Precious Family Times - who can beat it!

Well, it is cooling off a little here. We are out of the triple digits and into the 80's and 90's. Last weekend we even had what the weather man called a cold front with high temperatures only at 87 degrees :) Is that really a cold front??? Well, for us Arizonans we get excited about temperatures like this. The best part is that the kids can play outside again. Most mornings they are out there from about 6 AM to 8 AM. Then we eat dinner outside on our patio every night while the weather is nice (it saves on a lot of clean up). After dinner, its game time - and I mean serious game time. The kids get on their jerseys or sports



clothes and play a game of football or baseball. It is so fun to see them build such great memories with their Daddy. Even Jacklyn gets some action when Javi passes the ball off to her and then sweeps her up and plows through the defensive line for a touch down. Tonight, for a change, we made a fire in our fire pit and drank Dominican hot chocolate and did our worship/Bible time around the fire. You can see how cold it is since Joanna is just in her diaper and Julia has a tank top on :) and then Jordan put on his snow hat and ski goggles - but hey - we
can't let fall pass us by. (You have to click on this picture and check out Jordan's gear)

Still pressing on

Someone asked in the comments if we were still pursuing our Zambian adoption with Faithful Adoptions. Yes - we are. We are in a waiting game either way. We sent in our i600A quite a while ago and our homestudy was finished a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, our homestudy agency is just now sending it in this week. Now we just wait for clearance from the government for a 171H (I think). I have seen some come back extremely quickly, in just a few weeks, and others take a few months. For all of you adoption savey people out there, there is no dossier or any other paperwork required for Zambia (at this point). Our agency should receive official registration soon which will allow them to start facilitating adoptions in Zambia. You see, we have to wait anyway - so we just pray and wait on the Lord that this will all work out in His timing. We would love to have our boys by the end of this year, but that may be wishful thinking -not sure. Everything considered, this still may be one of the fastest, simplest programs. We just started the process at the end of June and already have all of our paperwork in - Praise God.

Nieces and nephews

Felipe, 4 yrs old, is in the cowboy hat and is brothers with Junior, 5 yrs old, who is holding the cup with the caterpillar in it and has hair. Charina, 16, is with her brothers Aneudis, 13, Armin, 6, and Brian, 10 (Stefany,12 is also their sister and she is the one holding Joanna). We wanted to bring Junior and Brian home with us - they would make perfect brothers for Jordan. All of the kids in these pictures do not have a stable family. They are just taken care of by different aunts or family members, but aren't they beautiful!

Pig roast and Family

Our Dominican Beauty

Like I said, Joanna did great on the trip. She just tromped around everywhere and explored everything. She gave everyone that passed by a big loud, "HOLA", and she loved all of the chickens running around and the 2 big stinky pigs. Of course her aunts couldn't resist putting rollers in her hair and the morning before we left we found a Haitian girl to put braids in her hair.

Back from the dead

I feel like I am "back from the dead" :). We had a great quick trip in the Dominican Republic. I wanted to bring 3 or 4 of my nephews home with us, but it is not that easy. The day after we got home I checked and I was indeed pregnant as I had suspected. Then a few days later I started to have high fevers - up to 103.3, along with other weird symptoms like severe eye pain, back pain, tingling tongue, headaches etc. My mom took the kids and fed us most days which really helped. Then on Wednesday night I went to the ER because the palms of my hands and bottoms of my feet were bright red and burning and itching as if fire ants were eating me alive. After drawing a lot of blood and phone calls to the center for disease control, the doctors were excited to announce that I had Dengue Fever. This is a tropical disease from mosquitos. These doctors had not seen a live case in the US before and thought that it was pretty exciting. The bad news for me was that there is no treatment. They gave me benadryl, steroids, IVs and Vicadin but nothing helped the pain or the red reaction. It is a nasty disease that does not respond to anything and the pain was so extreme that my body was shaking. The good news is that I am immune for life to that strand of Dengue, but there are 3 other strands and if I get one of those it will likely be more severe and include internal bleeding. My fever is now gone and so is most of my itching, however, I am extremely weak and Thursday night I started to miscarry the baby. I know that that is for the best because there is no way that my womb was a healthy place for that little baby. I was concerned the whole time. What a rollercoaster of emotions in one week!

I am thankful that I was in the US with my family's help and the comforts of home when all of the fevers started and I am so thankful that Joanna did not get sick at all. She was such a trooper and everyone in the DR just loved her!