To Blog

I have decided that 2011 is going to be the year of my blog revival, I think. I don't want to put too much pressure on myself, I do that too often.

2010 was a really difficult year for my family and I. We were living in a new city, lost some friends, added to our family (this is also one of the highlights of 2010), changed jobs, and I lost my dad. Any one of these things would have made for a difficult year but all of them together made for a rough year. I couldn't bring myself to blog about most of it.

We are now back in our hometown, in our house, and it feels like we are starting fresh in 2011. That is not to say that everything is easy for us now, we are still transitioning and we are still dealing with some job/financial stress.

I want this blog to be a place where I can share our families growth, joy, hardships, and other random thoughts. I want to start 2011 by reflecting on the good of 2010. I spent enough time living/reflecting on the hard parts of 2010, now I want to remember the good and give credit to God for those things.

* We brought our sweet, spirited little boy home from Ethiopia.
* We got to travel to one of the most beautiful places we had ever been to, and meet some of the most beautiful people in the world.
* Kaden started Kindergarten and has loved every second of it.
* We connected with some wonderful families that have also adopted from Ethiopia, not just connected but become great friends with these families.
* We got to spend a lot of time together as a family.
* We got to go on a family trip to do relief work in New Orleans.
* We moved back into our house.
* Kevin's mom fought and beat cancer!
* We are blessed with three beautiful, healthy boys.
* We lived in a beautiful neighborhood in Denver, complete with great trails and a pool.

I think one of the main things I have learned this year is that life is short and I need to love the people in my life the best I can because I may not always have the chance. I know I am not always good at this, today for example was not my best day, but I want to work on this. I will share more about my goals for 2011 later, now I would like to bid 2010 farewell. Lord, I thank you for all of the blessing that you brought into my life this year and I pray that you would continue to heal my heart and continue to teach me how to lean into you.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Romans 15:13

To blog or not to blog?

That is the question I have been thinking about for months, or since I started this bog. I have never really been good at it or enjoyed it all that much. I am not much of a technology person, I really enjoy telling my stories and giving my opinions in person, or at least over the phone. I started this blog to meet other people and to keep family and friends up to date on our adoption, and now that Kaleb is home I am not sure what to make of this blog. I think it has become a scrapbook more then a blog. I am not very good at expressing myself in written word so I am not even sure I can call this a "blog". I am also not even sure anyone is reading it now that it is private, and I feel very strongly about keeping it private. So I guess for now I am going to stop worrying about updating, but I will still be reading all of your blogs that I have grown to love.

New Orleans (Part 2)

Monday morning we headed to the park to feed the homeless and to just hang out with them for the day. The kids wanted to check out the paddle boat before we went to the park.

Here are some of the girls from the group serving the men in the park. It was wonderful to see these teenagers stepping out of their comfort zones to love on these men. There were a number of people that were left homeless after the hurrican and then more that had come looking for BP jobs and were unable to find them.
We had a wonderful time chatting with some great people at the park. I had a couple of really interesting conversations, and some really wonderful conversations as well. We ate, played football and frisbee and talked for a while.

That night we went out to dinner and then walked around the French Quarter. We went to Cafe Du Monte for some delicious beignets.

The next day Kevin, Marc, and Kevin's dad went to do some work for a man that has been trying to rebuild his house since Katrina. So, Kevin's mom, Kellie and I went to the Children's Museum for the day. The kids had a wonderful time and we really enjoyed the air conditioning. Here are the boys inside of a giant bubble.

The boys had fun shopping in the mini Winn Dixie. Look at those dimples!

They had a replica of the parliament buiding. I love this kid!


They also had a whole room of boats to play on. They had a tug boat, paddle boat, and a barge. The boys spent most of their day playing in this room. Kaleb was there but I didn't get any pictures of him. He spent a good part of the day napping in the stroller :)

New Orleans (Part 1)

This last week we went on a family trip to New Orleans to do some relief work. We had such a great and exhausting time. We were limited on how much work we could do with the kids, but I think it was a great trip and the boys got to learn about Katrina and helping others.

We left Colorado at 5:00 p.m. and drove straight through to New Orleans, arriving there around 4:00 p.m. It was a LONG drive with three little boys. Our friends the Brown's and two of their kids came with us and I felt so bad that they had to ride in a van that long with our family. We all survived though, and even decided to go out walking and exploring a little the first night. We were staying in the French Quarter so we just walked a few blocks from the hotel and ate. It was fun to walk around and see the history of the buildings.

(View from the restaurant.)

The next morning we woke up and decided to go for a walk. We made our way to the river walk and got to see this paddle boat.

The original captain was on top of the boat playing some kind of musical instrument. It looked like it was steam or something, it was really cool.

Later that day we went to a park where they had a boardwalk built over the swamp and you could walk out and look at the swamp. It was really fun to be able to see the swamp up close. We got to see some gigantic spiders, bugs, and a baby alligator.

(This spider was SO big. Marc was trying to put his had next to it so you could get a picture of how big it is, but he was still a good foot away from it.)
Beautiful!

The next day is when the real work began, more to come.....

Picnic, Birthday, and Migraines

We went to a picnic for families that had adopted from Ethiopia. We had so much fun connecting with other families and seeing all of the sweet babes that have come home. Kaleb enjoyed some Fanta.....

(He was actually sitting with his new girlfriend but some how I didn't get one picture of her. She is pretty cute.)

The boys found some friends....

The were so cute, they kept huddling and discussing what scene from Stars Wars they would act out next. Partial family portrait.

They had an area set aside for painting.

My birthday was on the 12th and I had a great day. I started out with a massage, and then Kevin's parents came home to watch Kaleb so Kevin and I could take Kaden and Oliver to Toy Story 3.

Then Kevin and I rode the light rail downtown to the 16th Street Mall. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Here is my delicious Key Lime Cheesecake.....

After dinner we walked around for a while. They had these pianos that were painted really cool all over downtown and random people would be playing them. These guy was really good.....

I had such a wonderful birthday! Unfortunately the next day I spent most of the day in bed with a migraine... BOO! I hate migraines. I did get to check our my new iPad as I laid in bed, that was a huge surprise from my hubbie. He wanted to get me something nice for my birthday/anniversary gift. At the end of the month we will celebrate 10 years together!!

Happy 4th!!!!

Kevin's family had this tradition of going to the Vail/Avon area every 4th of July to enjoy the mountains and some amazing fireworks. Since having a family we have loved making our way up there whenever we can. This year we were so blessed to have the chance to go. The fireworks are actually on the 3rd, so that day we drove up and spent some time in Vail. We went for a walk along the river. If you gave our children some water and a pile of rocks they would be happy to throw rocks ALL day.

That night we headed over to Avon where the fireworks are. Before the fireworks they have food, music and entertainment for the kids. The boys got to have a potato sack race, jump in bounce houses, play games, and eat lots and lots of candy.

Kaden was so fast with the sack race that I barely got a picture of him.


When it started to get dark we kept the boys close to us because the park had become quite crowded. We entertained ourselves with a soccer ball, football, snacks and Papa's hat.

Handsome boys!!!

Kaden and Oliver fell asleep during the fireworks, which I have no idea how that is possible because the are SO loud. Kaleb was asleep in the stroller when they started but he woke up and laid quietly in the stroller watching them. We thought he would get scared but he just laid there watching until he had finally had enough and he covered his head with the blanket and went back to sleep, so sweet.

The next day we went to Vail for their 4th of July parade. The boys enjoyed the fire trucks and especially all of the candy they caught. Here is Kevin and Kaleb before the parade started.

That is Kevin's mom with us. We had such a great time with Kevin's family. We are so thankful for his mom especially, she just finished chemo treatments a month ago, she is our hero!

This is the lawn chair team, they are hilarious!

After the parade we took the gondola up Vail mountain.

Up, up, up......

View from the top. We love living in this beautiful state!

Walking around Vail we ran into Albert Einstein! Oliver didn't know what to think of him.

We also found this fun fountain and the boys couldn't resist.

That is Kaden in the middle of that fountain!

We had such a wonderful time just hanging out and spending time together. I hope this is something we can make a tradition for our family.

Summer....

I am going to blame my bad blogger behavior on our busy summer schedule. We have been having a great time enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Here are a few of our fun activities...
We made our way down to Colorado Springs to go to the zoo with my mom and sisters. We had fun feeding the giraffes, riding the train, and then ...

( Kaleb tried to eat that cracker seconds after this picture was taken. Yummy!)

hiding from the torrential storm that hit the zoo. This zoo is so gorgeous, tucked right into the mountains, but that also means that you don't really see the storm moving over the mountains until it hits. Still a fun day with family.I also had fun celebrating my friend Rebecca's birthday with a group of girls at the Golden Bee. The Golden Bee is a really fun piano bar where everyone sits around and eats, drinks, and sings, so fun. Here she is for her birthday song.We also celebrated Kevin's dads birthday. You will never guess how old he is....Here I am with my boys. They all wanted to sit with me which made for a really relaxing dinner out, as you can see.... insert Star*Wars noises, spilled drinks, dropped crayons, and a baby that can grab anything in two seconds flat, ahhhh.Grampy and his four grandson's. With four squirmy little boys this is the best we could do. Don't you think he needs a granddaughter? We also had another birthday celebration for Kaleb since you can never celebrate too much and because we wanted to celebrate with family. We went to a splash park and had lunch, cake, and fun getting wet. Here is our little man with his cake. He wasn't sure what to do at first....but he quickly caught on. The nice thing about having a birthday party at a splash park is the easy access to water to clean up a very messy baby.

So far our summer has been so fun. We are enjoying being outside, going for walks, BBQ's, swimming, and being with friends a family. I love this time of year!

Swimming

We are so blessed to live in a neighborhood with a pool and today we got to go check it out. We all had fun. Kaden and Oliver are still a little timid in the pool, but they got more comfortable the longer we were there. Kaleb loved it, he just splashed and splashed the whole time we were there. It is so nice to have a place that we can go through out the summer to cool off, and it is almost right across the street from us which is even better. My handsome Mo-Mo....

Kevin, Kaden, and Kaleb....

Happy Birthday Kaleb!!!

Yesterday was our baby boys birthday, at least the date that he was given, the doctor thinks he is actually a couple of months younger, but this is the date that we have so we celebrated. We are just so happy that he is home and that we were able to celebrate as a family. We had a few friends over and I made some Ethiopian food. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I made doro wat, yummy, shiro wat, yummy, Ethiopian cabbage, yummy and spicy lentils, not so yummy, I will have to work on those. Here is the spread......

Some friends that were brave enough to try Ethiopian food with us...

The kids eating chicken nuggets....

Kaleb has a really strong gag reflex, so if we feed him food that isn't pureed, he will gag and throw up.... fun. So instead of birthday cake we had birthday ice cream. He loved it when everyone sang to him.

Here he is enjoying his ice cream.

We had so much fun celebrating Kaleb's birthday! We are going to have a family celebration with our extended family later this summer so maybe then he will be able to handle some birthday cake.

Kaleb, we love you so much and are so thankful that you are a part of our family. You bring so much joy to our home, you have the most infectious laugh, and you are the mushiest little boy ever! We are excited to see what this next year holds for you!!