Bruin Visits!!

First off a big thank you to all the comments, emails, and phone calls I have gotten in the last week since visiting Alex. I can't thank you enough for all the encouragement and mostly for the prayers. Those of you who have been praying and are now praying even harder- thank you so much!! It means so much to us. I keep going back and reading all of your encouraging words. This has been a lot harder emotionally than I planned, but I am feeling better. For awhile there I couldn't go more than an hour or two without breaking down but now things are feeling better. I don't think I will feel right though until Alex is home, but I trying to focus on what we have here- a lot of blessings- and praying for him and for all of the kids in Haiti waiting to come home. After being in Haiti, Scott and I really feel a passion for the people of Haiti. At first I said, "One is not enough! We need to adopt more!" Who knows where God will lead us though- we have all kinds of ideas about things we could do to help though. Just being at the orphanage was so inspiring to us. We'd love to go spend several weeks there with our kids helping, cleaning, holding babies. I can totally see the girls and me leading some sort of crafts and activities while Scott does handy-man type stuff around the orphanage. Hopefully in a few years we will have the opportunity.

OK that had nothing to do with the blog title so back to that....Most of you know my good friend Andrea who I met in college. She became my roommate after some interesting experiences first semester. Thank the Lord she moved in because college suddenly got a whole lot better, but that's a whole other post! Anyway we have been friends through it all since then. We navigated through the horrid dating scene and eventually stood up for each other at each other's weddings. In fact not only did I get to be the Maid of Honor but Hailey and Karis got to be flower girls. Well fast-forward to now and Andrea is the proud mother of an adorable baby boy: Bruin. He is six weeks old. From the moment Andrea was in the hospital having him I have been itching to get my hands on this boy! I originally planned to fly down to be with her but the circumstances didn't work out with us going to Haiti and trying to get me to Portland without the girls- Scott working, who will watch them, etc. etc. So amazingly Andrea decided to brave flying here by herself with Bruin!! Very impressive. He did great on the plane although he did have a huge blow-out right before taking off from Portland and Andrea had no clothes in the diaper bag and had to buy him a men's t-shirt to wear. The joys of newborns!

He did great here although man, I forgot how much work a newborn is! So much holding and feeding and changing. Although Andrea is handling it like a champ. I was so impressed with how laid- back and just go with it she is. Nothing seemed to phase her including every time we were in the car he literally screamed the whole way. And the crazy thing was that twice it put Avery to sleep! He reminds me of Hailey in that he won't nap for more than a few minutes unless he is being held. I tried to encourage Andrea by telling her that all changes but I couldn't remember when. Isn't it funny how quickly we forget these things?

We did lots of fun things: went to the mall, went out to eat lunch, went out for ice-cream. It was so nice just to hang out and chat and hold the baby. He is so adorable and the girls adored him. You can see in one of the photos they are changing his diaper and clothes. They were all over him constantly kissing him and holding him. In fact they were begging me to have another baby. Promising me they would help take care of it. Ummm...I remember hearing that about the dog....

It was so sad when Andrea left. We were all crying at the airport, except Hailey who was saying, "Stop crying! She's going to miss her plane!" Karis cried the whole way home, "I want Andrea!" So sad to be so far away now!!! Hopefully we will get to see her again soon. Thanks for coming Andrea and letting us meet baby Bruin!! We love him and you too of course! (Oh and don't forget Ben,the wonderful father and husband. Hopefully he can come next time too!)