The family increases

Well, Erik and I have some news. Our family has grown and we have decided to adopt a little girl born in Lithuania who goes by the name of Ieva! What do you think about that? As you can see from the photo, she and Erik get along quite well and spend their time running around together being each others' best playmate. :)

Actually, the true story is that the the adoption is NOT official. Our family has not actually increased in size since our arrival in Klaipeda. It IS true that Erik's best friend here is a 4-year old charming girl named Ieva.

Ieva (pronounced Ye-va) is the daughter of Kim and Andrew Stave, who have both worked at LCC for the last 7 years. Ieva is their oldest child and their son, Isak, was born in the middle of this last June. The Stave's have welcomed us to the LCC community here by offering a home off-campus to visit, where we have made meals together and shared our weekends exploring the city. We appreciate this friendship that has developed so quickly and naturally. It's fun for us to spend time with a couple that brings their kids into the fun that is already happening and are still able to be present with others too. The feelings between Ieva and Erik are mutual and there is nobody that can capture Ieva's attention the way Erik can. I know that Erik is used to being "Mr. Fun" and/or a mobile jungle gym when my cousins are around, so this is helping him stay in practice while we are away from close family for now. We miss you, Wees'.

Yesterday we explored south of the downtown area with the Stave's for a couple of hours. We bought a week's worth of fresh fruit and vegetables from a variety of stands at the local market. Then Kim and Andrew drove us out of town and we headed to Palanga, which is a city on the coast 25 km north of us. Kim's parents are in town visiting for the month and volunteered to babysit the kids. The four of us stopped in a linen store before strolling the boardwalk out to the beach to take in the sea view out on the pier. The night ended with dinner at HBH, which kind of reminded us of a Chucky Cheese meets Disney World, complete with rope courses and a full outdoor basketball court in the middle of the restaurant complex. Well, I wanted to make sure we were introducing some of our new friends. We hope you get to meet them yourself when you come visit us!