New News - Probably Not...

well as I try to enter back into blogging I am starting out small...

most of this is probably not new news to anyone but just in case...
to begin to answer the question "what in the world have we been up to?"
*Baby Girl Shepherd #4 is well on her way.  We are 28+ weeks.  I will try to write several posts for/about her later, but for now here is out biggest "deal" with her: At our 18 week sono they discovered that I have a full placenta previa.  Big bummer. Tomorrow we go in to see if it has moved.  Please pray that it has because I am tired of worrying about it :)

*Baby Boy Shepherd is now growing in our hearts.  Much much will be written about this later, but the very short of it is that we are planning to start the process to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia in about a year. (See the last post I wrote last fall to see warnings on starting to read Katie's blog.  Some of you may have guessed this would happen when you read that, but honestly when I wrote that post I had no idea that would even be considering adoption.)

*We also have done many other things not related to having a larger family. :) 
This week our big fun is that we are finalizing plans for our church's first marriage retreat this weekend.  We really felt like this was a need in our church and you know what happens when you see a need, right?  You are the one who gets to fill it!  This has been so much fun for us as we have been able to plan it with 2 other couples who we love and will take any excuse to spend more time with. We have found ourselves in the somewhat self-appointed roles of planning the sessions (which we of course call Club (a la Young Life style)), hospitality - including a fun evening tonight of hitting up Sam's, Dillons, Target, Party City and Walgreens looking for clearance Valentine's chocolates (which there were none of - anywhere.) among other interesting items, and door prize coordinator (not my favorite role, but it will be worth it to surprise the couple with super fun prizes!).  Oh and lastly Matt will be playing the role of Hanz - of Hanz and Franz - coordinators of the Love Olympics.  We also get to host the speakers who are a very amazing couple and I CANNOT wait to get to hang out with them - by the end of the weekend everyone will be jealous that we will get to spend so much time with them!!! :)

And a picture to play catch up because there is no way I will go back and write posts about things we have done in the last few months, but I may be able to stick in a pic here and there.

So may I re-introduce you to Rapunzel (Macy), Kitty Cat (Kate) and Baby Bee (LuLu).