This is how they felt about Legoland being closed!

San Diego

We took a 3 day vacation to San Diego that turned into a 5 day vacation. We saw all of our relatives that live there an went to a Science Museum/ Balboa Park. We planned on going to Legoland with some tickets my cousin gave us (Thanks Kris), but when we got to Legoland on Tuesday it was closed Tuesday and Wednesday. We had planned to go home to AZ on Wednesday, so this meant we had to stay until Thursday to go to Legoland. Luckily my grandma let us stay at her house an extra couple of days. It was perfect going there in the middle of the week, when most kids are in school (this is a great benefit of homeschooling - we take breaks when everyone else is in school). We rarely waited in a line and the few times that we did, we never waited longer than 5 minutes! Often times, we just stayed on the ride and they let us ride 2 or 3 times in a row since no one else was waiting. What a blessing of great family time that we really needed! We got home around midnight and all of our kids traveled so well. We read an adult book about Ethiopia, There Is No Me Without You, the entire way to San Diego and then they slept and sang most of the ride home to AZ.

Jordan is 7!

Jordan turns 7 on December 1. Enable the speaker icon if you want to hear some fun salsa music.

Thanksgiving and family stuff

We had a great Thanksgiving with family and our new niece, Elizabeth. She is warming up every day and is never short on smiles. She still likes to be near her mom and/or dad, but she was happy not to be held constantly. She spent a long time sitting at a little table feeding a bottle to her baby doll and speaking Chinese baby talk to her. It was sweet.

Joanna flies free until she turns 2 so she often flies to San Diego with Grandma. Today they will go there together again. She loves the special time with Grandma and visiting her great grandparents and great aunts. We get a little break from the messes and it is amazing how much we get done without her :) - but we will all miss her terribly - we always do. She makes life so fun. She is always saying something new and funny. Jacklyn and Joanna have really become buddies and play/sing together most of the day while the kids do school. It is really precious to see their relationship developing.

Our sweet Elizabeth

We are so proud of our new little niece/cousin Elizabeth Hui Ling. She is just a doll and bonding so well to her parents. We are getting excited for her to come home. Is she beautiful or what! Please pray for her adjustment to so many new things (including their big dog) and especially for my sister as I am sure the first few weeks will be overwhelming with jetlag, 3 kids 4 and younger and adjustments for everyone. What a blessing from the Lord!

I-71H is here

Our 171H arrived in the mail tonight. That is our final approval that we were waiting for from the US immigration. Javier just walked through the door with the mail and started reading the form out loud amidst the hecticness of getting dinner served. I stopped and said, "What? Let me see that." (Javier is always joking, so I never know whether to believe him) Once I saw it I told the kids that we can now officially adopt. They all cheered and Julia (5) said, "EXCUSE ME, CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? Let's give 3 cheers to God" Then everyone started the hip, hip hoorays. It was so fun and just an outburst of sincere joy. Now we are waiting on the Zambian government and our agency.

Family night at Sonic

On Oct. 31 every year Sonic has $.29 corn dogs and free ice cream for kids in costume. That is a deal we can not pass up since each kid costs us less than $1. When Javi called that he was on his way home, I told the kids to get some dress up clothes on for Sonic. This is what they came up with. Joanna looked so cute with her fake hair and long dress. Janae is a Moroccan lady, the 3 other girls are princesses and Jordan is a football player.

My dearest husband

Here is Javi's "costume" today. His name tag says " All That" - those aren't his sunglasses either, but he doesn't own any so he found these and said he needed them because all the guys who think they are too cool where sun glasses.


OK - those of you who know my husband know that he is loud and crazy and always joking. He can actually be kind of stern and quiet and reserved before he is comfortable with someone, but usually he struggles to be serious. This picture shows his confident and silly personality. We don't do Halloween in our home, we just have a fun family night, but he couldn't resist dressing up for work today. Who do you think he is? He is "All that and the bag of chips". Ever since he was learning English he would learn a new phrase and say it over and over until he found a new one. I don't know if it is the second language, but he thinks it is so funny. Well according to the kids and me, we do think he is "All that and the bag of chips" :)

Actually, I have to share how proud I am of Javi. He came here at 17 to play baseball and played a couple of years in the minor leagues and didn't make it to the big leagues. When we were first married at 19/20 yrs old, he was working 2 jobs as a cashier at a grocery store and a cashier/stocker at a drug store. A far change from his dreams of making it big, but he never looked back and just worked hard at his new job. His English improved and he moved up to night stocker and then a low level manager, often working 70-80 hour weeks between the 2 jobs. When our first daughter was several months old, he took a pay cut to be a manager at a cleaning company so that he could be home more. He has really learned on the job and become the second highest manager in AZ for this cleaning company. This year he was a key person in securing more than 10 million dollars in business, including a contract to clean Sky Harbor Airport. He is not in sales, but he has been selling a lot of business the last few years. He taught himself how to build, fix and use computers better than most and he never even used a computer until he was about 19 years old. He never went to college either.

Besides this, he is an amazing father who teaches his children the Bible, trains them in baseball, cooks, mops, helps a lot with the kids when he comes home from work and always puts them to bed. He is a loving husband, at times too loving - if that is possible :), who always tells me I am even more beautiful when I have gained a few pounds (I lucked out there :)). He has also learned to be a wise investor of our money (which is good for anyone, but especially for someone who grew up very poor and never learned about $ management). I am so proud of him also because he completed 2 1/2 years of a rigorous Bible/pastoral training center at church. It amazes me how he can read and study the Bible and theological books so well in a second language. Those of you who know a second language know how it is very different to speak a language than it is to study at a high collegiate level in it.

It is funny because every time we go back to his country I hear all of the stories of how he got into so much trouble as a kid and they are all so surprised at how he turned out. They always say that America really changed him, but we know and share that it is his relationship with Christ that changed him. Of course, we have our share of struggles because we are two sinners, but I really do love and respect this man. He is more than I could have hoped for.

Off to China to get us a niece

So my sister and her husband left early this morning to go to China to get their daughter. I had butterflies in my stomach this morning thinking about them, so I can't imagine how they feel. First, they are going to volunteer at a special needs orphanage that they support before they join the other group of families also adopting. They actually will not get Elizabeth until Sunday I think - but still, they are very close. You can check in with their trip on http://embracingelizabeth.blogspot.com/ .

What crazy big families do!

We are still waiting on the Zambian government - no news yet. There are supposed to be important meetings tomorrow and next week. We are hoping that those are the last of the "important" meetings and that things will get moving soon.

OK - so while we wait we are preparing and organizing, trying to figure out how a family of 9 can function well in our 4 bedroom house. For us, the beds are not a problem. All of our kids would sleep in 1 bed if we let them. The problem is more with the clothes, shoes, toys and messes. These new houses now a days really scrimp on the kids' closets. Clothes for 4 girls was just not going to fit! We have gleaned ideas from other large families, especially that large family that I am sure you have seen on TV, the Duggars, who have like 18 kids (no we are not their groupies, but we too are a large Christian family, homeschool and name our kids with "J" names). SO . . . . I found some clothing racks at a garage sale and my dad hung closet poles and a shelf all along one wall and we moved all of the dressers into what used to be our nursery and . . . voila. . . we now have one big closet room. It stores all of the clothes for our 7 children. The beauty of this is that there are never clothes on the floor in their rooms anymore. Yes, I already have clothes for the boys - some handed down to us and others from garage sale - of all sizes from 3 months to 5 yrs old. I also included 2 pictures of the boys' room. I just found that Pottery Barn surf crib bedding last weekend at a garage sale. It goes perfectly with Jordan's surf/baseball room.

Extreme Makeover

I thought you would enjoy seeing our littlest's daily morning makeover - the pictures say it all.

To the ends of the earth

For those of you that don't know us well, we have desired and prepared for several years now to go do work overseas. Many have asked if we are still thinking about going to North Africa to work at a physical therapy center for disabled children, or if adopting has stopped us from that pursuit. Adopting has not changed our desire to minister overseas at all. We feel like it has been a call on our lives for a long time and we do not believe that our call to adopt or raise a large family conflicts with our call to go to the ends of the earth. In fact, many more experienced Christian workers have greatly encouraged us and told us that having a large family can actually give us great credibility and respect in other nations.

Our desire stems from scripture and our love for Christ. We understand that we are only saved by God's grace. He sent His son Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus paid the price that we should have paid and God provided Him as the perfect sacrifice to be a substituiton for us. We rejoice in that truth because we can live in the freedom of Christ, knowing that we are no longer in bondage to sin. We can never do enough good works to get to heaven or to deserve forgiveness. Even the very "best" humans and nicest people fall miles short from the holiness that God requires. Jesus was the only perfect one, and we can only enter the presence of the most holy God when we are covered with the righteousness of Jesus. How can we be covered with His righteousness? We must confess with our mouths and believe that Jesus died and was raised from the dead and accept him as Lord of our lives. When you realize that you are a sinner and can never be good enough, the forgiveness that you receive through Christ's ulitmate sacrifice becomes so amazing and precious. The joy is uncontainable and for that we give thanks!

Because of this joy and thankfulness, we do good works and we desire to obey God's word. But we do not do the good works and obey him out of obligation, fear or personal gain. The good works may look the same, but the difference is that a Christian's motivation is strikingly different from others' motivation. The Bible also speaks of this life being just a vapor. It also tells us that our work is to go and tell the good news of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. We feel like the more that we treasure our salvation and are in awe of it, the more we desire to go show love to and tell the good news to those who otherwise would live and die with never having a chance to hear. If our life is a vapor, then how can we cling to our worldly comforts of America and ignore God's call to go? Sure we/you can be a testimony here, but there are thousands of churches, thousands of Bibles, hundreds of radio broadcasts, and thousands of Christians here. What about the thousands of people groups that have no witness, no Bible, not even any scripture in their own language? God said His word would be preached to all of the nations and then the end will come. We say and we sing that we can't wait for Jesus' return, we even pray it in the Lord's prayer, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. " If we really want His kingdom to come, are we fullfilling His great commandment, His will, here on earth? Is our heart really like God's? His heart is for the people of all nations - IS YOURS? Lord make our hearts more like yours!

Geography and homeschooling

We had 2 funny geography lessons this week - one from our 5 yr old and one from our 3 yr old.

Jordan was studying and locating the eastern United states. He came to Pennsylvania and Julia (5) immediately said, "I know! That must be where we get all of our pencils from!" No - she was not joking. I think homonyms really confuse her- or maybe we should call it creative thinking :)(see the post about hymns)

Then Jacklyn (3) saw me making a coffee drink and she said, "Yuck, I don't like coffee!" I jokingly said, "Daddy and I both like coffee so where did you come from?" She said, "I came from the same place you did - RUSSIA!" I said, "what???" She said, "Russia - let me show you on the map." She ran over to our kitchen table where we have a large map displayed on it under a clear table cloth. She pointed right to Russia. I was so surprised that she knew where it was, but the kids constantly sit around the table at meal times and school time and locate different countries and quiz each other about the different countries all on their own. I still am confused why she thinks we came from Russia though!??

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!