Long time, no see!

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long! We've just been busy and my computer is running slowly lately, which makes posting a bigger task than it should be!
Anyway, we've had a great week. Last week we played lots and lots with friends.
Among other things, Amos has made friends with the really cool stuffed owl our friend Megan Martin made him. He's enjoyed writing and drawing on our easel (and has been so great with not drawing on the walls!). We tried painint on the sidewalk with water (which we greatly enjoyed!) and he's really enjoyed playing with Eli.
We had our first small group meeting at our house last Wednesday and it was wonderful. Each week, we'll host a dinner and discussion with the same group of people that we go to church with. We did another meeting tonight and it was great. We are excited to open our home each week and get to know people in our church better.
On Friday, we went to the great Holliday park up north and met a new friend and her mom. Amos learned alot about sharing last week and at the park, he shared his bulldozer and dump truck with a nice little girl and even though it was a bit tough for him, he got through it and practiced more sharing!
He's been sitting on the potty a whole lot and occassionally will go number 1 and number 2. Lately, it's just been number 1 but that's still exciting. And yes, I've taken pictures of him sitting on his little throne but I hesitate to post them for fear of getting in trouble with someone, anyone!
So Friday, afternoon, as he was sitting on his little potty, things in that department didn't look quite right and I suspected an infection. After a call to our pediatrician, a visit to our other pediatrician's house and a stop at the urgent care clinic, it was confirmed that Amos did have an infection, but it wasn't as bad as we thought, so that was good. He's been on an antibiotic and was on the mend by Saturday morning.
Speaking of Saturday morning, I got to sleep in and woke up to breakfast, complete with coffee and waffles. Nathan brought Amos up, too, in his highchair and we enjoyed eating together upstairs. To continue our day of fun, we shopped at Old Navy and came back for lunch and a nap. The spoiling continued, with Nathan cooking dinner for us that night.
Sunday after church, we got to video Skype with Dan, Beth and Eli in Malawi. (Amos loves doing Skype--as soon as we hung up from Dan and Beth, he wanted to see Abby! So they had a video conference a few nights ago and he loved it!)
It was soooo wonderful to see them! Amos loves looking at their pictures and saying their names. Also on Sunday, we received free tickets to the Irish festival. We went after nap and had a pretty fun time. We took Eli with us and I think he was a bit bored by it all, but enjoyed watching us celebrate our Irish-ness! Since we had fish 'n' chips there last year, we went this year all excited to get our fix. For some reason, unknown to us, we couldn't find one vendor selling our desired dish. So since we bought a whole bunch of food tickets, we ended up eating Guiness-soaked brats, Irish-cooked potatoes and Guiness. For dessert, we had an Irish Coffee with Baileys.
After the festival, we visited the fire trucks and walked along the canal.
After dinner, we had a jam session, having figured out Outkast's "Hey Ya!"-- Eli pretended to play the bass, I played Amos' guitar and Amos played his shovel guitar. Much fun was had!

This week has been pretty full already. I've given lots of haircuts to our smaller friends before their picture day today. Amos has continued to perfect his counting, eat his fat and calories and practice his gymnastics. Our group tonight was great again, and I broke out my chili recipe in hopes of enticing cold weather to our corner of the midwest by cooking cold weather food. I don't think it worked--we'll still have some warm weather this week, but I think it's coming soon!
Tomorrow we get to play with more friends and on Friday, we have a trip to the apple orchard planned with the Berends!