Category Archives: adoption

Spring festival

Leave a reply

The first weekend of this month we got to take the our children with their cousins to a school spring festival. We took them all last year, and were excited for the opportunity to go again.

The children had crazy amounts of fun. Jon, ours, and I were all wearing our adoptions t-shirts. We got lots of attention wearing our hoping to adopt shirts while carting 5 kiddos around. I spoke to several people about it, and didn’t hand out a single adoption card!!!!

I really need to be better about that. I am going to try my hardest to channel my friend Joyce in that regard. She is AWESOME at handing out cards!  In fact last night I had a random chick come and ask me about my hair, then she noticed my hoping to adopt shirt. Well good thing Joyce was there otherwise I would have missed another opportunity to hand out a card!

Back to the festival of fun! This year we did the giant slides, and the older boys did the giant hamster wheels. They waited in line (with uncle Jon) for over half an hour while I took the younger three to three separate things!

092 086 067 057 048We did lots of line waiting.

045She gets SO SO red in the heat. For each ride we would let the children hold on to and hand over their own tickets. They loved that.

038 034 031We ate lunch there. It wasn’t the best, or healthiest meal, but the kids loved it, and I didn’t have to do much so that was nice.

030The hamster wheel photos are out of order, and I don’t feel like fixing them. Watching the boys climb in, figure it out, race, and then climb out all dizzy, was a highlight for all of us. FUNNY!

028 026 023 019All three of these guys were OVER waiting in line by the time it was their turn. Sad for Jon since he waited with them for THEM to ride, and didn’t get to climb in a ball himself. Now THAT would have been FUNNY!

017I LOVE LOVE LOVE my double stroller. This is how we roll with three kiddos. I had ALL five kids extra stuff i.e. water bottles, and three kids riding the whole time. I made a rule that Nathan had to hold on to my running strap. This was to prevent him wandering off, and it WORKED.  We could NOT have done festival day without my awesome stroller.

014 012 003 002 106We ended the day with homemade snow cones. Jon did ONE cone by hand and then decided that it was going to take far to long, and far to much effort to shave the ice the “old” way. So he totally MacGyvered our shaved ice maker to be speedy. And it was! The kiddos thought it was crazy cool.

101Pictures are again out of order. Sorry. Also don’t mind our construction crap pile. The kitchen ceiling needed some lovin’.

098 095A picture of why I am van hunting. 🙂 I NEED a van. Also Kaylee was in the shade the majority of the time, and well hydrated. Poor kid, it’s not even summer yet….

But we all had FUN on our little family adventure to the spring festival.

 

Kayleeism on adoption

2 Replies

556Kaylee prays daily for her missing siblings. This prayer was particularly sweet to me, so I wrote it down.

She was felling sad about not having a baby, so we talked yesterday about how we are looking for the right birthmom, just like she is looking for the right family. And that that is why we don’t have a baby yet. I am glad that Kaylee seems to understand.

So after lunch today Kaylee gets up and announces:

“Everybody be quite and reverent. I’m going to say an adoption prayer. (Clears thought LOUDLY.)

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for this day. Thank you Mommy, Daddy, Kaylee, Regan. Please bless we could adopt a baby. We could adopt a sister and bring her home. Please bless our special lady to find us. That she will know Kaylee is the big sister, Regan is the big brother, Mommy is the Mommy, and Daddy is the Daddy. You can do anything. Name Jesus Christ, Amen. ”

She usually says brother or sister. And then just references a sister for the rest of her prayers. But today it was all about sister, and finding the right birthmom, and us her.

I love her complete faith in her Heavenly Father, and that I get to have her sweet spirit around to help me remember to have faith in all things.

Matching

Leave a reply
Kaylee and I were watching Stuart Little during a Regan nap. We love watching adoption movies around here.
She was excited to see this one because, “It’s a new one I never seen before.”
She was so very excited for the Mom and Dad when they were looking for the right son/brother. Then they found and chose Stuart.
“But Mom, he’s a mouse.”
It opened up a great opportunity to talk about how a family doesn’t have to match to be family.  Such a great movie for that!

I asked her, “Kaylee does Mama match Uncle Barry?”

“No…” I could tell she hadn’t ever thought about it before. That made me happy.

I asked her if I matched Yaiyai, Jack’ee, Sam, Abuela, Aunt Magie and her children. Pretty much my Mom’s whole side.

“No…. But why not Mom?”

“Well because families don’t have to match to be family.”

“Oh. O.K.”

Just like that. I love children. They just get things.

She is now pretty darn excited about the whole thing. She really likes surprises and has been wondering if she is getting a brother or sister for a long time now. Now she is also excited and wondering what they will look like. Because, “Mom they could have chocolate skin like Uncle Barry!” 🙂

Kid cracks me up! I told her that Barry wasn’t THAT dark, but that yes she could very well have a “chocolate” sibling.

IMG_0691 (4)
(My brother Barry the “chocolate” one and me the random white child. 😉)
 
When you are filling out your epic mountain of paper work for adoption you get to fill out a matching sheet. Basically you can get pretty picky about what you are looking for in a child. We found that sheet awkward and uncomfortable. We are not picky. That is not to say those who want their child to match them are.
 
Since being certified to adopt we have been asked what we are looking for in a baby. Lots. Which is fine. People can’t help us look for what we want if they don’t know what we want. Right?
Our usual response is something like this: Um…  A Baby. A human child.
 
I grew up in a multi racial family. Here is a small selection of photos of me with my Salvadoran family.
 023
Barry, Me (blond), Jack’ee, and Aunt Maggie cooking Papusas.
barry's homecoming 176

Sing with me now: One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong….

Except I do. And I have never felt like I didn’t. Ever.

121
My siblings and I standing in reverse order. Barry, Sam, Me, Jack’ee. I must say I do blend in a bit better when my hair matches theirs. 😉
003 004

And finally the children with Abuela. Their Great grandmother.

Love is love, and Family is family. What’s the fun in being all matchy matchy anyway? 😉