Olivia and Annabella's Birthdays

We wanted to share some of the birthday fun in our house over the last six months. Yes, you read that right....we have been a little busy, but we still wanted to share the pictures with you all.

February 21st...Olivia's fourth birthday

We had our good friends the Stewart family and Megan over for a birthday celebration. We had Cincinnati chili for dinner.
One of our girl's favorite meals!

Olivia wanted a Cinderella castle cake this year

Pure excitement!

Yummy!

Our second birthday girl was Annabella on June 16th. She turned three.

We turned her party into a college ministry night. Olivia and Annabella were the only kids in a room full of college students. They loved every bit of the attention!

Since we only had adults, the girls were able to win all of the games!

Yes, my sweet girl chose a dragon cake

She was totally in love with her cake. Over the next couple days after the party, she kept running up to the cake calling it her, "Birthday party!" She was so sad when it was all gone saying that she had lost her birthday party.

We are so thankful for these little girls and for the friends that God has put into our lives to celebrate with us. God is so good!

Aunt Molly with us for 6 weeks

We were so blessed to have Aunt Molly stay with us for six weeks this spring. Here are a few pictures from her trip.

The excited nieces and nephew

Molly even mastered the art of holding a baby and eating with chopsticks!

Molly was so brave...she was always willing to try new foods!

Fun at the Chiba zoo

This was by far Calvin's favorite position! He definitely misses this!

Silly girls

So Sweet!

This was Molly's sixteenth birthday cake.
It was such fun to make it together!

Molly made many friends here. Many people were sad to see her go.

Molly actually was the first in our family to meet a Sumo wrestler!
Go Molly!


Molly, thank you for coming to Japan. Thank you for serving our family in such amazing ways...getting up with the girls in the morning, washing dishes, holding a fussy Calvin, and the list could go on and on.
We love you! The Pfeil clan

Baby Calvin - growing up!

Here's Calvin, all grown up at almost 3 months old! He is such a sweet little man, and we are so blessed to have him in our family. He has been a good sleeper, and pretty flexible with all that we have going on. Oh, and he just laughed out loud for the first time today! We all love him so much. It is really cute to hear Annabella say to him in the morning, "Heh-woah shun-shine boy"! :)



Here is Calvin showing of his dance moves, with a little jig ...

Summer Teams: PCPC

Our final team from America this summer was the 20+ group from Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) in Dallas. Five people returned from last year's trip, plus four more, made quite a big group this year!
They had a running commentary of their trip on their blog, 20PlusJapan08. Check it out for some interesting stories.

The members of the PCPC team did a great job of engaging students in a personal way, helping us establish current relationships as well as make new student contacts.

Their big event of the week was a "Texas Night" party at Oyumino Chapel. We had a mix of students, church friends, and PCPC team members adding up to 32 people. We ate taco salad, played "chubby bunnies", heard a testimony from a PCPC member, and learned some line dancing. It was quite a festive night, and capped off a week of lots of contact time with college students.


The day the PCPC team was leaving for the airport, three Japanese college students showed up and presented each of them with personal gifts to take home. I have never seen this level of gratitude for a short-term team before, and clearly showed how much love the PCPC team shared with the students all week. God definitely uses short-term teams for His glory!