Madang over New Year's

Playing with friends on the raft

Taking a dive course! (We celebrated Isaac's 18th birthday on the 22nd of January. I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that we have an adult child! Because we didn't start him at kindergarten until he was 6 we still have another year-and-a-half with him, for which we are truly grateful.) 

Date night!

The reason we have life insurance (Gavin is worse than the kids!)

Seth floating in the waves

Will

David and his favorite soda - pineapple Fanta!

Marcie (Few things are more refreshing than a soda at the sea on a hot day!)

Gracie's sweet face becomes a mass of freckles no matter how much sunscreen we use!

Marcie selecting her lunch at the nearby fish market

I think this is yellowfin tuna, but either way, she loved it!

Seth chose sago pancakes for his lunch from the fish market. He and I LOVE them!

 

A few fun Christmas photos

 Credit: Siobahnne Duhe, set up by Susan Smith for our Clinic staff! Gavin was off flying and Isaac was . . . not keen to give up his first day of break. 

A not calm but very bright Christmas

Not much in our lives has been calm since the five babies joined our family! But this was a lovely Christmas with lots of blessings.

Flashback to 2012: Seth was still in the hospital. We couldn't fit Will's big belly in the stocking. 😆

The girls and I sang in our week-before-Christmas church service. Gracie is the only visible girl.

Making a gingerbread house!

My favorite night of the year: our Christmas Eve service!

Gracie's gift to her siblings was a Christmas kitty cake. She is a keen baker and cook already!

We served it Christmas Eve with friends at our house.

Happy Christmas morning!

Isaac with his gifts: an ESV study Bible and Biblical Doctrines book - which he took on vacation with him. 😂 He requested theology and Bible study books for his gifts this year and bought Thomas Watson's Body of Divinity with his grandmother's gift. We're thrilled that the Lord has given him a passion for Truth, and we pray that his love for Christ continues to grow! We appreciate your prayers for him. He wants to go into full-time pastoral ministry, specifically aiming for the mission field. He needs your prayers because we know there is an enemy who would love to trip him up and attack him.

How they love LEGOs!

This young woman, Iren, needs your prayers. Marcie gave her a homemade plaque that says "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you, Hebrews 13:5." She's been a friend of the family since 2006 and has a very painful growth in her back and abdomen. Her pathology reports were never released, thanks to COVID disrupting everything. She needs to get to the hospital again ASAP and see a surgeon, but if it's cancer there's nothing that can be done. We had a lovely day with her and her family!

Keeping Up With the Joneses - November 2021

And now they're 9!

APOLOGIES to everyone who actually still checks this blog (those of you on a mailing list I don't feel so badly about, ha ha). I thought I had published this way back in August. Instead I'm publishing in NOVEMBER - the month of their due date when they were expected to be only one baby! 😁 Forgive me! I don't know what happened to my brain. Blame it on having 5 very busy nine-year-olds or COVID coming (finally) to our area and requiring me to work way, way, way more than usual. Both of those is probably true. But the Lord is good, and we're on the other side of this wave (I trust/hope/pray), so here's the birthday post, at long last!!

August 9th:

God is so good, keeps going through my head. How far we've come! How kind He's been! How much we love these kids He's blessed us with!

Portraits by a very dear friend; clothes from our dear Aunt Mickey 💞:

Will Edward

David Stephen

Seth Jared

Marcie Jane

Grace Elise

We didn't want Isaac to be the odd man out! This photo is so perfect for his personality and silliness towards his siblings. They LOVE when he plays with them. He graduates in 18 months! 😫💙

With a brother from another mother (the photographer)! He fits right in! 😍

This was the birthday of the LEGOs for everyone except Marcie, who's our glamour girl! She got a fancy, long, sparkly dress. 

This girl loves her dress-up!

We had a waterslide party with all their friends. When the kids asked for How to Train Your Dragon cakes I had to enlist this lovely colleague to do it for me. These were not only amazing to look at but DELICIOUS: dark chocolate ganache and white chocolate peppermint!

Isaac is amused, Gavin mildly so, but the dog is NOT.

And a cool extra photo of the helicopter on Mt. Wilhelm. (Gavin was giving high altitude training to our newer pilots who are also great friends. We thank God for sending them!)

Summertime, and the living was easy (and fun!)

It's a joy to live on a beautiful, rugged island in the Pacific Ocean. Although we're in the Southern Hemisphere and should think of this time of year as "winter," we still call it summer break. Old habits die hard.

We drove to the beach and swam in a pool back in June:

Chicken fights between Will and David on Kori's shoulders and Marcie and Seth on Isaac's shoulders!

David loves hamburgers, and we all love eating by the water with palm trees.

We took a boat ride to a nearby tiny island.

We drank a lot of soda. (Marcie) It was hot there!

A gorgeous location for photos, but I think this was a former WWII battery.
If I recall correctly, there used to be gun mounts and stone walls to hide behind.

A friend of Isaac's explains storm clouds to Will. 

The kids loved kayaking in the bay!

Seth at our "campout" just down the hill from our house

Special friends, then and now, at the town nearby

And now everyone is happily back to school, but we sure enjoyed our fun "summertime" as a family! Thanks to the Lord for His kindness and provision of the rest and recharge we needed!