Hello from California, the Golden State!  

This is Terri Ben Ami writing!  I pray and hope this finds you all well.  We are busier than ever:  we have added two children to our growing family: we now have seven children (six living, one in Heaven).  Our children are now 12 (Nashi Danielle, who lives with Jesus, in Heaven), 11 (Hyman Benjamin and Alyssa Grace), 7 (Wallace), 5 (Mordechai Daniel),  3 (Owen Jonathan), and 1 1/2 (Piper Corinthe).  

Between running the foundation we started for children with neurodegenerative diseases (Nashi's Hope; we lost our daughter, Nashi Danielle, three years ago, when she was nine, to Canavan disease), raising our family, and helping out with church/temple duties (we are Messianic Jews: we believe in both the Chriistian and Jewish faith), and so forth, what free time we do have is very limited.  It is still a life I wouldn't trade for anything!

The weather here in Sacramento has been quite hot (as it has across a good deal of the country).  The kids have been spending a lot of the time in the pool we purchased last year (as have Tovah and myself) when family and church/temple duties don't take precedence.  We did have some terrible storms the other night; we thought for a while we were going to have a tornado or two.  We had very heavy rains, small hail (pea to quarter size), and lots of wind, thunder, and lightning.

 In fact, we just got our power back on today; we had to spend a day and a half at my sister's place up the road a piece.  It was really bad!

Anyway, back to our two newest children.  We adopted Owen last year from Haiti and Piper six months ago from China.  They are beautiful!  Piper has Down syndrome and was born with a cleft palate (since repaired), as well as heart issues; as for Owen, he has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair (they don't know if he will walk one day, but we are hopeful that one day he will).  

They have adapted well to our family unit, and the kids just love them to pieces!  We love them too; we cannot imagine our life without Owen or Piper!

The children have been enjoying theit time off from homeschool, but in a few weeks, it starts back up again, so they'd better get in plenty of play time while they still can.  I have already gotten their school supplies at a discount price and cannnot wait for them to start hitting the books again!  I have been enjoying my time off from teaching and every month, the homeschool group I belong to get together for movies, trips to Disneyland, the Sacramento Zoo, and even lunch dates.  Of course, the children come along too; that way they can see their friends and have a good time.

The homeschool group has accepted Piper and Owen without any problems; the homeschool kids, meanwhile, see another opportunity to make new friends, so it all works out great!

Well, Tovah and I are going to take the kids swimming, so I'd best sign off of here and get them ready.  I will try to do better in keeping you all informed as to what is going on in our lives; please forgive me for the long delay in my writing.  I hope you understand.  Until later, this is Terri Ben Ami saying Yeshua bless; take care!

~Love, your friend in California, Terri Ruth.  :)

P.S.: If anybody wants to know, yes, we still miss Nashi very much.  She will always be a part of our family; she will never be forgotten and will live on in our hearts.  This is why we started the foundation, to keep her memory alive, and to help/counsel other families who may be going through the same thing we did when our daughter was still alive.