Oh Canada!

Today I got an email from my Vancouver girl! My dear friend, Nikki, is doing well visiting family and I am over the moon to hear that my godson is a healthy butterball at 4 months old!!

She will be so proud to know that this past weekend I tried butter tarts for the first time in my life and I am hooked!!! There is a Canadian in H's class and he used to be a pastry chef and brought these amazing butter tarts to the house this past weekend. I could not believe my mouth! When I asked him for the recipe he said, "lard, sugar, butter". I then quickly said no thank you to the recipe and resign myself to no more butter tarts unless in the presence of a Canadian. My hips thank me....

Tomorrow we leave for San Diego to attend Charlotte's memorial service and the spreading of her ashes. I'm looking forward to seeing our friends but so sad for the occasion. I'm just happy that we are able to be there for them.

G is a bit reluctant about his stay with friends. At first it was a resounding "no thanks" but day by day he's come around. We've left him for a weekend before and he did great so I'm not particularly worried. I know H and I will miss him like crazy over the weekend but we both felt like it was best to leave him at home. G knows about heaven and understands that Charlotte is there now, but I still think that at his age there is only so much he can understand and may not act appropriately at the service. To G heaven is one big party with the Lord and he talks about it often. It is difficult to explain how those of us left behind are sad when all he's been taught is the joy of eternal life in Heaven with our Creator.

In Honor of Those Who Have Served on Memorial Day

To my husband,

I wanted to take this time and honor you and your service to our country. There are not many days that go by when I don't think about the sacrifice that you have made and how it impacts our family. There have been days when I have wanted to lead a "normal" life. A husband who comes home at five o'clock after a days work and is there for every special moment. I realize, however, that this is what God has called you to do. I am so proud of you for your dedication and committment to the freedom of our country. I know that you wear the uniform with pride and dignity. I love you and am so proud of you.

Always,

me

Preschool Graduation!

If you don't see the picture here, click on the red x and you will be connected to the you tube link for this video!

On Friday the Penguin class had their "graduation" for pre-kindergartner's. Although G will be attending pre-K again next year (can you believe you can go to kindergarten at 4 in CA?) they had a great Hawaiian party! The kids could not have been any cuter and if I'm successful in uploading this video you'll see what I mean. These are the days when you just melt when you see your little guy independent and growing up so fast. *Sniff* The only slightly embarrassing moment came when G helped himself to the blue jello and marshmallow concoction, gave himself 4 scoops after his teacher said one, proceeded to lick the spoon and put it back in the bowl. All I could think was how many times had he done that at school on a normal day?

Today we booked our airline tickets!! My husband I'm sure is thrilled b/c now I'm not screaming at the Singapore Airline website like a lunatic. Literally the fares were changing every 1/2 hour. I was beside myself trying to book tickets yesterday and getting timed out only to have the fare rise by $800 in the 2 minutes I'd been online. Let me just say that this whole process is not for the faint of heart.

This morning I woke up to do battle online again and was pleased to find that it allowed me to book tickets, seats and meals. Whew! I do have to say that I'm pleased with what Singapore Airlines has to offer for special circumstances. Since G is allergic to dairy and eggs I was a bit worried about 29 hours of traveling and him having limited food. I called the airline and they booked him dairy free child meals on all legs of our flight! In the descriptions they gave me there wasn't anything eggy. The also went ahead and allowed me to book a bassinet for Prim on the way home AND meals for her even though she is not even a ticketed passenger (it was recommended that we just pay for her while in Bangkok b/c it's much cheaper). The offer jar baby food, toddler food and child meals. I think that's pretty great! Right now I'm just thankful we won't be flying on an American airline. It just seems that the Asian ones are so much nicer and accommodating. Plus they only charge you a portion of your fare for children instead of the US chains only giving $25 off the normal fare.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!!

Aloha

Travel Approval

We got it!!! Traveling July 19th to get baby Grace!!!

No Offense to Blonds...

but I just totally had a blond moment. Here I've been thinking (thanks to DH) that Thailand was 12 hours behind us in time zones. So I'm reading every ones comments and posts on the Holt forum and Max's mom says how the board has already met and hopefully we'll hear something soon. And I'm thinking to myself "Self....I think you've got yourself some bad information from darling husband!" I've been going along all day thinking the board hasn't even met yet so I can rest easy and not stress until tomorrow. Wrong!! Today is Thursday in Thailand!! Sometimes I even outdo myself in stupidity.
Let the butterflies commence!!

New Pictures of baby Prim!!!!!!!!!

Look at those eyes!
Stuff we sent her!

Woohooo!!!! She's so beautiful!

Ok-now that I've calmed myself down, here are the details:

At 15 months she weighs in at 22 lbs and is 30.7 inches in height! She's gained two pounds in three months! She is still taking three bottles per day along with two (yes, two) bottles at night. Let me just say that that is the first thing to be weaned when we get home-lovingly of course. She eats three meals plus snacks a day. Prim has 6 upper teeth and 4 lower teeth. She has been in good health and is described as being independent, bright and happy. The report said that it is not difficult to separate her from her foster mother and although that gave me pause, Meredith assured me that she's probably like Meg. Now that makes me smile! She can scribble with a pencil and says a few words in Thai like grandma, cat, dog etc...

Please keep the foster family in your prayers. Back in November the foster father had to travel to his home province to help run the family business b/c of his father's illness. This update says that his father passed away in March from cancer.

On that note, just a quick mention that we will be traveling on June 2nd for baby Charlotte's funeral. Please also continue to keep this family in your prayers.

Hopefully this week-I know I say that alot lately-will bring travel news. I'll keep everyone updated.

Construction Zone

Please be patient while I'm trying to update my blog style....

Blog Envy

I have to say that I haven't quite found the "look" for my blog. I see other's blogs and have serious blog envy and wonder how they got such cool templates or blog headers. I keep scouring the web but am just not finding what I feel to be "me". If I can ever afford to buy my Mac maybe that will change...I covet the Mac Notebooks. Very, very sad.
Such is life...

Let's Talk About Nothing

I have the sudden urge to escape from reality and dish about my shows. After the past few days I have found that, today, I need to think about a whole lot of nothing. Did anyone else in the free world just hate the way Grey's Anatomy ended their season? I mean-come on people. It felt like watching a train wreck and then you wonder-did anyone make it? I absolutely adore this show and the side plots and actually am looking forward to the spin-off for Addison's character. Maybe I'm romantically optimistic but the Burke/Christina wedding disaster threw me for a loop. As did Meredith's character who decided she was ready to "be there" again yet when it came time for big commitment, again, she flailed. She crashed and burned. They have had two seasons to straighten her out and allow her to grow up and have her attitude match her college education. Where else can she go at this point? I am actually rooting for McDreamy to dump her sorry bum and move on to the sister who seems to be joining the crew. Ugh!! The George/Izzy thing is also getting out of hand and for the love of Pete I can't figure out why Callie O'Malley hasn't beaten her to a blond pulp for being in love with her husband. Did George fail the intern exams on purpose????
I loved, loved, loved the season finale of The Office and was rooting so hard for Pam and Jim. We (hubby and myself) actually cheered out loud when they semi got together at the end! Does anyone else feel really uncomfortable just watching Micheal's character b/c he's so inappropriate? It's just hysterical and the fact that Ryan got the corporate job and dumped jabber jaws Kelly was classic. Tee Hee...I loved that show.

Forever Healed

In memory of baby Charlotte, home with her eternal Father in Heaven. You were a miracle.

cyberthanks

Thank you to everyone who is faithfully praying for our friends. The only update we have as of now is that Charlotte was stable yesterday (good news) yet no test results came back. Maureen is doing better, she is off of certain drugs to control her blood pressure and has the ok to go home soon although they are putting that off to see how Charlotte will fare over the next few days. Please, please continue to pray fervently b/c their situation is extremely serious.

Dear Friends,
We have friends who are in desperate need of your prayers tonight. Our very good friends Mike and Maureen just had their second child by emergency C Section this past Saturday. Charlotte was born at 29 weeks and is suffering from what seems to be multiple genetic issues. Although Mike and Maureen knew that their daughter would be born with brain abnormalities (diagnosed from past ultrasounds) they could not have anticipated the extent of her condition and now are faced with the possibility of removing her from life support.
For those of you who do not know this family, this is one of many in a long line of struggles that they have faced over the past few years. Although their first daughter was born without her left eye (possibly genetic) and later diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, they have thrived and grown in parenthood and are raising a beautiful, vivacious five year old. In their quest to add to their family they suffered six miscarriages and had decided, finally, to adopt. They put in their paperwork to adopt a special needs child from China and during the process became pregnant. After a very touch and go pregnancy in the beginning and many scares later, they seemed to persevere and planned on the having another special needs child to love in their home.
Please pray for this family. Please pray that they would find comfort in the loving God who promises to never forsake us but to carry us always during good times and bad. Please pray that the decision that they may have to make will come straight from Him and that there will be no or doubts or regret. Pray that they are comforted. Please pray for the medical team that is taking care of both Maureen and Charlotte.
Please pray for a miracle.
Humbly,
April

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to everyone!! Check out our pictures from church with the African Children's Choir-what an amazing experience! I encourage everyone to find out more about this ministry and how they are preparing children to go into the world with the love of Christ!

Food is the Universal Language

Brenda, who is from the Netherlands and me with G and her son

Today the grad school had International Day. All of the international students hosted this wonderful event and made dishes from their home countries to share. Each country had their own booth with food and information about their country. As you can see from the pictures, many dressed in traditional attire that reflected their culture (I still don't get the Asian guy from Switzerland:) . To be honest I didn't expect it to be as nice as it was, but you could see that these men and women were so proud of where they come from and took the opportunity to show to us yanks! I tried a bit of the food but no one had more fun than G did when he saw all of the rice based Asian foods. His favorite was the rice with chicken that the men from Singapore made that had a sweet/soy sauce drizzled over it.

H sponsored this gentleman from Brunei, a very small country in Southeast Asia, who is waiting for his family to join him in the states. Would you believe that he made all of the food and sponsored the booth on his own? He is the first person (endorsed by the Sultan no less!) from his country to come to an armed forces college to study. I was very brave and tried the chicken curry. Trust me when I tell you I have never been interested in any kind of curry but this was really, really good. Almost mild to taste at first but leaves a bite!

G loved the fact that there were huge birds and a pretty Taiwanese girl that he thought looked just like Queen Amadala. For those of you who don't know who Queen Amadala is, please refer to your Episode One through Three Star Wars journals for reference. My son, who is totally obsessed with Star Wars right now relates everyone to it. And I mean everyone!! G proclaimed on Friday that the gentleman who delivers our FedEx packages looks like Lando Calrissian. Now I personally didn't see a resemblance to Billy Dee Williams....

We are so looking forward to church tomorrow!! The African Children's Choir is singing!!! Did you see them sing with my boyfriend Josh Groban on the American Idol Charity thing? They were so amazing! We are going to get to church really early to sit up front and we are letting G stay to watch since he is a music lover like mommy. Hopefully I'll have pics to post tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to baby Will who is turning 2 today!!! We love you!

No News Part II

Marissa just emailed and said that they didn't receive any 1st approval news from HSF today. That doesn't mean that they won't hear something on Monday but she said if we don't then hopefully the 5/23 meeting in two weeks. More waiting....

No News

I woke up at 6am with butterflies in my stomach. Actually, it had to be more like circus monkeys but I'll stick to the old saying for kicks. I couldn't get back to sleep and luckily H was trying to wake up for the day so we chatted and made our plan for the day in case of *news*. His orders were not to call me at all today. No texting. Nada. If I saw his number I would assume that Marissa must have called his cell and not the house and my heart would jump out of my chest. I couldn't take that multiple times today (we are text tag junkies, especially when our favorite shows are on. Example-"Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactiga" (the office) or "Yataaaaaaay" (heroes) . Seriously, we need a life.
I told him I would text if we got a call. Around 11:30 I was in such a tizzy that I called Marissa myself. I promised I wouldn't because I imagined she was making happy calls to other families and I didn't want to take her time away from that. However, sanity trumps courtesy and I dialed with gusto. Marissa was so nice and gracious and told me that they usually don't hear until Fridays or even Mondays. Oh geese. At least I was out of my misery for one more day. She seems confident that if we weren't presented at yesterdays meeting than it will be two weeks from now.
On a positive note, my blog pal Hannah got her great news yesterday and will be traveling to Bangkok for the June 13 meeting. Yeah Hannah!!!

Our House is a Petri Dish

could that statement be any more right? so G wakes up yesterday with a bit of a cough and I assume it's allergies....AGAIN!!! we've all been miserable here with allergies since moving and these past few months have been extraordinary. Today he woke up coughing without much relief from albuterol and I immediately made an appointment for him to be seen. later in the morning we saw his pediatrician and would you believe it? Pneumonia!!! I mean COME.ON. That makes two double ear infections, bronchitis, a sinus infection, skin infection and NOW pneumonia. All since January. My poor little guy is a walking antibiotic. I just feel at my wits end for him. He's been so sick yet he really puts on such a brave face. I can't believe that through most of this he just smiles and tries to joke around and still wants to kick daddy's butt at a light saber duel to the death. children are just so resilient. i could take some pointers from my son.so, in conclusion, i realize that you never, ever, know what the day is going to hold. sometimes it's bad, but sometimes it's really great too. while I know that today was filled with some bad parts and could have been better, I am thankful because it could have been alot worse! tomorrow in thailand a board is meeting and who knows, maybe the day will bring good news.

You never know...

Scrapbooking 101

I finally bit the bullet and began Prim's scrapbook-or should I call it a Life book?? I've decided that I will do one book completely dedicated to the adoption and our travels and then begin a separate book that focuses on her "growing up"-just like G's. I couldn't wrap my brain around doing both together and felt better when I decided to make her journey to our family a book in itself. It just felt like too much to keep adding onto and I look forward to dedicating many, many pages to her past history.

I do have to say though that when I think about what to include about her bio family I kind of come to a screeching halt. I think a part of me-a very honest part of me-quakes at talking about her biological mother. There is just that part of my heart that wants to her to be mine all mine and no one elses. But...then the realistic part of me kicks in and I realize this is real life-not a soap opera-and this part of her is who she is and who she will be. The funny thing is is that I can't wait to tell her how she was loved and adored by her foster family but I hear crickets when I think about what to tell her about her mother. That she was too young and would have been a disgrace to her family forever? That she may not have had a fair chance in life because of stigma that last for generations? I'm sure that, in time, with experience and actually having her here it won't be as awful as I think it to be.

Food for thought: How do we raise our adopted children to celebrate their lives without being defined by their adoption?

Another One Bites the Dust...

Another week down and still no updates on our little girl. I look forward to tomorrow being Monday, knowing that I have a crazy week of tennis and plenty of things to take my mind off of Wednesday's board meeting in Thailand.

This weekend was great. We do a babysitting co-op with friends and this weekend was our weekend to watch all of the kids. It turned out to be a great evening and we had a great time taking them to dinner and then to the big park near our house. M is only a few months older than Prim and she is just a joy to be with. I always tell her mother that I pray that Prim has the personality of M..and the appetite!! She is a doll and it makes me miss having our baby here even more. It's amazing how quickly I've forgotten the things that made me thrive as a mother during toddler hood. I love the babbling and animal sounds and the sheer, unadulterated enjoyment of all things new and exciting like big slides and sand! M is a daily reminder for me and I think God is using this precious little girl to prepare my heart for our daughter.

Today G slept in-would you believe it until after 9 in the morning! He had had two late nights so we decided to let him sleep and skip church. Not something we do often but we felt he could use the extra rest since we've all been so sick the last few months. Later in the day my son, my sweet little guy, had a temper tantrum that was almost laughable it was so dramatic. We hadn't gone through one of those in so long H and I just stared at each other and shrugged our shoulders. He was so tired from no nap, in the heat at a BBQ and then going swimming to boot that he just couldn't deal with himself anymore. G has this issue after swimming with his eyes being "swirly"-his term not mine. We try to get him to wear the mask but even when he does he won't let H suction it to his face to prevent the water from coming in so it's all for not. Our indoor pool is very chlorinated and it bothers him afterwards. Well, he must have gotten a wee bit over zealous b/c he was extremely congested as well and was trying to suck his two fingers and couldn't breathe through his mouth and his eyes were all swirly and on and on and on. He became so frustrated that he started screaming the second I mentioned nose drops to clear him up.

We managed to hold him down long enough to get the drops in and the second he found relief his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he was asleep-at 5pm. Not an ideal nap time.

Tonight I finished Prim's first scrapbook page. It's nothing crazy or overly creative. I really just needed to get over the hump on doing the first page. Every time I sit down to do start it I feel like I don't know where to start. Do I start with us and why we wanted to adopt? Do I leave out us entirely and make it totally about her? Do I add in personal information about her bio family right now? Should I do a page on Thailand and what makes it special? Any insight out there in cyberworld would be really helpful!!

These are the days....

...when I wonder how in the world I will do it with two children. Yesterday I spent the majority of the day hanging my head (and other extremities) over the toilet with the stomach flu. Have I mentioned that this is the third year in a row that I've had the stomach virus at least twice each year? I mean, seriously, do I have the immune system of a guppy?
I can't tell you how unbelievably thankful I am that every time this has happened I have had an amazing friend in my life who has swooped in on angel's wings and taken G for as long as I've needed to recover. So there I am in bed, sweating, shaking and miserable and all I can think about is how I will do this with two children. G's easy now, right? Throw in a DVD or he plays quietly with Star Wars lego guys. What did I do when I had a toddler and this happened? For whatever reason toddler hood feels like eons ago now that we are in self sufficient land. Needless to say I panicked a bit in my dehydrated delirium. These are the things I worry about. Not about Prim attaching (it will happen eventually), not about if she's picky or a prima donna, but if I have enough energy, enough patience to go around. I think, truly, that motherhood is synonymous with vulnerability (and guilt).