Wednesday is Awana night

My hopes, as a Christian mom, are that my children grow up knowing that they are loved by their Creator (God), loving Him whole heartedly, and serving Jesus Christ unreservedly.  That is why I am constantly teaching the boys this verse.  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Deuteronomy 6:5. 

I may stir up alot of constroversy for this statement; my goal is not to raise academically successful kids who will make it to Ivy league schools and earn lots of money.  My definition of success is not the same as the world's definition of success and certainly not the same as "Tiger Mom."  That does not mean I don't want them to strive for academic excellence.  I, myself, am still going to school to get a master in business.  What I mean is that I don't want to just focus on academic achievements, but rather to give the boys a good foundation in Biblical truth.  I want them to know Christ and have the desire to know Him more, which is why I bring them to Awana every Wednesday night at Castro Valley First Baptist Church.  Awana is a kids' club that teaches Biblical truth and emphasizes on scripture memory.  The church runs Awana like the way my church (CIBC) runs vacation bible school in the summer.  There are games, Bible memorization, messages, and singing.  It is also similar to boy/girl scout in the sense that they can earn patches.  After a certain amount of memory verses, they earn ironed-on patches and jewels.  Caleb have been memorizing a few verses a week and Joshie one short verse a week.  Because Awana is in the middle of the week, sometimes I don't want to take them, especially when I have lots to do for work and school.  But Hebron and I make that a priority because we saw that they enjoy it and it establishes the discipline of memorizing God's word as a family.  In addition to verses, Caleb also memorized all the books of the Old and New Testament.  Joshie is learning too by following Caleb.  Here they are singing it.  Seeing how they learn made all my effort worthwhile.

Happy 1st Birthday Karissa!

We have the priviledge of celebrating Karissa's 1st birthday.  I know in adoption that is not always possible, so we are very thankful.  The boys sang the happy birthday song to Mui-mui this morning and as a tradition from Happiness Hill Preschool, they continued to sing "we are glad God made you, we are glad God made you, we are glad God made youoooo, we are glad God made you." That just got me thinking of how God made Karissa.  So on the BART ride to work, I was overwhelmed with emotions of thankfulness.  Psalms 139: 13 -16 says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  I often use this verse to tell the boys that God made them special and with a purpose.  Every life is valuable because God has a plan for each person.  I have always knew this to be true because when I was pregnant with the boys, I knew inside me were precious gifts.  But now I realized that God, in His sovereignty planned a precious gift for me inside someone else's womb.  I have never thought about it that way.  Karissa is a joy to have and I can't imagine our family without her.  It's amazing that in just two months we have grown so attached. 

Today Mui-mui also had her 12 months well baby check-up and got the result of her blood test.  She has a clean bill of health and currently at 19 lbs 4 oz.  She gained 2 lbs since we got back to the US.  Boo to the nurse that gave her three shots on her birthday.

Her first taste of cake.  She loved it!  She was holding my hands to make sure that I gave her some.  Thank you to Uncle Tim and Auntie Marilyn for the royal outfit.