wiping noses

No Halloween stories, all my girls are sick. Karianne has had a cough most of the week, Angie has had a runny nose. Yesterday, Amy got the cough and Lucy sided with Angie and got the runny nose, I think I am getting both since I wipe the noses. Lucy didn't sleep much last night and wouldn't take a nap until she finally dropped from exhaustion half way through eating a peach.

Amy is always in a good mood regardless so here she is being silly, They all have a hard time smiling for the camera, they give me a wierd downward turned grimace when I ask for a smile, I usually have to tickle them or catch them when they aren't looking at me. Except for Lucy she'll smile at the camera every time.

Older Children Available for adoption

This is from an Organization called Christian World Adoptions:

Christian World Adoption has photos and information on our web site on
nineteen older children in Beijing. These children of Hope Project
are waiting and hoping for a forever family. Last weekend, our staff
had a chance to visit with them for 2 days, play games with them,
interact with them, and videotape them. These precious children are
anxious for a family, and excited about the chance to come to America.
Are you the right family for one of these precious children? Some
have medical issues that have been corrected, some are healthy
children, all have a great desire to be adopted into a loving family.
Tomorrow we will be adding information on three more girls to this
list, that is 22 older girls and boys in Beijing waiting. Hopefully,
in the next few days we will be adding video of these children to this
web site link, and we will have the full files and medical information
available soon. Any families interested in a child can email me and
we will share their information with you or put you on the wait list
for a chance to review their file. If you have not begun your
dossier, CCAA is granting the adopting families an extension of time
in order to complete the necessary paperwork, it does not have to be
submitted within 3 months.

Another unique opportunity, there are an additional 3 older boys that
are very close to aging out of the system, they will become too old to
be adopted. If any family - with any agency - with a dossier in China
or that an have one completed soon - is interested in adopting a
healthy older boy with a DOB of Nov. 6th 1995, Aug. 8th 1996, or Feb
25th 1995, we will be glad to allow these boys to be adopted through
your agency, we will turn their information over to your agency. Our
goal is that they have a forever family before their time runs out.

Please share the word about all of these precious, older children with
anyone that might be interested.
Blessings to you all.
Carol Nelson
Christian World Adoption
cwa@cwa.org
www.cwa.org

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It's a mom thing

Ta Da!

I made these pants for Karianne, then Angie wanted a pair. So I made her this outfit.

My big feet

I have these huge leopard print comfy slippers that come out when it is cold outside. I just brought them out for the first time this season. Amy has never seen them before and is fascinated with them. She looked at them and said, "Momma, dat your sippers?"

I said yes.

She said, "dat your big foot?"

I said yes.

She pointed at her "big" foot and said, "momma, dat MY big foot!"

uh huh, that's right.

"...and did is my yittle foot!"

Yup.

I'm not sure when she started it, or even when she realized her feet were different sizes but she now refers to her big foot and her little foot the same way we refer to our right and left foot.

Waiting Children

Here are a few children available for adoption in Ethiopia. If you are interested in seeing pictures of any of these children please contact Children's House International. http://www.childrenshouseinternational.com/

Meet Mimi. She is 6 years old and has no medical special needs. She is not an infant/toddler and so is
considered a Waiting Child. She is a sweetheart!

Also needing his foever family, a healthy infant boy. He was born 8/27/08. Yes,
you read that correctly. He could be with his family before he is six
months old. There are two more infant boy files that CHI will be
receiving very soon. They are this same age. Why are they needing to
be placed in the WC program? Well, because they are boys. We have a
line of families waiting for infant girls in the Traditional Program
but not one for boys. Apparently, this is common for the baby boys to
have to wait for parents.

Families need to have a completed home study or be in the process of
having a current home study completed to be officially matched with
the children from Ethiopia so the further along in the process, the
better. Ethiopia still only requires the I-600A so that is good news
too. The I-800A's are taking an enormously long time to process.
Families who sent in their home study for review the end of June 2008
have STILL not been assigned an adjudicator at immigration to review
their I-800A petition. It is woefully, woefully behind.

The CHI Ethiopia program continues to move very well and children and
families are successfully moving through the process. This is a very
viable program and the need for families is great. The conditions in
Ethiopia are very difficult for many orphaned children right now.

Silent testimonies

So I still don't know how to put video on my blog so here is a link to Brent's blog about our church doing silent testimonies that I participated in:

http://brentpeak.blogspot.com/2008/10/silent-testimonies.html

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch today to get our token pumpkin photos. Yes, there are more pictures of Lucy, she is the one that wanted to smile nice for the camera today, the others I had to catch when they weren't looking. :-) I didn't realize today was also the fall carnival for the Methodist Church that has the pumkin patch. They were just starting up the carnival as we were leaving the patch. How could we resist big inflatables, a horse, hay rides and candy? We stayed a few more hours than were planning but we sure had fun.

Amy was like a monkey climbing up the big slide and sliding down again and again. Angie loved the bouncer as usual, had no interest in the slide. They all rode a horse together.
Angie liked it so well she wanted to ride the horse by herself. There was a long line behind us already so I had to tell her if she really wanted to ride the horse by herself she had to get at the end of the line and wait for another turn. She did! She waited very patiently and got to ride the horse by herself! She was very proud!

Karianne was into the carnival games and played them all. gambing is not a gift with her. She did a cake walk and played round after round and NEVER won! Other kids were winning again and again, and winning the first time they played. Karianne kept ending up on the wrong number. I finally jumped in and played to increase her chances of winning. I won the second time I played and said, "hooray! Karianne you won!" She was satisfied and went straight to another game were someone rolled a die, and if they rolled your number then you got to move a step forward on a grid on a stick horse. She played 5 times I think and her number was only called like 3 times and she only got off the the start one square each time. I felt so bad for her and kept trying to get her to play another game, She's say, "but I'm not finished yet!" Poor baby. She still got plenty of candy so don't feel too sorry for her.

Lucy is my most photogenic child right now, she looks right into the camera and smiles so big. Impossible to ge the others to do that, they will look right past me and say "cheese" without cracking a smile. Sigh.

Micheal W Smith/ Steven Curtis Chapman United

Thursday night I got to go with a friend to the once in a lifetime, Steven Curtis Chapman/ Micheal W Smith United tour. It was so awesome, my two favorite christian artists in one concert together. They sang each others songs which was a hoot and MWS was debuting his new album. Steven Curtis Chapman as you know just lost his daughter Maria in an accident this summer. He still sings his Cinderella song that he had written for her and Stevie Joy, another daughter. He now sings it with hope, knowing he will dance with her again in Heaven. What an amazing testimony.

On a lighter note, I have to say they're fans are an aging crowd. I was there with a bunch of aging gen Xers and older. They were all content to sit and be entertained. I kept wanting to jump up and down but felt the grumbling behind me every time I did. People started leaving after 10 becuase I assume it was past their bedtime. At the end people immediately left and there was no encour; everyone wanted to go to bed. I think I must have been the youngest one there, at least I acted younger than anyone else and I was truly excited to be there.

I even got a concert tshirt, never purchased one before. :-) I took some video but I can't figure out how to load it, I'll have to load it later. I'm sitting here listening to MWS's new album, love it!


So here's some great pictures taken from row R- in the dark, good huh? :-)

NOT sleeping

Mom, I wasn't sleeping, I just LOOK like I was sleeping.

TRUST ME!

Momma!

Chicken Dance til the cows come home!

We have a mean chicken dancer in our house. Karianne can dance the chicken dance out of any challenger. She is very serious about it. You can ask her to do the chicken dance and she will jump into action. No music, just her, with a serious expression on her face making bird beaks with her hands, flapping her arms, wiggling her rear end and clapping in perfect timing- repeat.

I found out there was an Octoberfest this weekend in Tulsa and kids could do the chicken dance. I thought it would be fun. I asked Karianne if she wanted to go to a place were she could do the chicken dance. She was all business, jumped in the car and said "lets go". Like, 'who needs to see me perform my world famous execution of the chicken dance?'

I thought it was free, it wasn't. We had to pay to park, pay to get in, and pay for anything else we wanted to do in the festival. I wanted to leave as soon as we got there because we had already shucked out more money than I was expecting to park and get in the place! The Chicken Dance was free though. As soon as we stepped in the gate we heard warm up strains of- the chicken dance. Karianne had a job to do so we ran into the tent and Karianne, Amy and I ran up on the dance floor and started dancing. Amy and I were giggling but Karianne was a serious as a heart attack. Angie wasn't interested, she was busy being a 'princess angel'.

We got done with the dance and walked out and not long after that we heard the refrain striking up in another tent so we ducked in and performed our Duty. We finally found the Children's tent where everything was free and the Dance was repeated often. A clown and a guy in Legerhosen was leading the dance and they had some WORDS for the dance! Now this caught Karianne's attention. She studied the guy with the legerhosen on until she had learned the words to go with the dance. It was like learning that Swan Lake had WORDS to go with the ballet moves. Now she stood on the dance floor with the other kids and the clown and the guy and flapped her arms and wiggled her behind and sang with gusto without cracking a smile,
" I can't believe, I can't believe
I'm doing this, I'm doing this
I must be nuts, I must be nuts!"

She is the champion.

Family Portrait

Man, the first time one of our children drew a family portrait and she drew it on an Aquadoodle so we couldn't keep it!
It is so cute, I tried to take a picture.

"Princess Angel" the hippie

Angie has been having an identity crisis lately; in that she wants to dress to look a certain way and the rest of us don't get it. She has always told us she looks like a princess no matter what she wears so we know she is always coming from the standpoint that she IS a princess.
Saturday she got all dressed and then emptied her jewelry box on herself. She thought she looked very pretty and told us she was a Princess. Angie has very long hair. I had given her two small braids in the front of her head and let the rest hang. She had a circlet of a gold necklace on top of her head and many bracelets and long necklaces. I chuckled and told her she looked like a hippie.
" No I not, I a princess!"

"No you are a hippie"

" I a princess angel"

"that's a good name for a hippie, you look more like a hippie"

Brent even pulled up picture of a hippie on the internet for the girls to see. Everyone agreed Angie looked like a hippie, except her, she insists she looks like a princess angel. You can decided for yourself, but don't tell Angie unless you agree with her.

Today, she put a baby blanket around her waist and another one on her head. She then walked very slowly as she pushed a baby doll stroller. I had no idea what she was trying to be. Karianne informed Angie that she looked like a monster.
Angie flatly denied it and said, "No I not I a faywee (fairy)".

Karianne said, "no you look like a monster"

Angie was getting more upset and told her, "I not a monster, I a faywee!"

Karianne conceded that she may look like Jesus's mommy or a monster but definately not a fairy.

I had to get out of there quick! :-)

Dinner

A casual meal at home cooked by our own in house chef, Karianne.

Lucy is 9 months old!

I know I don't post many pictures of Lucy, so I thought I'd post some more! :0)

Lucy is 9 months old today. Brent reminded me that is how old Angie was when we got her. Incredible. I also remember what an appetite Angie had at that age. She was eating eggs and noodles and rice and anything else we'd give her. So I added to Lucy's food selections and she seems to really like noodles in particular. :-)