MY COUSIN'S WEDDING ~PICTURES GALORE!

My wonderful cousin, Kris, got married in La Jolla, CA on November 20th.

She loves our kids and they all adore her...so we were thrilled when she asked if ALL of our kids (minus baby Joshua) would be in her wedding.

The girls were "wedding fairies" with gorgeous hand made wands to wave and the boys were "bell ringers" ~with bells of course :)...they were paired up and walked in at the very beginning of the ceremony to begin the processional.

The wedding was on a Saturday -so Friday morning our entire family caravan'd over to CA for the rehearsal and wedding. :)

3 vans + 6 adults +13 children =craziness!!!

I swear we took up 1/2 the Carl*s Jr and overloaded the kitchen when we walked in for lunch. :)


We all fit into 3 hotel rooms ~of course they were adjoining so if we left the adjoining doors open, the kids could (and did) run from room to room to room.

It was CRAZY for us adults -but oh my ...the kids LOVED it!!


they were stir crazy from being cooped up in the cars...so there was wrestle-mania going on in our room!


we got to the hotel about an hour or so before we had to be at the rehearsal ~so we had time to change, eat a snack, and head on out.

this is blurry -I know -but I love it. :)

my parents took my sister's little boys back to the hotel after the rehearsal, but the rest of us were able to go to the rehearsal dinner.

Thanks Kris and Jeff for a great dinner!!

the girls with a picture of our penpal son at Kolfe in Ethiopia.
we took the pic along with us so he could be included in the big family gathering as well ~even if from afar.

of course it rained ALL day Saturday.
we were right on the beach.

so Saturday AM my dad and I decided to take some of the kids for a walk, even in pouring rain...just to get their wiggles out and let my mom and sis get b'fast ready for our crew.

we ended up seeing pods of dolphins swimming as well as several seals!

too bad it was raining so bad ~I couldn't get a good pic of them.




LOVE this pic of all the girls w/their hair in curlers!

b'cuz it was raining so hard -we were all cooped up in our 3 hotel rooms -ALL DAY.

have you tried that before?

cooped up in 3 hotel rooms with 13 stir crazy children?

I'd advise against it. :)

although it was a bit crazy...the kids really were good considering the circumstances!

this is how Becca spent much of her weekend -holding baby Joshua

Elizabeth has her hair done!
Auntie Joy did all the girls' hair in up-do's.
I helped blow dry and spray the hair and Joy made them all fancy!

look at my handsome boy!

all dressed up and waiting for family pics before the ceremony.

after the kids ushered in the processional, they got to watch the ceremony from the back of the hall.

it was so cute to watch them watch the ceremony like this. :)


from here on down, these pics are from my sister.
she has a great camera and was able to get so many great shots of everyone!!

Janae and Jordan

Jackie and Becca

they were glued together most of the weekend. :)

my sister and her newest precious blessing, Joshua

sweet Jeremiah

just LOVE this pic of Joanna!

the kids are watching the professional pics being taken before the ceremony

practicing the processional in one of the side rooms

still watching everything going on!

I was thrilled to hold Joshua any chance I could...but I couldn't resist playing with his while he slept.

grandpa and his girls

grandma and her boys

my sister got this great shot of us

my grandparents and their 13 great-grandchildren

Jameson is VERY attached to grandma...as long as she held him, he was a happy boy. :)

here the kids are again, watching the ceremony

my grandpa holding great grandchild #13, Joshua

and of course 1 sweet pic of our newest addition to the family.

he is such the sweetest baby and we all fight over holding him. :)


The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was fantastic ~the kids even enjoyed dancing. :)

On Sunday, our little family of 6 headed to Sea*World.

As we were walking thru the gates I realized I had left the camera in the hotel.

GRRRR.

After Sea*World we met up with 2 of John's sisters, a brother in law, and a nephew for dinner. We are so thankful they took the time to drive down to see us! The kids had a blast seeing their aunties, uncle, and cousin!

And, in keeping with the whirlwind weekend theme, we all caravan'd back home on Monday.

It was a fast weekend ~but full of fun and amazing memories the kids (and adults) will never forget!

FEEDING ANDREW'S OBSESSION

Andrew is obsessed with football.

obsessed.

He carries a football around with him ALL day.
I think he even sleeps with it.

He is learning his geography via football.

He opens up the newspaper on Saturday and Sunday -reads what teams are playing, then looks a map of the US to figure out where those teams are from.

What's uncanny is that he doesn't just LOVE to watch and play -he truly understands it...and can often tell us what penalty will be called before the refs even announce it.

uncanny.

So-a few Saturdays back, John was browsing around on Craigs*list and found a set of 6 tix for the Cardinals for a really great price.

We decided to jump on the chance to go!

Everyone was pretty excited -but Andrew was in heaven. :)

there were some nice fans behind us that gave the kids some banners to hold up....then they bought the kids cotton candy too.

so nice of them...though I'm not sure if cotton candy was the best snack for my already excited kids! :)

don't bug me mom-I'm watching the game. :)

I'm so glad John found the tix and we were able to have a fun family day at the game!

BIRUK'S READOPTION

November 10, 2010

Biruk John was officially "re-adopted" into our family.

By re-adopting him, we are making the adoption final in the US (he has legally been ours since March -this is really just a formality) which means he can get a US birth certificate stating John and I as his father and mother...AND we can apply for his US citizenship now!

With Elizabeth, she came home as a US citizen...but when we adopted Biruk the process was different and he came home as a "legal resident"...we needed to re-adopt him so he could gain US citizenship.

here we all are in the courtroom

after the hearing
it's offical -we're "suitable parents" and Biruk can officially be ours!

what's fun is this is the exact same judge and the exact same court room we had for Elizabeth's re-adoption. :)


thanks to my dad who was able to come along and take pics and help with the other 3 kids!


And as we did after Elizabeth's readoption, we headed to Dun*kin' Donuts to celebrate!!

it was hard to get a good pic of all of us cuz of the sun!!!

celebrating was JUST what Biruk needed after the court hearing.

We had told the kids a day or 2 ahead of time we'd all be going to court to make Biruk officially part of our family.
Because Biruk didn't understand exactly what was going on, he was nervous.
very nervous.

and insecure.

He exhibited alot of insecure behaviors for those few days before court.

A re-adoption hearing takes all of about 8 minutes.

seriously.
when it was all over and nothing bad happened. you could tell Biruk was relieved. :)

I'm glad we had already planned a celebratory donut snack for him!

This little experience helped to re-enforce we will keep him safe and that he can trust us.

HALLOWEEN 2010

we "celebrated" Halloween twice this year -once for our neighborhood carnival and once on the actual day.
I only have pics from the neighborhood carnival day though!

the kids getting ready to head to our neighborhood park for the festivities

cool huh?!
our HOA pays for this big Fall/Halloween Carnival and the neighbors all help out at the various booths.

Biruk and Andrew jousting!

mine and Elizabeth's fun didn't last long -she had been sick for a few days, but carnival morning it seemed as if her fever had broken...within 10 minutes of being at the park, she was notice-ably not well and her fever had come back. :(

she and I sat together for a long time while the other kids did the fun carnivaly things.

the boys doing this kind of tug-o-war thing

bounce house

tasting cotton candy for the first time

being that he is a HUGE sweet fan -cotton candy went over quite well. :)

attempting to climb the rock wall
he didn't make it very far -but we're proud of him for trying!

the 3 kids painted their small pumpkins.

Elizabeth felt so crummy by this time to asked me to just paint hers for her...poor baby.

BIRUK'S ADJUSTMENTS ~ PART 2

if you missed part 1 from a week or so ago, you can read about it here .

After I wrote the initial post about Biruk's adjustments thus far, a few other things came to mind...things or issues we had been told to expect and sure enough, are dealing with. I thought they might be really helpful to another family who is in the process of or considering adopting an older child.

First though -in an effort to give each child 1 on 1 attention, we are having "mommy dates" and "daddy dates". Since the kids are with me all the time, they seem to be more excited for their daddy dates! But that's OK ~they still seem to enjoy their dates with me. :)

Back in October, when Biruk was REALLY struggling, I took him on a mommy date.
We went to Build*A*Bear so he could make a stuffed animal of his very own. He probably never had a stuffed animal in Ethiopia because he LOVES stuffed animals here...and the kids have been so sweet to share their animals thus far, but we thought it only proper to let Biruk have one of his very own.

He LOVES this camo bear ~sleeps with him every night. :)

and it was some good mommy-son time spent. we had a good chat and I gleaned some information from him about life back in Ethiopia ~particularly about how he knew his "first mommy" loved him ~how he perceives he is loved.



ADJUSTMENTS ~
We had been warned of a few issues we may run into in adopting an older child....hoarding and regression.

Hoarding-We anticipated much worse than we actually are dealing with...but Biruk does hoard/packrat/save everything. He sleeps in the same room as Andrew, but has his own room with a bed (now it's really just a guestroom!), his clothes, a toy chest, and a desk. When he first arrived home, we gave him a plastic box in which to keep "special things" he wanted to save. We anticipated him potentially "saving" food and such so thought a plastic box would at least help keep bugs away!

Thankfully he doesn't hoard or save food!
But pretty much everything else is fair game. :)

He has filled up nearly every drawer of the desk in his room...with stuff.
random stuff
price tags off toys or clothes, drawings he has made, projects he did in Sunday School, trinkets he finds on the street,
rubber bands, paper clips.....

at first he would also take toys out of the other kids' rooms (mainly Andrew's) and hide them in the desk drawers too.

we quickly put an end to taking others' toys and things...but we are still allowing the "collection" of other items.
It seems important to him to hold onto things -probably because he didn't have things of his own before.

AND, the longer he is with us, the less we find him collecting things.

I will admit that John and I have, on a few occassions, cleaned out the desk drawers. :) not completely of course....but we'll take out 1/2 the paper clips or rubber bands...throw away random price tags or things it's obvious he won't even know are gone. If we didn't do this, he would have NO room to add to his collection!

Regression -
This is a big issue and "struggle" for us if I'm going to be honest.
We fully anticipated Biruk regressing...and even encouraged it to a point.
He came to us at a smidge under 6 yrs old....and really, was right on target developmentally -he could get dressed by himself, shower himself, tie his shoes, etc etc.

Even in Ethiopia, we began to regress him a little bit ~we tied his shoes for him, we cut up his food, we did little things for him that we knew he could do himself...but we wanted to do them for him to show him we were there to care for him, even in little ways.

It took about a day for him to realize we'd do or help him do the little things and he eagerly began coming to us for help!

We had been warned and were ready for him to regress even more once home. That because our American culture is so very different, it would be more like having a 3 or 4 yr old in a 6 yr old's body...he would need to touch everything, explore everything, play with toys intended for much younger children, etc etc.


Knowing and being ready for it is one thing.....living with it for an extended period is another, and has been trying at times.


This warning and advice has been spot-on.
In many ways, Biruk is more like a 4 yr old emotionally.
It's almost as if he's regressed so that he can then go thru those stages with us.
It is good ~but can be really trying at times.


He is still in the "exploring" stage -but when he first came home he was REALLY into exploring...going thru the house opening every cabinet, every drawer, every door...picking everything up,holding it, studying it.

He is still very much into touching things.
and right now with all the "new" Christmas decorations out, this has been tough.
He has broken a few of the Christmas decorations simply because he's been touching them, trying to figure out how they work, etc.

Several other things in our house have been broken ...not intentionally, it's simply because he's exploring and touching and wasn't taught to always be careful.

He's learning. :)

Just the other day he asked to hold my keys as we left the grocery store, within seconds I noticed he was spinning the key ring..he was in the process of taking the keys and key fab off the ring! I know he wasn't trying to be sneaky or naughty and lose the keys...he was simply trying to figure out how the keys stayed on the ring!
Thank God I noticed it before we lost all the keys!!


I have a few more posts in the works ~Biruk's readoption pictures, Halloween, an NFL game, Thanksgiving, and random Christmasy pictures too! I'm hoping to be caught up soon!

PUT A RING ON IT

we had 5 of my nieces and nephews this morning for a few hours. my girls and my sister's girls are like 4 peas in a pod -they are so funny together!

if you want a good laugh, take 20 seconds to watch this video....what cracked me up the most was watching little Jameson grooving along with the girls!

ps-they're singing "All the single ladies"...really by Bey*once' but they think it's from the movie Alvin & the Ch*ipmunks. :)

JUST FOR FUN CUZ IT WARMS MY HEART

Rebecca has really taken off in reading. Here she's reading to Elizabeth.


just cuz God's creation is cool

this was several weeks back.
I took the kids outside to get their wiggles out.
They were supposed to ride their bikes while I cut coupons.

1 by 1 then ran inside,grabbed scissors, and joined me in cutting coupons. :)

several weeks back we were at the dump and right next to us, a family was throwing out this motorized scooter.

so we took it home ~John had to fix it up a smidge and buy a new battery for it and it was ready to go.

the kids have a blast on it!

Andrew gets it going the fastest!

Becca is our cautious one and had it barely crawling around the cul-de-sac.

the wee one is a total dare devil too ~at the end of this post is a short video of her (couldn't get the video moved up to here).

the cousins are taking it for a spin

and of course it was time to see the dentist again.

the kids LOVE our dentist!!

and all had good reports too! no cavities!