Thursday, September 22, 2011

Anniversaries

It's annivesary time around our house. On August 27, 2007 we met our newest children for the first time. On September 10, 2007 we signed the final adoption decree - and they were ours and we were theirs forever. On September 11, 2011 we celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary. And now on September 3 our daughter will be celebrating her wedding anniversary. In four years we have added 3 children, a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law and very soon a grandson. Wow. We need a bigger dining room table!
In four years they have gone from three little boys who were a little scared and had no real understanding of what was going on...

...to big boys who have learned to live in a new family and know they are loved.
In July we went to Chicago to the CHI Reunion. It was fun to meet other families in person that we have followed through blogs and some whom we had never heard of. The boys did very well and had a good time. We stayed an extra day and did a little sight-seeing. The boys wanted to ride a train, but we just couldn't work that out. Instead, we rode the bus downtown and went up to the top of the John Hancock building. We also went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.
Andrew looking down from the John Hancock Building.
And since we don't have anything else to do - we decided to go ahead and do some remodeling in our house. We took down a couple of walls to open things ups and rearrange our kitchen. Everyone thought it was great fun to take hammers to the walls and tear them up. The cleaning up the mess wasn't as much fun. :( We currently have the kitchen/dining room area completely empty and are ready to start putting things back together. Hopefully we won't be washing dishes in the bathroom for too long. (We had hoped to add a large family room, but it seems it may take awhile to get our adoption tax refund so that is on hold for now.)

Maicol's birthday was in July, but it took us a little longer to actually do the activity he selected - bowling. He invited a couple of friends and they managed to bowl 2 games in 2 hours! I really thought they would make it through more than 2 games. They had fun and my Groupon was put to good use.
One thing Maicol in particular has been wanting to do is go fishing. We had gone once when we were at Grandma's, but didn't catch anything. So, I took them to the reservoir in our neighborhood and we tried there. We went looking for worms, but ended up with only one and didn't catch anything. We were "lucky" enough to find a snake though. Everyone took turns playing with it before I made them let it go. We went fishing last week and Maicol did manage to catch two fish. Juan Pablo and Andrew haven't been successful yet, so I see more fishing in our future.

We are in the middle of flag football with Maicol. He was the only one really interested in playing. The other boys like to go to games to play with other kids and check out the dogs that come with their owners to watch games.
We made it through our daughter's wedding (sorry, no pictures yet). The same weekend we also had a family vacation/reunion with my family. We go to a state park and stay together. Lots of bike riding, eating and playing games. This is my sister and Maicol playing a card game. Maicol obviously isn't doing very well.
Andrew and his cousin Catharine saying good-bye. They don't see each other often and really look forward to being together.
Last week we took our third annual trip to Florida. The back seat passengers watched The Little Rascals and The Three Stooges all the way down and back. I don't know when they have been that quiet for that long. The weather there was fantastic. Warm and sunny during the day and cool and breezy at night. We couldn't have asked for better. We also got to meet another Colombia family while we were there. Kimberly, Yuly and Riza came to see us! It was so great to actually meet them. They brought us some Colombiana and Postobon soda along with some candy. The boys didn't seem to remember it very well, but once they tasted it their memory returned and they loved it! Unfortunately I forgot to take the camera out of my pocket, so I don't have any pictures.
A little wardrobe malfunction.
A jelly fish at St. Andrews State Park.
Maicol chasing the birds. I think they were glad to see us go. :)