A Music Box, Fake Camera Smiles, and Playing Orphanage

We gave Little Girl a jewelry box for her birthday, the kind that plays music with the ballerina that twirls around when you open the lid.  She loved it!  Pure joy opening and closing the lid over and over again!

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Speaking of Little Girl, lately whenever you ask her to "smile for the camera", this is the face she makes:

All squinty-eyed and grimacing more like she's in pain than happy.

It took a lot of coaching to finally get this:

Our family portrait session in a few weeks ought to be fun!

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I walked into our playroom earlier this week and found this extraordinary mess:

 "What?"  My daughters asked me when they saw the look on my face.  "We are playing orphanage," they told me.

Then I noticed the mess was rows and rows of baby dolls with blankets and pillows.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry!  

My girls know orphanages.  One daughter lived in them for 14 months and the other daughter has visited 6 different orphanages in the past 2 years.

This burden, this heart for orphans that we carry as a family is not always pretty or storybook fantasy.  But, my kids know this reality and they also know the hope of a really big God who promises not to leave us as orphans, but He will come to us (John 14:18)!  May those little girls playing "Orphanage" in my playroom grow up to be world changers!

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Our family is participating in a Run for Hope this weekend to raise money to fund other people's adoptions.  There is also the cool aspect that we'll get to see many kids who were adopted and their families at the race and the families of adoption wear different colored shirts than the other participants in the race, so kids get a good visual for how many other kids were adopted like they were.  I believe there is a lot of power in not feeling alone in a situation.

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Have a Beautiful Weekend!

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