Baseball season 2010

Last summer I told the boys they could pick 2 sports to participate in for the year. They chose soccer and baseball (I did not include Tae Kwon Do and dance). [A] was the only one who ended up doing baseball since [I] was busy in dance. Let's just say that if you think baseball is boring--T-ball is 10x worse! I'm not the only one who thinks so, [A] seemed to agree. I give you exhibit A:

Now it looks like [A] is busy chasing the ball, but no, he is just playing in the dirt. When I asked him why he kept laying down in the dirt, he replied, " 'cause I'm bored." So instead, he would pretend he was sliding to catch a ball. To be honest, it wasn't all boring. [A] had some fun. As proof I give you exhibit B, C, and D!

This time he actually is going after the ball (it's at his feet).

Up to bat!

Coming in to home base!

Baptism

[I]'s 8!

Can you believe it!? He turned 8 in April, but we waited until May when his Grandma and Grandpa T were coming. Due to when [D] could get off work, we were in Rome the weekend before his baptism. I would not recommend traveling right before a baptism because it was a little crazy getting everything planned when we got back. (It didn't help that our internet died right before we left for Rome.) But everything turned out beautifully! [D]'s foot was also healed enough that he was able to do the baptism without problem (something that would not have been possible in April). It was an added bonus that [T] became officially our daughter the same day. In fact, our adoption agency tried calling us with the good news during the middle of the meeting, but of course we weren't able to answer. It was definitely a very special day for our whole family!

A little pre-baptism advice.

All of us!

The Best Adoption News

We are pleased to announce to the world that we are now the proud parents of [T] Hatcher. Our adoption court date was today and we passed court, so now in the eyes of the Ethiopia and the world, we are officially her parents.

We are so excited!!! We will be traveling in July to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to pick up [T] and accomplish the immigration paperwork at the US embassy . We will be traveling from Italy to Ethiopia and then directly to the United States.

Thank you all for all of your prayers and support while we have been waiting for this day over the last 2 years. Please continue to pray for us as we wait for our appointment time with the US embassy.

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Adoption News

On April 5th we FINALLY received the police clearance that we've been waiting on since December of last year! That is the good news. It basically allows us to move forward in the adoption process again. Now we need a court date. Before, parents weren't required to be present at the court, but as of May 9th that will be changing. We were hoping for a court date before then, but it is now May 2nd, and we still haven't heard anything. It just doesn't look like that will happen. There is a possibility that we will be able to get a waiver since we have already been out to visit [T]. once. Otherwise, we will be visiting Ethiopia an extra time--one more time for the court date and then 2 months later to pick her up. We are really hoping to hear soon when our court date is so we can make plans for the summer. And really we just want to bring [T] home. In August it will be a year since we received our referral, so we have definitely been waiting a long time for this. Here is a more recent picture of her. She is getting bigger and we want her to be getting bigger before our eyes, and not simply through photos!

D's injury

When [D] came home with his ruptured Achilles tendon, it started us on a long road of rehab. First we had to get surgery scheduled. These first two pictures are the bruising on [D]'s ankle from the injury.

It was pretty gross at the doctor's office going from the doctor's office to the casting office. His foot just jiggled at the end of his leg when he hopped on his crutches. You could just see that it wasn't attached to anything inside. I was going to video it, but then I thought better of it since it was really disturbing.

A week after that doctor's visit, we went in for surgery. This is the boot [D] came home with.

This boot was so big that [D] couldn't even get pants over it. He had to wear shorts the whole time--even to church. He had this on for 2 weeks after the surgery.


Here is [D] a couple of days post-op. You can tell it was a couple of days because he's smiling. Those first 2 days were rather uncomfortable for him. I dragged a twin mattress down from upstairs and put it into our storage room on the first floor next to the bathroom. That is where [D] stayed for the first 3 or so days post-op since he wasn't allowed to go upstairs where our bedroom is. He was only allowed out of bed to go to the bathroom--to which he mostly crawled since the change of pressure when standing up really hurt his foot.

Some things we did while D was gone

D was gone for a little over 2 months at the beginning of the year. We had to entertain ourselves somehow--here are a few of the things that we did.

K seems to think that adequate winter clothing includes a hat, coat, gloves, and boots--pants completely optional.

I had a whole roll of paper and A. and K. made some beautiful murals!

K. will do anything for the chance to play in water. I've had to become very creative to find ways to let him play without making huge messes. I'm not all that successful since our bathroom is flooded at least once a week. Thank goodness our house is all tile!

Mom caught sleeping on the job.

Where's my children?

Oh, there they are!

Our Latest Adventure

So. . . D was supposed to be back from a 2 month TDY in the States last Wednesday. First the jet he was flying in broke and they had to return to Las Vegas. The next day they tried again and made it to Shaw (South Carolina), but the jet was broken once again. The next attempt to come home was delayed because the re-fueler to get over the ocean broke down.

Then came the phone call--from the emergency room. D had ruptured his Achilles tendon. Yes, it's a 95% tear. We spent a stressful day trying to find out if he would come home for the surgery or stay there. Well, he has gotten to come home, although the flight home was not great (every flight was delayed and thus he missed every connection). Although D tells me flying with your foot in a splint was horrible, he did get to go through all the airports in a wheelchair, and thus go through all the secret passageways of the airports.

The next phone call I got was to tell me that the base surgeon was out of town. That person thought the surgeon would not be back until the 20th or so, but luckily the surgeon will be back on Tuesday. It's still a much longer wait between injury and surgery than it should be, but I think I would have gone mad with worry if D had the surgery in S. Carolina with no one to help him.

So, I guess I will post an update after Tuesday when we know more about when the surgery will be, etc. What we can definitely count on is at least 6 months of rehab. D has never broken a bone or seriously sprained anything, so I guess this is his way of making up for it. As for the deployment coming up . . . we don't know how this will effect it, but I'm sure we'll find out soon.
(I'll post a picture of gimpy D soon!)