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At the end of April, we took a surprise trip to Los Angeles.  Sadly, one of Emily’s uncles passed away.  We went back for the funeral, and stayed until the next weekend for Emily’s cousin’s wedding.  So…10 days, a funeral, a wedding, family, friends, and the Exodus…JAM packed.  I barely had time to even take pictures!

Here we are in KC, getting ready to ALL fly back to LA together.  So much more fun flying with everyone!

Traveling buddies!

Here we are on a stopover in Phoenix.  Not seen here…but I found Meghan crawling around and under the seats in the waiting area.  She was chewing on something!?  I hadn’t given her anything to eat…so I demanded she open her mouth and show me what was in there.  Raisins.  Raisins!  Not ours!  Some random raisins she found on the floor of the airport terminal.  Yuck!!!

Here we are, back in LA, at the Chang’s…enjoying friendship AND some awesome Marie Calendar pies.  Strawberry and Banana Cream…so good!

Emily and I have gone to see the optometrist out here in KC.  We both found the experience so lacking compared to the Asian places in the SGV.  Long waits, too expensive, and lame selection.  We’ve suspected Kay needed glasses for some time…but we finally got around to getting it done.

Here she is!  She is so happy with her glasses!

We took a day trip with Emily’s parents…by public transportation!  ALL my life, I’ve NEVER taken public transportation in LA.  Never.  But here we are, getting ready to take the train into Little Tokyo.

Getting through the gates.

There is our train!

Sitting together and creating a total safety hazard with our stroller!

We walked around J-Town (Japanese Town) and found some fun gifts to buy.  Here is Kay, sporting her new umbrella.

Here’s Noah with his new toy samurai sword!

Since we were already so close, we decided to swing by the Azusa Street Revival Memorial.  As I was telling the kids about the revival that hit LA at the turn of the century…I was moved myself!  Just thinking that God poured out his spirit in such a powerful way, right here in LA!  God, do it again!!

Glasses = fun.  Dentist = a little scary.  Dennis’s cousin, Dr. Eric Hwang, rocks…and took care of our teeth, mine and Kay’s.  If you live near Westminster, he’s the dentist to go to.  Awesome dude.

After the dentist, we decided to spend the rest of the day in Orange County.  Emily’s cousins have an RV…and the kids fell in love with the RV at first sight.  For days after, the kids would ask and lament…wondering if our next car could be an RV!

We took the RV to Irvine Park…here are all four of our kids going nuts on the swings.  Bekah, Kay, and Noah are shoeless.  Bekah is climbing on the pole, not even on a swing.  And Kay is swinging way higher than I think she should.

Then to Honda-Ya…Japanese Izakaya.  Oh man…some of the best food ever.  No Izakaya in KC.  Here is Noah with his Uncle David, enjoying a piece of chicken heart!

Just look at him grill.  So yummy!!

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Rebekah just turned 7…and she had a really PACKED birthday.

The day started with prayer and worship in the prayer room.  Here she is, praying that God would raise up a house of prayer in Israel!

To make the morning SUPER special…Ayi-3 joined in on the ‘worship in dance’ time!

Then it was a fun filled trip to Kaleidoscope.

The perfect place to come if you haven’t bought or made your sister a birthday card yet!

Meghan is NOT allowed to use markers at home.  But here, the rules are different…she was so excited about using markers.

Meghan and the markers were going well…but then I turned away, for just a minute!

Kay, painting, green butterflies…perfect.

Nice!…Shiloh woke up.

Here’s Noah waiting for his water color book market to come out of the drier.

Lina, hard at work.

Leonard, hard at work.

Meghan and Shiloh dancing in the music room.

Rebekah has been asking to go to the Golden Corral ALL year.  We went there for my birthday last year…and it’s stayed on her mind since!  And this is what she’s missed so much…the desserts!  A chocolate fondue fountain and fresh made mini donuts.

At the Golden Corral, there is something for everyone…even Livie!

Happy Birthday, Bekah!

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This past weekend has been one HUGE blur.  A powerful, intense, really strange…blur!  Powerful, because the Holy Spirit was really moving in people’s lives.  Intense, because our whole family got caught up in it.  Really strange, because…it had to do with about 120 very Chinese people in the middle of Kansas City, MO.  Very Chinese!  Chinese and Chinese Americans from the US…as wells as some that flew in from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.  I think there were even some Taiwanese aboriginals as well!

Welcome to Chinese Passion for Jesus, 2012!

On one of the worship sets, a spirit of JOY was released.  The ENTIRE room was on its feet dancing in a dance line that looped around the whole room!  We are talking young kids to grandmas and grandpas…rockin’ for the LORD!  It was so good to see these otherwise reserved old Chinese people dancing, full of joy and freedom.

Heh!  That’s me preaching in Chinese!  Not!  The translator is off to my left.  I did drop a few Chinese phrases just to get the crowd moving.  I didn’t do the usual white preacher, “Wo Ai Ni!”  No way…I dropped the real bombs…”Boba Nai Cha” “Sao Bing You Tiao” “Zong Zi”.  It must have been so weird for people to fly in from Taiwan and get spoken to by a Chinese looking guy who could only say a few Chinese food words.  Argh…should have paid better attention in Chinese School!

Check that out!?  English, traditional Chinese characters, as well as pinyin!

On Friday night, while the rest of IHOP was off to their usual Friday night service, the Chinese group moved into the main prayer room.  These 2 hour ‘keeping the fire burning’ sets are usually not attended by outside people…but that night we brought in all the conference attendees.  Wow…it was SO POWERFUL!  To hear Mandarin being sung and prayed in the GLOBAL Prayer Room at the INTERNATIONAL House of Prayer…come on!

The kids felt a freedom to dance…and put into practice their Harp and Bowl dance model.

I was so blessed and moved by this Chinese worship team.

The last day, our kids got to be a part of the worship team…along with the Maas family and the Shao boys.

As a part of her message, Joy wanted to model for the conference attendees how to empower, push, and expect our next generation to engage God in the same ways we do.

Worship…and prayer ministry!

Go kids!!!

Here is Perazim giving a word to Wendy’s Mom!

Kay prayed for this person, that God would give her a big hug.  She came to find Kay and Emily later to say that after Kay left, God flooded her with his love and comfort!  Awesome!

This poor girl had a tough time.  Some brand new big teeth coming in + all weekend conference = really tough time!  Here she is gnawing away at the buckles on the baby carrier.

And here is this guy’s portable street/car carrier.  That’s a lot of Autobots against one flying Decepticon (from McDonalds!).

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Kay just celebrated her 9th birthday…and wow, that was a marathon event!

The day BEFORE her actual birthday, Kay grabbed Peachwave Frozen Yogurt with her school friends.

That same night was dinner at the Yap’s with the Ko’s visiting from LA!  Thanks everyone for celebrating Kay’s birthday!

Here is Bekah, shamelessly trying to blow out Kay’s candle.

Kay’s actual birthday started with their usual worship set in the prayer room.  What a great way to start off a birthday!

We gave Kay a couple of choices for her lunch…she choose First Watch.

I’m telling you…this really was the birthday marathon.

Next…dinner at Nikko’s Japanese Steakhouse.  There’s actually a ton of these types of Japanese Teppan-Yaki steakhouses all over Kansas City.  Maybe midwesterners have a taste for this stuff.  We came to this one…because we found an awesome Groupon, which paid for about half our meal.  The other half…Jeff picked up the tab!  Thanks Jeff, that was so nice of you!

Noah’s mouth…totally stuffed with food.

Fire!

More fire!

Hehe…sounding like an Awakening Meeting…

Volcano!  Noah told me later he was shooting the fire with his finger.

As part of the dinner time entertainment, the chef tries to throw pieces of shrimp into the mouths of willing customers.  Kay and Bekah were not game for this.  Jeff and Emily both caught a shrimp.  I missed several times.  When it got to Noah’s turn…he opened his mouth, which was already stuffed with food!  The chef was like…’woah!…maybe next time.’

Krispy Kreme to round out the night.  What a birthday!

Enjoying her cinnamon donut.

The NEXT night was Kay’s special girls only sleepover.  They started off dressed REALLY nice, for a super formal, gourmet dinner…served by ME, the waiter of this fine establishment.

It doesn’t get much better than this…gourmet KRAFT Mac’n'Cheese, Pizza Bagels, Pizza Rolls, and Ling-Ling Dumplings…some of Kay’s favorite foods.

After dinner we had some creative expression in painting.

They each got a canvas, some paints, and one of my pajama t-shirts to wear over their beautiful dresses…and just started painting away.

Very artistic!

Here are the finished products.

Cake time!

Now, with goofy faces!

After cake and presents, ALL the girls went to get comfy in their matching pajamas!  Here they are, getting ready to watch An American Girl: Samantha.

Meghan assumed she was going to stay up late with the big girls.  Nope…I let her watch for maybe 2 minutes then sadly had to remove her and put her down.  Look at that tired face!…meltdown was right around the corner.  Where’s Noah?  He went to the Yap’s to watch Cars 2 with the other boys.

Not done yet!  At 10:30pm we went for it with Chocolate Fondue!  Strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, and pound cake…dipped in chocolate!  Yum!

Now…just riding the sugar high.

This is the Midwest.  Come out here…and you learn to shoot guns!

Finally…the later stages of the sugar high, winding down, and getting into bed.

Did I say winding down?  We did some adoration prayer, said a blessing over Kay, and then I made a short speech about being quiet, staying up late, but keeping it down to a whisper.  Wow…they received that really well!

After I went up…I think the 2nd wave of the sugar high hit, and with that, all parts of my speech were forgotten.  Just squealing and screaming, and pillow fighting…until quite suddenly the sugar wore off and they ALL crashed.  I stayed upstairs…but it sure sounded like they had fun.

I told Noah to wait for me upstairs.  By the time I reached his room…he was OUT.

Happy Birthday Kay!  Love you like you can’t believe!

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Four years old…hard to believe!  He’s lived more of his life here in KC than in LA!!!

These gifts arrived PRE-Birthday, from Noah’s Aunties, Uncles, and Cousins.

Even the sign was special delivery!  Thanks Leener!

Ka-Chow.  As you can see…it was a Cars Happy Birthday Party.

Stuffed solid with heavy duty candy and then reinforced with packing tape and blue ribbon…this turned out to be the toughest Pinata EVER!

But before we get to the birthday festivities…Family Worship time!  We’ve got the JOY!

His Banner over you!

His Banner over me!

His Banner over us!…is love, love, love!  And we can feel the Love, of God in this place…

And now, back to the super tough Pinata.  Tough enough for a Jedi lightsaber?

After EVERYONE had 3 shots with the lightsaber…we realized the force was NOT with us!  We had to switch to a more heavy duty plastic baseball bat.

After everyone had 3 shots with the bat…the adults gave it a run.  And the bat broke on Mitch!  The pinata BROKE the bat!

I think it finally caved under JMaas’s fist…and the candy frenzy began!

That was super fun!

Cake time!  Noah getting ready to blow out the candle.

Here are Noah’s many friends.  Thanks everyone for celebrating with him!

And now, it’s Cotton Candy time!

For a blur of 10-15 minutes, I was surrounded by all the kids, sugar webs flying everywhere, trying to make decent looking cotton candy.  It’s not as easy as I thought.  But it is as yummy as I remember!  I think Noah agrees…

Presents time…

Those gifts, plus a few more he opened this morning…resulted in this spread.  I think Noah was overwhelmed with all the new fun toys!

The next day, Emily listed a few birthday lunch ideas…and Noah got stuck on Dim Sum.

And then a surprise visit to Chuch E. Cheese.

Noah’s sisters offered to give him all of their tickets for his birthday!

Meghan kept coming back to this game.  Even after we were all packed up and ready to go…Meghan would NOT leave the Dog Pounder!

What a celebration!  Happy Birthday Noah!

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Older kids lounging around iPad-ing.

One night, Noah just disappeared into his room for a long time.  That’s not totally unusual…given the right mood and the right toys, he can occupy himself for a while.  But this was different.  He came back down, triumphantly asking for us to come see his room.  What could he possibly want to show us?

He cleaned his room!  The little dude put all his toys away and tidied up.  This is HIGHLY unusual behavior.  Usually it’s Kay that is the cleanup person.  Kay doesn’t exactly enjoy it, but she’ll put forth the effort when we ask her.  Rebekah shuns cleaning, and avoids it at all costs.  Noah…we just never really bothered to make him clean up yet.  But check it out!

This is Meghan’s little LEGO guy.  I’m not even sure where she got him from…but when Noah gets into playing with his Transformers, Meghan will often go find her LEGO guy.  I think maybe she thinks this is her version of Transformers.

Besides lounging, cleaning, and playing…these little ones are still consistent nappers.  Here they are, in the car, napping, and holding hands!

More than any of our other kids at this age, we give Meghan a tremendous amount of freedom.  Throughout the day, she’ll just wander the house, play, make messes, eat snacks, go upstairs, go downstairs, get in Kay’s bed, play in Noah’s room…

One day, we found her having Tea time by herself.  I’m not even sure who gave her this idea!?  Kay and Bekah have this little corner in their room that is set up for their dolls.  They have a little kitchen and play area for this.  Well…Meghan decides these doll toys are all about her size…and so we found her sitting at the table, serving a doll, and then pretending to eat.

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After watching Kay have piano lessons (and practice!) for a couple of years, Rebekah finally had her first official lesson.  Here she is, with her very first official practice!

Meghan…up to her usual innocent ‘mess-making’.

Sheep-O-Rama.  Meghan’s favorite iPad game.

She laughs and giggles out loud as she plays.

Guess what?  It finally snowed!  Way into February, and we finally had our first ’snow day’.

Snow day means FUN day!

Noah is usually the first to tire of the cold.  But here he is, warm and intent on getting me with a snowball.

Jesse…equally intent on nailing me!

Good of Mitch to finally come out…and partake in some of the punishment.

Good hit!  Not sure if it was Kay or Bekah’s toss.

Mitch gets Juli.

Sarah is hiding from it all, way up in her lookout tower.

Not sure what expression that is on Noah’s face!  I know it looks like I used all these cool filters and blurs to get this cool image effect…but don’t be fooled.  It was cold, and my lens simply started fogging up!

And that’s it!  Mid 40’s and low 50’s in the days to come.  The snow will be gone as quickly as it came!

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We had some LA (and one NYC) folk come visit us…Benny, Timmy, Judy, Anna, Jeff, and Stephen.  For a very full week, life was one spontaneously fun blast of games, good food, great company, and of course…prayer room time.  For some reason, none of us really took out our cameras to document our week…so be forewarned…these are some random pictures.

A few hours BEFORE any of them arrived in person, FedEx arrived with a really ‘happy’ looking package labeled “King Cake”.  It turns out Benny was behind this delivery, the New Orleans native insisted we try this Mardi Gras mainstay.  Here is Noah ‘helping’ with the frosting and sprinkles.  Cake was great!…like a frosted, colorful Cinnabon.

Game time.  Bop It Pass showdown.  Stephen vs. Bekah.

Good job Stephen…you won.  Haha!

With the same game face intensity…Judy goes head to head with Noah.  Uno!

No games for this one…but let me tell you, she is JUST fine with that.  With everyone else so busy competing against each other, Meghan took FULL LIBERTY in helping herself to ALL the snacks laid out on the table.  Yum!

It was so fun to see Anna and Meghan interact…literally, 2 little people learning about each other.

Enough with the indoor games…let’s head outside!  In spite of the relatively great weather…it was still cold to go out.  That’s Meghan and Anna bundled against the cold.

We all took the nearby nature trail.  Not the whole thing…just far enough to get to the playground.  Somehow, our group of 30-something-adults, ended up playing Freeze Tag!  In and out of the jungle gym, up and down the ladders, it was so much fun.  Short though…the adults couldn’t go more than 2 rounds.

Group Insanity!

It was so good of you all to come.  We miss you already!

admin Life In The Midwest

Happy 3rd Birthday Sarah!

Here she is, getting ready to manhandle this pinata!

Sarah got a couple of good hits in…but it took the combined efforts of her siblings and friends to take this cupcake down.  In the end (not surprisingly so), it was Samuel how took it down!

Then, with the sugar buzz of the cupcakes, as well as the candy from the pinata…a wrestling match started up.

This would be…the two Maas boys, the two Yap boys, the Young boy, my boy…and Rebekah!?

Meghan…surveying the damaged pinata, hoping to come across some unclaimed candy.

We also had the two youngest Maas kids over for a sleepover.  Here are the girls in matching ‘hot chocolate’ pj’s…drinking hot chocolate!  How perfect is that?

The boys drinking and making funny faces.  What you don’t see here is Noah spilling his entire hot chocolate on Perazim, ruining his comfortable looking pj’s.

Noah got his first nerf gun.  Here’s the range…including guns, ammo, targets, score card, and boundary lines.

Em also made Rice Crispy Treats with some of the kids.

And finally SPEED.  We taught the Maas kids how to play speed.  Here they are, squaring off.

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Some people LOVE to to ice skate.  I actually, am not very fond of it.  Ever since the first time I went in Junior High…I disliked it, and have since dread it every time it comes up. My kids have never gone…and I fear the day they find out it actually exists and that they might like it.  It’s cold.  I have to wear a stranger’s shoe, that hurts.  It hurts when you fall.  I have NO balance for it…and apparently EVERY other person has great balance for it…because they are wizzing and whirling past me!  I’m the ONLY person on the rink that has trouble going straight and stopping…and I hold onto the side the ENTIRE time.

And so in our home…we have carpet skating.  Warm.  No painful gross shoes.  Doesn’t hurt when you fall!  Here’s Noah in the same position as his snowboarding moose in his pajamas.  We bought some furniture slides to help us move furniture around more easily.  They are foam padded on one side, and a super slick plastic on the other.  You put them under the four legs of a dresser or table and you can effortlessly slide around the heaviest piece of furniture.  Incredible!  I’m not sure which of our kids found this out…but with the right amount of balance, you can stand on them and they make great ‘carpet skates’!

What’s this?  This is funny placement for a cushioned chair.  It almost looks like a climbing apparatus to get INTO bed…an ingenious way for Meghan to climb herself in.  If that’s what you were thinking…wrong.

It’s actually quite the opposite.  It’s so she doesn’t break her face (or something else) on her way out!  About a week ago, we left Meghan to put herself to sleep.  A little bit of crying…and then a loud ‘thump’.  The crying changed a little in pitch, and the next thing we knew…the little rascal was walking around her room!  She had climbed up and fallen out of her crib!  So sad.  Well…at least she’ll learn that isn’t the way to get out.  Nothing like experiential learning…right?

If only it were that easy.  The last few days have shown a side of Meghan that is a bit scary to look into!  She has since ‘fallen’ out of her crib several times.  We’ve found her in our room.  One time, Emily caught her in the act, climbing, scaling, swinging one leg over.  And you know what?…she’s not falling by accident.  She’s calculating…assessing risk, doing cost/benefit analysis.  She is looking at the fall, gauging the distance, remember her freedom…if she can just endure the fall, steel herself for the impact, and then gather herself back up…she’s free.  Crazy!  What kind of 1 year old stares pain, injury, and fear of falling in the face…and then heads right into it!  Hands down…crazier than her brother at this age.

I put this cushioned chair here to ‘break’ her fall!  Hopefully she’ll just launch herself onto this and ‘tumble’ down.  Yeah…not the best solution.  There is still so much that can go wrong.  Busted nose on the changing table.  Split lip on the crib.  Bruised eye on one of her toys.  OK!…fine, she wins.  At 15 months old, Meghan has forced the issue and won.  She officially graduated herself out of the confines of a crib, and into the freedom of a toddler bed.

Look at this freedom!  Getting in and out whenever she wants?!

Let’s try this…

…or maybe this…

…finally…asleep.

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