I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving this past week!! I know we did!! I am so Thankful that God chose us to be his servants!! What a joy!!! I am so thankful for God sending his Son for us!!!

I am also so thankful for my awesome husband. Hard to imagine what we have come through in the last 16 years to be where we are now. Praise God!!!

I have 5 AWESOME kids!! Yes they are NOT perfect but they are imaginative, spirited and most of all LOVE God!!!

I also cannot thank God enough for the friends he has blessed me with!!! Life has gotten so much better since they ALL came into my life!!! We have so much fun together and it is such a relief to be able to be "real" with them!!!!

I am sure you are all wondering what having Katie's picture on today's blog has to do with Thanksgiving!! Well I hate it when those special days when someone special comes into your life pass us by with no recognition!!!
Ekaterina Ana Came came home to live with us on November 13th 2002 and what a joy she is to us!!! She was born in Irkutsk, Russia and came to live with us when she was just 4 years old!! She is now a very lively 8 1/2 year old!!

So Katie, Happy Gotcha Month!!! We are so proud and happy to have you as a part of our family!!

We love you sweetie!!!! 

Heather's birthday pictures!!! What a blessing she is to our family!!! She is such a joy and growing up so fast!!

We love you Heather!!!!!!!
 

I know Halloween was over a week ago now but I just got my camera back from Haiti and just now able to get a few pictures loaded up.

Here are the kids on Halloween night!!! Are they not cute!!! 

November 9th, 2006

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER!!!!

Heather is now 8 years old!!

Hard for me to believe that my little 7 lb baby is getting so big!!!

She is such a treasure to us!! Especially since we were told we could never have any children. We adopted our wonderful son Nikolas in 1997 after not being able to have children for 7 years! God had other ideas and just new that Nikolas needed to join our family first because 11 months after Nikolas arrived home little Heather was born!!! Talk about a surprise!! :) 

Not sure if you will be able to play this or not but its so cute. Hannah is teaching the girls her chinese dance. this is from awhile back but I knew I had to post something. My camera at this moment is in Haiti with my dear husband who is on a mission trip and will be home tomorrow thank goodness!!! I will have great pictures to blog then!! I will also have halloween pictures of the kids. I hope you can play this if not well they look cute anyways. 

More pictures of Third Day!!!

There are no pictures of David Crowder. I will have to see if I can find one on the Internet because he has quite a unique look!!!

Anyways I highly recommend seeing Third Day. They have a powerful show!!! 

Last Thursday night (10/12) we went and saw Third Day/David Crowder/Hyper static Union. Wow!! great concert!! We went with a group of 8 of us and had a blast. I highly recommend going and seeing this groups or if you if you do not know who they are look up their music and purchase their Cd's. Here are some pictures from the concert.
This is Joanie (in White), myself of course in Blue,
Cheri next to me in a teal shirt and in back of Cheri is Sandy. Cheri's Husband Mark was also there but somehow he escaped he pictures.

This is John and Diane.








Mac Powell and Third day!! 

This was such a beautiful sunset!! Anytime you can see a sunset on Lake Michigan you are in for a treat!!
 

Here is the "famous Holland" Sanddune. Yep I have to do it at least once every time we camp here. It is a killer but the view is so worth it. We usually do it as the sun is setting.
Hannah's first time being on the sand dune. She had a ball!!! 

My mom and I on the pier.





The 7 of us actually getting ever to pose nicely!!









My 5 sweeties on the huge sand dune!! Believe me its a big one!!! 

Caleb
Hannah


These pictures were taken at Holland State Park in Michigan 

we went camping this past weekend and had such good weather for October. It was beautiful during the day and at night it would get cool but it was not too bad.
Nikolas







Heather

My Nice Anna-Marie 

Finally after a 3 month Hiatus Phase 10 is back!! This is Mark and Cheri and they are wonderful good friends!!! We have so much fun with them and our games can get pretty wicked and down right mean but we wouldn't have it any other way!!!

Yes Mark is chowing down on a huge plate of food and it looks like we are starving but in reality its because he had to work while th rest of us had dinner and so we brought him some take home!! What else is crazy it looks like no children in the picture!! They were actually either playing downstairs or watching a movie or playing outside. With us two couples we have 8 kids so there is always some noise coming from some where!!









For a small update Hannah is doing very well. Her language is unbelievable!!! I hardly ever hear Cantonese from her anymore except when she is signing. Hard to believe that child can only be here for 3 months and understand so much of what we tell her in English. She is sleeping well, she eats great. She hold her own with her 4 brothers and sisters!! We are so blessed to have her as our daughter!!! 

Hard to believe that one year ago we decided to bring this little sweetie home!! She was 4 at the time this picture taken and when we heard about her she had just turned 5!!!

Here she is today and what a doll!! She has been home now 3 months and just continues to amaze us!!

She is turning quite american now and getting quite comfortable with us where she is starting to get a little naughty. I already had a call home from school!! She is truly now a Yonker!! :) 

Yesterday was a big day in our house!! Hannah was baptized!! We had such a fun day and an awesome time with famliy and friends. I have the most awesome friends! I tell you all that I love you dearly and that we could not have done this day without you all!! My family was an awesome help too. We had over 100 people stay after baptism and have a potluck with us!!! We had 3 ministers help with the baptism. Pastor Steve baptized in the name of the Father, Pastor Rick (an old friend from our old church) baptized in the name of the Son and Pastor Paul baptized Hannah in the name of the Holy Spirit!! It was so cool. I do not have pictures on my camera of the fellowship time aftwards but I will post them as soon as I get them.

 

My girls and the neighbor girls were being very goofy the other day. Here they are on the street on their knees in their shoes. 

This is a little late but here is the kid's first day of school. When I looked back at this picture I realized that each day after school I would have 5 back paks to go through. Wow!!
Nikolas is in 4th grade
Heather and Ekaterina are both in 2nd grade (same class) and Caleb and Hannah are both in Pre-K this year. (same class)
I can't believe how fast my kids are growing up!!