My little man turned 5 today!!

Where does the time go?? We celebrated Keaton's 5th Birthday today. He was in such good spirits all day and so excited about his birthday. Please enjoy some photos from his last five years!

Keaton not even an hour old! 2003

Daddy and Keaton only a few hours old. 2003

Daddy and Keaton 2 months old. 2003

Keaton on his First Birthday. 2004

Keaton 2 years old and the rest of the gang, Easter 2005

Keaton 3 years old after getting into mommy's mascara. 2006

Keaton as "Captain Jack Sparrow" 4 years old, 2007

Keaton enjoying his new gift from Mommy and Daddy, 5 years old 2008

Keaton and his Birthday Spinosaurus, 2008

Keaton and his yummy Birthday cake, Big 5 years old, 2008


We love you so much and you are such a good big brother to Yaya!!

Wordless Wednesdays

Monday, Monday, Monday

Back to the school week again.  This week will be no different than the rest; busy, busy.  This week we have school open houses, starting tonight with the middle school.  Preston seems to be doing much better this year.  His teachers said he has really matured and grown up over the summer and is taking his work more seriously.  We are three weeks into school so lets hope he keeps it up!!

Tomorrow night the younger boys have their open house.  They are very excited to show off some of what they have been doing so far in school.  

We also have many appointments this week including Ortho, Chiro and Yaya's appt at the Children's Hospital.  She will be going in for a post adoption evaluation.  There will be about 5 different doctors that specialize in different fields take a look at her and see how she is doing in all areas.  It should be very interesting and I think they will be surprised how advanced she is for her age.  The only concern will be her speech but heck she has only been hearing English for 2 months now so all and all I think it is okay.  There will be no needles involved so hopefully she will enjoy it.

I cant believe how beautiful it has been the last couple of weeks.  We have been spending a lot of time outside enjoying the summer weather that is still hanging around.  I took a tub of water outside the other day with a little cup and just let Yaya play with it.  We kept it filled with warm water and she really had fun.  She got pretty wet so towards the end she stripped down to her diaper.  We had fun getting our vitamin D for the day.

I am enjoying everyday as much as I can.  My hubby travels a lot for his job and he has been home for 2 months straight which has been awesome.  Family life is so much smoother with all these kids when both of us are home every evening.  Starting on the 29th it will be back to the airport for him.  I think he will be home only one full week in October so I better finish my honey do list for him!  I am not looking forward to it and I will be one exhausted Mommy!!  It becomes very challenging with school, boy scouts, cub scouts and sports.  Plus you really never get the down time and when everyone is finally sleeping you are so tired you want to crash too.  I am not a morning person so the morning school routine is the hardest for me when he is gone.  And if it has been a bad night with one of the kids then we are usually walking through the school door late!  So here's to one more week before even more craziness begins!!

Thank goodness it is Friday!

Everyone it still trying to get over this cold.  I cant believe how many boxes of Kleenex we have gone through the last week.  Not much new to report.  Ava received a care package from my hubby's cousin so enjoy the pictures of her and her new dress!

Also please keep the following family in your prayers, they are in China right now.  There daughter has the same heart condition as Ava and she has cleft lip and palette.  She is three years old and has not had surgery to fix her little heart.  They went to receive their daughter just like we did but one of the orphanage directors came out and told them that she was very sick in the hospital and dying!  I could not even imagine, they had no idea that she was so sick. You can read their story here.

What a week!

I tell my self I want to post more then the day gets away from me and by evening I am wiped out!! We are officially into our 2nd week of school and the boys are loving it. We were all done with summer break and it is so nice having a routine again even if we do have to get up at 6:00am every morning. Keaton loves his Pre-K class and his teaches rock!! We had a bad preschool experience last year so this year is going to be great, I can already tell.

Preston is in 8th grade this year his last year before heading to High School. I cant believe I will be the mother of a High School student it does not seem possible. He is really loving being the top dogs in the school and they will be the first graduating class of the new school building. We also get to take a trip to Washington DC this Spring. I cant wait, that is one part of the country I have never been to and I am sure it will be a blast.

Soren is my 5th grader this year. He has the most wanted 5th grade teacher in the school so he is stoked. Soren also has his best friend in his class again this year which is totally awesome for them. This is his last year before Junior High. Soren is also taking band for the first time this year. We just went out today and rented his trumpet. Five kids and a trumpet in the house, we are in trouble!! We have some crabby neighbors behind us that dont like kids or animals and have caused us a lot of grief the last 1 1/2 years so maybe this would be a good time to start practicing trumpet in the backyard!! hehe

Gavin is in 4th grade this year. He too has an awesome teacher. He loves school and is such a good student. He is our Honor Roll kid of the family. He was the most excited to get back to school and start the routine. Gavin is really loving the new school building and being back with all his buddies.

Keaton is my big Pre-K this year. He was old enough to start Kindergarten but we made the decision to wait one more year. He is going full day and loves it. We had him in half day the first week but it was really hard with Yaya nap schedule and driving back and forth three times a day was hard on the gas budget. We live about 7 miles one way from the school and there is no bus system. He is loving it and is having a blast.

Last but not least Yaya (Ava) is the only one home during the day. Right now is still warm and beautiful outside so we spend a lot of time out there during the day. She loves to roam around outside and gets upset if we have to come back in. For the most part she takes really good naps every afternoon for about 3 hrs. This is heaven and I can usually accomplish something or take a nap myself if it has been a rough night. She is such a busy girl and does not stop. She is into everything, every door, cupboard, basket, if it opens she is in it. She also climbs everything she can and enjoys giving mommy a heart attack when she almost falls. The boys were never like this so it has been very hard and I am wiped out by the end of every day! Yaya also had her ped cardio check up last week. She did not like that at all, poor baby was so upset. The Dr. said the repair looked good for her ToF but did have a leaky valve which he said was common for the way they do the surgery in China. So she will have to go back every 6-12 months and in about 3-10 years she will have to have another surgery to correct the valve. She has no restrictions which is good because she would not have it. Yaya also got baptized last week, she did pretty good and even gave the priest a high five when he held his hand out over her head and prayed.

Well this weekend we came down with our first colds of the school year. We had gone on a mini vacation for three days and all the kids were miserable. Everyone has had it except me, my body has been fighting it pretty hard, but I hope I am winning. I have been taking some natural meds and tons of vitamin C, Garlic, and Zinc. I know I probably dont smell really good right now but hey it is keeping it away and that is all that matters.

I am going to try really hard to keep this up more often. I am pretty new to this and do not have a big following but hopefully those that read enjoy it. :-)

Wordless Wednesdays

Ending Summer Vacation with a Bang!!

Daddy and Ava, chillin in the warm water.
The boys enjoying the Mummy tube ride.
Mommy and Ava hanging on the tube ride.
Mommy racing down the slide on the left.

Mommy and Ava having fun in the wave pool.

I cant believe school is finally starting next Monday.  It has been a long summer, my kids go to a Charter School and they were building a new school building this summer so lucky us we got 4 months of summer!!  All of their neighborhood friends have already been in school for a month and the boys have been bored to death!  Four months of summer is way too long.  But God knew what we needed with our trip to China this summer, if school would have started on schedule the boys would have been back in school 2 days after we got home.  That would have been a nightmare, I am so thankful we have had an extra month to settle in with Ava.  The kids are ready to go back even if they wont admit it. :-)

My brother has been with us all summer and was a great help with our animals when we were in China.  He was also great company when my hubby was traveling this summer with work.  Thanks Norm!  Yesterday we took him to the airport for his flight to Spain, he will be working in over 11 countries over the next 10 months in Europe.  He works for Feld Entertainment and is in a Disney Magic show, what a life.

Anyway, after we took him to the airport we took the kids out to lunch and then we headed to Water World for the first time.  It was the last day of the season and we never had a chance to check it out this summer.  We had an amazing time and four hours was not long enough.  Ava loves the water and enjoying all the rides.  We made the decision when we left that next year we will buy season passes and enjoy it many times next summer!!  The weather was perfect and in the mid 80's.  Everyone made the hour drive back home and we all crashed 15 minutes after walking through the door.

Enjoy the pictures at our wonderful day at the water park.....