Displaying content from many pages on home page

I’m modifying twentyeleven showcase template and got stuck in one place.
What I’m trying to achieve is to have a horizontal bar under the banner containing the Intro, showcase slideshow and contact form – this part works.
Underneath this I want to display several boxes with content coming from other static pages, and simply can’t get it to work the way I want.
I’m using the following code to call the pages:

<?php
$mypages = get_pages( array( 'sort_column' => 'post_date', 'sort_order' => 'desc' ) );
foreach( $mypages as $page ) {
		$content = $page->post_content;
		if ( ! $content ) // Check for empty page
			continue;
		$content = apply_filters( 'the_content', $content );
	?>
		<article id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class( 'more' ); ?>>
		<h1><a href="<?php echo get_page_link( $page->ID ); ?>"><?php echo $page->post_title; ?></a></h1>
		<div class="entry-content"><?php echo $content; ?></div>
		</article>
	<?php
	}
?>

This is actually taken from the get_pages codex, with removed child_of parameter and adjusted containers. How can I specify just a few pages to be displayed? Right now all the pages are displayed. If I leave the child_of no pages are displayed in turn.

Thanks for help.