Reid and Stefani Adopt

Here's just a few pictures from Christmas break.  I took the kids to the mall to finish out Christmas shopping on Saturday, December 23rd.  They got to pose by the nutcracker statue.  They've watched the nutcracker every year (on TV--I'm not brave enough to take them to the actual ballet).  We also read the story book from the library this year.   I was excited about Christmas presents this year.  Isaac had been asking for a bow and arrow ever since his birthday, and finally decided to write Santa a letter asking for one the Saturday before Christmas.  Since the letter was so late, we decided to take it to our resident mailman, Al, and he was amazing.  He not only delivered the letter to Santa on time, but he managed to get Santa to return a letter to Isaac and a bonus one to Esther the next day.  It was postmarked with a  very genuine looking North Pole stamp, and had some oats to feed the Reindeer.  So When Isa...

Isaac got invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates at a little hidden away gem called "The Pony Express."  They have built this whole little western themed town complete with a pretend stage coach robbery.  They had dress up clothes and real pony rides.  It was super cute.

I just wanted to add a few Christmasy pics that we are starting to take.   Esther at the library next to the Olaf book display. Isaac the Snowman. This was at Lowe's, I think. Our Church Christmas party was Polar Express themed. We had a hard time getting the kids NOT to climb on the display.

Over Thanksgiving we went to Virginia to dine with the Virginia Archibalds.  To open our Turkey Day celebrations, we ran in a race.  This was Isaac's first foot race, and he was very nervous.  He was afraid of me leaving him, so I ran next to him and his cousin Devin for the 1/2 mile race.  It was a good warm up for my race that came later.  This is a picture of the Isaac and his cousins with their participation medals after the race. I was hoping that Reid would run with me since he says he doesn't care about 5K races.  But as soon as the race started, he took off like a rocket and left me in the dust.  I ran a pretty good race for myself, going faster than I had in years, but I couldn't keep up with Reid.  Come to find out he wanted to beat his older brother in the race.  I guess he does care about 5K races after all, if he wants to show up his brother, that is.  By the time the races were over, we were all thoroughly frozen....

Last month was Esther's 4th Birthday.  We had a pool party at the pool with an Octonauts themed party.  Her favorite present was the hand-me-down Octonauts set from our friends.  She plays with them every day.  For some reason, I can't find any pictures of her actual birthday party.  We also went to Virginia to visit with Reid's brother's family.  Since Esther's actual birthday was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we got her a birthday cookie and went to a trampoline place where the kids could jump to their hearts content. She was also given miniature raccoon toys by her cousins.  She loved them. 

Isaac and Stefani went on a Mommy and Son date. They ended up at the West Melbourne City Fall Festival and ran into a pirate and his ship. He was kind enough to take a picture with them instead of stealing all their treasure.

Here's a few other things that I just wanted to post: This is all the kids at an adoption get together we had a week or so ago.  I'm glad Isaac and Esther can be around a few kids around their same ages who also have adoption stories.   This is Esther cleaning the toilet for me.  She was such a good helper with the cleaning last Saturday.  I think I felt a need to capture this moment in case she discovers later in life that cleaning toilets isn't actually a fun thing to do.  Right now, her and Isaac actually fight over who gets to clean the toilets. Some neighbors of ours invited us over for dinner and to go fishing afterwards in the pond out back.  We don't have any fishing gear and Isaac has been very jealous of others he's seen fishing.  So he finally got to catch his own fish for the first time and was very proud of himself. Last Wednesday, Isaac earned a citizenship award at school for demonstrating "Organization." ...

Here's some pix from this year's Halloween festivities thus far.  We have already been to the library's "Truck or Treat," which features cool city vehicles that the kids get to climb in.  The semi-truck horn was going off constantly, as each child got a turn to pull the cord.  I hadn't completed their planned costumes yet, so they threw on some costumes we had kicking around.  Esther was the giraffe, and Isaac was batman.   On Friday we attended the church's "Trunk or Treat."  Isaac kept calling it the "Trick or Trunk," which made me smile so much that I didn't bother to correct him.  I was supposed to be the cowardly lion, but all the spray pain in the world couldn't cover up the leopard spots on the coat we found.  Reid was the scarecrow, and Isaac the Tin Man, and Esther was Dorthy, of course.  It was a fun night.  I think tomorrow for Halloween we will just have the kids dress up.  Although, the kids certainly have ...

What was on my phone this week?  Esther showing a book she wanted to me to read to her, and Isaac playing the 100 chart floor game with me. The family playing board games together.  As a past teacher, I have games and teaching supplies hanging around the house that are not normal for other households.  This means that my 3 year old brings her reading lesson book to my husband at 6:00 in the morning begging him to do a reading lesson with her.  This also means that as I'm working on projects in the spare room, Isaac gets into my old tutoring bag and pulls out random tutoring games, like my 100 chart floor mat.  So we spend time figuring out where all the numbers go and looking at pattern in the numbers.  Luckily, we also have normal games, too.  The kids pull them out frequently and feel as if life just isn't fair if we don't get a good game or two in during the weekend.   I told Isaac I was going to update the blog today, and a...

This past week Irma made her grand entrance all over the state of Florida.  She was a BIG storm.  We decided it would be better to hunker down in our home than to fight the lack of gas and long, long lines of traffic out.  We made a blanket fort with the kids Sunday night, and read together, and then we had a "sleepover" downstairs.  The most scary thing was all the tornado alerts.  We didn't get hit with one, but a couple of them did touch down in the cities nearby us.  The worst of the storm happened, again, at night.  The kids slept beautifully.  Even when Esther fell off the couch, she stayed asleep.  Reid and I didn't sleep so well, and we lost power around 11:30 pm. We did hear a big crash, which we assume was the playground equipment outside that fell over.  Monday morning, we woke up to water all over the street, and almost up to our garage.  The water had already receded a bit by the time I took the pictures below.  W...

Today Esther's birthmother called.  That happens occasionally, and it is almost always a pleasant conversation.  Isaac is starting to catch on to the fact that Esther's birthmother has my phone number, but his birthmother does not.  He is getting jealous of his sister.  So when I took a picture to send to her phone, he wanted me to take a picture of him to send to his birthmother.  He's a handsome little devil, isn't he?  All the little girls adore him, including his little sister.  He may be jealous of her, but she just loves him.

This boy cracks us up. Most mornings we can't get him out the door on time, but then there are days when he puts his clothes out, including his underwear and socks, the night before. We're down with the brown in our house. I expect by the end of the day that his underwear will start to match his color scheme too.

So it finally happened.  My baby boy is now in Kindergarten.   He was pretty apprehensive about going to Kindergarten all summer, but after meeting his teacher, Mrs. Lenix, for the first time, his excitement grew and he couldn't wait to get started. He and I went to a Kindergarten screening in which Mrs. Lenix discovered that not only was Isaac ready for Kindergarten, but he was way beyond where most Kindergartners are.  He is reading very well for a 5 year old that has never been to public school before.  He has been very good in school his first week, coming home with only positive notes from the teacher. I was also happy to discover that his class has some diversity.  He's still in the minority, but at least he'll see other people "with brown skin like me," as he likes to say. All in all, I think it will be a good year for him.  He makes friends easily, and is eager and excited to learn.  We're so proud of him!

Esther has always slept with her mouth open at night and snored heavily.  Lately she's been not hearing well either, as well as having multiple ear infections.  After a couple of visits to the ENT, we decided she needed tubes put in her ears and some of the adenoid tissue out of her nose that she could breath easier.   She had her surgery this past Friday.  The whole ordeal took about 15 after she had been put to sleep.  I got to hold her as she was coming too.  She was a bit grouchy and clingy afterwards, but the popsicles and juice she got afterwards helped bring her around to her cheerful self.  Today she was good enough to go to church.  She's still healing a bit, so after hopefully after a few days she'll sleep more soundly than she ever has before.   Notice the bear in this picture.  This is Esther's all time favorite bear dubbed "soft bear."  He's not so soft as he once was, because she has literally loved the stuff...

This summer we had the privilege of hosting the Carroll Family Reunion in Florida!  Then we promptly forgot to take pictures of it.  So we took pictures of our trip to Idaho/Utah instead.  We spent 2 weeks in the mountain west, and every day was a delight.  We got to go camping in Idaho, go four-wheeling in Utah, and play with so many different cousins that the kids had a hard time keeping them all straight.  They loved it.  Reid and I got to sneak off to go biking and hiking and enjoy a little bit of the fun that we enjoyed before we were blessed with our kids.  Now that both of them can ride on a peddle bike by themselves, though, we hope to take them with us sometime in the near future.  I still get a thrill of joy watching them peddle their little bikes independently.  They are really growing up. Esther holding baby cousin Charly at Uncle Tim's house. Biking in the mountains by Pocatello, ID.  I had an electric assist bike, ...