Baking banana bread with the kiddos

Bella in her jumperoo~ She is wearing her new dress from her friend peepers. She looked so pretty. I just love this dress. THANK YOU CAROLEE AND PEEPERS..

Jenna and Megan getting ready to make banana bread. They had a good time putting everything in the bowl and mixing it up. Nice little mess that was, oh well it was fun. We made three loaves of banana bread and still have some left. Jenna is one of our granddaughters and she is visiting us this week. Her and Megan love to be together all the time. We call them double and trouble. They seem to find lots to get into. But we love them both dearly. We sure do miss Evan this week , he had to stay at home to go to school.

The kiddos waiting to make the banana bread. They had so much fun making the bread, then getting to eat some of it . I think that was the best part for all of them.

Bella in her stroller watching mom painting the front room or trying to paint the front room. Dad ended up helping and he doens't like to paint at all. I turned wrong and couldn't move my back was hurting pretty bad. But i sat on the couch for a few and then was fine and back to painting again. Still trying to work out the kinks.

We also want to thank Aunties Linda and Maddie, they sent a bag a neat things up for the kiddos. It was like Christmas again. The kids were so happy to get the gifts . Thank you Aunties~

Andrew lost his first tooth.

~Andrew lost his first tooth~ or mom pulled it out for him.
Andrew wanted the tooth fairy to come and leave him some money.

~Bella and Megan on the road again.

`Daddy feeding Bella with a spoon. Bella will eat really well from the spoon if her daddy is feeding her. She likes to tease mom and turn her head.

~Big brother Jake taking Bella walking. She did very good for her big brother.

~Deztany and Bella ~ This picture is so pretty of my girls.

Snow Day for the children~

McKenzie,Deztany,Andrew & Megan

Deztany ~looks like she is gonna get some air.

Trying there luck on the ice rink now.

Bella home with MaMa`

The children had a fun day out in the snow with Dad. I think Dad had just as much fun as the children. The children take a couple of chairs with them to push around the rink to help learn how to skate. They love to skate and sled and i think they like the hot chocolate at home after better.

Bella had her ultrasound on her heart and kidneys. They looked good but we are waiting for info: from Dr.Hardy the heart doctor and our Ped Dr. to affirm this. So we hope we will get that info: next week. Bella is doing really good with everything so far.

Happy 5th Birthday ~ CAMREN~

Camren , his daddy and Aubrey

Camren and Bella

Today is our grandson Camrens 5th birthday. We want to wish him a very happy birthday .Have a great day Cam's.We all love you very much!!!

Merry Christmas to our Serbian friends

We hope all is well and you have a Merry Christmas!!!!
Stay warm we miss you all.
I pray all the littles ones will have a great day today.
Someone over there give them a big hug from all of us.
We sure miss these little ones and would love to hold them again.
We will send out packages this week to the children.
Merry Christmas~` Sending love to all~

The love of a family

~ Trying to get Bella to feed herself~

~Maggie and Bella having fun in the play pen~

~Bella looking at her Daddy~

All things are possible when you have the love of a family.. We see that everyday anybody can and will make progress when you have a loving family to help you. We always want all of our children to feel loved always. We can see that with love Bella is blossoming . She is learning new things everyday. She is doing very well learning sign language, and learning how to talk. She is babbling a lot lately and very happy most of the time. She is a blessing to all of us, and so are all of our children. We are so happy to be the parents of 8 ~ children` some adults some little children still. We would love to add one more little girl to the family , but we will see how that works out in 2009.

Bella has had a few doctors appt:s she is doing pretty well. Her thyroid is off so she is taking meds for that. Her cbc's were not to good she will have more blood work done next week and start her shots all over again.

Bella went to see the Dietian, she went over Bella's diet that we are feeding her. We are doing great with this. We just need to get her to eat more foods from a spoon. But we try every meal to feed her some of her food from a spoon. She doen't like to eat from a spoon. She would rather just have her bottle and then be all done. We have tried tippy cups but she doesn't want any part of them. So we are trying slowly to change these things.

Bella is loving having lots of family to play with. She loves to snuggle and play with all the children. She has taken a bite out of most of us, but we hope to stop this. Bella is very head strong~ its her way or the highway. Boy does she fit into our family just perfect..I think everyone of us are like that. That is what makes us strong people.We are determined to do things our way and get them done. She will do wonderful with all of us.

We have an EKG on Bella's heart tomorrow and an ultrasound on her kidneys also. So we hope and pray all will go well with this.

~A reflection of a year gone by~

This is a reflection of a year gone by in our life.
We started out with having a baby fosterchild, she came to us on my birthday.That is Dec03,it was 2007. I went to the hospital and picked her up. I was so excited to be getting a new baby and on my birthday. I took all the baby items i needed to bring her home. She is so beautiful, dark hair and lots of it. She was a great baby, loved to be rocked and held. We enjoyed having a baby in the house again. When that was easy going any way. Our last baby ( Megan) she never slept and she cried all the time. She was born with drugs in her system and had to be fed every couple of hours. She was a whole 5 lbs 3oz. She was very small. But this new baby was pretty healthy and a calm baby . We so enjoyed her with us. We had her home with us for one week, i got to meet her birth~mom that first week. She was a very young mom early twenties. The next week we got a call from DFS.our babies birth ~mom had died. I was devastated to say the least. Her mom had a aneurysm in her heart. The Doctors couldn't save her. We cried and cried for this little baby. They had to find her Daddy and they did. She got to meet her daddy and grandparents on Jan 21,2008. They got to come to our house to get her, we had a going away party for her. Her family was so sweet and beautiful. They were going to take great care of her. They are sweet people, they still send pictures and up dates on her. We are so happy to know that she is so loved and cared for by all of her family.
Next step was to commit to a child or children for international adoption. So we did~ i little boy and a little girl at the same orphanage. We thought we were ready ~so we started all the paperwork ,homestudy,and lots of documents. Then we thought about the lenght of travel time. Three weeks the first trip could we handle being away from all of our children for that long at one time. Then who would travel for the second trip. We looked at the pictures of these two little ones over and over. Started buying clothes for both of them,made fleece blankets , got their beds ready and had luggage packed. Then we got scared, how could we be gone from our children so long. So we gave the child up to be put back on the list looking for a family.We were so sad but new if we were going to adopt internationaly , we needed to find a country that the stay was shorter. So we said our good byes to these two little ones.
( These two little ones have families waiting to go get them, we our so happy for these families and children.)
Well right after we let these two little ones go. We got a call from our Adoption Agency~ asking if we would take a little boy`Domestic placement. We said yes and left to go meet our social worker out of town. We were so happy to be getting this little boy. He was a cutie. Well that was short lived, he got to stay 10 days and the adoption adgency called and said they are having problems with the birth family and needed to give him back.We were crushed to here this. So that same day they called them came and took our little boy away. Thank God we didn't send in our funds, we wouldn't have gotten them back. We would have had to stay with them for a domestic adoption. We said a quick good bye and he was gone.God sure was testing us to make sure we wanted to adopt more children.
Well back to thinking this adoption stuff over again. Do we keep trying or do we give up.Not us we never give up~ we love children and we love our house with lots of chatter and toys. So we thought about it for a few weeks. Pondered what do we do. Then it hit us~ A different country to travel to , shorter stay and we could handle it. So back to Reece's Rainbow we go, yes Andrea sent lots of e-mails back and forth with lots of pictures in them. We looked at lots of children , but this one little girl kept coming back to us. She was supposed to be our daughter. This is our Magda~Bella , so we commited to her. Got all the paperwork ready sent the dossier in the end of May,2008 to her country. Then the wait began, well in her country they take July and August off so we had to wait for the Officials to came back to work .Then we could wait to hear about a travel date. The waititng is very hard when you are so ready to go get your new child. When you were doing the paperwork it kept you busy, but when that is done all you think about is traveling to get your new little girl.You can't wait to hold your child and give them a kiss.
We also were waiting for our older daughter to have her baby, our granddaughter. She was due the same time we thought we would be traveling. So we all stressed about this, we needed to be home for the birth of the baby and to take care of our two other grandchildren while their mommy and daddy were at the hospital with the new baby. So this was stressing all of us out . But we knew God was in control of all of this and it would all work out. So baby was born before we left to go to Serbia to adopt our new little daughter. Our daughter and son in law their three little ones and their dog moved into our house to take care of our 4 smaller children at home. So our daughter , was a new mommy and had a housefull of children to take care of ~ that is 7 children. They were 8 ,8,6,5,4,2,and a new born baby . Boy did they have there hands full. Grandma Weezy came into town to help school the children and help out. We homeschool our children. So Amber our daughter always had a house full. When we would talk or e-mail her she would say we had to go to the store today again. Boy your children eat alot of food, she was not used to buying and feeding our children so much food. They all did wonderful. There was a few times we got to see the children crying on skype. Then we all would be crying, but for the most part we all did great. Our trip was awesome and we got our beautiful little girl. We just couldn't wait to get her home and meet her forever family. They all have loved her for so long also. Now it was time to get on the plane and go home. We were sad to leave our new friends , but so happy we were going home to the rest of our children. It was great to see how happy everyone was to see us, mainly our daughter and son in law . That meant they could go back home and they were so happy to go home. We can't thank them enough for taking such good care of our children for us and the dogs also. Bella got to spend her first Thanksgiving and Christmas in America in 2008. We are so greatful for this and so thankful to many people for helping us get Bella home.
Bella is doing so wonderful and is so happy. She has a smile on her face most of the time and she can laugh with all her sisters and brother . She loves to play and be held, and we love to hold her so much. She is learning so much already. We are very happy that she is learning so quickly.
We would love to adopt one more child with down syndrome ~ or up syndrome. She makes us so happy. What a ride 2008 was. Not sure what is up for us in 2009, but it will be great.
We hope everybody has a great 2009!!!!!
Thank you to all the people who followed are journey to get our daughter...