New Babies

 And then there were 5!  All the "cousins" as we call them, Daniel, holding baby Caleb, Connie, Nathanael holding the pillow with baby Cyrus on it, and Jedidiah in the yellow shirt. 

Caleb and Cyrus are "twinning" from two different sides of the Atlantic, and two different hemispheres.  Cyrus is on a pillow Joy gave us. 

 Caleb Seth Young got a special birthday 02/02/2020 and a big welcome from his family!  I found his birthing long and stressful. I'm not cut out to be a midwife, but he did have a safe home delivery with minimal interference from the midwife. 

 The "cousins" enjoyed the broom challenge.

 Connie's 9 now, old enough to be a big help with her fourth brother. 

 Caleb was not troubled by his first trip to church.  Nor was he particularly impressed that his great uncle Paul was the preacher. 

 Jedidiah is now 4, and suddenly not the baby of the family any more, but he's intrigued by his baby brother and very loving. 

 Great Uncle Paul prayed a blessing over baby Caleb.  He's been born into a fun family, and will be trained to serve the Lord. 

A month later we had the loss of our  11 1/2 year old dog Berwick.  Berwick was a good, faithful dog in these last years.   She was a beautiful German Shepherd, named after South Berwick, Maine, where Paul and I first met. 

We could see that she was aging, as she began having trouble climbing the 17 steps into our home.  We knew the end wouldn't be years away, but was coming sometime.  Unfortunately, I pinched her front leg with the car one day.  She seemed to recover from that, but then a few days later, her back legs just didn't work.  It seemed too soon as she was still so pretty and had such a good disposition, but we had to let her go.

We were dogless for 6 days.  We were planning to leave for a missions trip on April first so it would not have been a good time for a puppy, but that Corona virus was changing everything.  Lock-down was announced for the whole country of South Africa beginning at midnight on March 26th.  We decided that a lock down was a good time to bond with a new puppy and begin training. 

Gallup is our new little puppy!  She is 9 weeks old.  We named her Gallup after Gallup, NM, where our first child, Evangel, was born.  Update: She was not 9 weeks old. She actually shared a birthday with Caleb, the 2nd of February.  

See the watch?  She's a watch dog in the making.  We're finding her not only terribly cute, but smart too.  And she's giving me good exercise!  We live up 17 steps, and trotting her up and down is going to keep me from atrophying during this lock-down. 

Aunt Grace's visit was another highlight since we've been back.  Nathanael and Connie pose with her in Simon's Town, South Africa.  Times may be tough, but new babies are hope personified.