Daddy/Daughter Dance

The dance took place at the beginning of February.  I just didn't get a chance to post the pictures.  Soney came from Chicago for the dance.  This is the 3rd year for her to go and Renee's first!

 

 

This is Grandpa with his two granddaughters.

I just love this one with Renee dancing on Baba's toes.

We are finding out the Renee is an observer.  She watches everything and you don't realize til days or weeks later that she was even paying attention.  You sing a song day after day and she never sings along and then one day she sings the whole song by herself.  Same with stories.  One of her favorites right now is The Very Hungry Catipillar.  One day she was quoting the whole book right along with me.  She definitely was an observer at the dance.  She really doesn't like crowds or loud music.  She did ok and just watched people, but it wasn't until the very end when most people had left that she really ran around, had fun and giggled with the other girls.

 

One more picture.  My  niece bought this for her for Chinese New Year.  She looks like she is a little executive ready for a day at the office. 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Renee!!

This pretty girl is three today!!

I love you my sweet Renee!  My mama's heart is so full today.  You add so much fun and giggles to my life.  I am so thankful to have you as a daughter.  But I have not forgotten the mama who gave you life.  I know that she has been thinking about you.  I can not replace her, but if she could read this blog I would want her to know that I love you as my own! You are an amazing smart girl and your first mother would be so proud of you!!  One of the great events that has happened this week that shows just how smart you are and how you are developing is the wonderful word "why!"  It is the word you say after every statement I make.  It is like a light switch was turned on and you went from never saying it to saying it 20 times a day!!  You make me laugh!

 

Sorry for being so silent.  There is much to catch everyone up on, but first pictures from today's events.  We have a homeschool co-op that meets 2 times a month and today was co-op so we celebrated there.  We are having a family party Sunday.

She got to open 2 presents tonight after dinner at her Pap Pap's house.  Her youngest brother told her to close her eyes and wait for her surprise.  I love this picture.

So Daniel brought them out.

Paper dolls have changed a lot since I was a little girl!!

 

It has been a very busy day and there was no time that we could all be together as a family to celebrate.  That is why we are waiting until Sunday for her official party and then we found out today that our oldest son has to work on Sunday. Ugh, I give up!  Our family schedule is crazy right now.  But by the end of this week there will be no more basketball games and by the end of February, my husband will finally be a graduate after 13 long years of, off and on again college classes.  He only went back to school a few years ago because he realized that if he lost his job, that it would be very hard to get a job if he didn't have a bachelor degree.  Little did he know that that decision would mean so much.  He lost his job with 3 classes to go.  He took 2 classes during the 3 months that he was laid off and he is in his 3rd and final class!  Our other important news we have is.... drum roll please............ He started his new job on Jan. 17! It is amazing to me just how slow companies can move at times.  It didn't help that it was the end of the year.  Tim found out about this job 3 days after being laid off.  It was approved for 2013's budget so it took awhile until they were willing to interview him.  He interiviewed before Christmas, but the whole fiscal cliff had the company concerned.  Big sigh of relief to be on the other side of unemployment.  No fun to go through, but I have a whole new understanding of what it means to be unemployed.  Just one of many things that you have to go through so you can empathize with others in ways you couldn't before.  Thanks so much for your prayers and kind words during our time of waiting.

I have more pictures to post, but I will save them for another post.

  



 

Eight months home, no job yet and it is beginning to look alot like Christmas!

The title says it all so here are the pictures.

Catching up

It has been too long since I have posted anything. It has been a very long month in our house. Almost a month ago I received a phone call from my husband that ranks right up there with the phone call I received on Aug. 6, 2010. The August call was a shock and so was this one. My husband calmly told me that he was being completely serious in what he was going to say next. He went on to say that his job had been elimanated. Just like that we joined the ranks of the unemployed. He had just received a raise and next years assignments. Corporate(not the plant that he worked in) made the decision that since the division was projected to have a loss in sales they needed to get rid of a few people even though my husbands plant was not the cause of the loss of sales. Those first couple of days were difficult. We didn't sleep that first night. But, we have a faith in God that he is using this to bring our family to an even better place. Let me just say it is not easy. The weight of it gets very heavy, especially for my husband. He has some very good leads, but unfortunately businesses are not as motivated as my husband is. With the end of the year coming it may be until the beginning of the year before he finds something.

Just some random pictures. The first one is an outfit that was given to us. We live near South Bend which is Norte Dame territory. Needless to say people in our community are very happy this year!

Here is Renee with a play station remote that is not connected to the power. She is so happy thinking that she is playing the game right along with her big brother.

She loves to go to our neighbors house and play dress up with Olivia. They play so well together even though Olivia is 4 years older.

Finally here she is putting clips in her "Baba's" hair. Renee has really made a turning point this month. I have not been comfortable leaving her in our church nursery. I just didn't feel like she was ready. I felt it brought back too many memories for her the few times we had tried. I have left my boys crying in the nursery before, but her cries were different. Her cries were different than what she does at home. I went many weeks sitting through nursery with her and explaining at the end when parents would come to pick up their children that ma ma always come back for their child. She still didn't seem ready. She had adjusted so well in most everything, I just didn't feel like I needed to push this issue yet. Then one Sunday morning I had an idea. I had been given this necklace of an Asian girl. I hadn't wore it much, but put it on one Sunday morning about 3 weeks ago. She started playing with it as we walked up the stairs to the kids area. Then I realized what I was going to do. I got her settled in her class and then I took the necklace off and put it on her. I told her that she could wear mama's necklace. She could hold it when she thought of me and remember that mama would come back for her and the necklace. She could remember that mama loved her very much!! I gave her a kiss and a hug and walked out. She looked alittle nervous when I left, but they said that she did great. When I came back to pick her up she came running to me holding onto the necklace ready to give it back to me. She wears it every week and hasn't cried at all. When we were leaving church that first week, on the car ride home, she even seemed more happy like she even realized that she accomplished something great. She is showing so much trust and a sense of security. It truly amazes me that I can talk with her and she has the abiltiy to understand exactly what I say. How amazing just having something tangiable to hang onto would bring her such peace!

My Daughter

A year and one month ago today I saw the picture of my daughter for the first time..........Just pausing to reflect...... I will be honest, I was scared when I first saw her face. Part of the problem is the report I got about her seem so empty of information. I found out months later that the report was missing several pages. If we had received these pages we may have not been as concerned. But the paper work did not tell why they had labeled her with the special need that they did(Even the completed report didn't tell me this). We questioned if there was more going on than the paperwork said. We analyzed the picture to death. I hate to say that. She looked so confused. She just didn't seem quite right. Was she sick or had she just been woken up? Her eyes were red and puffy. What was wrong? Because of that we started questioning if there were more development issues than China said. Let's face it. When you adopt, especially since it was the special needs program, there are going to be unknowns and we knew that when we started down this road. When it finally came down to it there was nothing in the paper work that could make us say no. It was the unknowns that scared us and we couldn't control this. So we sent our LOI and celebrated our daughter by eating at a Chinese resturant.

Days later we got new pictures and answers to some of our questions and our fears melted away. There were still questons, but we knew we could deal with them and were ready to face whatever challenges that we would face. I look at the picture now and see the eyes of my daughter, but she looks nothing like this picture now. When I was in the middle of all the steps to get to our daughter, I got alittle crazy about the dates. I looked at the calendar and started counting weeks and months and trying to figure out how long it would take to hold her in our arms. I am so glad that I didn't know that it would be 7 months until we would land on US soil with our precious daughter(we have been home 6 months today). I would have colapsed in a mess of tears, but now, it doesn't matter. After a failed adoption you start to wonder if you will ever get to your child. Honestly I couldn't even hardly allow myself to think about her being in my arms. I was so afraid that circumstances that we could not control would happen in our lives and make it so that we couldn't adopt her. Now she is here and it does not matter. The timing was perfect. Here are some new pictures taken a month ago. It is so amazing to call her my daughter. Our family is so blessed. She is truly amazing!

So What's for Breakfast at your House?

Sorry for not posting any news lately. There has been a lot going on in this house. I will give the cliff notes of the events since I last posted. My teenage boys and husband went to a week long teens conference, so it was just Daniel, Renee and me for 5 days. When they got back home it was fair week. It was so hot!! We had the worst drought and high heat this summer than I have ever seen. We didn't go to the fair as many days as we usually do. (also our drought finally broke during the week of the fair. Glad to finally get the rain, just didn't feel like going to the fair in the rain) My oldest son came back home after being gone for 6 weeks on a missions trip. It is so good to have all my kids under one roof again. I need to enjoy it. He is going to a community college this year and living at home, but he has plans to leave next year to another college. When he returned home it has been a mad rush to get everything in line for him to start college(drop and add classes, pay tution, buy books, etc) including looking for a job. Since I homeschool it has been very busy for me planning a new school year. I have 2 boys in high school and they are taking a couple classes at the public high school and it was more difficult this year trying to get this lined up and making it work with our schedule. I finally have it all planned out. It looks great on paper, but with Renee in the mix of it who knows if it will work. Our school district is trying to move toward a "balanced schedule." Code word: year round school. We started Aug. 10th this year, so my kids are starting their 3rd day at school. So far so good. My parents are retired school teachers and they come up every Tuesday and spend the day teaching the kids. Today is our first day back to school with them, which finally brings me to the breakfast question. My dad likes bringing his left over Chinese food over to Renee. She gets more excited about it than she does the candy he brings for her. Today he offered it to her for breakfast and she gobbled it up using chopsticks of course! I don't have any pictures of it, but I do have random pictures of her over the past weeks.

She loved the rides at the fair, but couldn't ride very many things yet because she was a inch to short. :( She seemed to have no fear at all. I think she would have rode many more things. She could only go on rides where she rode with someone.

She loves playing with a friend who lives right out our back door. They love playing dress up. This cracked me up. They came out as pirates and then 15 minutes later they were princesses!

Here she is with a bow in her hair and I had such high hopes that now that her bangs are getting so long she would let me put clips in her hair, but no such luck. This girl loves shoes! I just found these on clearance and bought them for her. She had a huge fit when I took them off that night and she wasn't even out of her crib the next morning yet and she wanted them back on. She has worn them every day since I bought them. Of course another picture with her buddy Daniel!

Here she is decorating cookies. She did a really good job and gave a thumbs up that the cookie was good.

I am in trouble. She loves clothes and things that sparkle. She didn't want to put this in her hair for a picture to be taken, so I wore one to encourage her to wear hers. Her Aunt bought her this adorable tutu! She was so excited!

Last two pictures. Here she is after I cut her bangs. The other is a picture of me measuring her. Every August at the start of school I measure the kids. We measured her in April and she has grown a inch since then!

Zoo!

Our family has not been to the zoo in a very long time. This zoo is probably our favorite!! Enjoy the pictures!

This next picture I promised I wouldn't put on facebook, but I said nothing about my blog. My teenage boys were good sports to let me take this photo. I so remember taking their picture on this dragon when they were Renee's age.

I let my 10 year old son decide where we would ride on the merry-go-round. He wanted the tiger and guest what animal Renee got to ride on? She loved riding the panda. When we left that area she kept saying bye bye to panda.