We're Hitting the Road!

We've had a busy week already visiting with my parents, and tomorrow morning, they are heading home to Louisiana, and we are heading to Georgia to visit Chet's mom. Since we'll only have dial-up internet access for the most part while we are there, I probably won't post much on the blog until we get back next week. There will be lots to post about, too. Miss Katherine will have her first birthday and her first birthday party while we are in Georgia. Stay tuned...

Ouch!

We decided to walk to church last night, so we loaded the girls in the double stroller and off we went, as we have many times before. On the way home (which is only around 4 blocks or so away from the church), a mosquito found Mary Joyce and must have thought she was very sweet. Poor thing even has a mosquito bite on her eyelid. It looks terrible, and I know it has to be uncomfortable for her...

Update: She is looking much better today. I gave her some Benadryl at bedtime last night, and it really helped with the swelling.

Email Check

Back Story:

Mary Joyce has learned how to climb the baby gate to get into our computer room. We have to keep the gate up, though, because the cats' food and "facilities" are in here, and Katherine is not to the point where she will leave those things alone yet. We can't put up a higher gate, as the kitties are not spring chickens anymore, so they wouldn't be able to jump one of the really high gates to get in and out of the room. Because of that, Mary Joyce climbs over the gate at will. She leaves the cat stuff alone (except she is fascinated by dropping pieces of dry cat food into the water dish), so that really isn't a problem. The problem is getting her to leave the computers and phone alone.

Today's Funny:

Today, Chet came into the home office to make a phone call. Mary Joyce followed him in, and I came in to get her out, just as she was opening up the Macbook and starting to play with the mouse (not good...). I closed the computer and picked her up to take her out of the room. Her reply, "No! I check email!" (I'm thinking maybe we check email a little too often...)

Word of Explanation (VBS Videos)

Mary Joyce really wasn't old enough for VBS this year, but since our church is small, I was able to pull her out of the nursery to go to music with the preschoolers each day. She had a great time with it, and was able to participate in the Family Night service with the big kids. The little strawberry-blonde girl next to Mary Joyce is already 3, so she was our tiniest regular VBS participant. In the video that is closer, you can see one of the girls who helped the music teacher all week. She was tasked with keeping the 2 1/2 year old and the 3 year old focused on what they were doing. :-)

VBS Family Night

VBS Family Night

Recent Pictures

Email Issues

Hey, everyone--

Our hosting company for Adoption Voyages is having some server issues, so that is causing us to have issues with accessing our adoptionvoyages.com email addresses. For those who know me well enough to have the information required to fill in the blanks, you can email me at dusty lastname @ bellsouth . net. Take out the spaces and replace "lastname" with my actual last name.

Update on Life

Since things have been so hectic around here, I thought I would type up an update on all that has been going on with us.

VBS:
Several have asked how VBS went. It went very well. We had 33 children enrolled, which is great for our church--mostly an older congregation with very few children. One girl made a profession of faith on Thursday, which, of course, made the whole thing worthwhile. God is good! The turnout for the Family Night Worship Service on Sunday was amazing. We had a packed house.

Mary Joyce and Katherine were not old enough to be in VBS classes this year, so they were in the nursery while Chet and I handled our VBS duties. On Monday they stayed with our regular nursery worker, who is a real blessing to us, and the rest of the week, they were with one of our church ladies who is also one of our regular sitters. The girls love both of these ladies dearly, so that worked out very well. I pulled Mary Joyce from the nursery each day to go to music session with the preschoolers, and she had a ball! (I will try to post some video within the next day or so.) She is still talking about "Cation Bible Schoo."

Potty Training:
We finally seem to be making some progress. Once we got through with VBS, yesterday morning we had Mary Joyce going bottomless around the house. (She uses training pants just like pull-ups or a diaper, or has up until now anyway...) She did great! We handed out lots of treats, and the only accidents we had were due to not making it in time or to Mama cleaning out her potty at an inopportune moment. We're on day 2, and no accidents yet (as of nap time). We're still doing pull-ups for nap, bedtime, and leaving the house. Hopefully we can progress to big girl underwear soon.

Katherine:
Still growing way too fast. She is pulling up all over now. I think it is time to move her crib away from the blinds. (The cords are childproofed, but she still likes to play with the blinds.) She also has discovered the toilet tissue in the bathroom, so guess what her new favorite game is?

Mary Joyce Funnies:
Lately, Mary Joyce has started this thing where if she wants something, she'll cut her eyes up to you and ask very sweetly, followed by, "okay?" with this high-pitched inflection. As in, "Mummy [Mary Joyce] eat kood [food], puhple popsicle, okay?" I may have to try and catch this on video, because I think it may be a "have to be there" kind of thing.

Today the UPS man came and left a package for Chet. I signed for the package and started in with the box. Mary Joyce saw the box and said, "Peepa [pizza]!" very loudly. The UPS guy laughed all the way to the truck.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think at the moment. I will try to get some pictures up soon.

Quick Update on our Adopting Friends

I just got an email from Gail and Lonny, and they and the girls have made it home safely. Word is that they are too tired to write a website post right now, which makes perfect sense to me. That first week or two, jet lag recovery is a bear.

Also, Tana and Keith leave for Guatemala tomorrow. Ana will be with them soon!!!

Why I May Disappear from Blog Land for a Little While...

Next week is Vacation Bible School. This is always a fun time, but it is a crazy time in our household, too. Please keep us in your prayers as we reach out to the children in our community.

Another Mary Joyce Funny

In the world of Mary Joyce, there are 4 kinds of juice:

orange juice

apple juice

grape juice

and...

box juice

What, you may ask, is "box juice"? Any juice in a juice box, of course. It doesn't matter that the box juice is also apple juice (or another type).

I wonder where boxes grow... Hmmm...

God is Good!

Ana Gabriela is coming home!!!! Tana and Keith have pink (Guatemala equivalent of TA) to go to Guatemala and bring their little girl home! Praise God--this has been a long, tough road for them... Congratulations to the new family!

Also, our China travel buddies in Vietnam had their Giving and Receiving Day yesterday. So, two more of our Tonggu girls are now big sisters. Congratulations!!!

Travel Buddies in Vietnam

Two of the families that were in our China travel group are currently in Vietnam, completing the adoptions of Sasha's and Rachel's baby sisters. (This is a neat thing, as Sasha and Rachel are both from Tonggu in China like Mary Joyce, their baby sisters are from the same area in Vietnam.) Please keep Gail, Lonny, Sasha, and baby Kiri in your prayers, along with Tim, Linda, Rachel, and Baby S (Don't know what name they have chosen). They just arrived in Vietnam on the 7th. Gail and Lonny have a website with us, if you are interested in following their trip:

Kiri's Adoption Voyage

Tagged!

I was tagged by my friend and travel buddy, Kim to choose 6 words to describe how I feel right now, and then to tag 5 more people to do the same. Let's see if I can come up with 6 words (in no particular order)...

1. Blessed: I have a wonderful Savior, and incredible husband, and 2 beautiful little girls.

2.Tired: It is after 11 p.m., and I have a 2 1/2 year old and an 11 month old. I'm always tired at this time of the day. :-)

3.Loved: I know that I have friends and family that care about me, and I can always count on them.

4.Busy: We have VBS coming up next week, and I'm the director. Add that to my usual mama, wife, Adoption Voyages administrator, Sunday School teacher, church choir member rotation, and it makes things even more hectic than usual.

5.Amazed: I'm amazed by the friendships we have built through the China adoption community. We have bonds with people that will last a lifetime, and we might never have met each other if we weren't all part of this crazy adoption world.

6.Saved: I'm a sinner saved by grace...

Now, to tag 5 more. This gets tricky, as I just tagged 5 people for something else the other day, and I don't want to repeat, but 3 of the others I might have tagged are Kim and 2 of the others that she already tagged. Here are the rules:

You need to describe how you feel right now in 6 words, then link back to me, then tag another 5 people. Leave them a comment to let them know that they are tagged. It's fun. So I tag:

(Okay, this thing is making the rounds. I just checked the blog of someone I was about to tag, and she's been tagged by someone else.)

1. Susan at the Rachel Chronicles. Susan is one of my fellow July 2005 Dragonflies, and is mom to Ting Ting.

2.Rossette at Two Boys and a Little Lady. Rossette is a friend from 3 of my Yahoo groups, the June 2005 Jitterbugs, the July 2005 Dragonflies, and the China Peaches. They got their referral for Annalee at the same time as we got our referral for Mary Joyce.

3.Dana at Shealin's World. Dana and Shealine are one of our Adoption Voyages families, and they shared our same guides/travel facilitators in China. Shealin came home a little bit before Mary Joyce did.

4.Karen from Our Journey to Kaelie. Karen is a real-life friend from our old stomping grounds in south Georgia. She and her husband, David, and their 2 boys are waiting for their referral of Kaelie. With a February '06 LID, hopefully that will come soon for them.

5.Angel at Once Upon a Time. Angel was my June Jitterbugs Secret Pal back when we were waiting for our referrals of Gracie and Mary Joyce. She is a fellow July Dragonfly, too.

11 Months Old!

Miss Katherine is 11 months old, as of Sunday the 6th. Time really does fly by, doesn't it? We have mailed out the invitations for her first birthday party, which we are having while we are in Georgia on vacation. Katherine is crawling all over now, and just today she pulled herself up for the first time. She'll be cruising before we know it, and walking can't be too far behind that. Our little girl is a champion teether. She now has 11 teeth! Yes, you read that correctly. At least she's getting the teething thing out of the way early. :-) She has also recently learned to bounce/jump, which she finds absolutely hilarious. And, as seen in the picture with this post, she loves her bath time. (Yes, we really do have a harvest gold bathtub. Isn't it lovely? The tile matches it, too...)

Anyway, happy 11 months, Baby Girl! Next month...one year old!

Independence Day 2008

Funny Pictures from Yesterday

Here are a few funnies from yesterday.

I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher (around the corner), and stepped around to check on the girls. I found Mary Joyce here:


This is one of those moments where my first parental impulse probably should have been to tell the child to take the toys out of her ears, not to laugh and grab the camera. Anyway, Mary Joyce's jewelry here is one of Mr. Potato Head's ears and his tongue. (And, yes, after the picture I did explain why sticking toys in your ears is a bad idea.)


Mary Joyce was riding her daddy's back, and Katherine decided to follow along. It was too cute...

The Writing is on the Wall...Finally!

I have blogged about this before, but just for a refresher, when we decorated Mary Joyce's nursery, way back before we ever got our referral, I painted these letters, and we put them on her bedroom wall. Of course, when we moved, the letters came with us and went up on the wall in her new room:



Well, when we found out that Katherine was a girl (so we knew what name we would be using), I got another set of letters to use. I waited on painting them until we got to Florida, as I wanted to know if the new baby would have her own room or would share with big sister. They were to share a room, so I decided to paint the letters green, as green and lavender are the dominant colors in the nursery. So, I painted the letters, which were not exactly the same as Mary Joyce's, but they were a similar style. When we finally got around to trying to hang them up and we started to put the hardware on the back, several of the letters cracked. I tried gluing them--no luck there. So, we finally got new letters.

The other day, I sat down to paint them, and realized that I didn't have enough green paint, but I had quite a bit of the purple left, so I just went with purple. The new letters are from Wal-Mart, and are the same basic size, but a different style. They came primed, and they have hangers carved into the backs. After a couple of coats of craft paint and some spray-on polyurethane, they turned out pretty well. Then, we had the evil strep bug attack the household, so the completed letters sat in the garage for a few weeks. Finally, on Monday, Chet was able to get them up on the wall.

As it turns out, I think the purple looks better than the green would have, anyway. And now Mary Joyce doesn't have to tell me that we need to put "K, Pappin" (K for Katherine) on the wall (which she has done more than once, by the way, including calling me into her room at night after she has been in bed for awhile and had time to peruse her walls, but that's another post...).

Anyway, here are the end results...

Two Silly Sisters (The Explanation)

I have to put the text for the previous post in its own post because for some reason Blogger and Photobucket are not very cooperative when I try to put text into a post with a Photobucket video. Oh, well...

The girls have a great time together most of the time. Katherine just adores her big sister, and Katherine is in the process of learning to give hugs and kisses. Many times her hugs are like tackles, more so than hugs, and she still gives "baby kisses," you know the kind where they "kiss" you with their mouth wide open and drool all over you. It is sweet, and it is hilarious when she decides that her big sister needs lots of hugs and kisses. Mary Joyce seems to find it funny, too.

Two Silly Sisters

Here She Comes!