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Archive for October, 2008

To the ball!

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

About a month ago, the girls reminded me that there was a bin of dress-up clothes in the attic. They thought Ami was ready to enjoy it. Sure enough, Ami and Johanna have dragged that bin out of her closet about every day since then! They dance to everything from classical Mendelssohn to Keith Green to Mickey Mouse tunes. It’s so fun to see their pure joy and uninhibited pleasure of just being kids!

In traditional Japanese attire

In ballerina attire

In Disney attire - Cinderella and Belle (watching their reflections in the TV)

Posted in Ami, Family, Johanna | 4 Comments »

Bonfire

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

We had gorgeous fall weather today! The temps were perfect for a traditional midwest weenie roast. We didn’t even have to contend with the slightest breeze to blow smoke into anyones eyes. We had about forty friends from church over this evening and we enjoyed the fellowship, not to mention the kids all had a blast. We are very thankful for our church family here, they are a blessing to us.

Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

Waiting

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

For my birthday this summer my parents gave me a Kodak Easy Share screen. We keep all of our Elijah pictures loaded on this and get to see different flashes of Elijah all day long. Ami especially loves to stop and watch the pictures flash through. While I am thankful to have SO many pictures of Elijah, the wait is starting to drag on a bit. We are on day 62 of waiting for our official referral approval (not that I’m counting or anything!) and probably have about a month still to go. I guess it just seems like a much longer wait because we have know Elijah for well over a year now. But, God is good and in His perfect timing we will be together as family. In the meantime, we continue to shower Elijah with prayer and love him from afar.

On another note, a fellow AWAA family is traveling to China next week to meet their daughter. You may remember me posting here and here about the oldest son in this family that is a student in Beijing and visited his soon-to-be sister and Elijah at PHF in September. It has been a blessing to correspond with this family. We can’t wait to see them joined with Kate and are hoping that they can get in a special hug for Elijah from us! Pam, thanks for the blessing that you and your family have already been to us!

Just a shot of Benjamin and Johanna using their creativity with the pattern blocks.

Posted in Benjamin, Elijah, Family, Johanna | 2 Comments »

New “old” pictures

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

First of all, I had a great weekend away! I came back refreshed from having spent quality time with friends, got a lot of pages done for our family scrapbook, and also put together the album we will send to Elijah after we have Referral Approval. I didn’t fare so well in the sleep department since I stayed up way late and naturally woke up at my “normal” time. So I’m still a bit on the tired side, but I’ll be back in the groove soon.

Just before leaving Friday morning we received some new “old” pictures of Elijah from June 2007. I have been in touch with a couple that has led several mission trips to PHF and has met Elijah. They leave again on Nov. 1, so hopefully I’ll soon have more recent pictures to share. Thanks Steve and Carrie!

This is day 60 into our wait for our Referral Approval. It seems to be averaging about 90 days, so we likely have another month to wait. After that our Travel Approval should come fairly quickly and there’s still a chance that we’ll be in China by the end of the year. Of course we pray for God’s perfect timing, but we would love for that timing to be sooner than later. And we continue to pray that we would be able to travel once again with our good friends, the Woodruffs, that we met up with in China in 2006.

Posted in Elijah, Family | 3 Comments »

Creative Kids

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

I mentioned to my friend Amy this morning that my kids seem to constantly be playing with sleeping bags and blankets. This has gone on for several years! I don’t know what the fascination is. Maybe it’s that they can do all sorts of things with them, become things, have adventures, etc. Most often they use sleeping bags for a bumpy adventure in sliding down the stairs. Blankets are usually hidden under, made into cozy caves and forts, or made into various creatures. Here’s an example of their newfound use this morning as kangaroo pouches. Ami was the mama kangaroo and Benjamin and Johanna were the joeys. And yes, I know this doesn’t look very safe. Despite my warnings, mama kangaroo later fell to her demise and then this mama whisked her away for a story and then naptime.

As much as I love hanging out with my kiddos, I am SO looking forward to a get-away this weekend. For three whole days I get to work on catching up on our family scrapbooks, hang out with good friends, and have no schedule or demands at all. We are blessed with a great husband and dad!!

Posted in Ami, Benjamin, Family, Jocelyn, Johanna | 3 Comments »

Family pictures

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

I am working on getting pictures pulled together to make a small photo album to send to Elijah. We have sent him several pictures over the last year, but this will be a special one that “officially” introduces us as his family. I’m going to include a picture of each of us with a few of our interests, pictures of the outside of the house, and pictures of several of the rooms in the house. Of course, getting these pictures taken includes cleaning up each of the rooms beforehand! We will send this album to Elijah after we have our next approval (we’re 51 days into the average 90 day wait), along with a special letter telling him that we are his family. Oh, I can’t wait! So, here are just a couple of shots that we took today after church. One is at church of the kids and the other in our front yard. Beautiful fall weather today!

Posted in Ami, Benjamin, Chris, Elijah, Family, Jocelyn, Johanna, Michaela | 2 Comments »

Liberation Day

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Our homeschooling days have included a few “pets” recently. Some of them have been held in captivity longer than others, but the kids all agreed that today should be “Liberation Day”. First, we had the dozen or so Painted Lady caterpillars that we observed through their chyrsallis days, then the emergence. Fun! Then we had the box turtle found in our yard that went right along with our studies of reptiles. Johanna fed him (her?) any fresh fruit of veggie that she could find in the kitchen. Then Benjamin found a tiny ring-neck snake, no bigger than a worm. We are keeping “Tad” the tadpole to watch his metamorphasis until his frog days. We’ll see how long he lasts in captivity! Apparantely Ami and Johanna decided to dress up for the occasion as Cinderella and Belle.