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.....