Kitchen Duty

How great was it to come home to find that our dear friends that were feeding our dogs, cats, inside rodents and outside chickens not only had hung welcome home banners is everyone's room, but they had also seriously done some major deep cleaning on our house.  Jenn keeps it really neat and clean all the time, but our friends did the stuff we don't normally do very often. They washed the walls, cleaned all the floorboards, wiped all the slats on all the blinds (like 50,000 of them), lots of other stuff AND had MEALS ready to cook in our spic and span totally cleaned refrigerator.  They even cleaned the overflow fridge in the garage.  How awesome is that? All of y'all that have friends that you're trying to figure out how to serve - this was seriously indentured servitude type service! We have been majorly blessed. Sorry no pix of the fridge, you'd think I was selling it. :) And we already ate the yummy meals.

A week back in the States - sorry for not posting

Well we made it back to the States! Our consulate appointment got moved up to the 6th, so we went back to Shanghai on the 8th, spent a couple days getting to know the people from the Healing Home where our two oldest still are.  The rest of us made the first flight we tried for - as usual, there were EXACTLY enough seats left for us to make it to Chicago. And they fed us 3 or 4 times - I love free food!!!!! God continues to surprise us by letting us know that He even controls the number of available airplane seats so we can get home for free. And they were all together.....

So we've been back almost a week now. Things are going really well.  Liam is a totally easy baby. Smiles a lot and doesn't seem to be having any attachment issues or significant grieving going on - except when Jenn gets more than 8 feet away from him.  Keane has been asking some pretty funny stuff - I think misinterpretation from the electronic translator is helping:
     Do the boys go to school? (We homeschool!)
     Where will I get my knowledges? ( I told him from us - that probably has him really scared!)
     Do you have money for ALL of this? (We had to stock up at WalMart with almost two carts of stuff - including 20 or 30 of the 20cent notebooks and stuff like that)
     I asked if he were happy or sad and he told me, "I have two plates..."

It is obvious that he has been surprised at some things, too:
     I don't think he expected me to drive our own car.
     Or own our own car.
     Or own more than one car and keep it at our house!
     Everybody gets ice in their water all day long.
     We eat uncooked spinach at every meal.
     We really are going to do school at home............................
   

 And then we went to the beach for the day. Enjoy the pictures!

19? Really?

How did Rylan all of the sudden get to be 19?  What a fine young man you've grown into, Rylan! He and Keane celebrated their birthdays together last night (again) with a cake the hotel brought to our room - they saw it was his birthday from his passport at check-in.  Very nice!

HAPPY JULY 4TH FROM CHINA!!!!

We got Keane a translator, and it has been great being able to communicate back and forth. He was so happy to be able to match Daddy for the 4th of July.  He keeps asking, when will we go to America?  I wonder what he thinks it will be like, and what he has been told. He is doing great and seems much younger than 14, which is great with us.We are hoping he will be able to enjoy just being a kid for awhile and still be able to play with toys and enjoy some of the things he has missed over the years. He calls us Mommy and Daddy, and is all smiles showing us things.

Liam is super happy, easy going, and always giggling.  He is a ham and loves to run everywhere.  He can already shake hands,give five and do the fist bump on command.  He is smart too.  I ask him go get your shoes and he runs over and grabs them with a big grin.   He also loves to cuddle, when I give him the bottle at night .

We are soooo blessed.  Both boys are a perfect fit for our family,only God could plan such a perfect match.

Big Starbucks, Little Starbucks and a Red Couch

     The big brother and the little brother at Starbucks!  Their first cups of America!

And then we strolled over to the White Swan for the traditional red couch picture.  We got one of the two boys and one of the whole group.  I'm not sure if we'll get everyone to look at the camera at the same time until some of us learn a little more English!

Day off - July 2nd

Well for starters, the pool was deeper than the 14 year old is tall.  If you thought we were surprised, you should have seen the look on his face!  He jumped right in and went all the way down.  It was only 1.5 meters, but he's about 1.4, so everything that he uses to breathe through was full of water.  He jumped up and grabbed the side and looked at me with this huge smile and then held out his hand for me to help / save him.  It was pretty neat. Yes, Mom, my  pockets were empty and I was ready to jump in   :)

Really hot today, so we all enjoyed the pool.

Happy #14 Keane

How much cake do you get for $1.29?  It was the perfect size. And it came with two tomatoes!  We had a great celebration for Keane's #14.  We got him a Chinese/English Bible for his birthday - he wasn't familiar with it.  Glad to have him in our family.

Gotcha Day for Liam

 So here are the photos of Liam's gotcha day. Just bought the card reader to get them off of the other camera.  That's the orphanage director from Liam's orphanage - he was really attached to her and wanted nothing to do with these new people.

It didn't take long for Liam to warm up to Jenn.  She's pretty easy to get along with and is the world's best mama.  Cute, too! Hurry up and read this because she is going to want me to edit it out when she wakes up and sees that I'm calling her cute.  Look how cute little Liam is, too.  Man he was screaming - he's got a really quiet cry. And his mouth is only about as big as a dime when it's fully open.
        Now we are the happy family of 9 for about 36 hours! I was counting the people to make sure we were all there - then realized that we hadn't gotten Keane yet.