The Hatcher 5

A Quote

2010-12-02T07:03:00.003+01:00

So [I] told me the other day that he was going to ask Santa for a DSi and ask us to buy him the game Spirit Tracks. He explained, "That way it will save you money because I'm asking Santa for the expensive thing and asking you to get the cheaper thing." I simply thanked [I] for being so thoughtful! We can definitely say that we still believe in Santa in this home!

Our Thanksgiving

2010-11-28T14:30:00.005+01:00

This year, as we did last year, we went to the LDS temple in Bern Switzerland for Thanksgiving weekend. There is a little hostel across the street that we stay at and we go up with several people in the ward. Thus, we have lots of fun with many of our friends, but we don't get to make a proper Thanksgiving meal (the hostel only has stove tops and a single microwave--or did do until someone tried to make toast in it and set off the smoke alarms and the microwave never worked after that--and no I don't know who did it). This year we had chili for our big Thanksgiving feast. Well, Friday night some people brought up pumpkin pie, so I guess that almost counts as a Thanksgiving meal.

This year was especially special because we were able to have [T] sealed to our family. A sealing is a simple ceremony done inside the temple to show that before the eyes of God and the church, [T] is part of our family from now on and forever. It was a very special day for us to make our family complete. Below is a picture of us right before we entered the temple. It snowed the night before our sealing so the world turned a beautiful white winterscape.

A view from the hostel.

Snowing the night before also meant that our kids got to have a day playing in the snow! We don't see snow very often, maybe for one day a year, here in Aviano, so snow is a real treat. Also, I think it was [T]'s first time seeing snow. I'm not sure what she thought of it, but we had a great time having a snowball fight and running around in the snow. After [T] watched us a bit to see what we did with the stuff, she was happy to join in as well--a least a little. I think she mostly thought it was cold. [I] and [A] didn't let a little cold stop them and spent most of the day outside!

[T] with her first snowball.

[I] has a way of always finding the biggest chunk of snow he can--and then throwing it at sometime. This time that someone was me, and it went all down the front of my coat since I wasn't zipped up all the way--COLD!

[A] is always up for a little snow!

[K] helping out in the snowball fun.

Just a Few Pictures

2010-09-26T21:00:00.005+02:00

First day of school! So maybe that was a month ago, at least I posted it, right? Notice what hams my children are.

[T] in the hospital with her big splint on. This is while we were waiting for them to open up an operating room for us so they could decide whether to do surgery or not. She looks pretty happy for a girl who wasn't allowed to eat from 8pm Friday night to 3pm Saturday.

Here are my "twins" at the welcome shower for [T]. [K] did most of the unwrapping for her. I think [K] is trying to remind me that he never got a birthday party this year. Neither did the other boys. Poor boys. :(

Finally we have a family photo! It's not the best photo ever, but it took us forever to just get this one. We brought both of our cameras with us to this location and both ran out of batteries trying to get a few pictures. Luckily one turned out okay, because we weren't able to take any more.

[I] is Amazing

2010-09-26T20:36:00.004+02:00

[I] is in 2nd grade this year. He is 8 years old. The other night at bedtime, [D] was talking to the boys about random things when [I] starts this conversation:

[I]: When do you start doing math with letters?
[D]: What do you mean?
[I]: Math with letters like a+b?
[D]: (After a moment of shock, he explains the basics of algebra) Are there kids in your class doing math with letters?
[I]: No, I just saw some kid.

**The conversations continues, leading to college. Can I just add that I didn't know what college was until I was in high school--[I] is 8**

[I]: Are there good colleges and bad colleges? (You should know that [I] decided about 2 years ago that he is going to design games when he gets older. He has already made us do quite a bit of research about it, found websites to create his own game, and designs games on paper all the time.)
[D]: Yes. For example if you go to MIT you could get a job almost anywhere. But you have to get good grades to go there.
[I]: Do I have to go to MIT?
[D]: No.
[I]: How do you find out if a college is good or not. Can you find out about colleges online?
[D]: Yes.
[I]: Can we look now?
[D]: No, it's bedtime. We'll have to do that later.

This response worked until after school the next day when [I] asked me to research colleges for him. I answered that we needed to homework first and I needed to make dinner, so we would have to wait until later that night. [I] did not forget and when [D] came home, [D] and [I] researched different colleges that would be good if you wanted to go into designing games. Yes, [I] has a plan and he amazes me all the time that his brain works this way.

K-Bomb Cutie

2010-09-26T20:18:00.004+02:00

K-bomb is just one of [K]'s many nicknames.

It just so happens that [K] has this super cute pouty face that I've been trying to get a picture of for ages because it just makes me laugh every time. I thought I was finally getting a picture this time, but the camera was set to video. Here is the result. It is only a few seconds long but I hope you see why it makes me laugh--he's really just too cute!

On fire

2010-09-06T00:10:00.004+02:00

So... as you may be able to tell it has been an interesting week. After so much stress we decided to go on a short hike and Geo-Cache as a family. We went to a trail that we knew of and enjoyed our time by Lake Barcis. After this we decided instead of driving around the mountain back home again, to dry over the pass through our local ski town (Piancavallo). When coming down the other side our breaks began to over-heat. At that time I remembered what my Mom said when I was a kid about overheating breaks and pulled over. The was smoke billowing out from the front tires. We got out and looked and the drivers-side brakes were on FIRE!!!!! Looking for our fire extinguisher (no where to be found), evacuating the kids quickly, and then looking for some water (none found at first), we found some lemon-aid and doused the flames with a some crystal light. It worked and our van was saved. After 20 minutes we came the rest of the way down the mountain in low gear at 15 mph. What a great family outing.

[T] --NO SURGERY-- Yeah!!!

2010-09-06T00:01:00.002+02:00

So after a night of waking every two hours, when the nurse would come in to check on [T]'s blood supply to her hand, we found out that the scheduled surgery was postponed due to emergent surgeries that took up the operating rooms. Then, waiting until noon we found out that we had a new Orthopedic Surgeon now on managing our case. He was much more conservative than the one the evening before. He said that she MAY need surgery if after attempting to reduce the fracture under anesthesia it does not set well. Then we had to wait for an operating room to open up. The new Surgeon decided that because [T] had been fasting already for 18 hours he was going to try to work some deal with the surgery room in the ER and their Anesthesiologist to do the procedure down there. Everything went well with just a little IV sedation. The fracture was set with just casting and we were able to go home 2 hours latter. A good ending to a long week (after a stressful climax.)

[T] is in the hospital

2010-09-04T07:01:00.002+02:00

Poor little [T] has quite a tough time when it has come to the medical side of things since she has come to live with us, and now she is in the hospital! So . . . I had told her and Kimball that they could not have any more popsicles (I felt the 2 they had already had that afternoon, plus the one in the morning really was enough). I guess they felt this wasn't a good answer so when I wasn't in the kitchen, they decided to try to sneak some more. It did not go well. [T] fell off the chair she was using and broke her arm! Of course she did this Friday evening, on a 3 day weekend, right after the base hospital had closed down for the evening. So we had to take her down to the Pordenone Italian hospital--they do things a little different there. What isn't different is that she broke the joint in her elbow and needs surgery. They were going to do it immediately, but Dan had fed the starving girl a snack while they waited in the emergency room. Now it is scheduled for some time today (Sat). In the States this would be an out-patient surgery, but we are in Italy so we hear she will probably be in the hospital for a few days. We'll post more when we know more--it's hard to get information out of the Italians.

Updating

2010-09-02T07:33:00.005+02:00

So I have heard from many people that I really need to update our blog. There is just so much that has happened this summer, it almost seems too daunting a task to even try to complete. But I have decided that a few minutes a day can go a long way and I will do what I can. We did write a bit--preparing to blog--while we were in Ethiopia, but at some point even this fell to the wayside. So you will probably notice a big difference in what was written before as opposed to now. But, I am going to post them as to the correct date when they SHOULD have been posted, so you will have to look back at older dates to find the newest information. Just FYI! Here is a picture to tide you over until I get more done!

Here is all of us outside the Washington DC temple.

Picking up [T]-- Day 4

2010-07-06T14:37:00.001+02:00

Tuesday began our real saga with the Italian Embassy. (No pictures today since taking pictures of an embassy is just a really bad idea.) They had recently made a change to their policy (starting June 1^st) where they no longer made appointments for visa applications. Instead you had to show up at 8:30am outside the gates and they would allow around 12 applicants inside. So of course we showed up early, not wanting to be #13 in line. So we waited with [T] in tow from 7:45 – 8:30am to be admitted inside the gate. Then we spent a few minutes in the gates but outside the building. At 8:45am they let us inside the building into a tiny room with only enough space for about 20 chairs and that many people. We sat down and waited until a bit after 9am for them to start helping people. We were called as one of the first people because they must have thought we had Italian citizenship when Dan said he worked there. Getting in didn’t help us, though, because we didn’t have the paperwork he wanted—specifically the US Visa in [T]’s passport, but he also listed a few things we didn’t have such as our marriage certificate and a printout of our travel itinerary in and out of Italy. (We had the one out of Ethiopia, but not of our trip to the US.) They also said that if we came on Friday (since we wouldn’t be getting the visa from the US Embassy until Thursday) they could not get the Schengen Visa completed until the following Mon at the very earliest. We left a bit discouraged. Plus, I will not go into detail, but it is no small ordeal to get a page printed off the internet here, so getting our missing documents printed took about a full day. It may not sound long, but think about how most people have a printer at home and can print something in a few seconds.

To make sure Tuesday was a very full day, our agency then took us on a shopping trip with the other adoptive families then home for lunch and off to the US embassy in the afternoon.

Two embassies in one day is 2 too many. I will say that the US Embassy was much nicer to deal with. They have two waiting rooms for people coming for Visas and one had a big play area for children. While there were twice the number of people there—many who were also adopting children, our wait time was probably about the same. We were at the Italian Embassy from 7:45-9:30am and at the American Embassy from 3:00pm to 5:15 or so. At least [T] had something to do while we were waiting which made the time go much quicker.

So this is how the process goes. When it is your turn, you go up to a window with a worker behind it. They ask you some questions about the adoption and how your child became available for adoption. A form is filled out and signed and that is about it. Our worker was amazing! He was nice and we kept joking with him. We expressed how we needed to make sure we got an IR-3 instead of an IR-4 Visa because of our living in Italy, and he made sure to get that done. We then joked about how this process was so much better than going to the Italian Embassy—and joked about how they must be bitter about losing in the World Cup. Then, I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it came up how we really could use some help speeding up the process since we did have to work with the Italians. He quickly talked to his co-worker and it was done—our Visa would be done the next day by 3:30pm instead of the normal two-day wait. We were ecstatic!

Picking up [T]--Day 3

2010-07-05T21:33:00.004+02:00

Driving up to the Thomas Center. This is the best picture we could get.

Monday we got to pick up [T] from the Thomas Center, her orphanage. She was pretty excited to see us, but I think it has more to do with base personality. She has a way of just tackling anything that is thrown at her head on. Plus, we found out later that [T] always loved going in the car to anywhere--just as long as she was going. So maybe she was so excited because she knew she was going somewhere, but I also hope that she remembered us a little from when we came out and visited her in Oct. In any case, she was more than happy to leave her home for the last year and start this new adventure.

Here is [T] in the room she has spent the last year in. She was still in the baby room, so she didn't have many kids her age to play with. She doesn't look too happy here, but she was pretty excited to come with us. Those are molluscum on her face. It's a virus she picked up just a few weeks before we were able to get her. Most of the kids at the center had them, so it must have gone around the orphanage pretty well. Molluscum is very much like having a wart--it spreads by scratching, not much medicine helps it, and it takes a few months to go away.

This day was spend mostly sitting around different places. First at the orphanage after meeting the nannies and letting [T] say goodbye, we had to wait for the other families to do the same. Then we moved to the CHI office there in Addis Ababa while each family took their turn checking through and preparing paperwork for the embassy appointment the next day. It is a little difficult to try to get to know your new daughter while sitting in a room with a group of people you have just met, above your agency's offices, with no toys for a couple of hours. It wasn't bad or annoying, but a weird way to spend the first several hours with a 3 year old that is suddenly mine.

Here we are at the CHI offices trying to entertain [T]. The sippy cup was a new thing and she loved having something of her own. That and soda--she couldn't get enough soda.

So this whole time we thought we were adopting a 2 year old and that [K] and [T] would be almost exactly a year apart. We still believed this last October when we went to visit [T] at the orphanage. She was just learning to walk then and the right size for a 15 month old. So when we showed up this time with a bunch of 18 month and 2T size clothing, we weren’t expecting to find a 3 year old. Since she was abandoned, they guessed her age when she was found. Our guess is that the conditions she lived under before going to the orphanage must have caused her to be delayed in her development, but under the great care of the Thomas Center she was able to catch up more to her actual age. So it looks like we have twins now (or at least close to it). And we are here in Ethiopia with a bunch of clothes that are way too small for her (she’s wearing a lot of capris and mini skirts—with capris under the skirts).

Picking up [T]--Days 1 & 2

2010-07-04T21:17:00.004+02:00

We left Venice Italy on Saturday after spending 3 frantic days of trying to find babysitters for our other 3 amazing children. Our flights were uneventful and we arrived to Addis Ababa only ½ hour late (compared to our last trip which was 2 hrs late arriving at 2am). Upon arriving in Addis Ababa we spent 1.5 hours getting through the immigration lines and Visa Office. Once we collected our luggage we headed into the main terminal to meet our ride to the guesthouse. However, we walked out of security and there was no one there to meet us. We waited about 15 minutes and then decided to call and see where our ride was. (Note that in Ethiopia they use a different clock than we do in the states. Their day starts at 6am our time, in other words 6am our time =12am Ethiopian time. Also their dates to not change until that time also.) We arrived at 12:45 am our time on the 4th of July = 6:45p 3rd of July Ethiopian time. So this was very confusing to our guesthouse and so they were expecting us the next day. Our phone call woke them up in the middle of the night to come and pick us up. Luckily it was the same guest house we stayed at before and so it was like coming home in a way--Tsebay the manager is amazing and we were all hugs when she showed up to get us.

Sunday was very uneventful. We slept in and found out that ALL the families that are picking up children from CHI were staying in the same guest house as us. This is very unusual but worked out great for us because we were all able to get to know each other very well and not have to spend any extra time picking up and dropping off people all over the city. (There was another family there with a different agency who said they would spend almost 2 hours picking up everyone in the group from their different hotels/guest houses.) We all just lazed around most of the day and checked and re-checked all of our paperwork, clothes, and diapers for the next day. Happy birthday to me! A very weird sort of birthday it was, right on the brink of picking up a daughter. I don't think I have words to express it.

EMBASSY APPOINTMENT

2010-06-29T21:05:00.002+02:00

Finally, we have our embassy appointment to finish up the immigration paperwork to bring [T] home!!! We can not express how excited we are. It seems so surreal... We started this process over two years ago when we prayed about if we should have another child in our family. At that time we felt that we were going to have another child but the more we thought and prayed about it the stronger we felt we needed to adopt. Again, we prayed and pondered which country and which agency we should use and we ended up adopting from Ethiopia. It has been a long road but now we are going to pick up a daughter whom God has reserved for our family.

We are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Baseball season 2010

2010-06-06T15:46:00.006+02:00

Last summer I told the boys they could pick 2 sports to participate in for the year. They chose soccer and baseball (I did not include Tae Kwon Do and dance). [A] was the only one who ended up doing baseball since [I] was busy in dance. Let's just say that if you think baseball is boring--T-ball is 10x worse! I'm not the only one who thinks so, [A] seemed to agree. I give you exhibit A:

Now it looks like [A] is busy chasing the ball, but no, he is just playing in the dirt. When I asked him why he kept laying down in the dirt, he replied, " 'cause I'm bored." So instead, he would pretend he was sliding to catch a ball. To be honest, it wasn't all boring. [A] had some fun. As proof I give you exhibit B, C, and D!

This time he actually is going after the ball (it's at his feet).

Up to bat!

Coming in to home base!

Baptism

2010-05-22T23:04:00.002+02:00

[I]'s 8!

Can you believe it!? He turned 8 in April, but we waited until May when his Grandma and Grandpa T were coming. Due to when [D] could get off work, we were in Rome the weekend before his baptism. I would not recommend traveling right before a baptism because it was a little crazy getting everything planned when we got back. (It didn't help that our internet died right before we left for Rome.) But everything turned out beautifully! [D]'s foot was also healed enough that he was able to do the baptism without problem (something that would not have been possible in April). It was an added bonus that [T] became officially our daughter the same day. In fact, our adoption agency tried calling us with the good news during the middle of the meeting, but of course we weren't able to answer. It was definitely a very special day for our whole family!

A little pre-baptism advice.

All of us!

The Best Adoption News

2010-05-21T23:55:00.002+02:00

We are pleased to announce to the world that we are now the proud parents of [T] Hatcher. Our adoption court date was today and we passed court, so now in the eyes of the Ethiopia and the world, we are officially her parents.

We are so excited!!! We will be traveling in July to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to pick up [T] and accomplish the immigration paperwork at the US embassy . We will be traveling from Italy to Ethiopia and then directly to the United States.

Thank you all for all of your prayers and support while we have been waiting for this day over the last 2 years. Please continue to pray for us as we wait for our appointment time with the US embassy.

.

Adoption News

2010-05-02T14:22:00.003+02:00

On April 5th we FINALLY received the police clearance that we've been waiting on since December of last year! That is the good news. It basically allows us to move forward in the adoption process again. Now we need a court date. Before, parents weren't required to be present at the court, but as of May 9th that will be changing. We were hoping for a court date before then, but it is now May 2nd, and we still haven't heard anything. It just doesn't look like that will happen. There is a possibility that we will be able to get a waiver since we have already been out to visit [T]. once. Otherwise, we will be visiting Ethiopia an extra time--one more time for the court date and then 2 months later to pick her up. We are really hoping to hear soon when our court date is so we can make plans for the summer. And really we just want to bring [T] home. In August it will be a year since we received our referral, so we have definitely been waiting a long time for this. Here is a more recent picture of her. She is getting bigger and we want her to be getting bigger before our eyes, and not simply through photos!

D's injury

2010-03-31T18:44:00.002+02:00

When [D] came home with his ruptured Achilles tendon, it started us on a long road of rehab. First we had to get surgery scheduled. These first two pictures are the bruising on [D]'s ankle from the injury.

It was pretty gross at the doctor's office going from the doctor's office to the casting office. His foot just jiggled at the end of his leg when he hopped on his crutches. You could just see that it wasn't attached to anything inside. I was going to video it, but then I thought better of it since it was really disturbing.

A week after that doctor's visit, we went in for surgery. This is the boot [D] came home with.

This boot was so big that [D] couldn't even get pants over it. He had to wear shorts the whole time--even to church. He had this on for 2 weeks after the surgery.

Here is [D] a couple of days post-op. You can tell it was a couple of days because he's smiling. Those first 2 days were rather uncomfortable for him. I dragged a twin mattress down from upstairs and put it into our storage room on the first floor next to the bathroom. That is where [D] stayed for the first 3 or so days post-op since he wasn't allowed to go upstairs where our bedroom is. He was only allowed out of bed to go to the bathroom--to which he mostly crawled since the change of pressure when standing up really hurt his foot.

Some things we did while D was gone

2010-03-31T18:32:00.000+02:00

D was gone for a little over 2 months at the beginning of the year. We had to entertain ourselves somehow--here are a few of the things that we did.

K seems to think that adequate winter clothing includes a hat, coat, gloves, and boots--pants completely optional.

I had a whole roll of paper and A. and K. made some beautiful murals!

K. will do anything for the chance to play in water. I've had to become very creative to find ways to let him play without making huge messes. I'm not all that successful since our bathroom is flooded at least once a week. Thank goodness our house is all tile!

Mom caught sleeping on the job.

Where's my children?

Oh, there they are!

Our Latest Adventure

2010-03-14T18:22:00.004+01:00

So. . . D was supposed to be back from a 2 month TDY in the States last Wednesday. First the jet he was flying in broke and they had to return to Las Vegas. The next day they tried again and made it to Shaw (South Carolina), but the jet was broken once again. The next attempt to come home was delayed because the re-fueler to get over the ocean broke down.

Then came the phone call--from the emergency room. D had ruptured his Achilles tendon. Yes, it's a 95% tear. We spent a stressful day trying to find out if he would come home for the surgery or stay there. Well, he has gotten to come home, although the flight home was not great (every flight was delayed and thus he missed every connection). Although D tells me flying with your foot in a splint was horrible, he did get to go through all the airports in a wheelchair, and thus go through all the secret passageways of the airports.

The next phone call I got was to tell me that the base surgeon was out of town. That person thought the surgeon would not be back until the 20th or so, but luckily the surgeon will be back on Tuesday. It's still a much longer wait between injury and surgery than it should be, but I think I would have gone mad with worry if D had the surgery in S. Carolina with no one to help him.

So, I guess I will post an update after Tuesday when we know more about when the surgery will be, etc. What we can definitely count on is at least 6 months of rehab. D has never broken a bone or seriously sprained anything, so I guess this is his way of making up for it. As for the deployment coming up . . . we don't know how this will effect it, but I'm sure we'll find out soon.
(I'll post a picture of gimpy D soon!)

Adoption--The Latest

2010-03-01T09:26:00.004+01:00

I wish I could say I was posting something good, but unfortunately will are still stuck in a bit of an adoption black hole. We have been waiting since December for a simple letter from the local government where T. is from. We don't know why it is taking so long, but nothing can progress until we have it. The only news we have received is that of the 6 families all stuck in this same place, 3 of the families received their letters about 2 weeks ago. It is rather frustrating to be on the wrong side of 50%. We are, as we have been these last months, hoping our own letter comes soon! It is all in the Lord's hands, and we must trust to his timing.

2010-02-08T17:38:00.005+01:00

As long as I was posting pictures of the boys, I thought I should add the boys school photos from this year. All I can say is we paid way too much for way too little.

So while we did ask that they wear their jackets for the pictures, we had no idea they would zip up their jackets all the way to their chins. Tell me again why I bothered to put them in nice shirts?

My Little Boys

2010-02-05T22:34:00.005+01:00

I have been blessed with some of the cutest boys on the planet. I have also been blessed by a dear woman in the ward who offered to take free family photos for anyone who wanted one. Unfortunately, D was already out of town so we were unable to get a full family photo--maybe when he gets back--but I did take the opportunity to get some pictures of my boys. It's funny how hard it can be to get 3 boys to pose for something simple like a few photos--I felt like I had just finished a long wrestling match when our session was finally over. (If the pictures seem a little dark, it is because the transformer for one of the lights wasn't working and so we had to do with much less light than expected, but beggars can't be choosers, and I am well content with how they all turned out!)

As you can see, my children were showing off the silly parts of their personalities.

I couldn't decide which of these pictures of K. to put in, so I went with both of them. :)

Adoption Saga

2010-01-10T23:41:00.003+01:00

On Dec 15th we were informed that our orphanage cleared all investigations and everything should be moving along again--at snail pace! On Fri we were told they are still waiting for letters from the government that allow them to petition for a court date. When are we ever going to get moving forward again? Our hearts are breaking knowing that T. is waiting for us, in the orphanage, not getting the love that we can't wait to give her. We know the Lord is with us and helping us through this waiting that is nearly unbearable

Tae Kwon Do

2010-01-07T22:14:00.004+01:00

While we wait for news about our little girl, life goes on. I thought I would show a little of what I spend my life doing--or at least a little of why I'm always on the go. For the last several months, I. and A. have been taking Tae Kwon Do. Just tonight they tied on their Tiger Cub blue belts (it's a white belt with a blue stripe in the middle). I only have a picture from when they tied on their green belts, but all the award ceremonies look the same. I think we are about to take a break from Tae Kwon Do, but I had to show they at least once in their totally cute uniforms.

Their new belts are tied on.

Here they are with their certificates.

They always take their old belts and throw them in the air at the end of the award ceremony. Their own little graduation tradition. (Yeah the picture isn't the best, sorry.)

Adoption Update

2009-12-10T22:03:00.003+01:00

Here is the latest report--and we only wish we had better news to report. Apparently, our agency's orphanage in Addis Ababa is one of the ones being investigated after some bad press from the Australian BBC a few months ago. The story was about some pretty horrific behavior on the part of a particular adoption agency. Our agency was not listed as an offender on the show, but they must have gotten some of the children in the orphanage from similar areas. I am still working on getting more information from them as to why they are part of this investigation, but getting information from them is like pulling teeth. I really have not been impressed by our agency in the least since we always get our information by looking at other sources, and are only told information long past the fact and only through prodding. I had actually asked my agency if they were involved in this set of investigations over a month ago to which they had replied no. These investigations--at least on other orphanages--began in early Nov, but I was only informed on Dec 8th because I've been pestering them for more information for over a month as to why we do not have a court date scheduled. Their previous response was that the courts were backed up, however, I knew this was incorrect from a friend who is also adopting from Ethiopia. So the moral of the story--be very careful what agency you choose to adopt through. If I could go through another agency, I would, but there is still a very beautiful, innocent little girl that we cannot bear to forget. Hopefully everything will be worked out soon.

The Best Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T22:11:00.000+01:00

For Thanksgiving this year, we did the funnest thing ever. We went to the Bern Switzerland temple! A short 8 hour drive, makes it a good trip for a long weekend like Thanksgiving. And since it was a planned ward temple trip, there were many people to trade babysitting (I think this was the first time in years D. and I got to go together), and many of our best friends were there to share some fun time together. We were able to stay at the hostel there at the temple and had the funny coincidence of running into the Harris' from Loveland who are serving a mission in southern Italy!

This is a quick picture we took from the road on our way there. Switzerland is such a pretty country, we could have filmed the whole drive nearly. It doesn't represent any of their tall mountains, but some of the beauty of that country.

The temple is so beautiful, don't you think!?

Here is a quick family photo of us outside the temple. We took the children on a night walk around the grounds so we could admire it at night and have a good talk. In the morning of one of the days, all the Primary kids there got to meet with the temple president and talk with him. It was a very neat experience.

The boys were fascinated by this simple Christmas tree on the temple grounds.

Before heading back, we spent half a day in Bern touring the city and checking out their Christmas market. This was a candy store our friends showed us that has a slide into their below street level store. Here I. takes his turn.

And now A!

K. says, "I want to eat it all up! Candy, candy, more candy!"

Our friends next showed us a store with an open elevator that you jump on when it's level with the floor your on and that you can ride full circle (up one side and then down the other) without getting off, so you see all the mechanisms. Neat and creepy at the same time.

We also visited a church known for having an amazing 360 view of the Alps and all the surrounds. D., K., and I didn't go up top, but I. and A. went to the top with our friends and took some photos for me. I thought this was a pretty good representation of the view.

2009-11-14T23:23:00.000+01:00

We had this amazing derby race come right through our neighborhood! We knew it came through, but we've never known when. This year, we happened to be outside and saw the signs up and walked literally a little down the street to watch. We happened to be right at one of the sharpest curves, and I kept thinking they would slide into this huge concrete block just on the other side of the curve, but no one did. So much fun! Here is a little video so you can have a taste of it too!

Halloween

2009-10-31T21:44:00.002+01:00

I've finally put up Halloween pictures. We had a cute medieval theme going on, but unfortunately we never got the chance to have a family photo. Part of it because D. was gone so much and part because I, being the Primary secretary now, was very busy at the "Family Fall Festival" making sure the party (essentially the Primary activity) was going well. Here is a sampling of the few pictures I was able to take.

Here is D. looking spiffy in his knickers and vest.

You are going to see quite a bit of K. in these photos--he was everywhere, as long as it involved a ride in someone's arms. Here is Mommy in her pretty dress. We initially were going to go for knights and a princess, but it is nearly impossible to find an adult princess costume that doesn't involve involve showing a lot of skin. Thus we settled on lord and lady with our knights to protect us.

Here is knight number in his get-up (although he is missing his shield and sword). We found these great foam shields and swords at Legoland in Germany and they were wonderful! They were fun to play with, but could hardly do damage to the opponent.

I don't know where A. was hiding out at the Primary party so that I never got a picture of him there, but I did get a picture at his Kindergarten parade around the school lot. Behind him is his good friend that just happened to show up in the exact same costume! They were so excited. Here you can see what the sword and shield looked like.Here is K. all on his own! I tried to get him to match his brothers, but I couldn't find a size I thought would fit him, although it probably would have fit him better than this costume. While it was cute, it was too small from day one. It is hard when your only options are to buy online. So K. got to be the Prince elect! He sure thinks he's that already.

"I ate my last Daddy too! Ha ha!"

Last Day in Ethiopia

2009-10-04T21:49:00.002+02:00

Our last day in Ethiopia was also jam packed with adventure. After some mis-communication and the manager of the guest house missing church (which she told us later), we arranged to be taken to the Thomas Center one last time before we left that evening, and we planed a trip to Debre Zeyit. We spent the morning packing and generally just hanging around the house. Just before the trip to Debre Zeyit, we went to the Thomas Center. We arrived unannounced but were warmly welcomed by the staff. We went to T's room and romped around with her for a while. It was so much fun. She especially liked A's sunglasses.

We took some pictures and then after about ½ to 1 hour we got ready to leave. It was as hard as we had anticipated, leaving such a wonderful daughter there, not knowing when we would be back to bring her home. For me it was heat breaking. And then T realized that we were leaving and she was not going with us. She began to cry. Not like the first time where she cried some, but this time it was full tears and sobbing. I had some tears in my eyes when I walked down the stairs.

We planned a trip with the help of our Guest House to an area known for their beautiful “crater lakes.” Unlike the day before where we went to a place that seemed interesting to us (the water fall and the baboons), our guest house and tour guide insisted that this was “nice” place. Well, nice apparently meant a place that was developed with resorts, restaurants, and prepared activities such as boating and a swimming pool. While it was a nice place, it seemed to me and Vanessa that is was just another resort type hotel. We have found through our marriage that we prefer to see people how they really are and not how the rich tourists see them. To me the real Ethiopia was in downtown Addis Ababa and in the countryside town and villages. Nonetheless, we had fun canoeing in the lake and eating the resort quality Ethiopian food. Of note, when we ordered the Ethiopian food at the resort they said “Are you sure?! That IS traditional Ethiopian food!” Once we assured our waitress that we knew what we were doing she took our order. I got a lamb stew mixed with this really sour Injera bread and Vanessa got this amazing chicken dish with a side of Injera. We had a lot of fun and then we drove back to Addis Ababa to get ready for our flight home.

The resort

On the lake

We got to the airport at 11pm and had to scan our baggage right when we went in the door going into the building. After checking in we had to go through passport control. We had to fill out these little cards that looked exactly like the cards we filled out to get into the country only they said something like “Leaving” on the bottom. We stood in line for about 30 min and A was so tired that he fell asleep while I was holding him in line. This was a good thing because as I was standing there one of the security personnel saw this and asked our family to step to the VIP / First class passport line (go A, fall asleep on me any time). The funny thing was that he woke up almost the instant we finished at passport desk and did not fall asleep again until a couple hours later. Our plane from Ethiopia to Turkey was delayed an hour (we ended up getting on the airplane at 3am) and our connecting flight was also delayed two hours on the taxi way. Over all we arrived in Venice 2 hours late with Vanessa's sister, Erika, and her husband waiting for us (they landed 30 min before our original land time).

Overall a wonderful trip with some interesting moments and some heart wrenching moments. We cannot wait to go back and make T a permanent part of our family, never to be left behind again.

Ethiopia--Day Three

2009-10-03T23:42:00.001+02:00

Poor Dan was sick pretty much this whole day, so I have to write about it instead. This was our greatest adventure day! I convinced the guide our guest house uses to take us to a place called Durba that I had read about in a travel book. I had picked it because it sounded both interesting and somewhat easy to get to. A relative term, as we were to learn. Our guide had never been there, but was willing to try. After driving on a main road out of town—which boasted some great sites because we saw a traditional funeral taking place on the side of the road, and it was “flag day” so we saw a bunch of horses dressed up for what I think was going to be a small parade-type thing—we turned off onto this dirt road.

Just one of the normal sites. So many donkeys!

This is where it got interesting. We would travel for a few minutes, and then our driver, Solomon, or the guide would yell out the window “Durba, Durba” and ask directions. They would keep telling him it was further. Even though it was only an hour out of town, they already spoke enough of a different dialect, that our guide sometimes had a hard time communicating. (I should also mention that the North must be more dangerous because we had to stop twice for police to check the vehicle and ask us where we were going. Our guide had also forgotten to get some vital paperwork from the guest house, so he had to bribe the guards to let us back into the city on our way home.) After doing this for some time, and traveling on a very rough road, we finally made it into Durba where we then found some local willing to show us where the waterfall was—the intended destination. Out of nowhere, we found ourselves driving on the side of a huge ravine. There isn’t much water that flows down the waterfall, but the drop is spectacular.

Also, this was one of those scene from National Geographic because once out of the car, we were surrounded by all the local children who proceeded to follow us everywhere we went. Even more strange was one of the local youths started asking us, in great English, about American politics. Turns out, he is an Ethiopian law student who was home for the summer. At the top of the waterfall, there was a whole family of baboons that we got to get pretty close to and watch for a while—well, as close as I was willing to go.

If you look closely, you can see one of the males, and behind him, many of the village women washing clothes in the river.

By the time we headed back, A had figured out what a novelty American children are (I think they see American tourists every once and awhile, but not American children since both I and A got quite a bit of attention everywhere we went). He would wave at every person we passed through the bus window and revel in how excited people were to wave back at him.

Since Dan was sick—which was not due to the food as I’m sure you are thinking. If it had been the food, we would all have been down, since we all ate the same things, and he didn’t have any of the normal food sickness symptoms—we just went back to the guest house and hung out there. Unfortunately, I don’t think Dan remembers much of this day at all. At the guest house, A, being his normal charming self, got nearly all the workers—a guard, a small boy who must live in the back part of the house, and the driver Solomon—to play different games with him. By the time we left, they were all deeply in love with A. They all gave him hugs and gifts when we left.

Ethiopia--Day Two

2009-10-02T23:16:00.001+02:00

Today we did the “City Tour” that our guest house arranged. It basically involved driving around town to have several main buildings pointed out to us and then stopping at a few key locations. Our first stop was at the Ethiopia National Museum. It wasn’t very big, but probably the right size for our boys—and it had a lot of history. Ethiopia is the origin of humanity, after all. Instead of audio sets that you can rent, they have a few people there waiting to be your guide. We hired one, and so got the full history. We also got to see the bones of Lucy, the oldest, most complete skeleton in the world (or actually a replica of her since she’s visiting the States right now). A. got bored pretty quickly, but I., as usual, was all questions. Our museum guide was so impressed by how curious he was about everything and by his pertinent questions.

We next visited the Lion Zoo—as per the kids request. Why is it called that, you ask? Well, that’s it—about 10-12 lions in a big circular building separated into pairs. You are separated from the lions by a chain link fence—and could easily reach in and pet them if you were so bold. It was quite worth it, though, since most of the lions were pretty active—I’m sure partly because they were in mating pairs. We got to watch and listen as some of the males roared to each other for quite a while. And we got to see a lioness slap the amorous male in her pen that wouldn’t leave her alone, after which she then had to jump on him to get her point across. Just not something you get to watch in the States. (We don’t have any photos because it would have cost us 10x the entry fee to take pictures.)

We also drove up on the side of the mountain to see the oldest Christian church in Ethiopia.
The drive was much more interesting than the church because of all the people and foot traffic we saw. Little old ladies which giant bunches of twigs strapped to their backs walking down the hill, an Ethiopia priest making a pilgrimage up to the church, and much more.

The priest (it would have been in focus, but A. bumped Dan at just the wrong moment)
Ladies with bundles
A view of Addis Ababa

We also got to stop at Ethiopia’s largest textile market and bought a nice tablecloth! We then went home and had some of the best soup I have ever tasted, brought to us by our great guest house cook.

Ethiopia--Day One

2009-10-01T22:17:00.002+02:00

Today we met a great family from Washington State, Seattle area. True to form I do not recall their last names, but they are Dennis, Gabe and Maggs. They were in Ethiopia adopting 2 children--to total for them 7 children. It was neat to meet someone who was completing their adoption through CHI (also our adoption agency). We didn’t have much planed for the day other than to visit T.. We had been told to show up and call Pastor Abdisa and he would take care of the arrangements to visit the Thomas Center Orphanage. Well come to find out that this week they were processing 5 adoptions at the same time and trying to meet all of the meetings and requirements, not an easy task. The first time we called Pastor Abdisa he was at the US embassy with one family and asked us to call back in 2 hours. When we called him back, he arranged a driver for us to go to the Thomas Center at 15:30. So we had some time. We went to the “Post Office” market. (Why is it called the postal market, not that you go postal from haggling, but because it is next to the national postal center, go figure). We found some cool stuff, this was after all the market for traditional souvenirs.

After a trip to the market we were able to finally visit T.. I do not think that I can explain what it is like to show up at an orphanage and have someone hand you your child to be. It is just as exciting as being able to hold your child in the hospital, only she is bigger and beginning to walk!!! We spent about 45 min at the orphanage with her, feeling like fish in a bowl. There were 3-4 nannies, our driver, and the orphanage patron all watching us interact with T.. It was an odd experience, it almost felt like we were being judged in a subtle way. Beyond that, our interaction with T. was wonderful. She warmed up to me somewhat quickly and then after some time went to Vanessa. She looked just like her pictures, absolutely beautiful, full of personality, and excited about life. It was interesting to see how quickly she attached to us after just an hour. When we were getting ready to leave, she knew that we were going and began to cry. She ran to me (Dan) to pick her up. I carried her downstairs to our waiting car but had to leave her. (One of the frustrations with our current visa process is that you HAVE TO visit the child before the adoption court proceedings, but being that you have not adopted her yet you cannot take her out of the orphanage. It was heart breaking to see her cry as we left. After much pondering about it and discussing it with other adopting parents, etc, we decided that we should limit our contact with her until we are able to bring her out of the orphanage with us. It was just too heart breaking to make her go through the same stress 4 days in a row. (see post for Oct 4 for further details on this).

We went back to our guest house both excited to be adopting this wonderful little girl, but heart broken that it would take another few months to process this adoption be fore we can bring her home. We had a wonderful traditional Ethiopian dinner, some was spicy (they said that they toned it down for us to a 5/10 if normal is 10/10, I was still the only one in our family who could eat the Doro Wat) and some was not, but it was all wonderful.

Ethiopia--Travel Day

2009-10-01T10:15:00.002+02:00

We spent a long time on an Airplane, and the boys did amazingly. I think this is the best we have traveled in a long time. Granted this is the first time we have not traveled without a child 3 years old or less. Nonetheless, our plane was only 1 hour late into Addis Ababa Ethiopia, having us arrive at 2am. We had arranged with our guesthouse to pick us up from the airport, and so Tsebay (the manager) had been waiting outside for us until we cleared customs and immigration.

Immigration was interesting, we arrived and were required to fill out an entry card, then we went into this little room where they basically had 3 card tables, 2 people hand writing visas and one person accepting money. After that we had to go through the immigrations booth, just like every other airport. When all was said and done it was probably 02:45 before we got loaded in the van to go to the guest house. After a 15 min drive along the roughest finished road you have ever been on we arrived, stumbled our way upstairs and fell asleep in no time. The best part about traveling with small children is that they do not understand the meaning of sleeping-in, neither for its restorative properties nor for it’s more transient qualities. Our wonderful children were up at 06:30, oh happy day.

Referral!!!!

2009-08-31T13:16:00.003+02:00

We just wanted to let everyone know that after starting this adoption process over a year ago, we are finally almost done! We have received a referral! That means that finally there is a specific child for us to adopt. It also means there is only about 2-3 months left in the process if all goes well. So here is a first look at T (name pending )! A little about her is that she is almost exactly a year younger than Kimball, she was abandoned so the birthday is estimated and we pretty much know nothing else about her background, but we do know that she is healthy! We are right now trying to get out there for our 1st of 2 visits. I'm sure we'll be writing again soon.

Something's Missing

2009-07-07T09:51:00.002+02:00

If you have recently looked over our blog, you will notice some things are missing. Specifically people names. We didn't want to make our blog private and risk not getting out invitations to everyone, but we also wanted to increase the security of our family. We resolved to just take out the names except for the first letter. (This can be a little confusing with I. but I think you'll figure it out.) So if you know us, you know our names and it won't be a problem at all! So enjoy!!!

Paris--Ooh la la!

2009-06-01T15:34:00.002+02:00

For our anniversary this year, Dan took me to Paris WITHOUT the children!!! For those who attended our wedding you may feel a little confused. Yes our anniversary is in Feburary, but D. has been gone so much on different little assignments that May was the earliest we could plan anything. (His office wanted him to wait until July, but D. figured I might not appreciate waiting quite that long--I think his words were more along the line of "my wife will kill me if I make her wait for July." For the record, I really wasn't that upset, but it is nearly pulling teeth to get D. a day off from the clinic, so I approved of any methods necessary.)

For some reason, and maybe it's only because I haven't blogged for a while, but I didn't remember that blogspot would load all the pictures backward. It doesn't make sense to me, but be aware that you are going to see our trip in reverse.

I guess since our hotel was so close to the Eiffel Tower, that we procrastinated going until the last day. Either that or else it was so cold, rainy, and windy, we were hoping it might improve before we left. It didn't. I did something I've never done on a trip before, since the weather was supposed to be nice, and only brought shorts. What a mistake! But it wasn't too bad and we still had a great time. Above is a picture of the local firefighters climbing the tower. We figured it was their annual training exercise and we enjoyed watching them for quite some time. They were still fairly close to the bottom and I wonder how high up they were planning on going.
D. got this picture of Notre-Dame through the telescope at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I included it only because it's such a cool shot!
Yes, this is her. Mona Lisa. You always hear about how small she is, so I decided to put in my picture of her. I wouldn't mind that she is small if you didn't have to elbow everyone around you just to get a small glimpse from 10 feet away. Not the way I enjoy looking at art. We only spent a little while in the Louvre though. It felt like walking through all these Italian museums over again (we did go to the Vatican museum at Christmas). On the other hand, we visited the Orsay museum across the street and could have spent several days in there. It is where they house the Impressionist artists like Degas, Monet, Manet, and on and on. We got kicked out of that museum because of closing time, but we wanted to stay much longer.

Okay, so we were only in Paris for 3 days, but 3 days without children is sooooooo different. Honestly, we came home exhausted because we wore ourselves out. We went to almost every main sight Paris has to offer--at least to look quickly. I'm still amazed at all we fit in and I'm quite content--with the exception of the Orsay--of how much time we had everywhere. Here we are in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
This is inside Notre-Dame at night. How did we get the priveledge of being there when it was night? It just so happened while we were touring Notre-Dame that I finally looked closely at one the the posters I had seen around. There was going to be a Gregorian chant concert in the church THAT NIGHT. I didn't think we would still be able to get tickets, but decided to ask the information desk inside the church, and she was like sure you can buy a ticket now. Not only did we luck out that the concert was the same night, but we got front row seats (it was basically who got in the church first got the best seats--we got in so soon on our account of buying our tickets earlier in the day). It is amazing to see a live performance of chant in a church built to enhance that type of music. It was thrilling! Plus, right before the concert started we found ourselves a nice little dinner boat tour that didn't break the bank and ended up being deserted except for ourselves and one other couple with a small child. That was definately my favorite night in Paris.
I had to put in this picture of D. outside Notre-Dame just to prove that we did occasionally see a little blue sky, but this is the same day as the picture below, where you can see we are needing our umbrellas.
Below you will see the first picture we took in Paris. Why the Eiffel Tower when we didn't visit it until the last day of our trip? That is because this picture was taken at about 12:30 at night from the balcony of our hotel room! I would say we got a pretty good room. Plus, being so close to a major attraction also puts you very close to lots of options for transportation. It was a breeze to get around. Yeah, D. did good this year for our anniversary!

I.'s First Dance Recital

2009-05-31T12:26:00.003+02:00

I. has been taking a broadway dance class and the recital was last night!!!! He was actually feeling sick, but decided to try to perform anyway. All the dance classes put on the entire Wizard of Oz (yikes!) and I.'s class was the opening act. Their theme was Pink Panther. I. is mostly easy to find because he's the only boy, but unfortunately there are a few parts where other dancers totally block him. :( I was just on the wrong side of the auditorium. Below are both dances--yes the entire dance, but they aren't too long.

Dance Recital 2

2009-05-31T11:57:00.003+02:00

Here is the second dance.

All About I.

2009-05-23T22:09:00.001+02:00

Apparently this month is all about I. This post is mostly for all you who I called and asked questions of, who are now dying with curiosity. So, the diagnosis is Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, otherwise known as PDD-NOS. I will not go into details here, but if you want to know more, google it. There are many great resources and descriptions--I personally like how simply they put it at www.autismspeaks.org. So to make things clear, I. does NOT have autism, but it is an autism spectrum disorder. What it means is that I. learns a little differently, he reacts to certain stimuli in peculiar ways, and he has difficulties in certain social situations. If you think something along the lines of "but I. is so normal," you are very correct. He really doesn't have any major symptoms, just a lot of little things that are starting to become more apparent.

While this is nothing I ever dreamed about for my child, I am very grateful for the great doctors we have here that we've been able to work with. And I am very grateful for this diagnosis. There are many situations that we would find ourselves in, and just couldn't figure out what to do. I'm sure every parent experiences this with their children, but it was a little more with I. It just seemed like all the normal things didn't work, and many situations I was simply clueless. That is the main reason I sought out medical advice. I just wanted more resources as to how to help I. cope with some of the situations he finds himself in, especially when there isn't an adult around to intervene for him. So many times, the school has just chalked all his issues as having to do with his speech delay, but I just felt like there was more. Now I have my answers. I understand much more about the "why" and now I have ways to help. Now that I understand a bit more about how I.'s mind works, many of the things I. does makes more sense to me. I now have options. And the school even has programs to help him learn some of the social skills that will never be natural for him. I know I will still have many more clueless moments, but right now I feel empowered. I now have direction and understanding and after 1 1/2 years of wondering, feeling at a loss, and sometimes just feeling like I was failing as a parent, this new feeling is great. We have been living with this our whole lives with I., but finally we have a starting point to making things better.

If you are wondering if I feel comfortable with this diagnosis, well, I don't think anyone wants to hear this from a doctor, but I do think it is accurate. We were lucky enough to have the pediatrician that works specifically with developmental disorders also be a part of our church family. We know what a great doctor he is and a great person. He was very thorough. It took 4 appointments, questionnaires out to all of I.'s teacher (his Italian asilo teacher and his English speech therapist) as well as questionnaires for D. and I which we had to take separately. And yet all four questionnaires, for the most part, said the same things. We had one appointment where just D. and I answered the most detailed questions about how I. does things that lasted about 2 1/2 hours (and would have been longer if my watch alarm hadn't gone off to say I was nearly late picking up the boys from school). So I think we did all we could do to make sure this diagnosis was as accurate as possible.

Talent Show

2009-05-06T09:18:00.005+02:00

The primary had a talent show on Saturday. We didn't hear much about it until the week before, and thus didn't have much time to prepare something (the boys wanted to sing). So, we decided that our talent would be Rock Band! (And actually, they are getting quite good at Rock Band.) As you will see, they were a big hit and the audience was very involved. And, believe it or not, that is actually K. walking around in the beginning of the video. He acted like he was going to join them and then decided against it. The video is about 2 min long, so don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing! :) Except you D., you DO have to watch the whole thing. ;)

Tooth Fairy

2009-04-20T22:31:00.001+02:00

I. lost his first tooth! He is very excited about the whole thing and showing it to everyone. He even got a whole dollar from the tooth fairy!!!

It was pretty funny when we were talking about the Tooth Fairy, I. and A. had several questions. I can't remember them all, but they wanted all the specifics. How does the tooth fairy get the money to give to kids, how does the tooth fairy travel to all the kids, etc, etc. Since A. was doing half the asking, we simplified some of our answers to "by magic." I.'s response, after a few moments of pondering, was, "There's no such thing as magic." Which is true and something we had talked about before--referring to tv shows and movies, but it was interesting to hear I. make the connection. Our answer to that was . . . avoid, avoid, avoid. We can't ruin the myth of the tooth fairy before it's even begun! If we told I. the truth, he would spread it to A. and what would A. do when he finally looses a tooth? Ah, the magic of childhood!

I. is 7!!!!

2009-04-14T23:46:00.004+02:00

Can you believe that I. is 7!!!! I can't believe it. He is such a beautiful and thoughtful boy. And he is already asking me how old he has to be before he can get his own cell phone! What does a 7-year-old need with his own cell?!? I can't believe how big he is getting! Who gave him permission to grow up? (I will try to post a birthday picture when, and if, I ever find our camera again.)

Adoption Update

2009-04-14T23:41:00.002+02:00

For those of you wondering what's going on with the adoption, we only have a small bit of news. We are waiting! Our dossier was completed and arrived in the country of Ethiopia in the first part of Feb. Now we are just waiting for a referral. This can happen quickly or take some time. We did get an interesting phone call the other day--our pre-travel phone call. The person seemed rather surprised that we were on her list to call when we didn't have a referral yet. So, we are trying to find out if we got on the list by accident, or if our referral got lost in the mail. I'll let you know when we know.

Christmas

2009-01-15T22:25:00.002+01:00

So I know I'm a bit behind in updating the blog. This probably isn't going to be all that you had hoped for, but it will have to do. (I've had a computer crash, lost a camera, D. gone most of the year. . .you'll just have to forgive me.)

So for Christmas T. and her family came out to visit. Here are pictures from just a few of the places we took them. Hopefully they went home tired and happy because we sure did our best to show them as much of Italy--and a little of Slovenia--as we could.

The pictures are not in chronological order, but here is a brief synopsis of what we did:
Rome--including the Vatican museum, St. Peter's Basilica, the Scavi tour (a very hard-to-get tour of the excavations underneath St. Peter's Basilica to see St. Peter's burial ground itself--or where they think he's buried), Coloseum and the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc, etc. Okay, so I don't actually remember everywhere we went, but we saw a LOT! We even got to see what a bus does when there isn't enough room to turn onto the tiny Italian road, lined on both sides with cars, that is along the bus route. The bus driver got out, recruited 4 men from the bus behind us, and together they lifted the car that was in the way onto the sidewalk. Of course, what else!
Then on to Pisa--to see the tower.
Florence--Michelangelo's David
Venice--St. Marc's Basilica and to wander the streets.
Piancavallo--sledding
Slovenia--visit a castle built partly inside and interconnected to a series of natural caves (the cave we had originally planned to visit was closed due to dangerous ice stalactites)
And a few more other random places, but I'll spare you the details. Let's just say we packed a few things into the 2 weeks we had with our visitors.

Outside the Slovenian castle. The tower furthest to the back connects to the caves and in the summer you can keep going, but it was closed during our visit. There is also another entrance far below the castle--several hundred feet down over the edge of the wall we're standing by.

Posing at the back of St. Peter's basilica in Rome.

Seeing how many kids it takes to circle one of the pillars outside the Pantheon. Even with D. in the mix, we needed them all.

I. and D. discussing the paintings of the Sistine Chapel.

This was our own little nativity play that we put on for Christmas. Since I thought M. would be leaving earlier, we could only fit everything in by traveling over Christmas. For spending Christmas in a small hotel in Lavorno, I thought we had a pretty good time.

Halloween

2008-10-31T09:10:00.001+01:00

So, we had a pretty obvious theme for Halloween this year. It was all thanks to A. who fixed on a Darth Vader costume. From there it was pretty easy to convince I. to join the theme, and there we had it. Of course, after that I figured they had better watch the movies so they would know something about their costumes. Believe it or not, that was the first time they saw the movies.

I ended up having to borrow a sewing machine for the project since every costume had to be adjusted when they came in the mail. I.'s looked nothing like the picture they had posted online and was so hideous that we had to do some major reconstruction before I would let him wear it. I could have fit two of me in the original "one size fits all" Leah costume. A.'s just needed some hemming. D.'s was the real challenge since all male Star Wars costumes are either a tunic with lines painted on to show there should be three layers, or it costs $800. We opted to make a costume, but getting fabric here is quite a challenge and I didn't have time to buy anything online. Luckily a girl had some leftover fabric she brought with her from the states that she donated. To die the white fabric, we bought some tea since we knew that would give it a nice natural color. When I. went with me to the store to buy the tea he was very concerned and asked, "Mom, does God know what we're doing?" It was so cute! I explained to him that, yes, God knew what we were doing and that even though we don't drink tea, it still has some very good uses, such as dying fabric.

I love this picture of I. because it looks like it's Photo Shop-ped, but it's not! He was running down the hall and I was trying to tell him to turn around so I could get a picture. Instead, he just leaned his head way backward, and this is the result.

Okay, you have to admit it, K. is the cutest X-wing fighter pilot ever!!!

We even carved pumpkins. We actually haven't done this for quite a while (because of moving and things), and the kids were ecstatic! Because of safety reasons, though, while we are living here, we are supposed to do all we can to NOT make it obvious that we are American. Thus, no putting out jack-o-lanterns on the front porch. We put the pumpkins outside for this picture only.

This picture had to be added, just because. It is amazing the costumes A. puts together when you're not looking. Here is is wearing my boots from the Leah costume, I.'s Jedi belt, and the scabbard from his sword. Looking good!

K.'s a Walker

2008-09-20T07:14:00.001+02:00

It finally happened, K. decided to walk! We are all very, very excited. Of course, this now means he is a walking menace leaving pure chaos in the wake of everywhere he goes, but we love it. And also, of course, he started walking those first few steps while D. was gone on one of his many TDYs (i.e. it was around late Aug that this all happened). So here we have a video from when he first started walking, and then a clip a little later to show his progress. He still wouldn't pass a drunk driving test since he can barely walk in a straight line, but it's so fun to watch he waddle like a penguin. (It's his enormous budda belly that runs interference with his balance :)

Coming Home in STYLE

2008-09-05T17:19:00.001+02:00

So, as you all know, D. is gone a lot. . . .but there are some advantages. I.e., getting special permission for you and your kids to go onto the flightline (a normally totally restricted area) and see your husband roll up in the back of a F-16. We even had to get a special form signed to allow me to take pictures. So here are the fruits of that!

A. waiting with his ear protection.

D. coming in on his sweet ride!

D. de-boarding. It's a little different than your standard flight.

You can see how much we miss our daddy when he's gone.

Even K. had ear protection on.

After getting a tour of the plane, A. decided to try his own wings.

K.'s Many Adventures

2008-08-31T19:44:00.004+02:00

So D. is out of town, so of course lots of fun stuff have been happening on the home front. K. decided to learn how to climb a ladder--unfortunately it was up a ladder into someone's back yard above ground pool. I came outside to find him at the top of the ladder looking down into the water. Thank goodness I came out when I did--it scared me half to death to see him there.

Then he flooded our bathroom by putting a roll of toilet paper into the bidet and turning the water on. There was several inches of water in the bathroom by the time I realized what was happening. He was in there sliding around on him tummy having an absolute ball! It's a good thing our whole house is tile flooring--it makes for easier clean up.

There have been many other adventures, but the only other one I'm going to mention is his back flip off the couch. I think he was just trying to lean up against the edge of the couch, but ended up going over and landing on his head. Of course it was right before bed time and like I said, D. is out of town, and I couldn't get a hold of him. I read a lot online about what to do (since going to the Pordenone Italian hospital wasn't exactly anything I wanted to do) and ended up just keeping him up for observation for another hour and then checking on him every couple of hours during the night. He was fine, but it's probably the best goose egg any of our children have ever gotten. Now that it's a few days later, the color is really starting to show and he was the most popular person at church with everyone wondering what had happened. I took a picture, but it really doesn't do justice to what it really looks like. If you look closely, you can see the little racoon bruises on the inside of his eyes.

The first day after.

Today now that the color has begun to come in.

Ode to Summer

2008-08-31T18:34:00.006+02:00

The summer has basically ended for us. I. started school on the 25th of Aug, (above is his first day of school) but he will be transferring to the Italian school on the 8th of Sept when that starts. Yes we have decided to take the plunge and put I. in the Italian schools--although we haven't told the American school yet, so I'm not sure what resistance we are going to find because of his speech therapy needs. Anyway, back to the ode to summer. We got a new camera that is waterproof and we have been able to take some fun pictures. Here are a few for your enjoyment.

Blog Alert

2008-08-02T14:03:00.002+02:00

Apparently I blog in spurts, so scroll down and search older posts, because I just added a bunch! I post them according to when they happened, not when I added them, so make sure to look around!

2 Big Announcements

2008-08-02T12:08:00.003+02:00

Announcement 1:
The Hatcher bed and breakfast has been open for a while, but considering the lack of customers, we felt we needed to advertise. So while we thought we would be here for a full 4 years, there is now the chance that we will be here only 1 more (i.e. moving next June). We will not find out until December if the move will happen, but we wanted to let everyone know in case they want to make some plans. The bed and breakfast is spacious, with plenty of room for visitors, some meals included, and a nightly fee you can't surpass (free), and only an hour from some great places like Venice! (For example, airfare right after Thanksgiving is amazing into Venice, and we usually have pretty good weather then.) We really do welcome anyone who would like to come for a visit. If you know how to contact us, you can make a reservation.

Announcement 2:
We have begun the process of adding to our family again. Except this time, it is through adoption! We have already completed our home visit and are in the midst of piles of paperwork that typify the adoption experience. We have decided to adopt a child from Ethiopia and are really excited for the future. The adoption process is a long one, so we are not expected to add to our family for a least 6 months up to a year, and possibly more (although not likely with Ethiopia which has a great adoption program in their country). So if you start to see me add things about Ethiopia, you will understand why that is constantly on our minds. This is one of those things that we have been very strongly prompted by the Lord to pursue--a surprise even to ourselves--and a decision we hope you will all support us in. We will try keep everyone up to date as things progress.

How Much We Love Mommy--Or a Typical Day in the Life

2008-07-30T12:01:00.001+02:00

I think the video says it all. I love my boys!

I. the Water Fiend

2008-07-28T11:41:00.003+02:00

I. has always loved the water. Now that we have a water faucet at his disposal, I. is out there playing with the water almost everyday. This is I. after church on Sunday.

We do have to mention that A. and K. are fascinated by the water just as much. In fact, any time that the door is left open, K. makes a mad dash for the outside. He loves being out there despite all the things his brothers subject him to (he is usually the wettest one of the three when out there with the hose).

A Taste of Italy

2008-07-22T11:47:00.000+02:00

Watch the video first, then read.

Of course when you first hear the music, see the truck, you think "Ice Cream Truck." Not in Italy. This is the dry-cleaners. Yes! Our neighbor is one of their customers (one day I hope to get a video of my neighbor exchanging clothes). So they play the music really loud to let their customers know they are outside, then wait to see if anyone comes out. If not, they lower the music and drive on to the next place. I think if I wanted to, I could run out with my clothes to be dry-cleaned, just as long as I don't ask for any gelato with my shirt.

Some Family Photos

2008-07-20T13:30:00.000+02:00

A good friend of mine was kind enough to take some pictures of our family, since it is really hard to get nice photos out here. These are some of the results.

A's Clothes

2008-07-10T11:53:00.002+02:00

A is a curious little boy who loves to dress himself, although you can't always be sure of what you are going to get when he comes out "dressed." He also has begun helping quite a bit more around the house, not that I mind. When the two get put together, it gets pretty interesting.

K's Birthday

2008-06-30T11:23:00.001+02:00

K turned 1 on the 30th of June! We can't believe a year has passed already! Here is a video of him right after he opened the present sent by his Grandma and Grandpa Hatcher. It was a simple party with just us, a gelato cake, and a few presents. K was very confused by us suddenly telling him to rip paper where we normally tell him not to.

K

2008-06-16T00:14:00.001+02:00

From 6 months to 10 months, K did the "caterpillar crawl." It was really funny. I thought he was going to go from the crawl to walking, but he suddenly decided he wanted to check out this normal crawl thing, and that's what he's been doing lately. I guess he figured he didn't like being on his belly quite so much.

Asilo End of School Concert

2008-06-01T14:05:00.001+02:00

At the end of the school year, the Asilo held an end of year concert and ceremony for those kids moving on to elementary school. A had missed a few days of school the previous week, so he seemed a little dazed and confused, but was totally cute nonetheless. He is sitting in the front row with green pom-poms if you have a hard time finding him. While we have a hard time getting him to speak Italian, and I know he doesn't speak much to his teacher either, when we do get him to say a few words, he says them in a perfect Italian accent. We are all working on speaking more Italian in the home.

Pisa

2008-06-01T03:23:00.001+02:00

June 31st found us in Pisa and Tuscany for the weekend. Dan had a 3-day weekend and we decided to make the most out of it. We headed down to Pisa and checked out their tower.
The Baptistery followed by the Cathedral and the leaning tower in the back.

We started our tour in the Cathedral.

The boys inside the Cathedral. It was quite the experience with a real human skull on display and various graves inside. I and A wanted to put up some candles like they saw other people doing, so we had to try to teach them a little theology.

We went into the Baptistery next. We would have started here, but it was actually being used . It was neat that they still use these buildings for their original purpose. The picture is looking down into the center of the Baptistery from the second level. While we were up here a man came and stood right in the center and started singing a chant. The acoustics and echo in that building are amazing!!! On the way back down the stairs a man was chanting softly so A took up the chorus. The echo in the stairwell made quite a neat effect and he was quite a hit with the other visitors.

I sitting on one of the Saint markers inside the Baptistery.

Also, while on the stairs to the second level of the Baptistery, we found the really neat bell. K especially was enthralled.

What the boys really enjoyed doing--feeding pigeons out of their hands.

Finally we visited the tower!

You have to be 8 yrs or older to climb to the top of the tower, so I headed up there by myself. As you go up, the stairs keep getting smaller and smaller.

Here I am at the top trying to take a picture of myself. You go up and think you are a high as they'll let you go, and then you climb up some more. On my tour, there were several people who suddenly realized they were afraid of heights because they started crawling on their hands and knees. It was pretty silly.

Me and then D in front of the tower. This is actually from the less photographed side, so I don't think you can see the lean so much. It's hard to get the whole family in a photo without making a fool of yourself. We tried a little before deciding to take seperate shots.

K after a long day of sightseeing.

Carrara

2008-05-31T15:32:00.001+02:00

After visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and after an afternoon nap, we then headed to Carrara which is about 45 min north of Pisa.

This looks like a snow covered mountain, but don't be deceived. They call it the marble mountain--that's marble you see, not snow.

There are marble caves everywhere and we decided to stop at one that said it had a tour. It was just a guy who gave us a tour of his own quarry. It cost us 10 euro for the family, and we got a personal tour and it was so neat!! His family has had that quarry for almost 1000 yrs (although my memory has faded, so I might be off a little). He told us all about the history of that area and it's marble, how they used to cut marble, and how they do it now. We learned that the scrap (pieces with flaws that cause cracks) are used for building dams and levees and the pebbles are used to making roads. Only in Italy would they use marble to make roads!

Here is A hiding between two marble slabs. Our tour guide was amazing and let the kids run nearly wild. He showed them tadpoles and salamanders on his property. Also, since his marble has grey steaks in it, and not the pure white, he only gets 150 euro per ton. I wish we could get marble that cheap.

Here is I playing on the bulldozer. The boys really did run nearly wild.
This is one of the holes they used back in the day when they had to slide the slabs of marble down the mountain to where ox and cart could pick it up.

So this was actually the funnest part of our whole weekend. We all LOVED this tour. Plus, he told us anything we can carry out, we could keep. So we picked up quite a few chunks of marble. I have no idea what we are going to do with them, but we couldn't resist an offer like that. Next time we'll go with a few strong men and haul out some bigger pieces!

Miramare Castle

2008-05-26T13:26:00.001+02:00

On Memorial Day, we decided to take a day trip to Trieste and visit Miramare Castle. It was a perfect day to be outside since it wasn't too hot. The castle isn't very big itself, but it's surrounded by a huge park that we enjoyed wandering through. Here are a few picturess from the day.

Part of the extensive gardens. We had I and A choose which path (since there are several that wind and cross all throughout the park) we would follow until we got to the other side of the park and realized we needed to use the map to find our way back.

As you can see, the castle is built right on the edge of the water. It's a lot farther of a drop than it looks in the picture.

K got tired of being in the stroller after a while.

Skocjan Caves, Slovenia

2008-04-11T21:13:00.000+02:00

These caves are located about 1 1/2 hr drive from where we live near Divaca, Slovenia. It's amazing that after just a short drive, you are in another country! We still don't have a camera, so all these are scanned photos, but really a regular camera could not do this place justice. Plus, you aren't allowed to take pictures inside although our tour guide was very lenient towards those in our group with cameras.This is just one of the many giant formations inside the cave. We saw just about every type of rock formation there is (not that I have any real knowledge, but there was such a variety in these caves). There was even one area where the rock looked like flowing water that has suddenly turned to rock.
This is the bridge you cross over this giant ravine with a river running through the bottom. This part of the cave was so enormous, it was breathtaking. In the picture you can make out a little water down at the bottom, but there was much more water there when we visited since it has been so wet lately. The guide talked about a flood in 1965 when the river filled that part of the cave all the way up to the top. I can't even imagine how much water there would have to be in order to do that.
These are some water pools that have formed in one section of the cave near the exit.
This is the exit of the cave. Much bigger than where we entered. Right outside the mouth of the cave, the vegetation is so green I felt I was in some tropical part of the world. This was probably one of the neatest places we visited.

Neuschwanstein Castle

2008-03-08T20:48:00.001+01:00

While the all the T families are all going to be going to the Magic Kingdom next Feb, we decided to go to the castle Walt Disney based his castle on. It is located near Fussen in southwest Bavaria in Germany. We accompanied D on a TDY to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and stopped by here on our way back home. Our digital camera actually broke on on way to Germany, so we don't have as many pictures as we would like. We ended up buy a disposable camera for this trip, but we have scanned some photos from a book we bought to give you an idea of what it looks like. It's pretty obvious which is which.

The castle is set on the top of a pretty steep hill. We took a horse-drawn carriage up to the top. The boys thought that was great, and I thought it was amazing that the driver fit all 5 of us into the front seat in a space big enough for only 2.

This is right outside the main doors. These doors lead into the front courtyard.

Pictures aren't allowed inside the castle--like everywhere we've been in Europe--but we did get this picture on the other side of the gift shop. It's in one of the unfinished corridors. Surprisingly, most of this castle's interior is unfinished.
So, of course we are at this really cool place, and all I and A care about is the snow!

Sledding in Piancavallo

2008-02-16T20:15:00.001+01:00

I has been sad all winter long that it doesn't snow where we live. So we had to bring the boys to the snow. Here we are in Piancavallo for a day of sledding. Luckily, it's only a 30 min drive from where we live. It was the perfect day for it since the snow was packed down and the sun was out and we were all very warm.

I is in the red coat and A in the blue. The sleds had steering wheels, and the boys used this to full advantage to go all over the hill.

Here D got talked into pulling the sleds back up the hill, which we did way too many times.

This is I in his mock sled accident. He loved falling off his sled at the end of his runs.

Here's V and all the boys at the top of the hill!

A was so cute pulling his sled around.

Lake Barcis

2008-01-26T20:05:00.001+01:00

On a not so cold day in January, we headed up into the mountains to Lake Barcis. It is known for its water which is a very interesting shade of blue. It's nestled right in the Dolomite mountains and only 40 min from home.

K is starting to get used to being in his backpack, since we've been toting him around all over the place in it.

Here is K all bundled for the day out.

Here we are close to where the cache location was. We wanted to come out here anyway, but why not take in a cache while we're at it.

Venice in November

2007-11-12T19:08:00.001+01:00

On a really nice day in November, we heading down to Venice for our second trip down there. It was a Monday, which was great because there were no lines anywhere. Here is Saint Marc's Basilica. It is a beautiful church and all the artwork is in mosaic. Like all areas in Europe, we couldn't take pictures of the inside, but here are some shots of the outside.

With all the beautiful artwork of saints and beautiful things outside this building, we found the random sqwat man with the wine jug a little curious and out of place.

We had to get a shot on one of the many bridges in Venice. If you look closely, those are gondolas packed up for the night.