We have a wonderful group of friends and once a month one of the couples gets to go out on a date and the other couples get together at one house with all the kids. It is a lot of fun. Last night it was Jeff and Michelles turn to go out and we had chicken Lickn! Yum!! Anyways we had 17 kids at our house. Here are just a few at the dinner table! It was cute because we kind of have our own United Nations. At this table we have Russians, Haitians, Guatemalans, Americans, Chinese, The oldest is 14 (smart boy was not there last night!! :) ) the youngest is 2 and all ages in between!! What fun!! We played 80's trivia until almost 11:00pm! What a blast!!!!

 

My friend Lydia is adopting two girls from Ukraine and she had these beautiful bracelets made. They are $90 a piece. She has 7 left and I would love to try to help her sell these.

You can get in touch with Lydia at jltarr6@insightbb.com If you have a problem getting in touch with her please let me know and I can put you through to her. tearsofjoy@highstream.net 

I am a great Aunt!!!!!!!!!

Last night around 6:00pm my great neice was born!!

Her name is London Bailey and I know I am partial but she is such a cutie!!!

Congrats to Brandon and Carrie!!! We cannot wait to meet her in a few weeks!!! 

We had such a nice New Years Eve. We had some good friends come over with their 3 children. We made homemade pizzas and the kids had a blast putting their own together.

 

I did not get many Christmas pictures. These are my girls and my 2 nieces at my moms. she got them all matching PJ's. They all looked so cute.



My two boys and my two Nephews. 

We will be gone a lot between now and Christmas day so I wanted to take this time to wish all my friends and family a wonderful Christmas!!!!!

May Christ always be the center of your life!!! 

These are a little dark but I could not resist posting them. They will hate me for this but it is worth it!!

Here is Jeff and Nate Racing on the Bungee bounce toy. It was pretty funny!!!!!!

 

Heather as she fell off the Velcro wall.

A huge Thank you to our good friend Jeff Janssen who braved this birthday party with us!!! We are very grateful to him!! :)
Here he is with Grace trying to throw her up on the Velcro wall.

 

Faith and Katie

I am bummed that the pictures on the slides turned out a little fuzzy. This was a cute on of Grace. What happened is just as I snapped the picture caleb came down the slide and the camera tried to focus on that motion instread of Grace lying there.

Here is Nikolas on the Velcro wall. Nate left him up there a while and we kept teasing him that we were going to leave for Ice cream and come back later. He was soooo stuck. 

Hannah stuck on the velcro wall. She wasn't so sure about being in that position.

Here is Katie on the Velcro wall. We did learn that if you have long hair you really need to keep it pulled up because it can get caught in your suit. Sorry Grace. We also decided that we needed on of these walls in our house for if the kids need a time out. You can but a suit on them and stick them up on the wall and there is no where they can go!!!

I actually have a movie of this and I know I will not get it to work but its a great one with Nate on the bungee toy. 

Yesterday my sweet little boy turned 10. 9 years ago this today (Dec 20th) a little 12 month old boy named Vasily was placed in our arms at the baby home. We were first time parents and had no idea what to do with this little person. 9 years later we still do not know what to do with him but we sure do love him!!!

For his birthday this year he wanted to go to crazy bounce. If I can get my pictures to work I should have some to share.

Mr. Janssen graciously came with us and I even got a few pictures of him on some of the bounce toys. I couldn't hardly get any on the slides as they were just moving to fast and the pictures would get blurred.

we went to Frankemuth This weekend for 1 night and had such a good time. We went to Bronner's which is the World's biggest Christmas store and believe it or not people come from all over the world to visit. Of course everyone of us forgot our cameras so Aunt Robin to the rescue with her camera phone.

First time Hannah has ever seen santa. Was she excited!!!

Katie's picture did not turn out very well and of course Caleb is petrified of anything that is in a costume. 

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!!!