A Road Less Traveled

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Woke up this morning...

...and realized our children are ages 17, 16, 15, 14, 14, 12, 11, 10, 10, and 7! I crawled back under the covers and hid for a few minutes, but was shortly called to action by a little one who came into our room with an urgent need for parental assistance. I read a facebook comment yesterday from a parent of a child who had been adopted at an older age. Someone had asked her how she did everything she needed to do on a day-to-day basis. Her response: "Lots of prayer and lots of liquor!" I wonder how my teetotaling religion would respond if I got a little help from Captain Jack on occasion. Hmmm. I call on doctors all day for a living. Perhaps an out-of-the box thinker could prescribe me a little liquid courage. On second thought, I need to be stone cold sober at all hours of the day or night. One never knows when one of our munchkins will have an emergency requiring my utmost and completely focused attention. Like when one of our hypochondriacs comes in and says, "Dad, if I stand on one leg and tilt my head just right, it hurts in my big toe." I must ever be on the alert so I can assuage the pain and suffering of poor souls in agony!

Still, I must admit I'm a bit jealous of her prayer and liquor strategy:)

-Jer

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Mei

Our darling, beautiful Elli turned 11 years old today! We love her so much!

It's hard to believe that it's been eight and a half years since we went on our very first adoption trip to China to bring home this angel of ours. We were so excited and a little terrified. Had we known what the next several years with Elli would bring, we would have been a LOT terrified! (: I often say it's good we didn't know about Elli's autism, developmental delays, and bi-polar disorder because we would likely have been too afraid to move forward with her adoption and that would have been a huge mistake. Elli has blessed our lives in so many beautiful ways. She has taught us patience and unconditional love and gratitude and so much more-- all in ways that she could not have taught us if she were a "typical" child. We've recorded some of these experiences on her adoption blog, found HERE. And others on her "Miracles for Elli" blog found HERE. (The lack of updates on this blog is not from lack of love.) Sometimes when I get discouraged with all of the things that are hard about raising her, I go back and read these posts and I am just filled with love for her and with love for my Heavenly Father for sustaining us as we parent her.

She has been our hardest challenge but has brought us the greatest of joys.

Happy Birthday, Elli Belly! You are so loved!!!!

In case you are wondering, her harness is for the bus rides to school-- it helps keep her safe on the bus so she is not jumping up and down the aisle. (: And I just had to throw in a couple of other pictures. The first one is my very favorite quilt made by my mom, aunt and grandma and given to us for our wedding. It's huge and warm and the blanket I always give to guests when they come because it's so soft and big. A couple of weeks ago, I went to put Elli to bed and realized her blanket needed to be washed, so I gave her this one. As you can see, Elli has an uncanny ability to destroy anything and everything. Argh!! That quilt had gone through 17 years of camping trips and guests and cuddles on the couch and was still perfect-- only to be shredded in one night by our Elli. I mean, there were several pieces of it on her floor! The next photo is what we often find when we go into her room in the morning-- she has found how to tear up her floor. Luckily, this time it wasn't combined with her getting into her messy diaper and painting the room. (; I can't believe we haven't completely lost our sanity with this girl. Good thing she's so cute!!!

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Trip of a lifetime!

As Jeremy said, I'm in a new stage of life! Now that I have a little more flexibility with my time, I've set some goals for myself-- the first of which is to resume blogging. (: My kids have been after me to do so for a long time and I'm excited to see their reaction when they sit down and see an actual blog post from me! The hard part about starting again after such a long break is knowing where to start! I have so many things I want to journal about and as I went through photos, I realized I have missed recording so many memorable things!

I finally decided to start with something AMAZING. (: Something I will always treasure as one of the best weeks of my life.

My parents are the most wonderful, selfless people. Somehow on teachers' salaries, they managed to give us EVERYTHING we wanted. They still serve all of their kids in so many ways. When my mom retired last year (2014), we wanted to do something big to show them how much we appreciated them. As siblings, we decided to gift my parents with something they have always dreamed about-- a cruise with their kids! My mom especially has talked for years about how much she would love to cruise with the kids and how it would never be able to work because of money, all the grandkids, etc. We threw a surprise retirement party and my sister put together an amazing scrapbook for my mom with notes and cards from former students and coworkers. At the end of the scrapbook were pages with the cruise tickets and itinerary. Watching their faces as they got to those pages was priceless!

We spent the next 10 months getting excited for our first ever vacation as adult siblings and parents! Usually we have 15,000 kids floating around (who are very loved, by the way) and so we don't get to focus as much on our relationships with each other. Sadly (and very happily!) my brother, Matthew, and his wife, Megan, found out they were expecting soon after we booked the cruise, so they weren't able to come with us. We decided that just means that we'll have to do the whole thing again! (:

Megan with baby Violet-- isn't she exquisite?! Love her so much! Definitely worth missing a cruise for! (:

Our cruise was in April and it landed us in Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Haiti, and Cozumel. It was INCREDIBLE in every way! Perfection all around. I'll let the pictures tell the story. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the love and devotion you have shown all of us. WE LOVE YOU!

And... where were all our kids while we played in the Caribbean for a week?? It takes a very special person to actually VOLUNTEER to come and hold down the fort. THANK YOU, Jennifer, for making this trip possible. We love you. The kids love you. Blessed be the name of Aunt Jenny!! (:

Getting ready to surprise Mom!

She really had no idea!

She gets to the cruise page! (:

Eleven months later...

At church in Florida before the ship set sail.

Jeremy, Me, brother Danny, Breanna, sister Leslie, Jeremy, Mom, Dad, sister Becky, Chris-- one of my favorite parts of the cruise was meeting together each night to have dinner. So fun to have so much adult conversation in one week!!!!!