A Time of Thanks

Some of the things I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for a wonderful family

Supportive and caring friends

Our home that keeps us warm at night

A free country and all of the servicemen who are fighting for our freedom, including my Uncle who won't get to spend the holiday's with his family this year

My health and my families health

Being able to adopt Esther, Emma and now Asher

Having sisters.. right now we fight all the time but I know one day we will be so glad we have each other

For the nannies in China who have and will continue to care for Asher until we can bring him home

Coffee.. can't make it through my mornings without it!

For my parents who work so hard to provide us with a good life and education

A wonderful and caring Father, because we wouldn't be anywhere without Him

And, thinking of my sister Kayla.. the poor turkey who had to die so we could enjoy him tomorrow! (Kayla's one of those future PETA members!)

And, I'm thankful for the life I've been given and for all of my talents and goals I hope to pursue in the future


On Thanksgiving, we usually have a few traditions that consist of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while peeling apples for applesauce, naming the turkey.. those sort of things. This will be Esther's first thanksgiving, so we are very thankful for having her home, and also thankful that we have one more waiting for us at the moment in China.

There are so many things I'm thankful for this year that it's hard to remember them all. On my mind is the fact that we are so blessed to be able to live in a free country and have Thanksgiving. This past Sunday, we took part in a food drive with our church and delivered a complete Thanksgiving meal for a family in need. It was humbling to think about the fact that there are some families in our own town that won't be able to enjoy tasty chicken, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. I'm thankful that we have a wonderful Lord and Savior who gives us all of these blessings and I pray that he brings comfort to those who can't experience this holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday weekend!!


"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His love endures FOREVER!" Psalm 118:1

I didn't think this had a chance.. But

I took this picture back in June (You can look back in the June Archives under "Popsicles on a Rainy Day") and submitted it along with a few other pictures to Love Without Boundaries for their 2nd Love's Journey book. The first Love's Journey is a wonderful book filled with pictures of children from China, writings, poems and essays from adoptive parents. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen and whenever it's out on our coffee table, it's always a favorite. I would highly reccommend checking out Love Without Boundaries website to see if you can purchase a copy of the book. It's $50, but ALL of the money goes towards heart surgeries, foster care and nutrition programs for children in China. There's a link to LWB on my sidebar, so be sure to check it out.

Anyways, this picture was chosen to appear in Love's Journey 2!! I don't know when LJ2 is expected to be printed, but we're excited to see that the girls will be featured in it!!

Visiting with Santa Clause

We decided to beat the holiday traffic and took the girls to visit Santa Clause today. Esther was so excited and when it was her turn, she ran over to Santa Clause and went to sit on his lap. She and Emma were so cute together!!

Here are some pictures:

Hold on a second.. we need to get into our poses!

Ian, Emma, Santa Clause & Esther

New pose.. same people

The girls telling Santa Clause what they want for Christmas.. a Cinderella Castle, Dora the Explorer things, and a brother from China!

"I want Asher from China!"

Santa looks a bit perplexed at how he can give these cute little girls a brother from China!

And then Ian also asked Santa Clause for a brother.. along with asking for some sort of new game/ipod he wants..

Santa Clause was so relieved to hear we were adopting a brother from China and that he wouldn't have to bring one and sit him under the tree on Christmas Eve!!

Notice Anything New??

Look to your right.. on the sidebar.. under "Our Blogs"

=)

Cute Sister Moments

A Swim in November

Esther thought it might be fun to try swimming in the middle of November.

Oooooo! It's really cold!


Maybe I'll try to go in a little further...


Wow.. This is cold!!


Sera told me to get my hair wet. She thought it would be funny to see if I would actually jump into the water and get my whole head wet! She's silly! I made her think I jumped in by pouring water on my head. Hah! And she thought I had actually jumped in!



I didn't have my camera on, but just a few moments later dad "accidentally" helped her into the water. She thought that was funny, and we were all laughing.

Family FotoFun Friday Challenges 5 & 6

Last week's challenge was hats! Here's Esther modeling a cute pink cowgirl hat. She makes quite a cute cowgirl!!






And this week's challenge was Crybabies! I usually delete any pictures I have of the girls crying because I wouldn't think anyone would want to see them! But, yesterday the girls had some Crybaby moments, so I grabbed the camera! Esther is crying because she had just woken up from her nap. Sometimes she will come downstairs once she is awake, but other times she prefers to sit and scream until someone comes to get her. And Emma started crying while we were on the boat and a capri sun pouch flew out as we were going. Not sure why she started crying when it flew out since there was nothing in it, but it proved a perfect picture opportunity!!

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge from http://www.2happy.typepad.com

REFERRAL!!

Just kidding! No, we're not adopting again, but this morning we received news from my aunt & uncle that they got their referral!! They started the adoption process in March, after being inspired by us adopting Emma & Esther.

We're still waiting for more details but what we do know is that she is a beautiful 2 1/2 year old little girl. She is a waiting child just like Esther was, and her special need has already been repaired.

We couldn't be any happier! Esther and Emma will have a cousin close to their age who is from China, just like they are. Hopefully once we get pictures, I'll be able to post them here.

Our new cousin should be coming home in February!

Congratulations Uncle Mau, Aunt Norma, Juliana & Milos!!

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge: Glasses

Again, late.. but better late than never!! This weeks challenge: Eyeware! The girls love sunglasses (particularly mine) so that wasn't hard to find pictures of!

Thanks to "Auntie" Donna from for putting on the photo challenge!!

Better Late than Never!

Well, I haven't been able to upload anything to blogger in the past two weeks!! So finally it is letting me add pictures.


Anyways, down to business. On October 15, we celebrated Kayla's 12th birthday! We went out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant with several of our friends and had a great time.
Kayla is a really funny kid. She's the most argumentative child I've ever met, and my mom has always said that she would argue with the Lord himself if she could. She's very smart so dad is hoping she'll be a doctor one day.. although she'd probably be better as an attorney!! She comes up with the funniest jokes and even if I'm really mad at her she always makes me laugh. She had a great birthday and is so excited that she's officially a "Pre-Teen." Oh Boy!

My prayer for her on her 12th birthday is this:

"But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18

"Delight yourself also in the Lord,
and He shall give you the desires of your heart.
commit your way to the Lord,
trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
Psalm 37:4-5

Happy Birthday Kayla!! (Although it was really on the 15th!!)



Now, on to Halloween and those activities. This year, we attended the annual Fall Festival at our church. We had a great time and the girls really enjoyed "Trunk or Treating", playing games and both got a present at the "Toy Walk".. sort of like a cake walk! But of course, the best part was how much candy they got!! Halloween was good to us this year.. we have enough candy to feed an entire army!! However, we're going to eleviate the problem and send most of the candy to friends of ours who are currently living in South Korea! And yet we still have plenty to go around!



For Halloween, the girls were Pirates! We found the costumes at Target and they were too cute to pass up!! Emma & Esther loved their costumes and loved to sing "Yo ho Yo ho, a Pirates life for me!" They sure made two adorable pirates!


On Saturday, the girls attended a town fall festival and got to dress up and see a Halloween play, that both Elena and I were in. Later, we took the girls to the pumpkin patch along with my friend, her mother and her nieces. There weren't many pumpkins left, but they didn't really care. We did get two pumpkins, but we mostly go just to get pictures!! Dad and Ian were camping this weekend, so it was nice to have a girls night. After the pumpkin patch, we ended up going to the mall and then out to dinner.






On Sunday, we were supposed to take the girls to a local farm, but mom was sick, so we changed our plans. We ended up taking the girls to the park for about two hours! They had a lot of fun, and it's an excuse for me to take pictures! I did get a few cute shots.





Ian was SO exhausted from camping that he fell asleep on the couch around 6:00! He was so proud of the spear he carved at Boy Scout Camp, that he fell asleep holding it!

Anticipation

We're taking part in a weekly photo contest started by Donna from 2happy.typepad.com. Donna is mom to Gwen & Maddy, who have the same age difference as Esther & Emma, only they're a year younger. Gwen and Esther are from the same orphanage, and Donna was able to meet Esther in September 2005 when she was in Shenzhen picking up Gwen.

This week's theme is Anticipation. So I dug through our photo library to see what we could use for anticipation, and this is what I came up with:

Oh the anticipation of the first bite of your popsicle...
What bliss!

Outside in October

The weather has been so pretty the last few days and we've really enjoyed playing outside in the afternoon. With six kids, there's always someone to play with, so you don't really get bored! We're blessed to have a large backyard, pool, trampoline and a dock that connects to the lake, so there's always something fun to do.

Some Emma & Esther funnies:
On Saturday, Emma spewed her first four letter word. Thankfully, it wasn't anything bad at all. She dropped something and said "oh crap!" Yikes.. I can claim responsibility for that one! Let's hope thats the LAST word of that kind to come out of her mouth!
In the car today, I heard Esther tell Emma, "I hate you." I turned around and both girls had their arms crossed, facing away from each other. Emma returned with another "I hate you." So, we had a little lesson in being nice to each other and not using those kinds of words. And this time, it wasn't my fault!!
Esther just cracks up at the funniest things. I love to tease her and say "Esther, you're crazy" and she just laughs her head off and says, "No, Sera you're crazy!" It quickly becomes a contest to see who's crazier, and who can say it the loudest.. longest, etc. She's really funny and continues to blossom. She's sort of taken over the big sister role to Emma, and likes to help and especially loves to tell Emma when she's wrong. Whenever they get into something, and we confront them, Esther is the first to say, "It's Emma's fault!!!" She can get out of her carseat, which isn't good sometimes since she likes to take the straps off and turn on the lights while we're driving. But she can get herself out, and Emma out too.
Emma continues to be a little tornado! But she's a sweet tornado. Any room she's in quickly turns into a disaster after she's left. She's so fast! Her latest obsession has been a pink purse that has gone everywhere with her! Then, we found out that she uses the purse to steal food from the pantry and eat it later! So that didn't go over too well. I'd love to know where her secret stash is since she hides everything! Last week I had just bought a new pack of gum and put it in my purse. The next day I went to grab a piece and it was GONE!! Either she had eaten the whole package (which she has done before) or she's hidden it somewhere!! She's constantley on the go, which is why she is so skinny. I put a pair of 18 month size jeans on her today and they fell right off. Despite all this, she really is sweet and she loves to help you do anything.
The girls are always laughing at one another and are inseperable. You'd really never know they weren't *biologically* twins if you looked at them, because they act like sisters. We get asked all the time if they're twins and we just say nope, they're five weeks apart. That gets some pretty strange looks from people, but usually we'll go into detail. Most people assume they are just twins and always say how cute they are. And they are pretty cute!

Naptime

This might be hard to see, but here's what naptime looks like at our house! That's Emma sleeping, along with all three dogs; Sofie is at the bottom, closer to Emma is Gizmo and in the back is Ivy.

A Look At the Kids Rooms

For the past 6 months or so, we've had an artist working in our home painting murals in each of the kids' rooms. She has pretty much become part of the family, and we see her several times a week. So far, Jenny has painted a beautiful mural in the downstairs bathroom (I'll post pictures of that later), and in Ian, Elena and Kayla's room. Each room has a different "theme" and the murals are just beautiful!!

Kayla & Emma's room is a mix of Africa & Asia. On Kayla's side is a beautiful mural of Africa, shown below. It's completed, and Jenny's going to start working on Emma's wall, which will be Asia. I've been working with her on the layout of different elements from China, and it's going to be BEAUTFUL!!
'Kayla's wall.. an African safari
Jenny painted some monkeys, since they are Emma's favorite animal.
Emma with the cheetah cubs
Emma's wall.. where Asia will be.

Moving on to Ian's room, he has a camping/outdoors style. Jenny painted a large campfire, bears and racoons and made his room look like you're outdoors. On his other wall, he has a rockwall set up, so she painted it to make it look like a waterfall.
View of Ian's room
Camping Mural
Waterfall/ Rockwall

Elena and Esther share a room, and there's is a bit more simple. It combines some Chinese and old world elements. On two of their walls are painted the Chinese characters for "Mama Hao," which was Esther's favorite song when she came home. Then (it might be hard to see in the photos) but randomly on the four walls, it looks like brick is coming through the walls, to make it kind of feel "old worldish," I guess you could say, for lack of a better word!
View of Elena's bunkbed
Chinese characters for Mama Hao
Sleeping Esther & some of the brick

And my room is still a work in progress. It was (up until about two weeks ago) painted a bright pink color, but now just one wall is pink and the rest are tan. It's not finished yet, because we're going to put a wash on the walls to give it more character and make it blend more. The pink will also go darker!



I'll try to get some pictures of the bathroom up soon, because it too, is beautiful!!