I am married to a wonderful man who is my best friend! We have 2 sons, TJ is 23 and Ryan 21 and 2 adopted girls from China, Hannah Mei 6, and Makenna Grace 5. Our life is always slightly out of control but somehow we make it through! We give thanks to God for all of our blessings. He has made himself so real so many times in our journey as a family!
Well, today it was a nice, sunny, and brisk day here in Northeast Ohio. Scott decided to rake leaves in the back yard so of course Hannah had to go outside. She loves to be outside. I saw her out playing in the leaves and ran to get the camara! Now Scott has this fancy schmancy camara and I don't know how to change the settings so the first half of pictures I took came out too blurry because the shutter speed was way to slow. He came to fix it and the rest of them came out pretty good. He says he is going to give me a Camara 101 class. I hope my brain can comprehend what he teaches me! My brain is not the sponge it used to be!! Anyway, we are getting ready to head to Dairy Queen for our Sunday evening ritual. We have been meeting our friends Scott and Trish at DQ for over 2 years almost every Sunday night. We have "our" table that we grab and if someone is in "our" table, it throws us all off! Kinda like going to church and you have "your" pew and you go to sit down and a visitor has sat there!! Enjoy the pictures!
Not to much happening here with us. We (Tina) has been busy getting stuff together for the trip. I went though Makenna's suitcase yesterday and repacked stuff. Took some clothes out, added a couple of other things. I am afraid she is going to be bigger than Hannah so I have taken pretty much all the 12 month stuff out. Hannah helped me gather up some small toys that we can take to Makenna. I had to promise to bring them back home though! She was especially nervous about me taking the stacking cups. Last night I went Christmas shopping with my sister in law. I was wanting to have the girls' Christmas done by last night. Well, my sister in law did pretty well but of course I couldn't decide on what to get and then they didn't have a couple of things I really wanted. I did get Tyler Michael (my beautiful nephew) finished up today. I am looking for a life like baby doll for Hannah. One that is soft, that she can change her clothes, but doesn't poop or pee! It is hard finding one that looks even similar to her. I found a couple on Ebay last night, 60 bucks, but adorable. We'll see. Scott wants to just look in China for one. Most of what I saw there was blonde hair, blue eyes! They did have some smaller Chinese dolls but I was wanting something bigger. She keeps tryingn to put clothes on these little hard dolls and struggles then mommy has to do it! I know why you have children when you are younger. Today at Walmart, I had to plan on parking near a cart return so I could push a cart over to the van, put Tyler Michael in his carseat in the "bucket" of the cart and Hannah in the kid seat. Diaper bag went under the cart by Hannah's feet. Then the shopping, of course she wants everything and in the middle of the toy isle, Tyler decided he was starving! His carseat takes up the whole cart so I had things packed in around him so I just took his bottle out and propped it up with a blanket and all was happy. Of course since I wasn't holding him and able to burp him right away when I did pick him up I paid for that one! He just smiled like always. Sometimes I think his daddy (my brother) tells him to do things to me! I'll post a couple pictures of this angel boy. It has been so much fun watching him. Hannah just adores him. It is "HER Tyler Michael. If anyone even looks at him, she gets upset. There are times his mommy comes to get him and Hannah cried for her not to take him. I guess we told her SHE was getting a new cousin, then we had the nerve for him to live at Uncle Todd and Aunt Kayla's house!! I told Scott, if I tell you are are getting a new car, you expect that you are getting a new car, to use as you want and parked in your driveway. Well Hannah can't understand why if Tyler is HER cousin, why he can't just stay here! I enjoy my sleep too much to keep Tyler here at night too! Well, I will end with a couple pictures of Tyler Michael. This is a little video of the life of Tyler Michael, Hannah's cousin!! I am quite confident that she will NOT share him with Makenna!!
I just wanted to post our other blogs. Hannah had her own journal that we kept for her from before we knew who she was until present. We also have one for Makenna that we will use for our trip. We had no problems updated our blog while in China with Hannah and we have heard with blogger it is hit or miss so we will use Makennas blog until after we are home. Feel free to check them out!
I was watching our neighbor boy Caleb and the kids wanted to go out and play. Hannah has been fighting a cold all week and I apologize for not seeing the snot coming from her nose but the pictures were to cute not to post!! Caleb and Hannah are one month apart. I used to babysit Caleb before we adopted Hannah and the sad thing is, we have not gotten the kids together hardly at all! The funny thing is, Caleb has been here over 3 hours and they have yet to have a fight! Maybe I should watch him everyday. Hannah is loving having someone to play with. I guess it helps confirm our decision to bring a sister home for her to play with. Well, I am going to fix lunch then see if I can get to two year olds down for a nap!! More later!
Hi guys, I found some YouTube video's of Chongqing. This is where we will be staying for a week. Fuling is where Makenna is and that is about 2 hours away. We will go to Fuling to get Makenna and visit her city on that day. I'll upload more video's as I find them. Pretty interesting though huh?!
We finally got word yesterday that China has given us permission to come get Makenna! We will leave on November 15 and get home the 27 or 28. We will meet her for the first time on November 18! We are very excited to bring her home. Please pray for our family as Hannah will be staying home with grandma and grandpa. She is happy they are coming but I know she doesn't understand that this will not be your standard weekend visit! On another note, Hannah has been batteling a cold all week. It started out Monday with sneezes and projectile snot flinging! She got to the point that when she'd sneeze, she'd hold her hand out to catch it! Pretty gross! Anyway, it has turned into a cough now also. She doesn't let something like a cold keep her down! She is on the go nonstop. I'd ask that you keep my friends Brian and Elisa in your prayers. Elisa is in China now adopting their little girl from China and just found out that Brian's brother Bill lost his battle with cancer last night. They knew it was a possiblity that is why Brian stayed home but she is having a hard time being a half a world away and not be able to grieve with her family. She will miss the funeral, as it is the weekend and the adoption cannot be speeded up at this point. Thank you in advance for prayers on their behalf as well as our family as we pack to head to China.
Our youngest son Ryan is a senior in high school this year. He plays basketball and baseball. He is a great son and a wonderful big brother to his little sister!
Daddy decided to be really nice this afternoon to mommy and take Hannah to the park to play. It was a beautiful fall day here and he was working with his new camara lens so it was a win win for everyone! He got to practice with his new lense, got to spend wonderful time with Hannah, and I got lots of great pictures! Not to sure what happened to that one piggy tail....kinda smushed and funky looking but she had a great time! She brought home a whole big bag of nuts that she and daddy collected. We are going to color a picture of a tree later and glue them on. Scott said they sat under a pavillion for at least 20 minutes watching the squirrels gather nuts and play in the leaves. He said that when they were coming home, Hannah was talking about her foster parents and mentioned they had a son! One report we had gotten said they had a son but we had never talked about it. He asked her if they had a sister for her too and she said no, only a son. Comparing to her big brothers or the little boy in 4 grade that I watch after school, she said he was more like the 4th grader in size. I am thinking I may contact the orphanage to see if there is a picture of the foster family and their son that we can add to her scrapbook. Since she does seem to remember him, I feel like this needs added to her lifebook! She is an angel 90% of the time! Can't imagine life without her for sure!
Well, I had to post and let everyone know about our supper tonight. I worked from 5:30 this morning until 4:15 tonight and came home rested for an hour then headed to the mall for some early Christmas shopping. We shopped, didn't buy much...too many decisions for someone codependant like me to make. We finally stopped for supper around 9:00 and I let Scott pick where to eat and he chose Chili's. We all really like the food there so I was more than happy to go along. I love their Chicken Club Tacos and Hannah loves their corn on the cob! Well Scotts supper came out cold and the kitchen made him new potatoes and corn on the cob and when that came, the corn was still very cold! Needless to say, the manager was at our table twice, our waiter was very upset with the kitchen, and Scott ended up getting his supper for free! Well, our poor waiter was trying to make small talk with us because of the mess up and he told Scott, "I would be upset if I came here with my daughter and was served a cold supper". As he said this he was looking right at me!!! When the waiter left, Scott gave me the look and said that the waiter thought I was Scotts daughter! The funny thing was, Scott was teasing me before we ordered to order a daquari and see if I got carded but I just laughed it off and got a diet pepsi like always. I got up later to take Hannah to the bathroom and Scott did something he never does....he corrected the waiter! He told the waiter that I was not his daughter that I was in fact his wife but that I was only 25 (I'm over 40 and under 45)! He told the waiter he gets this all the time and he just expects it now since he is twice my age!! The waiter of course felt awful but Scott said they all had a good laugh over it! If I thought for a minute that I only looked 25, I'd use that to my advantage! I read a funny the other day with a suggestion that the fatter you are the less wrinkles you have...you fill out your skin!! Maybe that is the case! I'll post a family picture that we had taken last fall. We did pictures with Scott's sisters for his parents for Christmas. They all turned out great and John and Margaret were very surprised!
Here are some pictures of Hannah Mei from this summer. We had a great summer with her. She has grown so much! She has gotten much taller, almost potty trained, talking complete sentences and actually carries on an adult conversation! She talks non stop from sun up to sun down! I have told her that just because her eyes are open doesn't mean her mouth has to be open too!! Hannah has been taking gymnastics on Thursday nights and story time at the library on Monday nights. Scott took pictures last night of her at gymnastics so I will post those soon. She is a bundle of energy, very stubborn and opinionated, and I wouldn't change her for the world! She is such a blessing to our family!
I just uploaded my first slide show!!! I am so excited. My friend Debbie has a wonderful blog and she talked me through how to set it up and get it on my blog! I promise to have more slides very soon! I want to do one of the kids and family etc. I hope you enjoy it. I will try to get more creative as the slide shows go by!!
Welcome to our family. I have wanted to create a blog for our family for quite a while now. We have had a blog for our daughters that we have adopted from China but we really needed a family blog so we can talk about our whole family! I think it will be easier to keep up with one blog than 2 or 3! I will try to blog every couple of days and include lots of pictures and also video of our family. We have 2 wonderful sons, and one daughter from China. We are planning on traveling to China next month to complete our second adoption so between now and then I have about 10,000 things to get done. I cannot promise that I will keep this one up too often before we get back! We would appreciate your prayers as we make this long journey to bring our daughter home. I have read so many blogs and admire how people share their lives online. I also wanted an easier way for our family and friends from out of town keep up with our children. Children are a gift from God and they grow so fast!
