The kids have belted up to Orange belt.  We headed to the west side for testing.  All 3 of them did an amazing job!

TKD

Kicking it at Tae Kwon Do

Christmas Letter 2013

Family photo with Santa at the Dreambank

Our 2013 Christmas letter is finished.  You can find a PDF copy of the letter as a shared link from my online backup software Memopal at https://apps.memopal.com/g/?Y8U6ECUU

or

As a link on Google Drive at http://goo.gl/RVKlHV

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2012

Cami helping Alex with tree decorating

No, that's not a misprint -- I'm finally posting the 2012 Christmas letter.  Actually, it's called 2012 Review instead of a Christmas letter because it was sometime in 2013 when we finished the letter and it got to a point where it didn't seem like it was worth sending out.  But the 2013 Christmas letter is almost finished (so stay tuned!) and it seemed like a good time to publish the 2012 version.    So here's the link to the letter - it will take you to site called Memopal and then you can download a PDF of the letter.  Merry Christmas

https://apps.memopal.com/g/?628RERNP

By the way, Memopal is an online backup software.  It backs up all the documents and photos on my computer automatically.  That way I won't loose all my files if my computer crashes or the house would burn down.  If you're not backing up your stuff, I'd highly recommend getting some sort of online backup software.  If you sign up with the link below, we'll both get extra space on our account.

http://apps.memopal.com/r/?29048eab46d03ab9

A Celebration of Children and Families First

Today we headed out to Schuster's Farm after church to join in the celebration of our social worker, Anne, and her agency Children and Families First.  Anne has been a part of our lives for over 11 years as she helped us in the journey to bring home each of our 4 children.  We have laughed with her and cried with her.  She was patient and understanding as we were frustrated in adoption delays.  She patiently explained everything we needed and wanted to know.
The celebration was also a good bye to her agency after 10 years.  Her husband recently changed jobs to run a company in the Milwaukee area.  After the recent loss of her daughter, she is closing the agency to spend more time with her family.
We will miss her but know that she is only a phone call or email away.  We feel so incredibly blessed to have had her as a part of our family as it grew from Justin and myself to a family of 6.

Happy Adoption Day Alex!

Today we celebrated Alex's adoption day. We headed to the courthouse bright and early and were met by our photographer and some wonderful friends and family.  We entered the courtroom a few minutes early and found that they were unable to locate our paperwork (flashbacks to missing paperwork from USCIS).  The file clerk was stuck in traffic and court would be delayed. The kids were amazingly well behaved while we waited a little over a half hour for the paperwork to be located when the clerk arrived.  Our judge had come out to introduce herself earlier and when she entered again, court started.  It was a special day for Judge Julie as this would be her first adoption case since she transferred to family court. We answered a few questions and Judge Julie declared that our son would officially be renamed and be now know as our son forever!  We are so thankful for so many people joining us so early in the morning and for an amazing photographer to capture this for us.

We celebrated with our traditional breakfast at Perkins and spent the rest of the day enjoying time together as a family (although daddy had to go back to work for a little while).  

This day as we celebrate, we also remember that our joy comes at someone else's sorrow. 

 "A child born to another woman calls me Mom. The depth of the tragedy and magnitude of the privilege are not lost on me" -Jody Landers

Ian loses his first tooth

After many weeks of having a loose tooth and lots and lots of encouragement from mom and dad, Ian lost his first tooth which he pulled out all by himself!  We encouraged him to do it himself by telling him that part of growing up is taking out your first loose tooth.  It would have been easy to do it for him as he asked repeatedly for help.  Knowing the best way to help him was by encouraging him, we waited for him to finally take it out.  Way to go Ian!  Mommy and Daddy are SO proud of you!