Chinese New Year’s Eve:

Calissa playing with her baby sister’s pacifier:

And a few more…

We celebrated Emmie’s 4th birthday today.  It’s been an adventure since we adopted her over three years ago.  She’s a smart, cute, silly little girl.  But she’s also a little girl who continues to exhibit effects from having been abandoned at birth and having spent the first 9 months of her life in a loveless, neglected institutional “care.”  It has not been an easy road for us parenting her.  But we know by faith that God as much wants to shape us, as He wants us to care for her.  We hope and pray for her daily, that God would help her to understand how much she is loved (by Him and by us).

We enjoyed a dinner at Lois’ parents’ home, followed by a cake.  Earlier in the day, Lois presented her with a simple gift, a Care Bear stuffed toy.

Here she is with her Care Bear and cake:

Emmie with Mama:

One of the free resources I found very useful is the printable flash card maker.  You enter the front and back sides of the card in the designated area.  The text is then converted to a PDF format for you to download, print, and cut out.  Make flash cards for math tables, memory verses, grammar definitions, vocabularies, and others.

We’ve been using this resource for memory verses.  We took the extra step of laminating the flash cards but you certainly don’t have to.