for everyone to hold while they were here!

Above: A family picture in the pasture....
When Ellie has baby number five this summer,
she will be the mother of five children, four and under!

Dear little Thaddaeus (1)

Sam takes Adam (4) for a walk!

Mary helps Carolanne (2) make chocolate chip cookies

Noah stole the babies whenever he could! (Above: Thad)

Liz and Carolanne

Isaiah David Phillip was so proud of his little namesake - Isaiah David (7 mos)

Ellie with her little Isaiah

Adam has started the violin. It was so fun to watch him play!

Carolanne is such a little lady. She speaks in this sweet little soft voice and likes to call people "honey" and wear princess dresses. Poor thing has three brothers - we're hoping that number five (due in July) is a sister for Carolanne!

A hayride with the babies, the neighbors, and Sarah and Emily B.
Above: Ellie with Thad and Joanna with Carolanne

Abe with two of his babies

Bedtime was a circus, but oh, so fun!
Here, the three little boys are bedding down with Joanna and Jemima on the living room floor.

Our whole family :)

We spent New Year's Day at the Eldredge's house and
Susanne agreed to take the "U & B" family picture!

Love Is...

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. --G. K. Chesterton

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.--Peter Ustinov

Humility and love are precisely the graces which the men of the world can understand, if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery, and they are within reach of all classes... [The poorest] Christian can every day find occasion for practicing love and humility. --J. C. Ryle

People need loving the most when they deserve it the least. --John Harrigan

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all. --G. K. Chesterton

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him. -- C. S. Lewis

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them. --Christopher Morley

To love at all is to be vulnerable. --C.S. Lewis

The Hardest Things

"The greatest things are always hedged about by the hardest things, and we, too, shall find mountains and forests and chariots of iron. Hardship is the price of coronation. Triumphal arches are not woven out of rose blossoms and silken cords, but of hard blows and bloody scars. The very hardships that you are enduring in your life today are given by the Master for the explicit purpose of enabling you to win your crown. Do not wait for some ideal situation, some romantic difficulty, some far-away emergency; but rise to meet the actual conditions which the Providence of God has placed around you today. Your crown of glory lies embedded in the very heart of these things--those hardships and trials that are pressing you this very hour, week and month of your life. The hardest things are not those that the world knows of. Down in your secret soul unseen and unknown by any but Jesus, there is a little trial that you would not dare to mention that is harder for you to bear than martyrdom. There, beloved, lies your crown. God help you to overcome, and sometime wear it."