We spent a morning last week at the park with friends and here's a picture of the crew on the merry-go-round.  Josiah and Kendra LOVED it.  I was just hoping they weren't going to throw up afterwards!

 

 

Jerica has been a huge help and a great big sister to Josiah.  He loves her!

So the boys went downstairs to play together and this is what they accomplished:  Dressing Up!  I guess it's time to buy more "boy" dress up clothes.  The girls thought it was hilarious, Daddy on the other hand had one word:  UNACCEPTABLE!!  

Here's Elijah's expression after finding out he was dressed like a girl!

 



 On Friday, we celebrated Alexa's 10th birthday!  I'm not sure how that happened but 10 years has gone by.  It feels like just yesterday she was handed to us and now look at her! 

 

 

 

 You're probably wondering why there's a question mark after the "1."  Well for some reason we couldn't find the "0" so she first put a "9" and pushed it way down but Ariana didn't like that because she said it looked too much like "19" and didn't want Alexa to be "19!"  So Alexa grabbed the question mark instead.  Yep, our kids have learned to just go with the flow!  I at least have 4 more years before I have to find the "0" or buy a new one!  :)

 

 

All Alexa wanted for her birthday was a bow and arrow!  She was so excited today to shoot it with Daddy!

 

And what a better way to end a birthday celebration than having some Italian ice!  

 

Poor little Kendra always has to hang out with the boys.  I think she just might need a little sister!  ;)



Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!

 

We started out our day by going to church and then having lunch at Noodles and Co.  We were hoping that Josiah would enjoy lunch there because he loves noodles.  We failed...  He wasn't thrilled with them at all. 

 

After lunch we came home to change clothes and then headed right back out and went to Anneberg Park.  It was warm, but fun!

 

 

 Here's the little princess after going down the slide!  Nope, not a fan of it yet!  Just wait Kendra, you'll soon like it!

 

 

 The boys are having a race to see who can go higher!  Daddy gave it his all!

 

 These boys have such a great role model and they love their dad SO much!

 

Josiah fell off the big swing so we went to the little swings and he liked it much more.

 

This smile could melt anyone's heart!

 

 

 

 I think Kendra likes swinging, what do you think?



 

After getting hot, we decided our next stop should be Purple Swirl.  No one complained about that idea!  The first time Kendra had ice cream she did not like it.  She probably never had anything cold like that before.  Most things in China are warm.  Now, she loves it.

 

There is NO way any boy is gonna mess with Kendra, she has too many big brothers watching out for her.

 

After Purple Swirl, we went swimming.  Sorry, no pictures of that though.  We pretty much wore everyone out for the day!  I think it was a successful day of FUN.

 

I'm so thankful for a godly husband that shows his kids the way to follow Jesus.  They have a great dad and they all love him so much. 

 

It's a bittersweet day though.  I'd do anything to get on the phone right now and tell my dad, "Happy Father's Day!"  I miss him so much but I have such great comfort knowing that someday I'll get to spend eternity with him.  Still just want to give him a big hug and kiss though..  Miss ya Dad!  :(

 

This week Kendra goes in for a renal scan of her kidneys.  There can be problems with kidneys in cleft kids so our pediatrician is checking just to be cautious.  Please pray for our little sweetie that she does okay with it and everything is fine.



Dr. Visit #1

We realized that we will be making many trips to the doctor's office with these 2 kiddos and yesterday was our first visit.  We had an appointment with the Cleft Palate team at Children's Mercy in Kansas City.  The doctor is a Chinese man who speaks Mandarin (and of course English) so it was so nice that he was able to talk with the kids and I think Josiah was finally glad to have someone that talked to him in a language he could understand.  He doesn't want to fix Kendra's palate until September.  He said he has done many internationally adopted children's surgeries and it's best to wait 2-3 months after getting home.  It's a very painful surgery and he doesn't want to jeopardize any bonding process.  He and his wife adopted a girl from China last year.  He knows what we are going through and that will help.  We visited many others, some necessary, some not...  She had a hearing test done and did very well.  Sometimes with cleft kids, it can affect their hearing but she passed with flying colors.  She saw an ENT also.  She has some fluid behind one of her ears but that is very common because her Eustachian tubes are not slanted and never will be due to her cleft.  She will also have tubes put in her ears during the palate surgery. 

After yesterday and how pleased we were with the doctor, Kendra will be in great hands to have her palate fixed.  It may require 2 surgeries but we won't know until he gets in there and starts closing it up. 

 

Jerica had an orchestra concert last night so it was a late night for all the kids.  They are still sound asleep in their beds.  Hmmm, what should I do??  Guess I better start preparing breakfast!  They are a hungry crew when they awake! 

 

Happy Saturday to all.  We're planning on doing a few projects outside today.

 



Yes Mom, I'll add some pictures.... ;)

Ok, so I've caught some slack for not posting anything since Tuesday....   

Just kiddin, Mom, I know you want to see these precious grandkids!  After Tuesday and how horrible we felt, it was nice to see Wednesday come and most of us feel like normal again.  The littles have adjusted back to normal the fastest.  The old folks have taken a tad bit longer.

 

Now that we are back to normal life and not sightseeing the world, not sure what to tell you.  I could tell you about how much food I have to get to prepare for each meal (it's crazy), I could show you pictures of the mountains of laundry I do, I could time it and tell you how long it takes for 9 people to shower/bathe, (not sure I want to know the water consumption), or how long it takes for me to get everyone out of the house.  But I know you want to hear the good stuff, like how Josiah can now sing (in English) almost the whole refrain to "Jesus Loves Me," or how Kendra just comes up to me and gives me a kiss out of the blue.   The smiles on both of these kids is enough to melt anyone.  They are beautiful!

 

See what I mean about those beautiful smiles?  They have won this momma over!  It truly is amazing how you can immediately fall in love with a child that did not come from your own body.  God works wonders.

 

Today Josiah had his hardest day since we got him.  Crazy part is that it was so minor.  He didn't sleep very well last night and was up early and I think he was just plain tired.  He was sensitive towards anything and cried a few times, that's it.  Yep, we're spoiled. 

 

Check this out - brotherly love!  Now that we are home, they are becoming much closer.  They are going to have so much fun together.  I'm so happy our kids have so many brothers and sisters to love on, play with, learn together with, be silly with, cry with, and most importantly follow Jesus with. 

 

Josiah loves to be outside and the plasma car is one of his favorite toys.  We have 2 of them but now that is not enough.  So I had to order 2 more, hurry up Mr. UPS man!!

 

Now here's a serious Kendra face!

 

Here's my Alexa girl all happy to be home, rollerblading!  She just cracks me up, she tries to act like such the tough girl, but she's the first one always to get homesick!  In her book, home is the best place to be, and I guess that's a great thing.

 

And this last picture has nothing to do with our precious children but look at these yummy strawberries that came out of our garden!!!  What a wonderful surprise to come home to!  The only problem was that there wasn't enough to satisfy the entire family.

Jetlag REALLY stinks..

I know the other day I mentioned how jetlag stinks but boy has today been hard!  Crazy part is that it hit all of us today.  We are walking around totally out of it.  Not sure why today but hopefully tomorrow it will get better. 

 

Kendra and Josiah continue to amaze us.  They have adjusted so well.  This probably isn't typically and to have it be so good with 2 is simply amazing.  God gets all the credit though because there really isn't any other explanation.

 

I'd love to write more but I'm off to snuggle my little princess cause she just needs cuddles right now.  I promise new pictures will come soon!

New foods

I just had to share this video of Josiah with you.  The girls tried to give him some cheese and as you can see, he wasn't a fan.  I'm sure he's thinking - these crazy people eat some weird food!!!

Enjoy! 

 

Jetlag Stinks.....

It's so hard to adjust the body to a 13 hour time difference!  Yesterday we kept all the kids up until 8:30 last night and hoped that they would sleep really long today but, no....  Isaiah was the first one up and asking if it's morning time yet.  It was only 3:30!  Then shortly after him, Jerica woke up hungry.  Ariana and Alexa set off the security system somehow and the alarm woke up Todd and I.  Thankfully though, the littles are all tucked in their beds. 

 

Yesterday was a day full of laundry and unpacking.  While we all slept, Todd couldn't so he unpacked ALL 9 suitcases!  He gets superman status in my book.  I hate unpacking so I really didn't care that I woke up to a pile of laundry the size of Mt. Everest.  He even started the first load before I got up.  The washer and dryer didn't stop all day.  And now that we're awake, it's back to business again for my lovely washer and dryer that I will love forever.  After doing laundry in China, I will never mind doing it here again...

 

I wish you could have seen the kids yesterday when they woke up and had time to explore their new life here at our house.  Josiah couldn't stop smiling!  And he didn't take every toy off the shelf and make a huge mess!  Happy Momma!  Kendra has not gone to the basement yet and we're trying to keep her away from the steps.  She did great and never tried to go down.  I really don't want to put up the gate so I'm hoping she learns to just stay away from the steps.  They LOVED our backyard!  Watching Josiah step in the grass for the first time was so cute.  We never saw grass in China so I'm sure he never walked in it before.  Then he started picking all the clover!  :)  He is such a happy boy. 

 

We're so anxious for everyone to get to meet these 2 amazing children.  They have adjusted so well and so much better than we ever expected.  We prepared ourselves for a very hard adjustment period but they both have just done so well.  God sure prepared them and answered all our prayers.

 

We're attempting church this morning and hoping no one falls asleep but we've missed it so much this past month and are looking forward to seeing our church family!

 

I'll try to take some pictures today of the kids playing around and upload them later.  

Home at last...

We are HOME!  It was an extremely long day but we did it!  Our flight out of Guangzhou was late so that didn't leave us with much time in Beijing.  After going through immigration and then security, (which took us forever) we headed to our gate.  We knew we didn't have much time but when Todd saw the board saying, "Last Call," we had to run to the gate.  If only we would have had someone videotaping it, I'm sure now I'd laugh.  Poor Ariana was carrying Josiah and she gave it her all.  Finally I told Todd to just go and we'll meet him there.  Then after giving them our boarding pass, we had to go through more security.  It was ridiculous.  But we made it on the plane and I was SO happy.  As I'm running through the airport, all I could think about was spending another night in China and I just wanted to get home.

After arriving in San Francisco, we went through immigration.  Those officers were so nice.  I was expecting crabby employees but the 2 men that helped us were so very kind.  It takes a while to do all the paperwork and it left us about 2 minutes to rest at our gate. 

Then our final flight was Dallas to KC.  That flight was on time and this time we had enough to time to take everyone to the bathroom and brush teeth, that's it, then back on the plane.  There were storms in OK so we had to go around which added another 20 minutes onto the flight.  Finally around 11:30 pm, we arrived in KC. 

While waiting for our luggage this older man came up to Todd and handed him money and said, "Please use this for your growing family!"  I don't know where he was sitting on the plane but he must have heard us talk to the stewardess on the plane about the kids.  What a kind man!  The people in America are so different than the people in China.  We are much more kind here.  So when this is the first thing that happens to you when you land at home, it really moved us.

We finally made it to our house at 3:00 am.  We brought the kids in and put them in their beds and then the luggage and headed for bed.  Todd didn't sleep long, I woke up at 11:00 and we finally woke the kids up at 12:00.  Now we're trying to keep them up until bedtime and hope they sleep a long time!