08/07/2009 - The 4th. . .

Of July - not August

My sister-in-law reminded me this week that my blog had not been updated - I knew this, but I just have not had the energy. I am a very busy woman - and I will be honest - I love being busy with my kids. So, my house is not straitened or cleaned, and my laundry is backed up and regularly sitting in my living room waiting to be folded, and I get little sleep - therefore I am grumpy a lot. But, the few hours each day I get with my kids - I want to be with them. Of course it is not that easy. For after they are picked up from pre-school we have to have dinner, clean up from dinner, get baths and get ready for bed, read books and our daily Bible Story, and spend a few minutes playing. There is just never enough real time in the evening to do all we want to do - and sometimes all we want to do is just snuggle with each other.

We had a lovely 4th of July - it rained all day but we had fun with some friends we now consider family. The kind of friends who can see me at my worst and love me anyway. Between us we have five kids - all adopted from China, Korea and Guatemala. We bonded after all our boys came home. There is so much for girls in the China adopt community - but for boys it is scarce. We did not care if all our kids came from the same country - the common denominator is that we have boys all under 3 years old and internationally adopted. We are trying to celebrate diversity as well.

We got their portraits done together. Here is a small sampling of the 68 total pictures we got. Here are six - but the slideshow has a total of 14. Notice that they are holding their own countries flag while wearing U.S. flag shirts in celebration of our country's birthday. We also want to honor their own birth countries.

Also note how goofy my son is. What a funny little boy he is!

Lacie and Emmy (from China)



Paul (Korea), Michael (China), and Aidan (Guatemala)



All together now



The Slide show:


More to come . . .
Blessings!

Vonda