It's a boy!

Hi, this is Joey posting for Dani. She's in the hospital and there is no internet access there. She wanted you all to know though that everything went well. Benson Ezekiel Easley was born November 9th at 8:30 am in Rabat via c-section. He weighed 3580 g (about 7lb 14 oz) and was 53 cm (about 21 inches) long. Benson is eating well, and Dani will get to eat normal food for dinner tonight. We're not sure who he looks like yet, so if you have any ideas let us know. It's definitely different giving birth in a foreign country - Dani has done extremely well though it hasn't been easy. Thank you all for your prayers and support.

What's this?


A baby brother!


Can I hold him... pleeeease?

Happy Birthday Kallen!!

Today is my nephews Kallen's birthday! He is 2 years old! We wish we could be there to celebrate the big day with him, but life being what it is we'll just have to send him a birthday greeting from across the globe.

unfortunately our hard drive crashed so I lost all my pictures of Kallen, luckily I could steal this one from my sisters blog. Thanks Kate.

Happy Birthday Kallen, I hope you have a great day! We love you and miss you!!!

Family Time

In a couple days Baby #2 is set to arrive. It is pretty crazy and exciting. It is weird to know the time of most likely arrival of this little one. It is nice that we don't know what the sex of the baby is so that we can have at least one surprise!

One special treat of having another baby is my mom has crossed the ocean to help Joey and I with baby #2 and Josiah. This is the first time she has really left the country other than a few quick trips to Canada and Mexico. It is so great that she has come. Josiah LOVES her and is enjoying getting to know her.


We've gone to a few local markets, made some cookies and just relaxed together. Its so much fun to catch up on life in the states and to show her a bit of life for us here. In a week or so my dad and brother will be joining us for two weeks. It will be great to show them life here as well. I am looking forward to having them all here together.

What a blessing to get to have family here. I LOVE IT!!!

Baby Update

Just wanted to let you know. We went to the Dr. today and things are looking good. The baby is about 7 lbs right now and we have scheduled a c-section for 8am, Friday, November 9th. It is so weird to know when this baby is going to arrive. Assuming of course that God doesn't bless us with a surprise sometime before then - which could happen and make everything a little more exciting :-)

My Mom arrives on Thursday to help us take care of Josiah and to be here to help with the new little one. I am SO excited to have her come. She has never traveled overseas and here she comes all by herself. I am SO proud of her for making the trip. You can pray she has safe travels and lots of blessing.

We will fill you in on anymore details and happenings that come this way involving chunk #2. I am so anxious to meet him or her!!!

Its all about communication

Like many parents these days we decided to try and teach Josiah how to say some words using sign language. It was our hope that communication could consist of more than tears and frustration for all of us.

Well, we decided to really push saying "please". Other things we worked on too, but not as diligently. The appropriate sign for please is rubbing your hand on your chest in a slow circular manner. We did this over and over again. Before he got to eat more food, before he got a drink, before we would pick him up, before anything we practiced saying please.

Somehow our incredibly smart son decided he wanted to create his own version of sign language. Who knew he would be so innovative. Somehow Josiah transferred our hand rubbing on our chests to his right ear. Yep, thats right he rubs his ear, quite quickly in order to communicate please. It is great, and super cute. The only issue is when he eats spaghetti or cake with loads of frosting and suddenly whatever he ate for dinner is in his hair.

We still have to smile as he says please. It is just TOO cute. Now that we've gotten "please" down, or at least understandable, we are working on some other words. It is so much fun to watch him communicate with us. He is really the smartest kid alive. No, I'm not biased at all :-)


Here are some action shots of him saying please, isn't he cute!

The Chunk Turns One!

Today is Josiah's first birthday. I can't believe that my little chubby "bump" is so grown up.

a few hours old

He is so much fun to watch and play with. I love watching him grow and learn new things. He is always so curious to see what is happening around him. He loves watching people and animals. He really loves his Daddy too. He is always pretending to talk to him on the phone and during the day he asks me where he is. When Joey comes home Josiah usually goes crawling towards him super excited.

The big one-year-old


Today we took it easy lounging around the house and taking some one year old pictures. Then we had a little birthday party with homemade tortillas and all the burrito fixin's. In my family there is a tradition that on a kiddo's first birthday they get their own cake. Well Josiah wasn't too sure about the whole thing at first, I don't think he could believe that we were actually giving him such a big piece of cake. Once he figured out that we were serious he dove right in.

Is this really for me?

Happy Birthday Chunk. I love you!!!

Fruit Snacks!!!

It is pomegranate season here and we are loving the yummy fruit. It took us a while to figure out exactly how to get into these things but once we did we found that they were full of little "fruit snacks"




Josiah Especially loves them!