Tiger's Game

Saturday, June 14th we went to a Tigers baseball game with many friends from our 'hood'.

We had a fabulous time hanging out with our friends, eating popcorn and hot dogs and enjoying the game. The tigers won the game, too, so that made the day trip even more memorable.

Pictured here is Rick and Julie and then Tom, Trevor, Quinn Humphrey and Noah Schlicht. Most all of us were wearing Tiger gear to show our support.

Keep up the good work, Tigers! We're watching!

TY will be turning 3 soon

Tyler's 3rd birthday will be Tuesday,

July 8th!

Here he is on his 'gator'. He has just discovered reverse, so our driveway is the perfect place for lots of circles, back and forth, back and forth.

He is developing into such a busy little man! He wants to do everything himself: " i do it, i do it" over and over. His new favorite is Bob the Builder movies, etc and he loves to get his own breakfast... poptarts and waffles (Yes he eats both in one setting!) :-)

He is enjoying having his brothers home from school everyday and looks forward to Tom taking him for bike rides in the burly and jumping on the trampoline with the neighborhood kids.

He too is understanding that we are getting a baby sister soon and we keep telling him that he will share his room and his toys with her too! He likes to carry around baby sister's picture and say "mine... mine"

He is so much different than the other two boys, it is just amazing that all three came from the same place and live in the same house. He adds the spark to our family times and definitely challenges us when we feel things are under control. The best times we have with T-Y (nickname) are everyday... of course.

Last day of school 2008

Last day of school this year was June 12th. Field day at Vowles included many fun activities outside in the warm Michigan sun. Races and individual events challenged all students to use their head and have fun too! The highlight of the day was the dunk tank with almost every teacher getting a chance to get dunked, and of course, the school principle getting dunked by almost every teacher and staff member!

Here are Tom and Trevor at field day, enjoying events and keeping the sunscreen on, of course!

This post is out of order, but at least it's here! Enjoy!

Tom is home from camp!

Tom is home from a week away at Springhill camp. Springhill Camp is in Evart MI and is truly a hidden treasure for Mid Michigan. This camp is amazing. We had not heard about Springhill until last year and when we decided Tom would be emotionally ready to be gone for a week, we signed him up!

Here he is with his camp cabin counselors, who were very dynamic, goofy and all around excited for the campers week ahead. We are so impressed with this camp's website. Everything is done online... you can register, make payments, fill out forms, and most importantly, when the kids are at camp you can email your camper and also see daily camp photos taken of all the kids at camp and posted every day.

This week was hard for us at home, but we all looked forward to checking the website for pics of Tom every night and looked forward to his postcards in the mail.

Springhill is a christian based camp, but those kids learned so much more than just lessons about God. There are zip lines and swimming activities and horseback riding and when they get to the older camp, there are extreme sports!

Rick and I were very impressed with the staff and the organization when we dropped Tom off on Sunday. The cabins were clean and Tom was shy but never did he say he wanted to go home. He said his week was great and he is ready to go back next year and hopefully with a buddy or two! Check it out! It is so awesome. The wrap up ceremonies on Friday, when we picked Tom up were tear-jerkers! Very relevant situations and absolutely heartfelt devotional stories from some of the campers. We are very proud of Tom for going to camp with no one he knew in his cabin and joined by 3 cousins, who he sometimes saw at gatherings.

So, please enjoy the summer and keep reading our blog! Happy Birthday America!

Our little Girl!

Here's a few photos from our trip to meet our little girl from Cheboksary Russia.

She has big blue eyes and light brown hair. She is very quiet and shy. We played with her for several hours one day only.

We are home safe and VERY glad to be home.

Thank you to everyone who checks our blog... we want to keep all our friends and family updated.

If you double click on any picture, it will enlarge on your screen.

Here's a link to our adoption agency, Adoption Associates, Inc.

We will post more again soon.

Almost home from Russia!

Hi everyone,
We are in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is right now, Thursday evening about 8:15pm. 6 hours ahead of Michigan time.
We are VERY tired.
We saw Anna on Monday for almost 5 hours.
She is very cute, very shy and very little!
A problem occured when she came through the door at the host family we were staying with in Cheboksary, Russia.

The photos of the little girl sent to us two weeks earlier were not the same as the little girl in the door way! OMG!!!

Apparently this problem has never happened in the history of the 12 years of adoptions from Russia with our agency.

But it happened to us!

Anyway, when we get home I will post photos of the little girl we saw on Monday and will share more of our story.

We changed our flight to come home from Moscow a day early so we will be back home Friday afternoon.

We stayed in Cheboksary Russia with an absolutely wonderful host family. They took very good care of us and cooked for us and took us to do a little sight seeing (when we were not sleeping, of course).

We have not seen any sights here in Amsterdam... too tired.

I never imagined this kind of travel would knock the wind out of you so much!

Anyway, love to all of you checking our blog and we will post again very soon.