Good times!

Here is Will having a good ol time getting his teeth cleaned at the dentist. This was his second visit at the dentist since coming home. He was a natural again, and I'm proud to say no cavities this time either!!

I have to share a Willardism(what we call the funny things Will says around here) Today Jeffrey was working on our taxes. He was getting toward the end and I'm looking at our refund on the top of the computer screen. Well, that adoption tax credit was giving us back more than we thought and so I walked up to Will as he was on the Mac computer with Jaymie making some sort of dance video and I said, " Will, you were practically free!" He went on to reply yeah mom, I know I'm 3, I'm not 4 yet. Obviously he thought I said he was practically 3. Jacklyn and I have a couple more Willardisms to share...that is for another post.

an evening out

When Jeffrey is out of town for the week, the kids and I like to go out one night just to get out of the house and help the evenings go by a bit quicker without Jeffrey around. So.....since APPLEBEES has 99 cent kids meals M_W and I had a 5.00 off coupon, we decided to go out last night for dinner. We were also celebrating the kids cavity free mouths from our dentist visit ealier that afternoon. I'll post photos of Will in the dentist chair later. He is a natural.

eleven

Yesterday marked our 11 month anni. of being home with Will. It is absolutely amazing at how far this little guy has come in the time he has been home!

Bowling fun

Here are the photos of the pure Wisconsinite past time! BOWLING.........Take note of the beautiful carpeted walls. You walk into a bowling ally and you feel like you have walked into a time warp.

wordless Wednesday

Help for Haiti

My heart is breaking for Haiti........I hope the site below will maybe push someones heart to adopt. I pray the U.S. is able to streamline these adoptions. Go to the website below to read up on it.

http://www.christian-alliance-for-orphans.org/

budding artist

Will drew this after I read him a book. Can you guess which book just by looking at the photo? If you guessed the very hungry caterpillar.. you're right. I was pretty impressed with the detail:)
Today we are headed to the bowling alley. Yes, a very Wisconsin thing to do to pass the time in the winter months. It will be Wills first exposure to the sport of bowling besides the bowling on the Wii, which he seems to like a lot. Well, any sport with a ball Will is attracted to. Stay tuned for some lovely photos in the bowling alley. After bowling, the Cowboys are on TV. so I think it is going to be a daddy/son game time:) Jeffrey will have Will's jersey on him and his own Cowboys jersey on. Will gets a kick out of wearing the same kind of shirt as his dad.

Wordless Wednesday

Losing calories

I now burn more calories walking Oscar as Will wants to be pulled in his sled through the cornfields when I walk Oscar. I wont be surprised if Will starts yelling "mush mom mush" as I pull him. Will also likes to scoop up the snow and eat it as we make our way through the snow. In frozen or liquid form........Will loves water!

Jaymie must have climbed into bed with Jacklyn last night. This morning I heard Will stirring upstairs, he called my name as I had already gotten up from bed and was downstairs, and then I heard him pitter patter across the hall from our room to Jacklyn's room. A few minutes later, Jeffrey went upstairs and told me to bring my camera. This is what we saw. I could watch them sleep for hours, but of course I have too much to do when they are sleeping. Bagherra and Oscar love sleeping with warm bodies!

Wordless Wednesday

melting hearts.......

A couple times a day, well, maybe more than a couple times,I lean over to Will and say, "I didn't get my kiss today" and if he is in the mood..........he will give me a smooch. Well, today I got home from work after being off since before Christmas and he came up to me and said "Mom, I didn't get my kiss today and puckered up" Melted my heart. He just may have missed his mama after spending weeks together without being apart.

Rough life.....

He has it rough doesn't he? Will got a leapster 2 from Santa. I thought it would be a little too hard for him....he proved me wrong. He calls it his "Will size DS". Now he will leave his sister's DS alone:) He likes playing a memory game we downloaded on it. I like the drawing and coloring game.

The newest addition to our family......well we're fostering him so he is just here for a while. His name is Twix. Oscar, our boxer, is fascinated with him! Will and JC are loving having a little rodent.

A night out.....

We took a night out this week to take Will to his Ethiopian Restaurant in Milwaukee. The food is soooo good. I just wish it wasn't so far away so we could frequent it more often.Will diggin into his Ethiopian food. He was lovin it. Still hasn't forgotten how to eat it.
Jacklyn acquiring a taste for the injerra bread.
The picture speaks for itself.....

Jaymie won't taste the bread, but she will play with it and rip it into pieces for Will.

Happy New Year

Well, this family made it til Midnight, but I believe we were all asleep by 12:10. The kids are still sleeping, but Jeffrey and I are enjoying our tea while we both do some computer work and take advantage of the kids sleeping. Jeffrey has been off since the 23rd and we have been going non stop with the list of to dos we created. It feels great to chalk them off as each one is accomplished. Our biggest list item has been transferring all of our info from the hard drives of my old laptop and our old desktop to the new addition to our family..........imac. Yes, our desktop was on its last leg, and my laptop died about 6mo ago, so we were using Jacklyn's laptop and Jeffrey's work computer. We visited the apple store and I was sold after they showed me it only had one plug and the rest was wireless. Then I was really sold after I experienced the iphoto program. We have been going crazy organizing all our photos. The kids just love the kid pix program and the photobooth gadget on the computer. Will is a wizard with the mouse. His ability to catch on to things continues to amaze me. The kids got the wii for Christmas and Will bowled a 170 his first game. He was on fire and now has spare and stike in his vocabulary. We have also experienced skype for the first time and have been able to skype relatives in other states which has been fun. Jacklyn will be using this often with her cousin in N.C.

2009 was most definitely a year of change for our family. It brought with it the gift of Will and the journey to Ethiopia. The trip to Ethiopia and the adoption of Will has forever changed the way I see things, as I'm sure it does for many who visit a third world country...The orphan situation weighs heavy on my heart, it overwhelms me, but at least I can feel we did a little and say there are 4.7 million orphans minus Will. Is there another adoption in our future? The girls would like to see that, and a part of me would love to do it again to. This time a waiting child, or special needs... but we will see what 2010 brings. I will continue to be an advocate for adoption and hope our story will put that push on others hearts like I had some 2 years ago. As it says in Proverbs 24:12.....Once our eyes are opened we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act.

I'm going to try to attach some photos from photobooth as I continue to figure out our imac... the possibilities are endless with this amazing machine....Happy New Year!

The photos above sure are lovely heh? I just noticed the background on one photo is maroon behind our antique tennis rackets and the other background is brown behind the rackets.....yes painting our den was on the list.....and we got to chalk that off the list:) I should add here that Will can take these pictures of himself all by himself. He will sit in the computer chair for 20 minutes at a time taking pics of himself. Some of them are pretty scary looking, and some make you laugh so hard you start crying. Thankfully they are easy to delete. We're lovin our imac.

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!