MERRY CHRISTMAS

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Will today........... (above) now check out Will below..........amazing the difference in photos heh. doesn't he look so lost below and so healthy and happy above. I'm tellin ya, adoption is a wonderful thing:)

Will one year ago...................This photo was sent to us on Christmas Eve last year.....

What a difference a year makes.......It makes me cry that he was not with us last year and he didn't have me to snuggle him and his sisters to tell him how much they love him. Every night Will makes his rounds to his sisters beds to kiss them goodnight and say his I love yous. It is very adorable. Then he makes his way to our bed, snuggles up and slips into dreamland. No more nightmares, he is so attached and bonded to all of us. We are looking forward to Christmas morning with him and his eyes all aglow.

fun in the snow

Here is JC doing a balancing act with a snow chunk that the snowplow guy created by plowing all the snow on the road to the sides. These boulders were "KEY" in creating their first snowfort of the year under the pines in our cul de sac.

Will joins right in on the fun. The cold doesn't seem to affect him like I thought it would. He just goes with the flow... He was very interested in collecting the boulders and helping the snowfort gang create their home.

Climbing the snow mountain that Mr. Snowplow guy created

Jaymie pretending she got hit by Mr. Snowplow guy! Very funny Jaymie.

I won

After a failed attempt on EBAY, I was so sad that I did not win this necklace. I mean who else in this world is as excited about little Bill as I am? Apparantly someone as they got up at 5am and outbid me! I was so bummed when I lost the bid. So a few days later I went on EBAY again and found an EBAY store that sold these at a bargain price! I also could use the buy it now option:) When I told Jacklyn she said to me "MOM, you are NOT wearing that!" She thinks I bought it for me. So I played her game for a while telling her that I was going to wear it, and I couldn't wait for the mailman to bring it to me! Then I finally told her it was for Will, and she settled down a bit. Apparantly it is cool for Will to wear but not her mom! So my little man is getting his Little Bill necklace in his stocking! It will eventually end up in his memory box I'm sure!

Wordless Wednesday

decorating cookies

As part of "Christmas in Wales" the local bakery had a table set up for kids to decorate their own christmas cookie. Here is Jaymie flashing her smile before she got started frosting away.

Forget the cookie.........don't you just want to eat him up? I could, really I could :)

brave boy

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, Santa's not so bad second time around! We went to Christmas in Wales, our old stomping grounds on Sat. Santa was at the village hall and we gave sitting on Santa's lap a second try. Will had no fear, got right on his lap and had a little conversation. If at first you don't succeed, try again! I'll post more pictures of our afternoon in Wales. The kiddos had a lot of fun.

Snow day!!

The kids and I had our first "Snow day" today! It's always fun telling them to stay sleeping because there is too much snow to go to school. They get so excited that they can't contain themselves and don't take advantage of the extra sleep. When it is good packing snow, the kids have a good old time rolling snowballs all over the yard. Jeffrey left town early this am, so he escaped the job of shoveling the driveway........luckily my friendly neighbors came through for me and used their snowblower on our driveway. The snow is so heavy, I think I would have been out for weeks with lower back pain if I had to shovel it. Yes, we live in WI and do not own a snowblower. Crazy I know, but the house we lived in before this had a very short driveway and so we always shoveled it. We should buy one now because if we do, we will probably have a tropical rest of the winter and not have to use it. Anyhow, I'll post photos of Will in the snow later. He really likes it. He cracks me up walking around in his snowpants. He waddles around in all his snow gear.

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Conversations with Will

If you are by chance flying through Dubai for your adoption you will want to pick up this mug on the way to Addis as on the way back you will not have time! I almost waited to buy it because I did not want to hual it to Ethiopia, but something told me to get it when I was in the line at Starbucks before getting on the plane to Addis. Anyhow, I love my Dubai Starbucks mug with the camels on it. It sparked a converstion with Will this am, which I'll share as it shows how powerful reading to children is. Will asked me as he often does about animal noises, what a camel says as he pointed to my mug. Well, I was not too sure the sound a camel makes or even for that matter if I could immitate it. So I made a little spitting sound. He said "camels spit?" I said yes, I believe so, then he proceeds to go get his book, From head to toe byEric Carle flips to the picture of the camel and says, "they bend their knees too mama!" He remembered the info I had read to him a couple days ago. I've probably read this book about 5 times to him and he connected to it and referenced it for more info. He knew exactly where to go, and showed me what he knew and learned about camels in the book. I love that our little man loves books! He learns so much from them.

Mr. Brave...........

Oh, yeah...... I'm down with the Santa guy. No problem mama, I'll sit on his lap and tell him what I want. I like this red hat that he wears too. I'm glad we have matching hats.

Ummm wait a sec..........I didnt think he was this big! This big white beard kinda scares me. I'm not letting go of you Jacklyn....check out those clenched fingers!

Nope, still not letting go

OK, I'll give a little smile, but I'm not letting go! There will be no sitting by myself on Santa's lap. Not this year... maybe next year mama!

First visit with Santa

Tomorrow we head to the bank to see Santa. Yes, he stops at our bank every Christmas to visit with the kiddos! I know Santa visited Wills orphanage last year, but I'm not sure he had a clue who he was or if he was given some background knowledge of the guy before he showed up. Well, Will knows all about Santa now thanks to the girls and my reading about 35 books to him about Christmas. Tomorrow we will see if Mr. Brave is brave enough to go sit on Santas lap. He was not thrilled about seeing the giant Easter bunny in April... but heh he had only been here 2 mo in April. I'll be sure to have my camera ready if he crawls up on his lap. It will be interesting to hear what he says that he would like. Will would be happy if we wrapped him up a case of water! He is so darn easy to please. The girls, Jeffrey and I played Apples to Apples tonight and Will just colored on the ground by my feet on a huge piece of paper and every once in a while crawled up on our laps to check out the cards. He is watching Grease with the girls now. St. Nick comes tomorrow night, so Sunday morning should be fun as the girls and him open up their stocking for small little treats from St. Nick himself! It was such a hard Dec. last year, knowing our little man was half way across the world on Christmas. We are so blessed to have him now and are able to see the magic through his eyes!

Wordless Wednesday

Im still here!

Yep, Im still here. A trek up to MN, black Friday with the girls(up at 4am), spending the night at a waterpark, spending 1 night at my brothers in MN, driving back, unpacking, laundry, more shopping, decorating for Christmas, celebrating the beautiful girl aboves birthday,making classroom bday treats, and trying to ship off packages to destinations around the US and Christmas shopping. Whew. We had a great time up in MN visiting with my bro and his family. Will has come a long way with his car seat issues. He used to bite me (and I had bruises up and down my arm) when I restrained him in the car seat. He did awesome with the help of Jaymie and Jacklyn and a couple episodes of Little Bill. He is quickly learning his Christmas vocabulary and taking it all in. He loves to see the lights on houses and our tree. It will be so much fun having a toddler experience Christmas with us again:) I missed that! I'm on the hunt for the perfect First Christmas ornament for him. I have not had luck yet though. Jaymie as always got an early taste of Christmas having a Dec. 1 bday. My little girl is 9! She starts the next level in her gymnastics class tomorrow since she got her backhandspring.......she moves up! A little scary for me, as I am not thrilled seeing her flip around like she does. But she enjoys it and I am happy she is involved with that and basketball. Well off to get my 9 year old ready for school! Will and I have a big day of shopping ahead of us! Sorry for the delay in posts. I got several comments.....wondering where I was....( I don't ever publish my comments, but I get quite a few) and it is nice to know I have people tracking Will's progress with our family. I know I enjoyed reading the progress of toddlers when we were in our adoption process.

Attention span

Should I feel guilty that my son has an attention span of a 10 year old? Recently I was sorting beads from my girls bead box and taking out the beads with letters on them so I could put the alphabet in a gel bag for my kindergarten students at work. As I started the project, Will came over and layed down on the floor next to me and started sorting the beads with me. He sorted beads for 45 minutes. As he sorted the beads, I pulled out the letters of the alphabet from his beads to put in each bag. Also, His coloring pages are pieces of art! I got him a jumbo size coloring book from Target last week and he spends at least a half hour to 45 min on each page. He used to like to stick to one color, but he has expanded his color pallete now and uses several colors in his masterpieces! He also is pretty darn good at staying in the lines. I have set up a little coloring table for him in the kitchen because my kitchen table was constantly covered with markers, crayons and coloring pages. Now he has his own little area where he just lets his creative mind go.....

Friday evening

Jacklyn won her tennis tourney last weekend and is playing in another this weekend. We had her conferences last night and we couldn't be more proud of our 7th grader. She maintains a 4.2 gpa and is well liked by all her teachers. She works so hard and is so dedicated to her studies. 7th grade sure seems a lot harder than it was when I was in 7th grade. Heck, her math homework looks harder than the math homework I had in college. Speaking of college, I'm taking my first on line course to clear my credentials for another 5 years starting the end of Jan. I am anxious to see how the on line course is run and look forward to not having to leave the kids to drive in the snow to class at night. Jacklyn is playing tennis with her dad now while Will, Jaymie and I wait at home for them to get home with dinner after they are done practicing ! Jeffrey is bringing home Chinese:) Will loves all kinds of food as you can see from this past Wednesday photo. That was a full on chicken enchilada with all the fixins and he ate the whole thing. He is getting heavy and the kink in my neck is telling me I have to not hold him as much as I do. He is just so darn holdable though!!!

Wordless Wednesday

Another Zoo trip

What does one do when her husband leaves for the day to go to the Packer/Cowboy game and will be gone through Wed. night on business? Take her kids to the Milwaukee Zoo. I have always been impressed at how nice our zoo here in Milwaukee is. Will had been asking to see bats as he had his interest perked through a couple of Halloween books. So we decided to bring him to the zoo for some live bat viewing! Jaymie got to bring a friend and we all had a pretty good time. No crowds to work around either!

Will got to see MOTO MOTO actually move out of the water and walk up his exhibit!

Running from the gorillas to the giant fish tanks!

Will checking out a long necked turtle. He was quite interested in him!

The aquariums in this building are awesome for viewing fish and other creatures. Will learned quite a bit from this exhibit today.

Warming up in the USBANK sponsered entrance building. Do you like Will's beret? We couldn't find his winter hat, so he picked one of Jaymies.

He is not so sure about the gorilla. He would not let me put him down in the monkey house!

Jaymie and her dairy cow!

Jacklyn sportin her NC hat. She is already planning on going to UNC or Duke. I would prefer UNC as the tuition is just a bit less.

They all had a good time at the zoo!

Mama and her little man

Will took time out of his busy coloring schedule tonight to come and sit by me at the fire. Earlier in the week Jeffrey and Will collected kindling wood in our woods and now I have a huge pile on our patio to start up fires in the house in. We had our first fire of the cooler season in our fireplace last night. The wood Will collected made starting the fire very easy. What a hard little worker he is:)

Our budding artist

Will's pumpkin

Another drawing and coloring picture of Wills. I am pretty impressed at the amount of time Will can sit and color for. He loves markers and colored pencils and has been going through a lot of paper in our house. He has some great skills for a 3 year old.

Another drawing, I think he said this was a fish

ooooops, he ripped it. No worries though, he has about a million more drawings to create at my kitchen table. I think St. Nick is going to fill his stocking with glitter markers and water colors and all kinds of drawing supplies to encourage his artistic abilities:)

Will and Jaymie

I can't say enough about the relationship that Will and Jaymie have formed over the last 9 months. There is something about Jaymie that Will just can't get enough of. It is precious to watch them interact. Jaymie rose to the occasion of being a big sister and giving up her position of being the baby of the family. When these two are together they can be cuddling reading a book or building with legos or coloring together. Or they can be whipping around the house playing hide and seek like a whirlwind tornado. On Wednesdays evenings when Jaymie has gymnastics after school, Will misses her like crazy as he has gone over 8 hours without seeing her. Their reunion from being away from each other all day is quite a scene. Will is full of hugs and running toward Jaymie like you would see in a love story movie! I look forward to watching this brother / sister relationship grow over the years. They have 5 and a half years between them, and they get along great!, Well, they do have their moments. But for the most part their bonding and relationship is priceless. Sure make me want to adopt again:)

Will is a sponge

I am often asked how Will is doing with his language and his learning. He has been home almost 9 months now and you would never know that he spoke another language before he came home. He is very fluent in English and picks up new vocabulary every day. I am also proud to say that he knows all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds! He will spot letters in signs and will even see letters in things like an "x" in a chain link fence or will say m is w upsidedown. His love of books has been a great contributor to this. Through the books, his vocabulary grows and he sure remembers what you read to him as he makes connections from the books to his life. Whoever is lucky enough to be his kindergarten teacher is going to have it easy:)

Jeffrey starts coaching Jaymie's basketball team tomorrow and Jacklyn has a couple of tourney's coming up! Jeffrey continues to work on Jacklyn's tennis skills and she continues to excell with her dad as her coach. We are happy about that as it saves $$ on private lessons:) So, we have some busy weekends ahead of us. I'm hoping Will will be the waterboy for Jaymie's team, but I doubt it. He is going to want to be out there on the court with her. It might be a challenge for us to watch her games if he keeps trying to get out on the court:)

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzz

Two of Will's new favorite sayings that I believe he has picked up from our vocal almost 9 year old,Jaymie Claire, they are geeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzz and whats your problem? nice!

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, nice teeth Will! Gotta love what you find in the Halloween bin!

Friday evening

Jeffrey, the kids and some of their friends and I went to our churches "trunk or treat" where cars /vans had decorated their trunks and passed out candy as the kids admired the creative creations in the trunks.... It was nice having the cars so close to each other so the kids didn't have to walk so far from house to house so it was a nice warm up for what is to come tonight. After they trunk or treated the parking lot, we went inside for carmel apples, hot dogs and nachos...., then we went to a costume party. It was a fun filled day, and Im happy to say all kiddos are still sleeping:) A horse themed trunk...

A candy store themed trunk......Will was big into the sugar sticks...........me? not so much.

A graveyard... Once Will got candy from a few trunks he knew what was going on and had a good ol time filling his bucket.

I caught him eating his nutricious nachos. Yes, that was his dinner....

I am surprised we have not had our "DALLAS COWBOYS" pumpkin smashed here in WI. Big time hoopla going on now with Brett being at Lambeau Field tomorrow. The whole state will shut down at 3 tomorrow to watch the Vikings and Packers.... a good time for me to go grocery shopping...no lines

Wills bat pumpkin and Jacklyn's spider. Jaymie did the star cowboys pumpkin. She drew the star all by herself and came up with the idea. So proud of her creativity:)

Jacklyn in the bat ears and her friend Natalie enjoying the night together:)

Ms. Jaymie Claire and her friend Lindsey. I'm guessing there is going to be green all over her pillow case this am, as I did not wash her face after we got home last night.