Girls at the Zoo

Here are the gifts from my incredible Secret Buddy. Thank you Secret Buddy. All of the kids have enthusiastically been wearing their Red Thread bracelets. I can't wait to place a photo in that adorable frame,wrap our child in that towel and fill that album with photos! Thank you too for the recent gift. I will post a photo soon. One week this summer, the boys had a basketball camp. It was a half-day camp for Joseph and Edward and Danny was able to work as a Jr. Counselor. It was a great experience for him. The kids were in grades 1-4. On the last morning, the girls and I went to a zoo in the same town. One special thing at the zoo was the white lion. Jenise loved how everything in the zoo was made of recycled material--including the bench they are sitting on. The girls enjoyed the bubble machine and the mist tent more than anything else:) I definitely need to go back and fix the lighting on this picture...I just thought it was cute--hope you can see them:) The darkness was bugging me so I added some light. I have a bad habit of overcorrecting but at least now you can see them...well, you can see Jenise. If only that hat were slightly higher:)

We Are Here...

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I honestly did not think that much time had gone by. I told myself I would post before the kids were back in school and they are back tomorrow so I am posting tonight:) These are scatterings from our summer. I finally took the card out of our camera and uploaded/downloaded photos. We have the girls at the zoo(more to come), the boys after basketball camp, fishing at our family reunion and Danny finally caught a fish, JiaLi getting a ride from Grandma and JiaLi with Mama Pug and her other Gramma. We have had such a great summer. Secret Buddy thanks for the gifts, I will be posting them. The kids all wear their Red Thread Bracelets religiously. I just love it. Thanks for everything. So what's going on with our adoption? Not something I really like to talk about. I get nervous. With JiaLi, we told immediate family but really didn't come out and tell people(although with all the references, many knew)until we had everything over there. Now with Vietnam, I haven't said anything yet but now I will. We withdrew. We did not feel far enough along in the process and did not want to lose more money. We were researching other countries and came to a decision that we agreed upon. We are adopting from right here. We applied and had a visit the end of July with a Social Worker and now we need to take a 10-week, 1-night per week class and we are hoping to get into one for September and then go from there. We'll see. I miss you all and I am going to try to get caught up this week on everyone's blogs:)

Goggles and shopping

Edward will sit an endless amount of time and listen to stories. But now he is at an age where he really needs to be reading more independently. The kids came home with recommended authors from the schools for summer reading. We picked up some books from the library by one of the authors for Edward(the Max and Ruby author). The book that he enjoyed the most was Max's Dragon Shirt and we focused on him reading it. He understands each of the sounds for all of the letters but gets overwhelmed by the larger words--which I know is normal for most kids(went through it with the others) but Edward's frustration sometimes gets really bad with a temper added on. I tried and tried to think of something to motivate him(I know, I should say bribe) and came up with goggles. We just got some for Danny because he is swimming higher distances and it makes sense for him to wear them as he swims laps but wanted the younger ones to work on keeping their eyes open under water. When I brought up buying goggles if he read the whole book to me...what a change. He ended up reading the book 5 times before we even got the goggles. I did offer goggles for the others too;) when we were shopping. As many of you know from previous posts, I am a horrible shopper and my kids really should have more bathing suits than they do for the amount of time that they are in the water;) Well, I finally brought JiaLi shopping(the same day we got the goggles). I bought her two bathing suits and right away when she saw this in the store she had to get it because Jenise had it. Jenise was such a good sport with her. I had to laugh to at the diving post on Annslee's blog. JiaLi is actually up to 5 times jumping with her sister:) JiaLi is not diving or anything fancy yet but we are proud that she has gone from bobbing in the water to diving to the bottom to get toys:) Step-by-step:) The next day, it was the cutest thing. We were driving Jenise to her camp and JiaLi said to Jenise "wasn't that fun yesterday wearing the same bathing suit."

It's happened...she says wicked...

The other day we were at a park and JiaLi wanted to go on the swings. The others were playing baseball. The swings were right in the sun and it was a hot day. Prior to going on the swing, I told her to be careful because the swings might be hot. She used her hand to touch and test the swing and she turned and said, "Ooooooo,the swings are wicked hot!" This one is from the cookout a few weekends ago. I love how the popsicle matches her bathing suit:)

And he is six...

Yesterday, Edward turned six. We will be holding his birthday party with the family in August to try to give us a little more time to work on the tree fort. For his birthday, Edward chose supper. He decided on quesadillas(may not be spelt right). As we were shopping for ingredients, he turned to me and said, "Mommy do I like quesadillas?" Daddy did the cooking. And the meal was enjoyed by everyone:) A great choice Edward:) While we were shopping, we also strolled down the ice cream aisle and he chose a dessert. Italian ice:) These two enjoyed strawberry while the others enjoyed lemon. Jenise topped everyone's off with a piece of candy from the bag of candy she received from her coach at the basketball camp she attended last week:) BTW, they are sitting on the floor because it was a hot evening and they ate supper in the air-conditioned bedroom:)

Summer

Jenise had a jumprope camp last week and I was in awe at how she jumped. They did Double Dutch jumproping and some other jumprope things. Of course, JiaLi also wanted to jumprope and the day we went to watch, JiaLi made sure to bring a jumprope along. JiaLi also enjoyed jumproping without a rope:) Everyone except JiaLi participated in swimming lessons last week and this week. They have had a lesson each day and will finish tomorrow. The age to participate is Kindergarten. I'm not sure what clicked this week but all of a sudden, JiaLi is doing bobs in the water on her own:) We are so proud of her:) I don't know if you can tell but in the lower photo of the big brother pictures, JiaLi is riding his back. Since Joseph was in the post yesterday didn't want to leave Edward out:) He had a collision with his brother while playing basketball and landed on his head--luckily he also landed on his elbow so that full impact was not to the head. I keep telling him that just because he dressed like Harry Potter last Halloween doesn't mean he needs to Really be him.(for those who have read, I am referring to the Lightening scar on his head--all week, he has been saying now I really look like Harry Potter.)

Our Seven Year Old and His Thoughts...

I have had this in my head sine it happened and had to post about it. The photo has nothing to do with the story but I made sure to take a picture of these two over the weekend so that I could share the story:) Of course, this photo is cracking me up because JiaLi is eyeing Joseph's popsicle even though she has one of her own;) The kids were eating lunch the other day and just doing there usual talking back and forth. All of a sudden, Joseph turned to me and said, "Mommy, I'm glad JiaLi isn't Chinese any more." He had a big smile on his face. I looked at him wondering what he was thinking. I tried to explained that a part of JiaLi will always be Chinese. He looked at me again and said, "Yeah but I can talk to her." We talked a little bit more and I went on to say that we never know, maybe one day JiaLi will learn Chinese. A few hours later Joseph approached me with concern. "Mommy, will I understand JiaLi when she gets bigger?" (Joseph is thinking in purely language terms.) I told him that since JiaLi was so young when she came home that English is her main language and she will ALWAYS be a _______________(I used our last name). What a sigh of relief he breathed.