Homecoming

All four kids together at last!

Big sister moment...

Cam is just a little excited to be a big brother!

Can you tell Brayden loves kids?!

The end..and the beginning!

Hello everyone, well it is 2:30 in the afternoon here and we have finished packing all our stuff! The flight doesn’t leave till 11:30 tomorrow night but we will check out of here at 10:00am tomorrow morning and go to Mary’s for the day until around 7:00pm. I just didn’t want to be scrambling around tomorrow morning so we got it done early. JP was so good…for a whole hour and a half he just played on the floor with toys and then he found the trash can and that kept him happy for quite a while…I think he was pretending to drive a car with it…he just held on to the rim and kept spinning it back and forth. We just spoke to the kids and now the next time I hear their voices it will be in person! I know I will be crying before I even make it off the plane. Sounds like we go back to our busy lives of watching our kids play sports! Brayden has 2 hockey games already this weekend! Believe me it will be a welcome change to the monotony we have endured while gone! I’m sorry…I need to stop complaining…good things have happened while here…the bonding…the milestones JP has achieved, and the neat people we have met. The best part of all though has been seeing God do what many have said would be impossible! That was so cool to be a part of. I just found out this morning that my friend who is also adopting from Rwanda just received her approval letter from the minister! YIPPEE! One more orphan about to get a family! Yes, there are millions of them but one child at a time is all we can do, right!
Here’s a blast from the past…the old TV show, ”Different Strokes” just came on. The other day, The Jeffersons came on and Brock and I started singing along to the theme song, then we laughed at how pathetic we were! Anyway…this may be my last email as we will be away from wireless internet as of tomorrow morning. So let me say now how grateful I am to have such a wonderful family of special people that care enough to share in this journey with us. You have all helped us through this past year by your prayers, your hugs, your financial support and all the encouraging emails and phone calls. I love you all and pray that you would know how much you are loved by us and by the ONE who burdened out hearts to begin this amazing adventure. Even though this feels like an ending, we know that it is only just the beginning….

Homeward bound...soon!

Hello everyone…just wanted to let you all know that after waiting an hour and a half at the embassy they finally called us to the window to receive JP’s visa. So we now have everything we need to come home…praise God we are so excited. We will spend tomorrow getting all our stuff organized and packed up so that after breakfast on Thursday morning we will be ready to go to Mary’s house. JP has now learned how to give a high five and today he started pushing himself backwards when on all fours so I think my estimation of him crawling the first week we are home might actually be pretty accurate. Brock made me laugh today by saying that he felt like Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day”. It is so true…same exact routine…different day. Oh my…how different my days will be once I get home…I think I won’t be bored for years to come! See you all soon…YIPPEE!!!

Just another day!

Well here we are another day in Kenya counting the days till we come home! Brock is studying and JP is napping. The TV is on but I’m not really watching…there is some made for tv movie…a murder mystery I think…I’m so sick of TV but yesterday was damp and cool, today is rainy so going outside isn’t an option. At least tomorrow we have to go get the visa at the embassy so that will get us out of here for a while and then one more day of life in a hotel room and on Thrusday we will check out in the morning and go to Mary’s house for the day. She lives right across the street from a place called Amani Ya Ju. It is a place that houses refugee woman from many African countries. The women are taught how to make purses, and quilts. There is a little shop that sells the items made by the woman and the proceeds go to the women and their families. We went to the shop and looked around the other day we were at Mary’s house, but we didn’t take the tour. I think we will do that on Thursday afternoon. They also serve a great lunch according to Mary and she says that an American woman runs the kitchen so all the food is cleaned appropriately so that we can actually eat the salad and any of the fruits and veggies! That will be a treat if we decide to have lunch there too!
JP is doing great. Just yesterday Brock went outside to study and I was in the room with JP…he was napping and after he woke up we just played in the room until Brock got back and when Brock walked in the room JP started laughing and saying “dada” and was flailing his arms and kicking his feet…he couldn’t wait for Brock to come and hold him. It was so cute. He is a really easy baby…lots of people here have commented on how placid and peaceful he is. So the bonding and adjustment process has completely surpassed my expectations. It couldn’t have been more easy and natural. He gets stronger everyday…he is already pulling himself up to his knees and just needs a little help to get to a standing position, but once there he can hold it for longer periods of time each day. We are working on teaching him how to be gentle! He gets excited and just grabs your hair or your face! Poor Cam is in for some serious manhandling. He also will go to kiss you and then end up biting…so there’s one more thing we need to work on but already it is getting less frequent. He used to try to bite every time but now it only happens maybe once a day, so we have made some progress!

Almost done!

Well, for the next 3 days we will be hanging out at the guest house.. It costs about $30 to go anywhere and we need to reserve our remaining funds! So you may be hearing from me often as I might get a little bored and stir crazy. Fortunately for us we do have TV and a pool here at the Methodist. Our friends are staying at another guest house that has really NO amenities at all. So we are very grateful to have ended up here! This morning at breakfast another woman came up to Brock and told him that she was so grateful to see us adopting. She herself had adopted a baby girl 19 years ago and said that it has always been one of her greatest blessings. She kept saying, “God bless you, God Bless you.” She was so sweet. And then we ran into her again about an hour later and she wanted to meet up at dinner so that she could give us her contact info…she wants to keep in touch. JP is napping now and hopefully he will be down for a while. Oh my goodness, I just looked over at him and he fell asleep as if he was sitting up and then just collapsed forward…he is very flexible!!! I’d better re-position him…I don’t imagine he will stay asleep too long like that.We invited our friends Melissa and Dave to come here and hang out with us today by the pool, but I have no idea if they will actually come or not, we’ll see. I cannot wait to eat good food again. We have been eating potatoes at EVERY meal and all the meat served is pretty dry and tough compared to what we are used to. They even serve goat meat pretty regularly. Even though the food is not the best…I would stay here again without question. The staff is soooo nice and the place is very clean. We were supposed to go to church with Mary (the woman we met at the embassy last week) however we just can’t afford to spend $30 to go to church. It would probably be right when JP gets tired and grumpy anyway. Mary has offered to let us stay at her home on Thursday so that we can check out Thursday morning even though our flight doesn’t leave until 11:25 pm. Well I guess that is all for now.

Village Market

Today we went to the Village market which is like an outdoor flea market of crafts and then a large indoor mall. We ran into our friends at the market and had lunch with them. Then we just came back to our room to give JP a nap except now he is just crying instead of sleeping. Brock went outside for a while to study for his real estate exam. And I am pretty much just bored so I thought I’d write a few more things I’ve noticed about JP this past week. When we first got him he could not carry his weight on his feet. He didn’t have much leg strength at all and this morning he was trying to pull himself up in his crib so I just helped him up a little and he stood there all by himself holding on to the rails! It is amazing how quickly they catch up. He also goes from sitting to crawl position easily and tries to move forward but usually just pushes himself backward. Just yesterday I was trying to teach him how to clap hands and today in the taxi he started doing it so I kept saying “clap hands” and he would do it on command…I know…he’s a genius!!! He’s getting better at giving kisses on demand, but not always! He’s finally asleep…sucking his fingers! I’m going to enjoy the quiet.

Flights changed!

After going to the embassy yesterday and learning that the visa will most likely be ready on Tuesday or Thursday the latest, I emailed Anne and asked her to call British Airways to find out how much it would cost to change our flights. When we received her email that said it was only $100 each to change our tickets we immediately called the taxi driver we have been using and asked him to come get us right away…we need to get to the airport to change our flights! We were able to change our flights to Thursday the 11th at 11:25 pm which will be great…hopefully JP will sleep the whole way to London! We only have a 5 hour layover in London and we will arrive home at 1:00 pm in Boston on Friday, in time to spend the weekend with the kids…YIPPEE!!! We are so excited and amazed at God’s hand upon us every step of the way. Our friends we met from a church in Tennessee found us this morning to say goodbye and pray for us again before they left. What a sweet and tender God we serve to bring such loving people along side us. It seems like God himself has orchestrated every detail of this trip down to the staff here at the guest house and the taxi drivers! Seems like such minor details but He cares about the minor details as much as He cares about the major ones! We are getting ready to go to the Village Market which is like an outdoor flea market of crafts hand made by the Masai tribe. I’ll tell you all about it later tonight.