Another lost tooth

Silly boy

Fun creating

SO happy to be mobile

Children's museum today

Marumi is excited they have sesame street here now. She used to watch
it in japan when she was little. :)

Surprise... Car stuff!

Cake and presents

Bazzys nemo cake

Happy Birthday Bazzy!!!

Happy Birthday Sweet Boy!!!

I truly cannot believe that Sebastian is 4 today! My sweet baby boy is no longer a baby. He's 4. 4 is big. Beyond a toddler and WAY too close to being school age. sniff sniff.

When the picture above was taken, Kris and I didn't even know that he had been born. It would be 6 more days until we got the best phone call of our lives and we were told we have a son.

I have felt this exact same way the past 3 years when we've celebrated his birthday. SO happy, but also so sad for the loss that both Bazzy and his birthmom had to experience four years ago. It hurts me that I wasn't there on the day he was born and I can't even begin to imagine what his birthmom was feeling on this day. Knowing that she wouldn't see that sweet smile as he's growing. sniff sniff. I pray for her so often and I hope she is OK and she has happiness in her life. I'm sure today is a very very hard day for her.

I can't even express the thankfulness I have that God chose us to be his forever parents. We could have never dreamed up a better child for our family. I have NO doubt that God chose Bazzy just like he chose our girls to be ours. He is amazing!

Bazzy- your smile will forever melt my heart! I love you more than words can say and I know by the end of today you will be tired of me picking you up and hugging you. I can't help myself.

Happy Birthday sweet sweet boy!
We love you SOOOOOOOOOO much!!!

At the zoo today

They Say it's KRIS'S Birthday!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRIS!!!
We all love you SO much and we hope you have a wonderful Birthday!

At the Durham today

Sushi with marumi

At blue downtown :)

A Very Rare Occurance

My Mom took a picture of all seven of us before we went into the Field Museum while we were in Chicago. We have SO few pictures of all of us, so this is pretty exciting for me. Usually I'm behind the camera, so it's good to be in a FEW pictures. ;)

Things have been fun and busy this week. Marumi is doing good and settling into our family nicely. I can tell she was a bit homesick the other morning, but since then she has been smiling and enjoying our daily adventures. I can't imagine being in a new country, with strangers, when I was 15 years old. What a brave thing to do.

Hopefully I'll have more time to write and upload pictures soon. If only there were about 8 more hours to be awake each day...

Schramm Park

We went to look for fossils today at Schramm park (sp?). It was hot,
but lots of fun! Hopefully we didn't wear out Marumi too bad. She
seemed to enjoy it.

Cupcakes

We had a great day celebrating Katryna's birthday. Marumi is doing great. She just fell asleep on the bed we made her, with all the lights on and still in her clothes. She was REALLY tired! We love her already and she seems to enjoy the silliness off our kids, so that's good. :)

Happy Birthday Katryna!

Marumi and Lisa

Marumi is on the left, Lisa is on the right. Lisa is staying with friends of ours from our church. We're happy for them that they will be able to see each other throughout the month. They were so happy and excited to arrive. It will be a fun month getting to know her and learning more about Japan.

Waiting for the students

Our friends are hosting a student too. :)

Happy birthday Trini

I can't believe my first baby is 10 today! Seriously. Not possible! We
are on our way to cheeseburger in paradise (tri's choice) and then off
to the airport to welcome Marumi. Exciting day!!! :)

Bright eyed

And somewhat bushy tailed. :)

The view from my bed

I wonder if I'll have jaws dreams tonight??!

Zoo night hike

Sleeping at the zoo tonight

Home, Japan, and Haiti

We are HOME and we had such a fun trip. Hopefully the iphone pictures were enough to give you a taste of our time in Chicago. It was so great to be back and every day was just a good time. I don't have it in me to upload pics from my camera tonight, but I will try to do it in the near future. I am tired! The kids went to bed tonight without one complaint that it was too early or they wanted to stay up just a little longer. That was a special treat in itself. So now I'm trying to catch up on laundry, emails, and prepare for the weeks ahead.

We have 3 birthdays coming up. Katryna will be 10 on July 21. Kris will be 33 on July 26. Sebastian will be 4 on July 29. Lots of Birthday fun in a short amount of time will be had by all.

The other exciting thing that happens on July 21 (which is this Tuesday! Holy smokes!) is our Japanese student arrives to spend the month with us. We are all anxiously anticipating her arrival. I'm so excited to meet her and I hope she will enjoy being a part of our somewhat crazy family for the month. We will be her first experience with an American family, so hopefully that will be a GOOD thing. ;)

Isn't she adorable? She's 15 and enjoys art, swimming, tennis, and music. She will fit in perfect! She even has a miniature dachsund in Japan! Come ON! Perfect!!! :)

I'm also thinking ahead to my Haiti trip. I need to start preparing for what we're going to bring and what we plan to do while we're there and also what shots (ugh) I'm going to need before I go. Right now we have 5 people that are interested in going, but no one that has been able to totally commit yet. Please say a prayer that at least one other person can for SURE say they are coming, so that I know for sure that I can go too. I feel in my heart that we will be there the last week of November, so I'm just patiently waiting to find out who will be there with me.

This is the place we will be. It will be amazing, joyful, and heartbreaking all at the same time to experience it firsthand. This girl will be blogging while she is staying at the Rescue Center and working at the clinic for a bit. She is a nurse (right out of school I think) and she also takes great pictures, so I know I will enjoy keeping up with her blog.

OK- off to do more laundry and then trying to turn my brain off so I can sleep.
Good bye. Sayonara. Orevwa.
for now...

New baby

We got to watch this calf be born. Mia cried she was so excited when
he came out.

Milk/Rock Climbing

Little chicago boy

Baz at the dairy farm

Walking along lake Michigan

Standing by the fishies

After lunch

After the dolphin show

A BIG snake

Sof and a 14 foot anaconda.

Amazon mist

Playing in the mist at the Shedd Aquarium.

Skyline

New family members

Josefina, Molly, and Mia :)

Our new family cruiser

;)

Mia's new tin man friend

At Our hotel downtown

Xylophone with daddy

So excited

At the field museum.

Charlotte walked!

Charlotte took her first steps today, in front of lots of family while
visiting my grandma. The girl loves an audience! :)

For the vdks

We found a chick fil a in davenport. Yay! :)

I'm off to Chi-town

I'm off to Chicago to visit my parents for a few days. It's been WAY too long since I've been home to Chi-town. It will be a quick trip, but fun! I'm sure I'll upload some pictures from my phone while we're gone. Be back soon! :)

Just so you know

Why you shouldn't leave the glass jar of cherries on the edge of the
shelf in your fridge.....

Such a good dad

Kris is on his way to see the Jonas brothers with the girls. He hasn't
taken them to a concert and found cheap tickets yesterday. Hopefully
he survives the sound of thousands of screaming little girls. ;)

GREAT CD

Just wanted to let you all know about a great CD I came across thanks to a cyber-friend on Bethany's Adoption Forums. Oddly I remember listening to Aaron when he was in Spur58 because, well, do you all remember when I did the volunteer phone calling for the Medical Advocacy Team when I was on bedrest? I didn't get to do much phone calling since little miss Charlotte decided to be born so early, but learned some wonderful things about their organization and also got to know more about the Rescue Center that we are helping through Artists For Hope. I ordered one of the crazy cool Haiti T-shirts that MAT was selling and they told me about Aaron's group. Anyways, I came across them AGAIN through the gal on Bethany because she told me they are adopting 2 kids from the Rescue Center. Very cool!

The CD is amazing and has a great vibe. I'm loving all the songs and just thought I would share it with you all. Check him out on itunes!

Happy fourth of July!

Happy Joy Joy - Spread the Word!

I'm sending out a plea. A plea to ask you all to talk to the artists you know in your life to donate something to Artists For Hope. We've had an awesome problem~ and that problem is that whenever we list something, it doesn't stay for sale very long. It just sells. Good problem, right? I'm hoping to get some new artists up on the site before we start advertising locally for artists. I feel that the more artists that are represented, the more NEW artists will feel that this it legit and a great cause and they will consider donating also. SO....if you have a friend, family member, or you yourself are an artist, will you please consider encouraging them (or yourself!) to donate something. ALL the money raised goes directly to the Rescue Center and with the new Medika Mamba program being a possibility there (if they have the funding), it's an amazing time to help them and make a real difference in the lives of the kids there.

Looking at the Rescue Center web site can be pretty sad at times. So many sick and hungry kids. :( Lori (Licia's sister who runs the clinic there) made this video to help remind people of all the smiles they see every day also. These smiles are definitely good motivation for wanting to help the kids get better. If you want to smile~you MUST watch it. Plus you can see a bit of what I will see in Haiti the week after Thanksgiving. :)