Family Vacation Pictures

The plan was to do a road trip to Missouri, like we did last year. We were all packed and ready to go on Thursday, when Ryan called and said Janelle had the flu bug that's going around (we all had it the week before). So my dad and I did some googling and found a park called Storybook Gardens in London, Ontario. We figured since it was Labor Day Weekend it would be hard to get a hotel here, and since everyone healthy enough to travel had a valid passport, we decided to head up there for a day or 2 until Janelle was feeling better.

Storybook Gardens was pretty fun. It was really inexpensive to get in, and it was a big park with a lot to do. They had a playground area, a waterpark area, a maze, puppet shows (ok, the puppet show was pretty lame...it featured Otto the otter and Baa-rbra the sheep. They also had a petting farm, and a lot of photo ops. The whole thing had a nursery rhyme theme, so the farm was Old MacDonald's farm, and they had a lot of statues of different characters, which you'll see in the pictures below.

We drove around looking for a hotel that wasn't busy, turns out Canada has a Labour Day, same day as our Labor Day...go figure. We had to call a bunch of hotels to find one that had a room for us. We checked in, went to the pool, and had a late dinner (which is a story of its own) and went to bed.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and went to the London Children's Museum. It was no Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, but it was pretty good. The best part was a mini city, complete with child sized 2 story house, McDonalds restaurant and drive through, grocery store with conveyer belt, and an atm machine, among other things. They had cars and shopping carts, it is great for preschool aged kids. Jenavieve didn't get as much out of it, but she did enjoy pushing a shopping cart around.

As far as London as a vacation spot for families, I would definitely recommend it, especially for people who live around here. It was only about a 3-3 1/2 hour drive and had a lot of fun things to do for not too much money.

Janelle was starting to feel better so we headed back and met with them for dinner, and the next morning, we drove out to Grand Rapids. We tried the Meijer Botannical Gardens, but they didn't have power, so we went to the John Ball Zoo, which was a good zoo, you could get pretty close to the animals. Then dinner at Golden Corral, which was a special treat since we don't have one near us! Jenavieve loves buffets, she really enjoyed having me take her down the row of food and she could say "no, no, no, yes!" to the food she wanted. After she had 2 plates of dinner and some dessert, she wanted more food, so I took her back by the dessert to see if she wanted any treats, and she said "no" to everything there. I kept walking down the rows of food, asking her what she wanted, and she finally got excited when we got to the stalks of steamed broccoli. I put one on a plate for her, but she insisted on holding it like an ice cream cone and proudly showing it off to all the tables on the way back to ours. My silly girl.

Then we went back to the hotel pool to play until bedtime (actually Vivi and I went to bed and everyone else stayed up in Janelle and Ryan's room playing games).

The next day we decided to try the gardens again, and I'm glad we did, it was really fun! They had a children's garden that was very cool, and a lot of interesting sculptures.

I've been trying to finish this post for days and keep getting interrupted and having to save it, so I'm just going to post it, the pictures say enough about how much fun we had anyway :)

Family Vacation 2010

Jenavieve this month

Jenavieve is growing and learning so fast lately! Here are some things about Jenavieve that you may or may not know:

She loves to eat! She will eat just about anything, especially if someone else is eating it. She loves sweets, but also loves fruits and veggies. She's a very well-rounded eater so far...let's hope it stays that way!


She loves animals. On this day, she was tasting the treats before (and during) sharing them with the dogs.


She loves to dress up-the more stuff, the better! The other day she took one of her little rubber hair bands, looped it over her thumb, and walked slowly toward me, staring at her thumb held out in front of her, like it was the most beautiful ring she'd ever worn. She looked so proud to be wearing something so beautiful :)


She loves to explore. She likes to see what happens when she squishes things or drops them in water, and lately her experiments have become more involved. in this picture, she took the peas from her plate, dropped them in her water, poured the cup out onto her plate, splashed the water a little, and then ate all the peas. All for the love of learning!

She loves her friends. Whenever there are kids playing, she wants to be right in the middle of it. This is Vivi with her friend Vivi (short for Viviana) at Chuck E. Cheese.


She loves to play! She's really into hiding games, in this picture she was hiding in the tunnel, and when we pulled it off of her she would give us her sneaky grin, then shriek and dive back in. When she didn't see us peeking in the top, she was just sitting there, smiling, enjoying being hidden.


I don't know many kids her age that will sit still while getting her fingernails AND toenails painted, but this kid brings me the nail polish and sits and watches while I paint. Today was the first time I painted her fingernails since she puts her fingers in her mouth a lot, but she always checks out the big girls when they have their nails painted, so after I did her toes, she handed me the bottle and stuck out her hands. We'll see how long it stays on...
Click on this picture to make it bigger, it really shows the true color of her eyes, which is hard to capture in a picture

She has become quite the little girly girl. Besides the jewelry and nail polish, she also likes lip gloss, fragrance spray, and lotion. Lotion has been a part of her daily routine since she was born, but now she'll bring me the lotion and ask to have it put on. She can even rub it in by herself!

She can point to many of her body parts as well as following other simple directions such as "put that back" "throw it away" "sit down" "show me" "give so-and-so a hug" "jump" and others I can't think of. She also knows the names of many of her toys, and if we ask her where something is, she'll go get it. She loves her baby dolls, Elmo, and Bob and Larry from VeggieTales. She's also saved the day many a time by remembering the last place she had her pacifier when we can't find it!

She doesn't say too many words clearly yet, she says dada and mama, dog, duck, moon, star, chalk, yellow, and green, although she doesn't seem to associate the actual colors to their words, she just says them when I do. She can make the animal sounds of a dog, cat, duck, and any animal that growls. She's working on saying grandma, grandpa, and Janelle, and has other words that mostly sound like "deh" but will also point at what she means. For instance, she's discovered airplanes, so when she hears one, she'll say "deh!" and point up to the sky while trying to see it.

She now has 11 teeth and is working on at least one more that we can see. The 4 front teeth on top and bottom, 2 molars on top, and one on the bottom. The molars seem so big in her little mouth, and look so painful as they come through!

So that's pretty much Jenavieve this month :)

We should all cook like this

Busted!

My little artist made me a beautiful picture...on the wall. For some reason I didn't think this would happen for a couple more years.

Is it wrong that I saw her doing it and went to get the camera before I stopped her? I just love capturing that 'busted' look ;)

A little update

I guess I haven't been updating often enough...

On the adoption front, our homestudy was approved by the agency in Washington and sent our application for advance processing of an orphan petition to USCIS. We're still waiting for that to come back.

In the meantime, we have 10 hours of adoption training to do online (thank God we don't have to sit in a classroom and do it!) and we are halfway done with that.

We applied for and have already received our passports.

We have to get notarized letters from our bank, our city police department, our doctors and 3 more references (the old ones don't count because they're not notarized) saying that we are healthy, responsible citizens in good standing who are capable of raising children, and we have to send a notarized letter to the government of Ethiopia introducing ourselves and our intentions.

We have to sign and get notarized a form naming someone in Ethiopia as power of attorney for our kids there when we know who they are to secure medical testing for them and to represent us with the government and embassy.

After all of those things are notarized, we have to send all of them to the apostille in Washington DC, which from what I understand notarizes the notarized documents.

We also got our appointments to get fingerprinted (because for some reason the ones we did a year and a half ago for Vivi's adoption don't count). This time we got a letter saying "This is your appointment date and time" instead of getting to schedule it ourselves. And we have to go all the way down to Detroit to do it.

I think that's about all the progress we've made so far.

And on the home front, we're keeping busy and trying to keep cool! We joined a new play group for local adoptive families. They get together one Saturday a month to do something like go to the zoo or a park, and also do occasional things during the week. In a couple of weeks a few moms with African American or biracial little girls are going to get together and bring all our products and supplies and have a hair party to exchange ideas. I'm really excited for that! We learned about the group through a mom and daughter we met at the library. The little girl's name is Viviana, and they call her Vivi (pronounced Vih-vee). It's funny to have Vih-vee and Vee-vee playing together :)

Playdates

A couple of pictures of Vivi and her friends from some of our recent playdates. I keep trying to type out an actual post with words but I never seem to be able to finish it...

Having a poolside snack with Cammie, who was born the day after Vivi


Vivi helping Amira smell a flower


Splashing in the pool with Brett

4th of July in pictures

Family Dinner

Last weekend, we were invited to dinner with my grandma's side of the family. We had a party room, which was great because we could visit with everyone, and Jenavieve showed off her remarkable eating skills, sampling from everyone's plate as we went around the table.

We even got a 5 generation picture, not many people have that!

Here we go again...

We're ready now to announce that we are in the process of adopting again, this time from Ethiopia, and we're very excited! After Jenavieve's adoption was final, we started thinking about adopting again, and Ethiopia has been on our hearts for awhile. We want Jenavieve to have siblings close in age to her, and we feel led to Ethiopia as a place where our children are, as well as a place that we can minister to and help the people who live there. After a lot of prayer, we began the process in March, filling out more applications and paperwork. We are with Adoption Advocates, International, a great agency who really puts the children first. They also have sponsorships and other services that they provide to children in Ethiopia and other countries that may not be adopted.

This time we have been approved to adopt up to 2 children from Ethiopia, up to age 4.

It is very likely that Jenavieve will end up being the baby of the family (for now) since we are open to children up to 4 years, and the majority of people adopting from Ethiopia are only open to a baby or young toddler. She could also have a sibling the same age as her.

Here is the basic timeline for how an international adoption works.

We already did our homestudy with the same Michigan agency that did Vivi's post placement visits. The draft was sent to AAI in Washington last week to be approved. The homestudy is the first part of what is called the 'paper-chase' for international adoption. For the homestudy, we had to supply tax forms, bank statements, marriage, birth, and adoption certificates, and doctor's notes to prove that we are healthy and able to parent more children.

Next, we apply for approval from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and get our passports. All of the necessary documents get compiled and sent from the Secretary of State, to the U.S. Department of State, to Ethiopia’s Embassy in Washington, D.C before it finally goes to the Ethiopian Ministry of Women's and Children's affairs. There it will get translated and processed, and then we will wait for our referral.

A referral is information about a specific child or children that includes pictures and medical information. We will get to review the referral and take it to a pediatrician for review before we decide if we will accept or decline it. If we decline the referral, we wait for another one. If we choose to accept the referral, then we get a court date and make travel plans.

Ethiopia just changed their laws to require 2 visits to Ethiopia. It is a bit of a hassle and an extra expense, but the laws are about the children, and we respect that and are getting excited to travel! Because the law is new as of May, we are all waiting to see how it all works, but both parents are required to appear in court, then we will go home and wait for approval to go back and pick up our kids. It is possible that Eric will be able to go by himself to bring them home. Another benefit of traveling twice is that our agency uses traveling families to take needed supplies to the orphanage, so if we pack light, we can take a lot of stuff to help out!

As far as time frame, it is unknown, it can take up to 6 months (hopefully not more!) to complete all of the paperwork before we can wait for our referral, and the wait for a referral can be anything from a couple of months to a year. But there is a good chance that we will have our kids home next summer.

I tried to explain the process the best I can, but if something is confusing, please either email or leave your question in the comments and I'll be sure to explain it, and stay tuned for more updates! We appreciate the prayers as we go through this journey to find our children :)

Little Rina

For those of you not on Facebook, here are a few pictures of Kana's adorable daughter Rina (pronounced Lina). Could she be any cuter???