Transitions - Why must we need them?

Sometimes I wish there was no such thing as transitions!  Seems like we have been in one far more than not in the last several years, and I think I am getting tired of them!  Sometimes my heart just cries, like tonight when Kase told me he is ready to move back to Mongolia.  That is his home and yet, all of us live there, all of us loved it and yet, here we are living in America.  We all left a bit of our hearts in Mongolia.  Yes, we love America, yes, we are patriots, but when you have experienced the ex-pat lifestyle there is much to be said about it!  We have been house hunting and it seems all the ideas and thoughts on that have kept running into walls!  We have made viable good offers on places and had them rejected, and even though of building our own house only to have that look like a bad location.  It is kind of like being in a pin-ball machine- but being the ball and not the player.  How do we get out!  Please pray for peace.  Pray for answers.  Pray for closure.  But like this flower in the picture, sometime we need the rain to bring out the flowers in our lives.  I think it has been raining enough though.  I am ready for some changes.  Our family is ready to see what the next step is in our lives.  In some ways the easy - though this is a LOT of work - thing would be to pack up and move back to Mongolia.  But I don't know if that would be the right step at the right time!  Or would it?  What does God want us to do?  Where does He want us to be?  We continue moving forward and trying to put down some roots, but it seems there are rocks in our soil.  Or maybe we are all in a big planting pot instead of the ground and we can then be moved easier and still intact.  I guess we will see.   

Space man Birthday

My Son had his 8 year old Birthday.  He wanted to have a space theme.  Had fun with this one!  We prepared a cake that looked like the moon - kinda - we used york mints for the craters - doesnt that sound yummy???  As he loves LEGO(R) we made a moon rover out of lego to go on top as our topper.  Very cute cake

We did space games - I bought some of those little spring loaded, with suction cup ends hopper things that looked like aliens.  We had a space alien hop race across the carport. 

Ahead of time we made a way cool design for the background of a space / solar system.  We took some of those funny spiny balls and dipped them in multiple paint colors and dropped them onto our poster paper.  This made cool designs, which each kid at the party got a long sheet in order to design thier own universe.  They all had a grand time with this project. 

We had some fun relay races - all were winners and all had fun! 

Branding

Well Dustin came home with some cows yesterday, so we branded them today.  Ran them through the squeeze chute and then drove them up through the rock pit field to the pasture closer to our house.  We branded all 22 of them.  Got them all through the chute without anyone getting run over or hurt, or any of them getting hurt.  These cows were funny though, not the typical range cow that wants to run from you.  Very friendly.  This was great when we were working them in the corrals, but not when we were trying to drive them.  I don't know if they had ever been driven.  They only climbed over one fence.  Fortunately into another pasture we own and not the neighbors corn field!  We had some good friends help us and we all had fun.