Summer craziness has begun!!!

It's official! School's out and the craziness of having all 4 children at home full time has arrived! Along with stomach bugs, colds and one sick momma. We had a rough start to this summer, but that won't hold us down. We are all feeling better and getting some travel going. We have been to the beach for almost a 2 week stay and back and I think Khari may prefer home. All her stuff is here and she just entertains herself better at home. Next up, we will be reuniting with our adoption group to get a look at how all of the other families are doing. It is hard to believe this time last summer we hadn't even met all of these people, but they are such a deep emotional part of the rest of our lives now!!!
        I am so excited!!!!
I am a little sad that Khari will not be walking for our trip, but hey, I have no right to be complaining, she has come a long way in a short period of time! She will definitely be in everyone's business, so I am not worried that she will be left out. She just seems younger to me since she travels every where on all fours, when most children her age are running by now.
 So heres a quick run down on what is going on in everyone's lives right now. Kent is almost relaxing as he is not teaching in the summer and finished his book a few months ago. When we got home from the beach, he had his first look at his published masterpeice! We are all so proud of him! In case you want to run out and buy a copy it is called, "Cinema 4d the artist's sourcebook, 3rd edition" by Kent McQuilkin!!

Max is finishing baseball season and going to play on a summer tennis league. He is excited. His daddy has had him on the tennis court since he started walking and he is pretty good!!! They said he could have been ranked in the state if he had started some tournaments before now. It is too late this year though...

Emma quit gymnastics and I think she is enjoying her free time. I am looking forward to getting her started in piano or voice lessons soon! She is so easy going, she is always happy!


 Samuel is finishing his first year of baseball and has really enjoyed it. He has started to notice towards the end of the season that his team in not winning. Maybe he will be my competitive child?? He is excited about starting kindergarten this fall :(
     Of course Khari bug!!! She is just crawling, climbing, cruising, around everywhere! It is hard for the older kids to find a safe spot to work on projects these days. I told them to go in their rooms and shut the door. They say,"it won't work, she will just follow me and bang on my door!" Pretty true! She would much more prefer to hang out with the kids, than the adults! She has a mouth full of teeth, including two bright and shiny new molars!! We are working hard on keeping water out of her ears this summer, since she had to have tubes placed in March. She is continuing to attend occupational and physical therapy once a week, but I am told she will be graduating before I know it! That will be weird! These people have become like family to me since bringing her home! Her therapist's are like aunts that spoil her with love! Hoping and praying that she will be walking around soon!!

So I will leave you with a few pics! And, if you wonder what I have been doing lately, see all of the above activities! No time for anything else these days, it is wonderful!

May 17th 2011, A year of full circle!

Last year at on May 17th I was celebrating our oldest child Max's 8th birthday. We were also anxiously awaiting the news of our 4th child. We had been waiting almost 12 months for a referral. Then, what do you know? Our beautiful baby girl popped into our lives on the waiting children page of our agency.

So, one year later and much more faithful and obedient to God, I can tell you that was an amazing day!!!

I was so confused! I thought we were just waiting on our call, but God had bigger plans. I can't imagine our lives without Khari, and I can't imagine it starting with her any other way. Max one year later has become a much more caring and accepting person. He absolutely adores Khari and she adores him! 9 years ago I could hardly imagine how my life was going to change when our first baby boy was born. If you had told me then how many blessings God would bestow on my family, I would never have believed you! She has given balance, character, patience, survival, more love than I could have imagined and spirit to our family. So to Max and Khari, happy one year later! I am so overwhelmed with blessings constantly because you two are in my life!

Guess who has their toes in the sand?

Khari is enjoying our spring break trip to the beach! Check out our 1st class sand eater!

Khari's story featured!!!

I finally spilled the whole story right onto my computer screen, in honor of possibly helping someone else on the journey to decide to adopt a waiting child or special needs child. If you follow the link you can read the whole thing for yourself! What a blessing to be involved in something like this! There are many inspiring stories of other families who have decided to adopt waiting children as well. Maybe you could be one of those people as well someday? 

Blessings! 

http://teamchase4andcounting.blogspot.com/2011/02/adopting-waiting-child-kharis-story.html

Happy Birthday to Khari!!!!

It snuck up on us, like all things seem to do these days with 4 children. Our little baby has officially moved from infant to toddler. I can't lie, I was not very happy receiving all of the "junk mail" from all of the formula companies proclaiming that the infant year was gone! So funny, because I remember when we were waiting to meet her, thinking about how eager I was to see her grow and to think about watching her learn new things and how it would go. But now I have realized that was dumb! It doesn't matter how long it takes her to roll, crawl, walk, because that means she is getting older. Yuck! It is always bitter sweet to me to watch one of my children become one year older, but now, I have two girls who mark their journey around the sun just three days apart. Khari celebrates her birthday on the 13th and Emma celebrates on the 16th. Talk about a crazy week!  We initially were told Khari was born in March, but when in Ethiopia for our visa appointment, we found out that she was actually a February baby. When we told Emma, she was sooooo excited. She said,"Oh, we can have birthday parties together!"  Needless to say, I insisted that we celebrate independently for the first year. First birthday parties are milestone birthdays in my brain. What a milestone we have to celebrate with Khari. Wow, I can't imagine how big of a first year she has had. My brain tries to wrap around that idea, and it just won't work!  Any how, we celebrated big time! While in Ethiopia I bought 18 gifts to give Khari on each of her birthdays while she is a "child".  For her first birthday I picked a small zebra. In my brain I was thinking, she should be able to hold this on her birthday. HA!!!! Not only did she hold that zebra! She chewed it, banged it, pushed it crawling across the floor, and threw it. We no longer have the small delicate bundle we brought home 6 short months ago! Needless to say the zebra is now living on top of her dresser in her room!!!  She has exceeded any expectations I could have ever placed on her.

Our group at the restaurant! 

       Now, where I was going with this zebra, I rather quickly spawned a plan for a zebra celebration. First, her outfit, then the cake. Oh what fun! She enjoyed herself! Not only did we have tons of family on hand to celebrate, but our wonderful travel companions to ET came to help us celebrate the big day! What  a blessing! So Saturday night we went to this great new Ethiopian restaurant in Knoxville and ran into our other buddy from Ethiopia! Then Sunday we ate cake and opened LOTS of presents!!!

So, can't wait to see what comes next in this chaotic thing we call life! Praises to God as the blessings are continuously flowing in our direction!
We felt so blessed to have the Freking family join us on Khari's birthday seeing as the two girls were together long before either one of our families could get there! I hope and pray that they will be able to keep that bond as they grow!

The girls enjoying all of Khari's loot! 

Not so sure about putting my hands in this cake!

WE HAVE A CRAWLER!!!!!

Guess who took their first actual crawl tonight??? Khari !!! So many emotions! If you didn't meet Khari when we did, you wouldn't understand why this is such an accomplishment for an 11 month old! But, knowing this little lady was 3 pounds at 8 weeks old and in an orphanage for the first 6 1/2 months of her life, just maybe you could fathom why we are so very proud of our little girl! Thinking back 5 short months ago when we brought her home, she couldn't even see well enough to grab a toy, much less actually get enough strength in her hands to grasp it! Wow, she has come so far, in such a short time, look out for her world!!  Check out this video!!!

A brand new year!!!!

So here it is a brand new year and I haven't updated at all!!! Sorry, I have four children now and if you could see my house, you would know why my blog hasn't been updated!!!!
           So here is our progress with Miss. Khari Bug, two weeks ago she started rolling from her back to her belly finally! She was almost 11 months old and was stuck on her back like a bug! All of our great friends at therapy said that it would come, but being the human being I am, I doubted. I would officially like to apologize to all of those amazing professionals! So now she can sit up all by herself! What a big girl!!! Here are some pictures of our progress!

You know I won't stay here long, right!

Watch me roll!

Made it to my hands and knees, all by myself!!! 

Push and walk my hands back, this is hard work!

So I made it onto my bottom!

Time to celebrate

 Wow! That is all I can say! People just do not understand. The baby we brought home 4 1/2 months ago could barely focus and track with her eyes. She was so weak she had to lean her head back and "stack it" on her spine to hold it up. She was terrified of people and could not stand very much visual, sensory stimulation or movement. I was very nervous, and worried. We put our faith in God and we knew he had a plan for Khari! We weren't really sure how much of the plan we were going to like, but we were trusting. So now we are rejoicing like never before. She is becoming a huge socialite, she loves people and entertaining people. She even went to bible class for the first time tonight! She tested out of speech therapy and they said her verbal skills were on target for an 11 month old and the girl is eating like a pig! We are feeling oh so blessed to have her in our lives. She is an amazing testimony to life! She is our little miracle and I like to think that somewhere her Enat (Ethiopian name for Mother) is looking down and is so happy to see how well she is doing! I hope that maybe by the time I update my blog next, she may even be thinking about moving! (Although I may try to update about her first Christmas!)Our whole family has just become so much more close and blessed all because of this tiny peanut !

 Oh, by the way, she has 4 terribly cute little teeth now! I will leave you with a sweet picture of  the Ethiopian Princess herself!