A Chip Off the [Young] Block

We took some time to enjoy our outing to Joe's Farm Grill (see below) by walking around the surrounding farm. In the process, we stumbled upon a nice little park that the girls just couldn't resist. Baby Brooke may not be walking yet, but that didn't stop her from enjoying the climbing wall! The real treasure in this photo, of course, is seeing where Brooke got her beauty from!

Reconnecting

Our good friend and former teammate, Kathy, has been visiting with us for a couple of days during her 1-month hiatus from her new home in Turkey. Yesterday's 111-degree heat subsided enough that we decided to cruise on out Joe's Farm Grill. The other night, we had the cooking channel on and saw them reviewing a unique diner-type place. The food sounded amazing. A few minutes later we heard them mention that it was in Gilbert, AZ of all places! Turns out it is just 5 miles away, so we couldn't pass up the chance to check it out. We can vouch for the food, much of which is grown on the adjoining farm. What made the evening, though, was the chance to get some time to hang with Kathy. As you can see below, 10-month-old Brooke seemed to enjoy the reunion, as well!

Never a Dull Moment

We like to joke about there never being a dull moment in the Stoops' household. Well, another thing that apparently was not so dull was the glass that sliced & diced 10-month-old Brooke's hand last week...

Grace (almost 3 years old now) had been battling a persistent fever that she couldn't seem to shake, so we set up an apptmt to see the pediatrician. Just as Brad & Grace were pulling into the parking lot, the phone rang. Propitious timing, as it was Janelle phoning to tell Brad that Brooke had just gotten a bad cut and was bleeding badly. Walking into the doctor's office, Brad called for a nurse, who then talked to Janelle about what had happened while he was signing Grace in. Discovering that a bandaid was not a workable solution to this crisis, Brad put Grace's apppmt on hold, rushed back to the car, and headed for home. Once there, he & Grace picked up Janelle, Chloe & Brooke (Ellie was at school) and headed immediately to a nearby pediatric emergency care facility with Janelle holding a towel around Brooke's wrist to slow the bleeding. As we'd already realized, immobilizing a baby can be a challenge; it took a couple of hours with Brad assisting the 2 doctors as they cleaned Brooke's wounds and stitched her up (living in Central Asia provided great expreience for dealing with these type of situations). Praise God - no apparent damage to nerves or ligaments.

Once she was stitched up, Brooke seemed none the worse for the experience. As if to declare her disgust at being immobilized during the ordeal, she finally started crawling later that day. The ways she's going, she might punctuate the removal of her stitches later this week with her first steps...!

Grace's health also improved enough later that day that she enjoyed sneaking into our room to play dress-up with Janelle's jewelry, which she climbed on top of a dresser to reach. Discovering they were missing, Janelle's first thought was maybe they went down the kitchen drain, or got lost in the washing machine. Then she remembered, "Of course! I'm the mother of a 2-year-old!" After a very frantic night and day of scouring the house (including sorting through the garbage & recycling bins), we were very relieved to finally find Janelle's wedding rings safely tucked inside the hidden pocket of a play purse under her sister's bed. One side benefit of all this was the intensive spring cleaning that the situation mandated (if you're ever lacking motivation to clean and organize your house top to bottom, consider giving something very valuable to your 2-year-old...).

As we said, there's never a dull moment in the Stooops' house!