A change in our adoption plans

Dear Friends,
We have recently started the process to switch our adoption from China to Vietnam. It was a difficult decision but one that ultimately feels right for our family.
Cindy

China Families meeting their children

I get so choked up when I see these videos. I keep dreaming of the day when we are united with our next sweet child. I honestly cannot wait to hold her in my arms, see her sweet face and to watch her with all my sweet guys.

Check out this blog!

Its called Chinese Starfish.
A South African woman, living in China, taking care of special needs orphaned children preparing to be adopted...a most exciting story!
Its really interesting so take a look:
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com/

Making a mess out of cleaning up

The thing about letting kids play with paint is that it is almost always going to be a fantastic mess. Even if its washable and I can't imagine letting them play with something that wasn't washable, its still such a big mess. The funny thing about my boys is that they manage to make a mess of cleaning up. Everyone needed to be cleaned up after painting so I brought out a tub of soapy water to wash their hands, some paper towels to dry off and a plastic bage to put all the used paper towels in. In the time it took me to clean off Ryan's hands Evan had unrolled the whole new roll of paper towels across the lawn and driveway. I am always amazed at how much they can "accomplish" in the same time that I am "accomplishing" very little. Ha!

Underwear Head

The boys were resisting getting dressed this morning. I finally laid out all their clothes and let them know no one could have their snack until they would get dressed (or let me dress them) and went into the kitchen. When I came back Ryan said "Mommy look at me!" He had Evan's underwear on his head! I guess its the 3 year old equivalent to the lamp shade on the head...Ryan's always the life of the party!The second photo is a reenactment of the first photo. The boys thought it was so funny that we should do it again!And just for the record, both times they were CLEAN underwear! :)

A trip to the zoo

Evan is on spring break so we decided to meet up with some friends at our local zoo. Its a small zoo- very managable and still lots of fun for the kids. The first photo is of the boys checking out the hyacinth flowers for which I am named (Hyacinth is my real first name). Then next one is of Derek petting a goat which he kept calling "dog" :) The last one is of the worlds largest rodent. I forget what its called though but it was about the size of a really fat bull dog. All in all a very good outing!

Scenes From A Sunny Day

Don't you just love those first few good days of spring?! After a long winter its so great to get outside to play. The boys were doing it all...bike riding (Evan is trying to learn to ride without training wheels), baseball, playing on the swing set, etc. To make it even better Dave was able to get home by 5:30, which by todays standards is very early. So we got to enjoy a beautiful day together as a family. It doesn't get much better than that.