Martin was disappointed that I didn't include his favorite photo of me from "back in the day" so I told him I would post it just for him :-) This is me in 1978. I look pretty grown up for only being 8 years old..ha ha

WOW #6!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is correct, we moved up to #6 for our baby girl!! This is so exciting. It was high-fives all around today when we got the news. At times it feels like it will take forever before we are finally united with our daughter, so I can only imagine how long it must seem for our boys. They are REALLY excited to have a sister! This makes me smile :-)))

We are patiently waiting for our I-800A to get final approval. We have already had our fingerprinting done, but have not received the final approval. After some phone calls today it appears that our file will be assigned to a case worker "soon". They are already about 2 weeks past the 90 day period of when it should have been approved. The main frustration is that even if our agency has a baby to refer to us, they can't until the final approval for the I-800A comes. So we wait and we wait.

We pass the time while watching the blogs of other families as they go and pick up their children and see the pictures of them holding their children and we gaze upon the precious faces of all the referral pictures of families that will be traveling soon to meet their children. Then of course we have the education classes and books to keep us busy too :-) We are trusting that God knows who our baby girl will be and when we will be able to have her in our arms.

PICTURES OF ME BACK IN THE DAY

My friend Kristi W. tagged me to yearbook myself. It took me awhile, but here are the results. Above is me in 1954


1968 - I am pretty sure there is a picture of my mom that is identical to this!!


1972




1980 - not liking the hair style

1994

MOVING ON UP TO #7

It is always fun to wake up in the morning and get good news. We found out this morning that another family has accepted a referral for a beautiful little girl. Congrats to Colleen and her family!! The referrals just keep coming in, which is simply wonderful. This means that another precious child has a forever family!! Please pray that our USCIS paperwork (I-800A) gets final approval. We will not be able to receive a referral until we have this approval. We are waiting and trusting in God's timing!

THE MIGHTY ZUCCHINI

Behold the biggest zucchini I have EVER seen. My friend Lisa C. from church was giving away zucchini from her garden and asked if anybody wanted any. We LOVE zucchini bread at our house so I was first in line to get some. Little did I know that this is what I was going to get. I was so excited. This one zucchini will make 17 loaves of bread. We already baked 2 loaves and shredded up all the rest and bagged it and froze it so we could bake it later. A big thank you to Lisa!


Yes, this is 20 inches long and this baby weighed in at 7 pounds!!! AMAZING!!!

More perspective.



Luke is such a wonderful helper. He was so helpful in shredding this beast. We don't have a food processor so it took quite awhile to get through this. All the hard work will be worth all the delicious zucchini bread we will have all winter.

MY BIRTHDAY SURPRISE 9-17-08

I was awakened by my two adorable boys on my birthday at 6:55 a.m.!!! They had gotten up at 6:30 and cooked the below breakfast for me and served it to me in bed. They made eggs, english muffin with butter and cinnamon/sugar, sausage, and frozen boysenberries, and water. This was made complete with flowers and cards all served on my skillet. I laughed so hard at this part. They said well we couldn't find a serving tray so we used this instead...how sweet is that? The only downfall of the skillet is that the plate and glass were sliding around and the crash of the two is what jolted me out of bed so see my sweet boys standing there saying Happy Birthday Mom!!




Not the best photos of me...yikes these were taken right after I woke up, but I needed to capture these precious moments.

WE HAVE MONKEY'S AT OUR HOUSE

AMAZING NEWS!

Just wanted you all to know that we found out this morning that we are now #8 on the waiting list for Alesha!! The referrals keep coming in and families are on their way to bring their children home. It is so exciting to watch all these adoption journeys unfold before our eyes. (well through our eyes reading everybody's blogs!) We have gone from #13 to #8 in 2 months and 3 weeks. This is MUCH faster then we expected. I guess we better get busy on all those education classes and book reading :-)

GRANDPA TOM'S CAR

Grandma needed to take grandpa's car into the shop to have an alignment done and asked if the boys wanted to ride over. The boys were so excited to ride in the back of grandpa's COOL car. This car is a beast...you can hear it coming from about a mile away. You get a lot of looks when you are riding around is this beautiful 1956 Chevy 2-door post!!!



Grandma driving the boys around town in the COOL car!

Shot from the front of the car.

Pretty excited boys!

TENNIS AT THE ROSE GARDENS

Darin decided to run one of his longer runs on the Wild Wood Trail so the boys and I decided to play some tennis while we waited. It was a beautiful day!! The roses smelled wonderful. I got quite a workout with having to cover one side of the court myself while the boys covered the other side. I have always loved tennis and it is fun that the boys are willing to play with me.


A water break to fill our water bottles after about 2 hours of tennis.

Beautiful roses and our cute boys!

OAK'S PARK 8-21-08

The boys completed the summer read program through the library again this year. This is a yearly tradition and the big pay off is a day at Oak's Park. They have specific days you can go and one of the days was while we were in India. The other option was 3 days after we got back. I didn't want the boys to miss out since they had worked so hard all year so I off to Oak's Park we went. I don't know what I was thinking, but I bought a ride bracelet for myself because I wanted to go on some rides and not just stand around the entire time watching. I will say this after the fact....amusement park rides and jet lag are not the best combination. Ididn't get sick on any rides, because I steered clear of all the real spinning ones, but I was SO exhausted when we left. It was a blast though watching the boys laughing and smiling and to see their excitement with every ride.

The Scream'n Eagle. This ride is crazy! The boys have wanted to ride this every year and haven't been tall enough. This year they both went on it. I was a nervous wreck watching them. They looked so tiny on this huge ride with all the big kids and adults!!! Scream'n Eagle...hard to capture how high this ride goes. It seems excruciatingly high when your children are on it!! The boys were amped after they got off this ride. Definately the highlight of the day.

I love this picture of Luke. This photo captures his personality perfectly. Luke and I were riding the balloon ride while Martin was doing bumper cars.


Martin is in the car with the lights on. He didn't have as much fun as he had hoped and he said the 30 minute wait in line was "SO not worth it".

I can't believe I actually got the above shot. If you look through the open slot to the right of the umbrella you can see Luke's face. It took several shots to get this one, but I did it! This ride used to be my most favorite ride as a kid. Luke was tall enough this year to ride it and had a blast!! Mom was a bit nervous letting him go alone, but all that spinning combined with jet lag I decided they didn't need somebody pucking on their ride.


Martin was tall enough this year to ride the BIG roller coaster. He was so excited about this, because he has wanted to ride this for many years and just wasn't tall enough. I think he went on it about 7 times in a row! The ride would stop and he would run off the ride and get right back in line for another go at it.


This photo is just to show the size of the roller coaster. For a nine year old this was VERY cool!

AUGUST UPDATES (boy's photos while we were in India on missions trip.)

I have fallen SO behind in my posts that I am just going to try and update by month at this point. All the posts below this one are photos that our boys took while Darin and I were in India on our mission trip in August. The boys spent the majority of their time with Grandma Lulu and Grandpa Tom, but also visited Grandma and Grandpa Pfeiffer too. We gave the kids our small digital camera and told them to take photos of what they did while we were gone and we would take photos of what we did when we were in India. They did a good job of documenting their days. Of course there were several crazy shots, but these are the ones that they selected for me to post :-)

A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY MOM AND TOM AND THE PFEIFFER FAMILY FOR TAKING SUCH GOOD CARE OF OUR BOYS WHILE WE WERE GONE!!!!!! YOU ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED BEYOND WORDS!

Upon our arrival home from India mission trip on 8-18-08

Our boys were waiting at the airport with Grandma Lulu to greet us when we arrived back home from India! They worked really hard on their welcome home signs. We were so happy to see their great big smiles and get those hugs and kisses we had missed for 10 days!

Washington Beach House

The boys had a blast with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Lulu in Washington. They made and flew kites, had trips to the arcade, built sand castles, played on the beach and outside in Grandpa and Grandma's amazing property. There were a tons of memories made this trip!!

Beach time!

The top photos cracks me up! Luke is famous for digging the biggest hole he can manage and usually it is just about as big as he is tall!

Looks like they had some fun building sand castles too! The weather doesn't look like it was as HOT as it was in India!

Our boys love going across the Astoria Bridge. This is the the bridge we take to get to Grandpa Tom and Grandma Lulu's beach house in Washington. I was not surprised to see these photos on the camera :-)

Grandma and Grandpa Pfeiffer's House

The boys had fun in Gearhart with Grandma and Grandpa Pfeiffer. They went swimming, flew some kites, played on the beach, played at the playground, and made some memories! It appears they had Grandma taking the photos...I didn't see any of her on the camera.

The boys went to a car show with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Lulu the first weekend we were in India. Grandpa's truck won 1st prize!!!

LONGEST RED ROSE!

Darin gave me this rose for our wedding anniversary, August 5th, right before we left for India on the 8th. I didn't want it to go to waste so I gave it to my mom to enjoy before it died. I asked her to take a photo of it, because I don't think I have ever seen a rose this long before! It smelled amazing too!! Thanks honey. I love you!

EXCITING NEWS!!

WE ARE NOW #9 ON THE WAIT LIST WOO-HOOO!!!!!!!

Yesterday we found out that another family has accepted a referral for a gorgeous little boy!!! It is always encouraging when we hear news like this, because we know that another baby has found a fovever family and that WE MOVE UP on the wait list!!!!!!!! There are several families waiting on guardianship and travel approval to go and pick up their children. We pray for quick turn around times on all the different steps that need to take place for these families.