Getting Old

I am not the only one getting old around here. Esther is 4 months old today.

Lots of Pictures

We are still trying to decide what the plan is for the blog and if it will be private or not. So, until we get all that worked out, I thought I would go ahead and post some new pictures of Esther.

Cute pumpkin hat

Seriously cute

Razorback cute

Esther has been doing a lot better at grabbing her toys and playing with them

This is her in her exersaucer, she laughs and laughs at the lion

Lots of big smiles these days

Yesterday we went hiking with some friends. I wore our moby wrap and put Esther in it and she did really good. She loved looking all around. After a while though she fell asleep and slept the rest of the time.

30!

Happy 30th Birthday!
We love you,
Margo & Esther

Privatization

Not of Social Security, but of this blog.

I wanted to let you all know that we are thinking about making this blog private. This is something we had always talked about doing when we had kids. I don't like the thought of random people that we don't know out there knowing all the things I put up on here about our Family. It seems like in a worse case scenario some creep could use the information to do something bad. I know that may seem like crazy thinking to some of you, but I just don't like knowing that any crazy person out there can have access to Esther's life through this blog.

If we do this, it means there will be an added step of signing in, in order to read our blog. And you probably won't be able to read it through a feed reader or rss feed (if you don't know what that is then that won't matter to you). I know this means that we are going to lose readers. Even I tend not to read some blogs of our friends because they are private. But I think it may be worth it. I will continue to have this blog even if we lose all of our readers because I think it is a great way to document our lives and have a record of it for the future.

So, let me know what you think. And let me know if you would like an invite to be able to continue to read our blog.

I will let you know later in the week when we decide for sure about this and send an invite to whoever requests one.

Orphan Sunday

Just wanted to let everyone know that this Sunday is Orphan Sunday. A few organizations that help orphans throughout the world decided to have a day each year that churches could focus on helping orphans. A lot of orphan organizations, adoption organizations, churches, and others are supporting it. It is a Sunday for churches to focus on orphans and promote helping them. It is a very important duty that we have as Christians (for those of you who are Christians) to take care of the orphans as the Bible tells us to.

There are approximately 143 million orphans in the world. Half a million kids in the U.S. live in foster care and around 125,000 are up for adoption. In Arkansas there are 7,000 kids in foster care and over 500 available for adoption. Arkansas ranks #1 in the U.S. in the number of moves a child will make while in foster care. They will move an average of 30 times while in foster care. 30. An even more shocking statistic is this....In Pulaski County (most populated county in Arkansas) there are 600 churches and in Northwest Arkansas there are over 300. So if just one family out of each of these churches from just these three counties would adopt that would be over 900 adopted kids which is almost twice the number of waiting kids in Arkansas. JUST ONE MORE FAMILY IN EACH CHURCH AND WE WOULD NOT HAVE WAITING KIDS IN ARKANSAS. And that is just 3 counties.

There are lots of ways to help. There is an organization in Arkansas that seeks to help these children in Arkansas. It is the C.A.L.L. which stands for Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime and their vision is to have no waiting children in Arkansas foster care but instead to have families waiting to take them in. On their website you can find all kinds of ways to help. But the best way is to become a foster parent or to adopt one of these kids.

I wanted to also post some videos about Orphan Sunday in case you are more of a visual learner.

This one is from the CALL

And this one will make you cry.

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their distress..." James 1:27

Halloween

Our community group had a Halloween party this weekend. We came up with some last minute costumes and decided on "things from the 80's" for our family.

Josh as Mr. Rogers (complete with the creepy King Friday puppet) and Margo as a Glamour shot.

Margo made a Smurfette costume for Esther.

And here is a shot of the whole group (minus Esther, she was sleeping).