The appetizer of our trip...

The long flight from our beloved desert home to Orlando is extremely tiring on our children -- especially Benjamin. So in order to get that behind us, and get the kiddos rested and ready to enjoy every moment of the cruise, we flew to Orlando on Thursday and spent two nights at the Animal Kingdom Lodge!

Wow. That's really all I can. Because when we opened our curtains that first morning....this is what we saw:

And this:

And we were only a bus ride away from our favorite shopping location ever -- Downtown Disney -- so we spent Friday afternoon hanging out there! (We would have been there earlier but we simply couldn't quit watching the animals from our balcony!! So very cool!)

And our timing was perfect because Dave Barry and Riddley Pearsons, authors of the Peter and the Starcatcher series, were on hand for autographs! Now, we enjoy their books...but when my former self was a newspaper reporter, Dave Barry was one of our syndicated columnists and I just adored his writings. So I was delighted to get to meet him. Clearly from the photo, the kids were following my lead as no one went and stood by Mr. Pearsons. It wasn't personal, really, Mr. Pearsons. Next time, we promise to be divide up more evenly for the photo op!

Of course, Cate was excited about the carousel at Downtown Disney and Daddy was only too happy to oblige his favorite four-year-old.

And this picture when she got off just makes me smile -- such bliss! Oh, if we could bottle that!


That kind of joy is what I long for each of my family members -- isn't finding joy the best blessing of all?!

More to come...

We're back...

From our absolutely delightful, completely necessary, positively rejuvenating, and only mildly stressful.....Disney Cruise Vacation!!




And in true Blessing Counter fashion....I'll gladly share details and some of the 900 plus photos I took...over the course of the next week or so!!


So, today, I'll catch up on the laundry, get my kids back in school-mode (oh, they will love me for that!) and give you a little sneak peak at two of my favorite pictures of the week -- my kids with Minnie! And I'll see you back here tomorrow for more!! Oh what a blessing!!

But she went from this...

To this entirely too fast...

Today is Cate's 4th Birthday. F.O.U.R. I can not believe it. I feel like it was JUST yesterday that this sweet one joined our family.

Her Daddy says I prayed her here. He is probably right....about the time the triplets turned 18 months, I was ready for more. Eight years later, God gave us this little gift! Oh, we are all so thankful!!

She has this big guy -- her Uncle Lenny -- wrapped completely around her fingers! When she opened his gift yesterday and saw that it was EXACTLY what she had told him she wanted, she threw the gift down and threw her arms around "Uncle"!

This is the "gift" that Uncle Len gave -- a baby Ariel doll!

A family portrait with the birthday girl...it took more than one shot to get everyone's smiles...

See, this one has a higher percentage of smiles...but Pluto wasn't looking!

And my favorite shots of the day...our birthday girl with her cake...

And blowing out her candles!

Thank you God for the blessing that is this little girl, our Cate!

Don't be fooled by the cuteness...

And she is cute....I'll give her that. But don't ask this little Tinker Bell to keep a secret....she just doesn't understand the meaning of that word.


Tonight, Cate and I went into Albertson's to order Birthday cakes (OK, it is a totally different post but my family and I have an addiction to bakery birthday cakes...we L.O.V.E. them!). We needed two -- one for Uncle Len's 30th birthday which is tomorrow and one for baby Cate's 4th birthday which we will celebrate Sunday.

Seriously, birthday cakes are a huge ritual for us -- our Daddy loved them and we loved them with him and so now we have to love them without him and we would never consider NOT having one -- but just to throw Len off, when we got back in the van, I said, "Len, they told me it was too late to get a cake by tomorrow so I couldn't order your's."

To which this adorable, very cute, hugely lovable baby looked at me and said, "Yes, we did, Mommy. Remember???!!!"

Honesty is a blessing. Right?!

On Mission

My husband is in Honduras this week -- a week long Medical Mission Trip! He arrived this morning and the team immediately began seeing children. Surgeries begin tomorrow.

Can I tell you that I want to be with him so badly? See, I am a Garaywa girl -- Camp Garaywa is a camp for little girls in Mississippi that hosts missionaries each summer who speak to campers, interact with campers, and teach campers about their respective countries, work and calling. I went to Camp Garaywa for the first time in 1977 as a nine-year-old, then again in 1978. I returned as a counselor in 1987 and 1988. The missionaries instilled in this camper/counselor a love for missionaries and missions and a strong desire to take the good news of the gospel to any country that God deemed for me -- and if I got to wear a Sari all the better!

To date, God has sent me around THIS country but not abroad. I love the ministry God has given me -- the ministry of leading my little crew to the Kingdom -- but some days, I still dream of wrapping a Sari around myself and sharing Jesus with women in far-away lands.

So this week, I am thanking God for opening the door for Wade to use his gifts to help children who otherwise wouldn't have the surgeries he and his team will provide. And I am asking God to shine through him as he touches the lives of these little ones.

And I might be asking that one day, just one day....I get a chance to go with him. Oh, wouldn't that be such a blessing?