Drive-in Fun

We've been wanting to take the boys to the Drive-in movie theater for a while now and it finally worked out last wekeend. We went with Helen and her kids and had so much fun! It takes about 45 minutes to get there so we left early, picked up some Subway, and were on our way. We decided to get there early to get a good spot and eat our dinner there. We met Helen there at 8pm and there was a huge line already.....over an hour before the movie even started. I guess it's been a long time since I've been to a drive-in cuz I had no idea how involved it was. People were practically tailgating in the lot. We almost didn't find a spot up close enough, but finally did. We pulled out the back bench in the van and turned it around for the kids to sit in. They were showing a double feature of Despicable Me and The Sorcerers Apprectice. The first one got started around 9:15pm. We had our cooler with lemonade and snacks and a whole bag of popcorn. The first movie ended at about 11pm and the next one started about 15 minutes after that. The boys actually all stayed awake through both movies. We didn't leave until 1am. Course, they were all asleep before we got out of the parking lot. That was so much fun, I think we'll have to do it one more time before summer is over.

Dragon Boat Festival

A few weeks ago we went to the Dragon Boat festival at Lake Phalon.
This is our second year going and it's pretty fun. There's a lot of booths and Asian things for sale, but there's also the entertainment of watching the boats or seeing some karate displays.
We brought a cooler and had a picnic lunch in the midst of a ton of great smelling food.
The kids got to color a hacky-sack at the Target booth and get a bulldog tattoo.


They also got the chance to paint a glass vase for an art fair that is coming up in Mpls. later next month.




The best part was when Jay and the boys got up and learned a traditional Japanese dance. It was pretty funny watching them try to figure it out, esp. Tanner...he just kept walking around the circle looking at everyone like they were crazy.


My favorite thing was that there are so many little Asian girls walking around for me to watch and daydream about. It was a little surreal to realize that next year when we go, we'll have our own little dark haired girl. I can't wait.

My new nephew

I'm sooooooo excited to say that I have a new little nephew, Bennett Anthony. He's actually already 2 1/2 weeks old, but auntie Jen hasn't gotten her butt around to blogging for weeks. But it was not for lack of excitement.
Pat and Lindsey have waited so long for this day and I couldn't be happier for them. They will make wonderful parents!
Little Ben sent them on a whirlwind 2 weeks ago when they found out they had been chosen to be his parents by a birthmother, and chosen, of course, by God to be his mom and dad.
Within hours they were on their way to Texas to meet their new little guy. Mom actually got to drive down with them, 23 hours straight and I don't think they slept at all.
They met him that night they arrived and have been in love ever since. It's always amazing to talk to first time parents becuase you can tell that they 'get it' now. Everyone knows that you love your children, but until you have your own you can't even fathom just how strong a love it is. You would walk through fire for that child the instant you meet them. Pat and Lindsey now know that love and I couldn't be happier.

Sweet Ben arrived in this world on July 12th weighing 4 pounds 9 oz. and is absolutely beautiful. The new family is on their way home as I write and I'm beside myself with excitement to finally meet the little peanut.

My Tony Baloney

Our little Tony, who will be 7 in only 5 days, has had us pretty scared for the past week and a half. For the past couple months, he's been getting these headaches. I'd give him some Tylenol and he'd get better. I started to notice a pattern with them though that bothered me. His headaches were almost always in the morning when he first woke up or overnight and he'd come into our room complaining of one. Most of the times this happened, he would at some point throw up. He'd always want a cold cloth on his forehead and eventually he'd start to feel better and then be fine the rest of the day. It came to a head on the Thurs. before the 4th of July weekend. Once again, he woke up with a bad headache and eventually threw up. I decided that day to call his dr. and set up an appt. Ya see, I knew that it was not a good thing to wake up with a headache all the time and to have one bad enough to wake him up at night. I also knew that the fact that they made him throw up was not good either. We went to see the dr. and she agreed. She looked behind his eyes with a scope and that looked good, and she did some balance and neurological tests on him and those were good. But it was the time of the headaches and the pattern of them that concerned her. She said she didn't like that they were waking him up. She set up an order for him to get an MRI of his brain. When I called to make the appt. they didn't have an opening for a whole week. We would have to wait until the following Friday. That made it the longest week of my life. Sometimes I could get it out of my head for a while, but most times I was on the edge of tears. Just telling someone at work made my heart start to pound and make me start breathing heavy...I couldn't even talk, and I certainly couldn't say the word.

That terrible word that we all knew this was about, but never wanted to mention.

Was it a tumor.

I still shutter at the thought.

When we got to the MRI appointment, they had not set him up for sedation. Usually it's necessary for kids to be put out because of how still they have to hold. They literally cannot move a muscle. This is all while being inside a big tube with a contraption over your head/face and very loud noises going off for over 20 minutes. They said we may have to reschedule. Um, I don't think so.....I told him no way. We already waited a week for this appt. We were gonna give it a try. They gave Tony some headphones (to which I had them put on KTIS cuz I knew he'd recognize all the music, also because this was about as good a time as any for some Jesus music) and they put a mirror right above his head so he could look out of the tube and see Jay and I there with him. The tech said we'd give him 2 tries and then we'd have to reschedule. Well, he didn't need 2 tries, he did great the very first time. He didn't even move a toe. I was able to sit by his feet and hold his ankle. I could tell when he looked at me and I would give him a smile to reassure him. Jason just watched and had this look of dread on his face. It's not easy seeing your child in an MRI tube.
All I did was pray.
The whole time.
We got done (much to the astonishment of the tech who said he'd never seen a child that age stay that still) and were told to expect some results by Monday.
So, yesterday came and went most of the day with no word. By 4:30, I decided to call our dr. office to see if she could get some results for us. She's out of town for a week, so they had a nurse call me back to talk to.
When I got the call, she told me that every thing came back NORMAL. I did a double take because I wasn't expecting an answer from her, I thought I was just gonna talk to her about checking into it for me. So she repeated it. Normal. I started crying and told her how worried we were. She said she didn't blame me one bit and that I should hang up the phone and take a deep breath....he's okay.
This was by far the most scared Jay and I have ever been with one of our kids.
We are just so grateful and thankful that our prayers were answered. Yesterday, I was thinking about the parents who don't get the good news we did....and I said a prayer for them.

Happy 4th

We went camping again this weekend for the 4th of July. We went to the same place in Brainerd that we went last year. It's a small campground with some cabins too so I suppose it's more of a resort. Last year I was disappointed in it when we got there, but it was fine. This year, after waiting too long (again) to make any reservations they were the only place I could find an opening at. I called a couple months ago, but this is a busy weekend so stuff books up quick. I was fine with it though, the price is right at only $30 a night and they don't charge extra if you have more than 2 kids like most other places do.
Anyway, we got there and set up and ya know....it wasn't so bad. Somehow, it just seemed nicer this year. Plus, I really like the owners. They're just this couple that runs it and are super nice and accomodating. One fun thing that happened is that we met some other campers. We got talking shortly after getting set up and found out we only live about 10 minutes away from eachother and they are neighbors to a family that goes to school with the boys. What a small world. They have 3 boys that are 5, 7, and 9 so all 8 of them between us had a blast all weekend. We sat at the beach and watched the kids together and we shared a campfire while the kids roasted marshmellows. We just really hit it off and talked like we knew eachother for a long time rather than just a couple days. We exchanged email addy's and said we'd get together soon. Maybe we can go camping again together since we had such a good time.
It was a fun weekend. I really enjoy camping with the family. It's a ton of work...not exactly a 'vacation' weekend, but just seeing how much the boys enjoy it is what makes me love it so much. It's a great family thing to do together and I look forward to many more years.

Heading out and an update

I'm all done packing for our weekend camping trip and we're just waiting for Jay to get home from work in about a half hour. I figured I'd take a few minutes to update our adoption process.
We are all done with the dossier requirements that are our responsibility. However, we are now waiting only on the immigration paperwork to get processed so we can send everything on to the next step. Unfortunately, when you're waiting on a Gov. agency, the time frame is anyone's guess. I'm really hoping that we get it back in the next 2 weeks. We were originally supposed to get our prints done on July 13th, but we walked in last week and got them done instead. We were pretty excited about being able to get in so much earlier than our appt. but then we found out we needed to call our case worker there to let them know what we had done or else they wouldn't process them until after our July 13th date. Sooo...that was a week wasted, but I did call on Tues. and let her know. She wasn't very receptive to it and said that she could not do ours 'out of order'. So, who knows.....it's out of my hands at this point and I need to be okay with that. I'm getting very antsy though. Seems like we've been doing this forever.
I'll be home on Monday and have some camping pics.