Postcards and Pictures of Place's We've Seen

Just reserving blog space in January, trying to think of a new idea for a blog post.

Goodbye 2011 - Hello 2012!

Goodbye 2011 - Hello 2012!

Well it's the end of another year. We have enjoyed our Christmas - New Year's vacation from work, despite a flu bug affecting 5/7ths of our family for a few of the days. Here are some photo's from the last day of 2011 - an unusually warm day spent mostly outside...

Jenna picture with the kid's new Apple I-Pad.

Group photo on the trampoline - Ben's being grumpy.

One last pony ride for Leah and Lily in 2011.

A fun pose (except for Ben).

We all fall down.

The sun sets on the year 2011 - see you next year!

An I-Pod photo by Leah.








Hello Hello! I don't know why you say Goodbye - I say Hello!

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!

Here are some photos of the Christmas weekend. We went to Grandma Donna's house for Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day we went to Christmas service and then we hosted a Christmas dinner for Cheryl's side of the family.

Here is our Christmas tree with the presents underneath and around.

A group photo of the kiddos in front of the tree.

Grandma Donna's Christmas tree, before the opening of the presents.

The children starting to open their presents after patiently waiting. You can tell they have just started because there is no mess yet.

Opening...

Ryan - the Cowboy of the future.

Porter and Jenna. This was Porter's 2nd Christmas!

Austin was there as well - clear from near Dallas Texas. Later Matthew Doll stopped by, and he came clear from Tennessee.

Our little ones - Porter, Ryan and Jenna.

Porter playing with Grandma's "town display." Santa and Frosty were there, among others.

Grandma with her Grandchildren. The only one missing is Willie.

Same thing with a few more people added in - Family Photo.

Daughters - Sisters - Aunties, Lori - Cathy - Julie.

Christmas Day at our house - getting ready to open more presents.

Opening...

Jenna the "Big Bopper."

Ryan with his remote control race car and Alex with his transformer "Bumble Bee."

Click here to see pictures from Christmas 2010, and from Christmas 2009.

The next day we had a few defective toys and our I Pad (which came with no instructions whatsoever) to return. Most of the kids spent their money they received from Ian and Lois to buy themselves another present. Ryan got this Lego "Ninjago" Motorcycle with his money and my teammates (pictured) and I assembled it that evening.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving 2011 - Christmas Programs - School Pictures

Here is the Thanksgiving and beyond post that has taken me awhile to do. Not a lot of time, plus our computer's hard drive crashed so we have a new computer system that I had to figure out. Plus blogger is different so I had to figure it out. Anyway...

These next few pictures are from Thanksgiving at Mom's house. We also celebrated Porter's second birthday. Here are some cousins having fun while Cheryl rakes leaves in the background.

Here's a family photo of us on Thanksgiving.

Kobe, Ryan, and Jenna playing in the leaves.

Here's Porter and his mommy Lori, with Zoey in the background.

Porter opening his birthday presents while his father Steve and his cousins look on.

Here another family photo from the saturday after Thanksgiving, when we had a another Thanksgiving feast at our house for Cheryl's side of the family.

Here are Jenna and Ryan helping me put up the Christmas decorations.

Ryan singing with his class at the high school auditorium during his Christmas program.

Jenna was in the same Christmas program, and here she is with Ryan singing some Christmas songs for us.

Here's Leah singing with her class at the same place about a week later during her Christmas program with her class.

Leah playing her flute with the 6th Grade Band during her Christmas program.

Buddies? Perhaps. Alexander and Benjamin before their Christmas program.

The 3rd Grade Christmas program with Alex and Benjamin.

Below are our children's Fall 2011 School Pictures. Ryan is in kindergarten, Jenna is in 1st Grade, Benjamin and Alex are in 3rd Grade, and Leah is in 6th Grade...

To see earlier school photos, just click here.

On 12-17-2011 we celebrated a couple of Adoption Days, which are anniversaries of the days are children's adoptions were finalized and they legally became our children. It was Alex's 7th and Ryan's 2nd Adoption Day.

The next day the children of our church performed their Christmas program. Here are some pictures from this day...

Leah performing the Christmas Carol "Do You Hear What I Hear" in front of the whole church, as the rest of the children sang along.

Halloween 2011 - What's the Big Idea?

This is the 1st blog post for November 2011. There will be a couple more - one for Fall school pictures and another for Thanksgiving, but for now here's what's been happening lately...


This is a picture of Leah's 6th Grade band concert at the high school gym. Leah is playing her flute, and is just left of center wearing pink.


This is a new 8x10 shed we assembled in our backyard for lawn machinery etc. Here we have one assembler and 4 gophers. The other assembler is taking the picture.


Here's a photo of our Fall mowing crew doing what they do best.


Getting some exercise on a warm Fall day.


Here's Mookie guarding her new home - she thinks.


Picture of completed shed.


Here's a group photo of the attendees of the Living Hope Wesleyan Church Clubhouse Halloween Party, with their leaders Lorraine and Teri and other friends.


Here's Luigi, Red Toad, and Mario of the Mario Brother's game.


Here's Princess Peach (also from Mario Brother's game)getting ready to go trick-or-treating.


Out trick-or-treating on Halloween night in grandma's neighborhood.


Here's Valley Girl Leah in the haunted garage that's nearby grandma's house.


Here's Alexander (Luigi) hangin' out in the boneyard.


This is one of the displays at Skull Creek, which is a place that really does it up for Halloween. Thousands of people visit there on Halloween night. It has gorilla's, giants, wolfman, and other scary people wandering around. This year they even had a joker with a working chainsaw (at least the noise part). They also had a garage that was a haunted maze.


A costumed group photo with their cousin Samantha, at grandma's house.


One day last week Cheryl dressed the kids up and took some group photo's - here's one of them.


Here's another photo Cheryl took on the same day of the boys wearing their Holt shirts. We got these shirts at the Holt Picnic last month. Holt International is the adoption agency that helped us adopt all of our children.

To read a post about Halloween from last year and previous years, click here.

To read a story I wrote about how we built our family through international adoptions, called "What's the Big Idea," click here.

Thank you for reading! Here are some more recent pictures Cheryl took today - below...