we recently received a care package... if you can call it that... from some friends in Arizona. What an amazing... i mean amazing!... blessing it was to receive that! It was definitely like an early Christmas. They sent two big ol' boxes of lovin' from the land o' plenty (America). Here... just check it out for yourselves:

Landon trying to get into Josiah's bassinet.




















Some friends of ours were very gracious to us and gave us their swing. Landon came into our room one morning and decided that mommy needed her pillow so he went out to get it. It was already with mommy so when he didn't find and didn't return I figured I should go find him... to make sure he wasn't playing with knives or anything. I went out to find this scene.



















Yvonne made this very nice cake for my big 3-0.














A friend of ours bought me this cake for my birthday. Sarcasm just isn't understood here. For example... people will ask me where I am from and I'll tell them that I am American. After that I will ask them where they are from. It is obvious that they're from this country but I'll ask them and then tell them that I think they look german... they usually give me a funny look like i'm crazy and then they tell me that they're locals. I tell them that I am joking and they kind of sheepishly giggle. Another example is when we were in a cab and a guy cut us off and was driving kinda crazy. I told my taxi drive that the driver was really smart... to which he looked at me funny and said, "no, he is stupid!" He just didn't understand the sarcasm. So anyway the point of this story. Many months ago we met a friend here that understands and uses sarcasm. She bought me this cake which says in Arabic, "happy birthday, you jerk!". Haha... the bakery gave her such a hard time saying that she couldn't do that and that it was shameful. She told them the cake was for her brother and it was a joke. Nobody at the bakery understood but hey... I sure appreciate unleashing my sarcasm on her.





























Bathtime fun...



















We went to a big Christmas bazaar here. There was a big playground and landon had a great time.






















































And of course we enjoyed getting our picture taken with Santa. He makes a special trip to the middle east every year for this shin-dig.

life with the newborn josiah has not afforded us much sleep. not to use that as an excuse for not blogging... well nevermind... that is my excuse for not blogging. if you don't like it... tough!

i'm not sorting them in order or anything but here are some new pics of Josiah... a.k.a. "jojo", a.k.a. "siah", a.k.a. "j-dawg"







































































man... that's cute!






















































These are some friends of ours... Hani, his wife Odette, their daughter, Toota, and their son David.


















Josiah is just chillin'

nana is gone... we had such a good time with her here. what a blessing it was!
here are some pics from her stay with us :)







































































































































































































bye bye nana...
love you!

yvonne is really creative and got some amazing shots of Landon wrapped in white sheets. she did the same thing with Josiah... here are some cute shots from it...

this outfit is a semmens' family tradition. my brother was the first to wear it almost 33 years ago. of course i got it as a hand-me-down.

somehow it was kept through the years so when my brother started having kids they started wearing it too. His sons Brennen, Ethan, Nathan and Jaden have all worn it. Landon was born in between Nathan and Jaden so we had to have it shipped out to us in Texas so that he could wear it. We then shipped it back on word that another Semmens was on the way so that Jaden could wear it. Since Yvonne's mom was coming out my mom had it shipped out to her mom and she carried it with her way out our way so that Josiah could wear it. It has now been worn by 8 Semmens boys spanning nearly 33 years!

a friend of yvonne's mama made these outfits for the boys... Landon is Buzz Lightyear and Josiah is a motionless bear with an occasional high pitched roar.

























































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the title says enough... man that last roar is hilarious! his facial expressions crack us up big time...