A Typical Weekend

Olivia zip-lining at Grandma and Papa's house

Josiah Go-carting with Papa

At the top of Pilot Butte, taking a break before hiking back down.

Riding with Mommy

Joel, Hannah, and Olivia at Mt. Bachelor

Apparently an intermediate run is too easy for Joel and Hannah, so they decided to ski down backwards!

We've had some requests for more pictures, so I finally remembered the camera this weekend! We love living in the high desert, and right next to the mountains. Outdoor recreational activities abound. Here's some highlights of our weekend, starting with skiing on Saturday, and ending with hiking, go-carting, and zip lining on Sunday! The only thing we didn't do this weekend that we usually do is go for a bike ride, but we have gone on at least one bike ride each day the previous week!

Enjoying the kids

Sorry for such a long time before an update! I have noticed that I am terrible at remembering to bring the camera places, so these pictures are from the past month.

Josiah is doing better each day. His tantrums are improving, shorter in length and less frequently. He is still tempermental, but this might just be his personality. His communication is slowly improving as he learns more signs. It seems like he is starting to understand more English now too. He will have his cleft palate surgery and have tubes placed one of the last two weeks of April (still to be scheduled). We are looking forward to him having his surgery so he can start working on speech more, but dreading the actual surgery and recovery.

As you can see with the pictures, Josiah loves playing with his sisters and brother. He usually wants to be doing the same thing that the older kids are doing, so when they are working at the table, he has to be at the table too. When they are dancing or playing dress up, he does this too. I don't think I got any pictures of it, but he loves putting on the girl's princess dresses and shoes just as much as the girls do, and of course they love to dress him up! Josiah even rode on his Papa's go cart cause he saw his siblings and cousins doing it so he had to try! One of his favorite things is going to the park and going on the swings and slide. He doesn't like it when he is left behind, like when the big kids go to AWANA's, but he still enjoys the one on one time he gets with his Daddy when the others are gone.

One month with Josiah

Today marks one full month since gotcha. We've been home 2 1/2 weeks now. It took at least a full week for everyone to adjust to this time zone, and I am happy to say that Josiah is sleeping through the night nearly every night! He is in a crib in our room, and he needs someone to be in there with him while he is falling asleep, but that's OK. He is still doing good with his siblings. The hardest duo is Olivia and Josiah, probably cause they are so close in age. They fight over toys sometimes, and whenever we are doing something with Josiah, like playing a tickling game or peek a boo, she wants to be right in the middle and doing it too. Josiah's tantrums have increased in intensity. He is pretty sensitive and will throw a fit at the seemingly tiny things. We are trying to work through these and figure out how best to handle it.

Hannah lost her first tooth and turned 6. These are pretty big milestones in our family and they happened only a day apart. My girl is growing up! She got to have a huge party with all of her class invited. We only do parties like this once or twice in their lives, so it was a pretty big deal.

Olivia learned how to ski without a harness and made it all the way down the hill without help! She was so proud of herself. Now we just need to teach her how to turn and steer a little better.

Joel is enjoying being back at school and loved talking to his class about all his adventures in China.

We're home!

First meeting with sisters




Dancing together


We made it home late last night. All 3 flights from Beijing were pretty uneventful, thankfully. Josiah and Joel slept just the right amount, so they still were tired enough to sleep last night. Our only bump was when we got to the airport, we found out that our van's engine was broken (I don't remember the technical term for what was wrong, but it wasn't cheap!). So that got us home a few hours later than expected. Our van got towed and is supposed to be fixed by Monday, so we rented a van to drive the 3 1/2 hours to our home.

The kids are doing great playing together. Normal spats over toys and all, but all is good. It is wonderful to have the family all together again. Josiah has pretty much latched onto a baby stroller and loves driving it around. Luckily we have 4 of them!

Last night!

We had a good flight here to Beijing with enough time to visit the Olympic stadium.  We paid a bit extra to get into the Bird's Nest and climbed to the highest seats possible.  Since it snowed almost 2 weeks ago, they use the snow to have a variety of snow activities on the field in the Bird's Nest.  It was fun to take the subway for almost 30 minutes and 3 transfers in order to get there.  Crazy that it only costs 2 yuan each for a one way trip, like 30 cents each.

 

Tomorrow we are heading home and excited to get there!

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Last night before Beijing

Well, today was a day of goodbye's as two of our group families headed back home.  Needless to say, the remaining two families.... we were uber jealous.  We miss our girls and are ready to be back in our home.  The hotels are great and all but..... it is not home, nor is the food quite the same as eating out.  Our carpet picnics are fun with noodles, PB&J's, chips, oranges, and bananas, but its not like home cooking.... specifically I miss Mexican food :).   This trip was much easier than our last one with Olivia, less adoption drama and in all honesty a really easy trip with all the wonderful families we got to share time with.  Joel was a champ who rarely complained about the food, granted he didn't always eat much (like tonight when we hit Tai food), but he was a trooper and is a great traveler.  He always has lots of questions, some of which we know, others we don't, but we love the inquisitiveness he brings to our trips. We are already planning our heritage trip in 6-10 years with the whole family to visit both Josiah's and Olivia's home cities.  
 
We did the traditional red couch photo's with our group today at the White Swan (the 5 star hotel close by).  See the pictures above.
 
April is busy packing while I blog, of which I definitely got the better end of deal, as tomorrow we head out of our hotel back to Beijing at 5:45 am.  Hopefully the flight will go well and so will us getting a taxi to our hotel.  We plan on visiting the Olympic Stadium (Bird's Nest) and the area around it tomorrow, kids permitting. Then Saturday we are off around 11:00 am for our long legs home (4 hours to Tokyo and 9 hours more to Seattle, then 45 min to Portland, then a 3.5 hour drive to Bend weather permitting). The flight is long, but the price was too good to pass up... although now we are both thinking... what is another 900 if we could have cut out a stop in Toyko or a direct flight from here.... oh well.  We can do a lot with 900 :).   Joel made the observation that the Magic Tree House books say time travel isn't possible, but we leave Beijing on Saturday at 11:00 and arrive in Portland at 11:00ish on Saturday... so he thinks it is possible :).  Another fun explanation :).
 
We will continue to make updates to our blog, but much less frequently once we return home.  Mostly it will be about our adventures (4 kids, how can there not be something exciting going on... like the time Olivia found a small hole on our scale and got her finger stuck... and it took us almost 30 minutes to figure out how to get it out...).  We covet your thoughts and prayers as we adjust to homelife, specifically that Josiah will attach to his immediate family.  That is the downside of having an easy trip so far, we both think the attached process will be much more difficult time then we had with Olivia, she was a tough trip/transition for the first month but easy since then.  As such, we are limiting our overnight trips for the next couple of months, limiting having family staying over, and limiting guests to our home to a short quick visits, and limiting our out and aboutness.  It sounds odd, but it is not a reclusive process, rather a process highly recommended by attachment experts.  Also April and I are the ones responsible for feeding, discipline, basic needs, etc, sorry girls but you can't carry Josiah around, just Mommy and Daddy.  This is a "fun" process for both April and I as we raised our other kids more Love/Logic and Babywise methodology, so it can be a challenge for us when we desire our children to be independent rather than dependant, then when adopting we need to raise them differently while at the same time keeping the homelife "fair" for all the kids.

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Official

Well, it is officially official according to the US government.  We completed our anti-climatic swearing in ceremony at the consolate along with 29 other families.  Tomorrow we recieve our "brown packet" to take back to the states.  A couple of families are heading out tomorrow night and we are a bit jealous since we wait until Friday morning for our flight to Beijing.
 
This morning we went to a zoo.  It was interesting to see the variety of animals there.  They especially had a lot of different monkeys.  Some of the cages were kind of sad for the animals - they looked very bored.  But then there were some beautiful spacious areas for other animals to roam.  Joel got to sit on a pony, and I got to hold a HUGE snake!  Josiah LOVED, LOVED, LOVED pointing out and "talking" about every single animal.  He was great at spotting the animals that were even a little hidden.  Apparently his eye sight is just fine.  We aren't really sure about his hearing yet, or if he just has "selective hearing."  He actually is doing better every day with his behavior.  He doesn't get upset quite as easily when things don't go exactly his way.  Joel and him are getting along great.  Joel is very patient with Josiah, and they just love playing together.  Josiah thinks Joel is the funniest kid in the world, I think.  Joel is having a great time being silly with our guide, Elvin.  Elvin is just about the best guide we have ever had.  He really goes above and beyond what he has to do and seems to really enjoy his job.
 
Tomorrow is pretty much a free day.  We will be sad to say goodbye to the other families that are in our travel group.  They have been a fun group to be with, and we all seemed to really click.
 
Hannah and Olivia, just a few more days until we get to see you!!!  We are so excited to give you both a huge hug, and we are so excited for you to meet Josiah.  You are going to love him!

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