End of Summer for Bob

Bob officially goes back to work on Tuesday. His five weeks of freedom are over. We spent the last week at the cottage. Caelan had a lot of fun with her cousins, Jenna and Zane and her Grandma Jansen. Garrett was too busy mowing and raking to be bothered with all of the fun:)



The Baldwin Troutarama was going on all week, so we went to the carnival. Bob and Gayle brought the kids to a fish hatchery where they had a two day kids event. Each child could catch up to three fish on the first day and two fish on the second day. The kids were able to keep the fish.





Bob's mom had 2 nights of sleepovers with Jenna, Caelan, Zane and one night with Tommy as well in the camper. As she gushed over what fun they were having, I often wondered if she was slowly losing her mind. I guess this is what I have to look forward to- being a grandparent. I am far too anxious right now to handle all of the chaos that seems to come with the territory of a handful of sugared-up 5 and 6 year-olds. I am not sure that I will do well when the time comes for me to organize and supervise sleepovers, maybe I will check myself into a hotel and hand over the night to Bob!

Just look at how excited they all are:



I have made it a habit to walk around the lake each morning. From our driveway, around the lake and back is exactly four miles. I have walked every day that we have been up there, except the day I had to bring Garrett in for chest x-rays after a couch diving incident went terribly wrong. (Thankfully, nothing was broken). Caelan has decided that she really needs "exercise" so she has also made it a habit to come with me. Unless, of corse, there is something more "fun" going on- aka her cousins and Grandma are at the lake. She does pretty well. I bring a stroller and she takes a ride when she is tired, but I think she usually goes at least 3 miles. When I bring Kali (our Siberian Husky) it usually takes me an hour to walk. When I take Caelan, we usually make it around in 90 minutes. It is fun. She is really into searching for dead snakes and frogs on the road. One day we saw what we suspect may have been a hedgehog. It sort of scared her. Here is a picture of us both in our walking gear- note the fancy pink sunglasses.



Caelan had such a fun time with her cousins this week, we were able to take quite a few pictures of her and her cousin Jenna.

Update on the 100 Wishes Quilt Wishes #3-42

Well, I now have 42 squares total!!! Only 58 left to collect:) I think that I have made copies of all of the squares, though I feel like there are a few missing.

Bob's sister, Robin and her family


From Great Grandma Jansen and Bob's cousin Cindy


From Bob's cousin, Rich, and his wife Lindsay:


From Jackie Kellogg and her children Mitchell and Olivia with cousin Courtney Kellogg


From Leslie, a teacher that Bob worked with in Delton, Mary Rose, a teacher at Hampton, and Tina, a parent coordinater at Hampton


From Bob's Aunt Betty Brown, her daughter Linnea, and granddaughter Linden


From Bob's Aunt Julie and Uncle Dick


Bob's Aunt Pat and her family


Bob's Uncle Howard, Aunt Betty and cousins Kraig and Kristy


From my very good, new friend Nicole, who is also adopting from China


An adoptive family


Another adoptive family


More adoptive families


Even more adoptive families

Birthday Boy!

On Monday, our little guy turned three. We celebrated at Wolf Lake with Shelley, Emily, and Mikey on his birthday and then the next day with Great-Grandma Jansen, Grandma Jansen, Aunt Robin, Jenna, Zane and Lukas. For those of you who know Garrett, he is very interested in household maintenance. He particularly likes lawn work and vacuuming. We have been joking quite a bit lately about how while Caelan is in heaven when we go to a toy store, Garrett prefers the hardware store. He now has his very own weed whipper and tool set. If only they actually worked:)

I asked him what type of cake he wanted for his birthday. While I LOVE to cook, I am not much of a baker, so I knew I'd be heading to our local market for the cake. He wanted raspberry cake. Huh? Well, I did find him a delicious raspberry pie that seemed to satisfy him.

Update on our little Lia

I just wanted to explain our new timeline for the adoption. Officially, we are logged in on 4/13/07 with the China Center of Adoption Affairs and have requested a non-special needs girl aged 0-12 months. Right now referrals for NSN are averaging 20-21 month wait for a referral, but this time is increasing, and is expected to reach a three year wait. While this was originally the plan, we have had a change of heart.

I have always felt drawn toward our agency's waiting child program. What CCAI does is have a prospective adoptive family fill out a Medical Conditions Checklist which states the "special needs" your family would be open to. Here is the checklist. There are a variety of special needs ranging from birthmarks to more major issues. We have selected needs that I feel that we could easily handle. I spent a lot of time researching and talking to other families. Since Caelan and Garrett are so young, I still felt like the age range we previously indicated would be best for us, though we said we would go up to 16 months. We still would like a girl, as we all have our hearts set on our "little Lia."

What our agency does is organizes the checklists into an order based on when the ckecklists were received. As they receive referrals from China, they match these children with adoptive parents. The parents then have a week or so to review the file, bringing the file to doctors or further researching the specific special need before deciding if this is their child. So far, our agency is working through checklists submitted in October/November/December of 2006. We turned our checklist in March of 2007. Now, if a child has conditions that do not match any of the potential adoptive families, their profile is posted on our agencies waiting child list. Generally these children have more severe needs or are older children.

We are very excited about this change and hope to have a referral by Christmas, though it could be longer (or shorter). Generally, travel is 2-4 months from the time a family submits a letter stating that they wish to adopt a waiting child.

Summertime

Well, we have owned the cottage for nearly a month, and have been up there almost the whole time. It seems that the kids start to need a little break from there, so we come home for a couple of days. They regroup, play with their toys and then are ready to go back up there.

We spend most of the time swimming or playing in the sand at the lake. It has been great for me because I feel like I have been able to relax for the first time in hmm... 6 YEARS!! There isn't much straightening to do and Bob has been grilling dinner every night as we still haven't been able to light the pilot on the stove (oh, well:)). I feel pretty guilty as we have been using a lot of paper products, but it has been so wonderful to do breakfast dishes only. I will make up for it in the fall, winter and spring.

While we have spent most of our time at the cottage, Bob did bring the kids to the Ludington State Park. We have never been there before, but I guess it was just beautiful. The kids had a lot of fun running in the sand dunes on the beach.

We did make it up for a while to the Cherry Festival in Traverse City. We didn't stay long, as the weather was on the verge of a major downpour. We made it our just in time. That is always fun.