Photo of the Week

My silly boy at Oak Lake 2 years ago.

This is him doing muscle poses with his water wings - big goof ball :)

Summer - August 2006

My 200th post

...and nothing adoption related to report :(

We did finally pick a vehicle. Thanks to everyone who emailed or posted advice. We went with the Honda Pilot. I'm excited to get out of my mini-van (I owned it for 7 years) and I'm scared to have less 'space'. The kids are excited to have a DVD in the vehicle... they could care less about anything else. We ordered it today and hopefully can pick it up on Monday. We are heading to Georgian Bay for a mini-vacation next week and it will be a good 'test' since i'm sure it will be packed to the gills with camping stuff, bicycles (eek?!), etc. I think we will need to get a little more efficient on how we pack.

The kids finished school today. It will be nice to sleep in in the mornings - I have kiddies that tend to like to sleep til 830-9am... Keaton would be happy sleeping til 10am some mornings... suits me just fine. I plan on a fun summer just lazing around the pool. Hopefully we will plan some mini trips each month of the summer... the kids would like to get up to Canada's Wonderland again, as well as our usual trip to the Toronto Zoo, etc.

DTV 11 months

Whew, another month ... gone.

Another month closer and hopefully soon I won't have to count up months but instead will be counting down months til our child is in our arms.

I don't know when the call will come. Like I tell everyone who asks... it could be tomorrow or it could be many, many more months.

I got this sweet little dress at Target on a recent drive to the US (Watertown, NY is about a 2.25 hr drive for me)... they have the sweetest clothes at such great prices!

Cheers to another month out of the way. Please phone ... ring - SOON!

Photo of the Week

Chloe with her very first bouquet of roses. Here she is posing with her red roses from her Daddy... on her 5th birthday.

Story behind the roses: Shaune lost his keys. He couldn't find them anywhere. We had searched EVERYWHERE. It was going to cost him a pretty penny to replace all the keys (including his car keys at $90 a key).

Chloe found the keys! ... and on her birthday. She was rewarded with this special thank you and 'love you' from her Daddy.

ps: the cheerleading dress-up costume is her attire of choice lately. Go Chloe Go!

A funny one... MY TOOTH IS OVER THERE

Had to share this photo of Keaton from a couple weeks ago when he lost his first tooth.
He was really worried that the tooth fairy would not know where his tooth was waiting for her, so he made sure it was spelled out clearly for her with his homemade signage:



Chuckle!

Photo taken sometime around midnight... him peacefully dreaming of hard cold cash in the morning. I guess there is still a part of him that believes in fairies... he does, he does.

Photo of the Week

This is an oldie. Chloe always had to have hair in her hands when she sucked her thumb. If it wasn't hers, she would reach out and twirl someone elses.
Keaton got very used to this. He would sit and watch a cartoon or play a video game and she would stand or sit beside him and peacefully run his hair through his fingers.

A few times I even caught her trying to play with strangers hair while waiting at the Wal-mart check out, etc. :)

Memories!

Quiet

I've been quiet lately. I honestly don't have much to say. We continue to wait and there has been quite a slow down with referrals with our agency. I think it is a first for them and some of it is believed to perhaps be due the upcoming shut down of the US program with Vietnam. Right on the heels of the US/VN announcement to discontinue adoptions as of Sept 1/08, our Canadian agency began to get fewer referrals. Perhaps it is due to the orphanages wanting to push through as many US families as they can before the doors shut. I can understand that and truly wish only the best for all, but it is a bit disheartening. There has been 1 girl referral and a few boy referrals in over three months. That is very rare for our agency. I was pretty certain at one point that there was no way we would get past May 2008 without our referral. Then I set my hopes on July 2008. After an email sent out today from the agency director, I think we could have a much longer wait still. On Tuesday we will be 11 months DTV. We obviously are in this for the long haul and understand that it WILL happen in time... it just feels today like each time we get our hopes set on a certain time frame, something happens and we extend it further. I do not hold much hope of having our child home from Vietnam before 2008 is over. Will it be Spring 2009? The not knowing seems to be the thing I struggle with the most. This too shall pass... just having one of those days.

Sorry for the downer post.

Chloe's birthday party was yesterday. Thank goodness the sun was out (it was supposed to Thunderstorm) and the pool party was a big success for Chloe and 9 friends from school. I got to know some of the mom's and we just hung out by the pool mostly... the kids just wanted to swim, swim, swim. I can't believe my BABY is turning 5 years old tomorrow. Wah! All she really wants for her birthday is a sister to love, but for now she settled for a new doll and a Generations white equestrian horse that stands 2 ft tall. :)

Re: Father's Day today!Shaune is spending the morning and some of the afternoon golfing with all his cousins and some of his uncles... a guy day. We are going to a family BBQ this evening for Shaune's cousin and her new husband that are visiting from Australia. The kids made Shaune really cute crafts at school and the sun is shining. It is going to be a great Father's Day :)

5 years of Chloe... set to music

Note: be sure to pause music on right side bar before watching youtube video...

Chloe's 5th birthday is this week... hard to believe - seems like just yesterday she was a little babe in my arms. Anyhow, I compiled some photos of her over the years and set them to music = as part of her birthday gift. She is thrilled with the video. I burnt some copies to dvd and she watches it over and over. She happily sits down and watches it with anyone willing to sit for 7 minutes to see it.

I loaded it on to youtube. The photo quality sucks on youtube but oh well, you get the idea... not everyone can come sit on our couch with Chloe and watch the high res photo DVD :)

This weekend...

Well, for starters our basement got 'very wet' a few nights ago and we are dealing with throwing out pretty much everything that got soaked. There was a huge thunderstorm and we didn't know that our sump pump had quit working. So... the next morning when Keaton went down to the basement he called up to me "Umm, Mom - the basement is looking kinda wet". Understatement.

The temps are high and it is going to be one hot weekend. We are enjoying the pool and are headed to a friends tonight for supper. Looking forward to that.

Between floating in the pool, gardening and cleaning up this mess of a wet basement - we should have a busy weekend :) Some fun, some not.

I looked at the ticker at the top of our blog and see we are now at 14 months since we signed on to adopt from Vietnam. Crazy how time marches on. In some ways it doesn't feel that long ago but in other ways it really feels like it has been forever. I know for the kids it feels like it is not going to happen... or that it is something we talk about but that doesn't seem like it will happen. It is teaching us all about patience.

Photo of the Week

Chloe in all her pinkness. Her favourite color. Her vitamins have to be pink, her clothes are almost always pink, her crayon is usually pink, etc etc.

The girl loves pink :)

Photo from January, 2005.

Still at #6

Well, we have not made much progress the past few months. There has been a slow down it seems with referrals coming in and we have sat at #6 for a while now. I have hope that we won't be sitting at #6 much longer. I think our call is coming this summer, I'm just not sure when. I'm going to keep positive. :)
We have been busy with soccer and ball hockey for Keaton. Chloe is still happy to tag a long and do her own thing - she isn't into team sports. She wants to do horse camp this summer - I think I will sign her up - she never asks to do stuff so she deserves it.
Today the sun is shining and it is beautiful out. It is supposed to get very humid and hot this weekend, the weather network said it will feel like 35. Eek. I will be floating in the pool with a drink in hand... all weekend if that is the case. I think I'll plan a pool party :)
I'm heading out for a lunch 'date' with Shaune... to my favourite sushi restaurant. Yum.

Big boy!

Keaton, at age 7.5 finally lost his first tooth this morning. He is sooooo happy - he said "June is looking great so far". He couldn't wait to get to school and show his friends his gap in his mouth.