Surprises are my favorite things. Only rarely am I truly surprised because I always figure it out. This condition is a challenge for my husband. Bless.his.heart. - I say that in honor of our southernness. However, he met the challenge head-on for my birthday this past Monday and, after having to throw me off here and there with my many questions, he surprised me! YAY!

To kick off my "birthday week," as Ryan has chosen to call it, the children and I spent sometime Monday morning doing random acts of kindness. We had so much fun leaving little tokens of kindness in random places - we filled drink machines with money, left dollar bills hiding in the dollar store, baked goodies for neighbors and bought breakfast for a couple. It filled our hearts with joy! My "birthday week" has flown by entirely too fast and has been filled with basketball practices, baseball games, ballet....and, SPEECH. Yes, our MK has been in speech every Tuesday and Thursday morning for the past year and a half at our local school. Today I met with her therapist as well as other facilitators and we all agreed that MK has met her goals and no longer needs speech therapy! She is thriving! She loves school and loves her friends though we are a bit concerned that she talks mostly about the boys :) And we know she is listening and learning....example A - today I was taking her to ballet. It is very quiet in the car, I was thinking and I really thought maybe she was asleep. Out of the blue she says, "I think he was from Spain." Now, I was thinking of every one possible that she could be talking about and when I couldn't figure it out I said, "He was from Spain? Who?" And she said, "Christopher Columbus, that man that got on the big boat and thought he was going somewhere but came here instead." Yep, she listens. And we are proud of this little one and so happy she is with us!

Our boys. Saturday they made me smile big. As their mother, I am always quite aware of their huge hearts yet on a day to day basis, I am so caught up in school and sports and the chaos of life that I don't always see their hearts. On Saturday, I saw their hearts plain and clear. The boys want desperately to go on their first mission trip next summer. Every June our church takes a group of people to a city in Georgia that is known to have the largest migrant population in the south. Once there, the group delves into a weeklong mission of witnessing to the children and adults of this community. Because the trip does have its costs, we told the boys that if they could earn half of the funds associated with the trip, we would meet them half way and pay the remainder. They have been brainstorming for weeks on how they were going to meet their goal. Saturday was their first fundraiser, a garage sale. The boys were up at 5:20am as a result of their excitement - it was almost like Christmas morning! After pulling everything out, the people began to show and the rest is history. Colin and Pryce spent the next five hours wheeling and dealing and sharing their mission with complete strangers. Many items were sold, a good start to their funding was accomplished. It did not take them long to speak out and tell the garage-sale-goers their goal and, before we knew it, the boys were receiving donations as well. Ryan later stated that he was so proud of our guys - he could not believe their boldness and their confidence in sharing their mission at such a young age. And, even to those that walked away, our guys told them thank you every time.