My mom

This is my mom and my sweet, little niece Sierra. My mom just came and spent a few days with the kids and I am it was SO nice! I didn't realize how much I missed her until I knew she was coming. Let me tell you, she is the best. She cleaned my stove top until it looked brand new. She got on her hands and knees and scrubbed my kitchen floor. She cuddled and played with the kids and she stayed up late every night talking with me about life and love and things mom's and daughter's talk about. I love my mom and am SO grateful for the amazing relationship I have with her. She is one of my best friends. Pretty cool, huh?

7 years

Today Jonah and I are celebrating 7 amazing years of marriage. God has had his hand on our marriage from day one and we have only grown closer together. Many thought it wouldn't work, after all, we had only known each other for 4 months before we were engaged and lived 500 miles apart our whole courtship. But we knew that we were meant for each other and didn't want to wait. I think the fact that we were both virgins helped rush the marriage process along too;) I praise God for the awesome man God had for me and love him with all of my heart. Last year we celebrated 6 years of marriage and 6 kids. Do you think this year, our 7th year of marriage, we will be blessed with number 7? I sure hope so. :)

Alana

Alana came to us when she was 5 months old. She was the quietest baby I had ever seen before and NEVER cried. The only time I saw her cry during the first 2 months was the first time I changed her soaked through diaper that had pooled urine under her car seat while we ate dinner. I had picked her up 20 minutes before. She was redder than a lobster and screamed bloody murder that first change. It was horrible.





For the first week we worked on stimulating her as she would just lay and stare at the ceiling without any interaction with others. We untaught her of holding her own bottle and literally had to hold her hands down so that we could do the job. Very quickly we saw her change before our eyes and learn how to roll over, smile and "play" with us.







When Alana turned one we started getting a taste of her true personality. She was VERY verbal and smart and amazed us every day with the things she learned and knew. On the other hand, she was FEISTY! And stubborn! And dramatic!






Alana is an all-or-nothing type of girl. She cannot speak sweetly and quietly when she is passionate about something and we are constantly reminding her to control her emotions. She is dramatic to the Nth degree and we call it "Alana Drama". She is a challenge, to say the least but SUCH a joy to have in our home! When she loves someone she loves overwhelmingly! She has passion and fire in her.






I pray often that the spirit God gave her will be used for HIS purposes and that Jonah and I can help her mold them to use them in the right ways. She is a social person who loves other people and it shows! She is not shy and will talk to anyone and engage them in conversation not like any other 6 year old I know. It's actually
pretty funny to watch her.





Alana would like nothing more than to have a baby sister(or twins ideally) from my
belly and tells me weekly that she is still praying for it. Her faith in God is nothing I have seen in a 6 year old girl before and she worships Him with her whole heart. Like I said, she does nothing half-way.






Today Alana turns 6 years old and I am left wondering how 5 1/2 years have gone by so quickly and how my first baby got this big. She is such a delight to me and I am so blessed to be her Mommy.






Happy Birthday Alana Faith!

The Fair

On Thursday I took all the kids to the county fair for a field trip. It is a fairly small fair ;) but still has all the cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chicken, roosters and rabbits you can look at. At first I was a little concerned about being with all 6 kids by myself because I didn't know how busy it would be and I have so many little ones. I will say this, my children make it SO easy to take them out. They were well behaved and obedient and understood my instructions of where I wanted them while we walked: The babies in the stroller, the big boys holding onto the stroller and Sarah holding Alana's hand and walking behind. I stopped counting the comments after the 23rd one but no one was intrusive. I had planned on staying from 1:30 till about 4:30 but the kids begged me to go see this or that and we didn't end up leaving till 7! I was utterly exhausted and had the best nights sleep I've had in a long time. We had a TON of fun and good memories and Sarah wants to work on knitting something to enter for next year. She'll win hands down for her age group just cause there were no other's who entered anything under 15 years old!

We are busy!

As I sit down in my chair in the evening after all the kids are in bed I realize that I have neglected my blog something awful. I am sorry. Seriously. But I have no time and no energy to write anything and no new pictures to show you and keep you happy. Soon, I hope to show you pictures of walls going up on the first floor but for now you'll just have to be happy that I plan on blogging in the future! ;)

Hawaii

Many of you commented that you didn't know we had a house in Hawaii. Yes, we do. Right before I met Jonah he had taken a trip over to look for some real estate there and found a house and bought it for an amazing price. It is in a very non-touristy area of the Big Island that we LOVE. The master bedroom has amazing tall windows that make you feel like your in a tree house in the jungle because you are about 15 feet off the ground. We love it there and used to go very often but for some reason 6 kids seem to make it nearly impossible;) We can't wait to bring the kids, especially Isaiah. Since he has been home from Liberia all Isaiah wants to do is go to Disneyland and Hawaii and he has no clue what either one is. We shall see...






The point where lava flows into the sea keeps coming closer and closer to our property. We aren't in danger of loosing the house but one day it is a very real possibility that it could be overtaken like Kalapana, which is close to our house.


Our little house nestled in the jungle. It looks really small but it has 3 bedrooms and a large kitchen and living area.



A few years ago we also bought the land next to us. This is what the whole property looks like everywhere you look.





I love the beauty of Hawaii.

Slab, Blab

When our house is done, this is where I want to go. We haven't been to our house in Hawaii since Kai was 20 months old and we all have been longing to go back(we've been a little busy with adoptions the last 2 years). Our Hawaiian airlines credit card(that we pay off each month) is racking up more and more points with the building and we are hoping to get at least 2 free tickets. By the time we're done, the break will be sorely needed.



Beautiful garage floor getting watered down by a sprinkler to help it "cure".


Next step? Walls! Can you believe it?

One more step forward

Tomorrow at 5 am, Jonah will be at our property to let in the concrete guy that will be laying our slab. I will be dropping off all of the kids to watch the excitement, except Isaiah and Justus, at 8am so that I can take Isaiah to his neuro. appointment. Hopefully, we will get some answers from the EEG he had done 2 months ago.
Here are some pictures from the last few weeks to bring you up to date on what's been happening. Look for more pics later this week of the slab itself!



All the gravel waiting to be smoothed out.



All smoothed out.



The rebar is laid and looking good.



And we wait for the cement trucks...

Celebrations

First off, I want to make a mention about my previous post "A thought". I hope you all understand that by saying my family is "abnormal" I do not mean that as a bad thing in any way. As a friend reminded me, my family is very normal in the fact that we still have a mom and dad in the same house who love each other and many other ways.


Okay.

Today, Justus turns 18 months old and I am left wondering where in the world the last year and a half went. This little boy is so precious to me and we are having so much fun watching him grow up.





Today is also the 2 year celebration of the day we met our Liberian boys. That day holds so many amazingly warm and positive memories for me and it makes me happy to go back in my mind and remember that day. If you would like to read more about that day and the days following you can go here and scroll down to the bottom of the page and read up. If you want to read more about our adoption journey before we brought our boys home you can do so by starting with our referral day and then the months following January, February, March, April, and May. All of the posts aren't directly related to our boys, since we did have 3 other children at home then, but it tells the feelings and thoughts during the process as well as the process itself.

A thought

Today, driving in the car with only one child, I had a realization. Really, it was more like a feeling that I won't be able to express to you properly but I will try. Growing up life was "normal", just like most of my friends. Getting married life was "normal", again, just like my friends. Trying to get pregnant, just like all my friends, and still, I felt "normal". Then, infertility hit and I began to feel "abnormal". Like all the feelings of normalcy were fading into the sunset. I could feel myself becoming the "different" one. There was no one in my circle of friends who could understand what I was feeling or going through. I now know you cannot possibly understand the depth of pain and agony infertility creates unless you have experienced years of it firsthand. My friends decided to have a baby and got pregnant, it was easy. Normal. I was thinking of a friend who easily got pregnant with her children and how "normal" her life is, the way I had pictured my life being growing up. The infertility was the first thing that made me "abnormal".

When I was a child, there was a family we knew who had 2 children who were adopted at birth. I always thought they were "different", like something wasn't "right" about their family. Of course, no one really talked to me about it, it was just my perception. Even though I always wanted to adopt I felt that I would still be "normal" because I would have "my own kids" (and please never, ever use that phrase with an adoptive/bio family. My kids ARE my own kids). My experiences are different, they are not in the "normal" realm of things. The majority of mom's get to experience the miracle of birth, it is a "normal" part of life. Only a handful of us blessed women experience the miracle of adoption. It is a life changing event. It makes us special and unique.
I pray that those that I know don't look at my family and my children the way I viewed adoption as a child. I pray I can explain the amazingness of it to children who ask questions and that the children will not be afraid to ask those questions. And I pray that I can remember that, even though our family is not "normal" by the world's terms, we are special because we are unique. And that's just the way God planned it to be.

Interesting

Last week we took all the kids to our new dentist for their cleaning. This is the same dentist Jonah and I had before we moved away and he is really great. This was the first time Isaiah and Alana had x-rays and there were some interesting discoveries. Alana's 2 top teeth are loose, which she did not know, and she is very excited about it. Sarah is going to need some intervention because one of her teeth is trying to get through but can't because of the placement of 2 other teeth and she has some jaw problems and a big overbite. But, by far, the most interesting was the dentists observation of Isaiah. I was laying in the chair getting my teeth cleaned when the dentist came in to give a report on Isaiah. He asked, "How old is Isaiah?" When I told him 6, he put his hand up to his face to think for a second and said, "Are you sure?" I told him how, no, I was not positive but that was the age we were given and have just stuck with it. Now, I have had the feeling that Isaiah was not as old as we were told for a long time now but, really, haven't thought much about it cause it's not a big deal. He fits into our family fine, whether he's 6 or 5 or 4. "Well," the dentist said, "his dental age looks much younger than 6. Like maybe more of Malakai's age(who he had seen first)." So, no crazy age change, but interesting to me all the same. The only way we could be absolutely sure of his age would be to do a bone scan but we aren't that curious about it. Interesting.

Large family, small house

Why is it that when you only have 2 restrooms for 8 people, 4 of the kids have to go RIGHT NOW! A big adjustment to living in a smaller house with less bathrooms... but it sure is easier to clean;)