First Camping Trip of the Year

New camper!

Collecting pine cones.

Drying off after falling in our water bucket!

The boy loves hiking!

Oooooo, campfire.........

First roasted marshmallow, Yum!

Hockey Rocks!!

Syd played on 2 teams for the hockey tournament this weekend,

6/under and 8/under.

The first of 4 6/under games was at 6am Saturday, well she actually played 5 games because one of the teams didn't have most of their players show up so she filled in as goalie for one of their games.  She made 3 goals on her team and saved 10 goals as a fill in, a shut out!

Her team won the GOLD!

On her 8/under team she was goalie for all 6 games. 

She is currently the NUMBER #1 ranked goalie out of nine teams!!!

She had 89 shots on her and only 22 made it through!

The SILVER MEDAL WINNERS!!  

These kids were fantastic!  Game number 6 was played at 11:00 last night, 3 of them had been at the arena since 5:30 am to play on the 6/under team.  Way to go Lightning!

We finally poured into bed at midnight last night and everyone slept in, Syd didn't get up until 10:00 and she is soooo tired and sore but so proud of her and her teams accomplishment yesterday!

Oh yeah, this little guy was at every game but the first one and did GREAT!!

Ambush in the Shower

Last week was not a fantastic week for my daughter.  She was great one minute and the next doing things that she knew would get her in trouble.  What the heck is going on?  I kept asking her if she wanted to talk about something, is there a problem at school, why are you purposely doing things you know are wrong? 

I don't know...
Nothing...

I know she was hurting about something, which was making me miserable because I just didn't know how to help. 

A friend of mine mentioned that her daughter (also adopted) had a tough time on Mother's Day.  After a talk with her, her daughter admitted that she had been thinking about her birth mother and after her mom said "That's ok!  I think about her sometimes too"  all was right with the world again.

Ah Ha!  That must be it!  So since Syd is always asking the deep questions in the car on the way to some where close by, which by the way I think she does on purpose so she can escape quickly, I decided to change tactics and ask her a question while she was climbing in the shower.   Can't escape from that!

"Hey Syd, can I ask you a question?  Do you ever think about your birth mother?"

The look on her face was priceless, kind of like a deer in the headlights! 

I told her that it was ok to think about and to talk about her birth parents. I told her that I think about them sometimes too, and the look of relief on her face told me that that was exactly what she had been thinking about.

Now I'm not going to share our conversation but we had a great talk and she had lots of question that I answered to the best of my ability.  She understands that we know nothing about her birth family and that makes a part of her sad, she wishes she could invite them to a hockey game some time.

I learned that I just can't ask "blanket" questions, I need to be very specific with what I ask her.  If that doesn't work, ask a different very specific question until I ask the right one.  It's so important to talk to your kids and let them know it's ok to talk to you, but you might have to do a little digging in the shower.

Finally Final

In the state of Colorado, we have to go to court to basically confirm that Alex's adoption was finalized in China so we can get his US birth certificate.  After more paperwork, fingerprints and waiting, our court day was this morning.  We had a different judge than 7 1/2 years ago with Syd and he was super nice.  He said that Friday is his favorite day of the week because it's all adoption hearings.  The rest of the time he gets to put people in jail.  Syd thought that was pretty cool!

The hearing was short and sweet:

State your name, address, son's name, son's birthday... x2
Congratulations, all done :-)

With Syd, we had to answer all kinds of questions before the Congratulations part so we were expecting to be there a while.  I think we were in the court room about 10 minutes, then we dropped off Alex's file to get his birth certificate.  That took about 1 minute!  So we had plenty of time to go to breakfast with Oma, Opa and MaaMaa before taking Syd to school.

Loving running around!

Beautiful.

Just hangin'

James' turn.

Me making a face at Syd, she clicked the camera just in time!

Finally final.

Mother's Day

Started Mother's Day yesterday with coffee and a pedicure with my mom.

This morning I read the Sunday paper in bed--all by myself!

Breakfast of waffles and strawberries, also in bed plus the gang.

Beautiful necklace from Wheat and Wildflowers  (the wo ai ni double).

A certificate for a massage. 

Alex napped, I napped. James and Syd did some hockey stuff.

Went on a 6 mile bike ride.

Glass of wine, dinner on the porch, kids digging holes in the yard :-)

Perfect!

Run With Timber

Syd's school PTO does a fund raiser every spring called Run With Timber.  The kids get to run laps with the school mascot, Timber (a big creepy looking wolf), and their teachers, I get to make tic marks on the kids so we know how many laps they run.  Syd did 12 laps this year which equals about 1 1/2 miles and Alex ran about 3 laps :-)

It's so great to see little man running with his big sis!  He's in the brace about 19-20 hours a day and we're doing stretches on his feet everyday.  When he's out of the brace he pretty much doesn't stop moving, he takes everything at a run with a lot of chatting to boost him along (he never stops talking either :-)

Syd has been moved up to the 8 and under hockey team--finally!  She get to be goalie at the tournament this weekend and is SUPER excited!  She also got picked to be the Lightning Player of the Month in the league newsletter!  We're so proud of her!

Out of the blue thoughts of an 8 year old...

Driving to swim lessons...

Syd:  Mom, why do people cry?

Me:  Well, you cry when you're hurt or sad or even when you're happy.

S:  Like when you and daddy cried when we got Alex?

M:  Just like that.

S:  I didn't cry when we got Alex.

M:  That's ok, I know you weren't very thrilled with Alex at first and that's ok too.

S:  You guys were happy because you finally got to go and save him.  (said with much eye rolling)

(WHOA!  Did my daughter just tell me we saved her brother by adopting him???)

M:  We absolutely did not save your brother or you!  Some families that adopt may feel they are saving a baby by adopting them, but me and daddy adopted you and your brother because you are ours.  You have always been our family!!

S:  But you didn't know us before you saw our pictures, how can we have been yours?

M:  You're right that we didn't know you before but we knew that our kids were living somewhere in China until we could bring you home.  We knew you were ours before we ever saw your picture and loved you both even more when we did see your pictures.

S:  That was cool when we saw Alex's picture, I love him.  Can I have hot cocoa when we get home?

There is sooo much that she thinks about and turns over in her thoughts before she can talk about it.  I wondered where she got the idea that we were "saving" Alex because that is certainly not how we view our family.  James pointed out that people are always saying "How lucky Alex is that you adopted him so he can get the care he needs to fix his feet."  That does sound a lot like we "saved" him from a life of crooked feet, doesn't it?  How sad that my daughter has been thinking that we are a family because we wanted to "save"  a baby.

Guess what people, James and I are the lucky ones to be the parents to 2 beautiful and wonderful kids who happen to be from China. 

We "saved" no one, we created a fantastic family through adoption!