Our Birth Family Visits

We had such a beautiful weekend, I hardly have words to describe it.

We started out Saturday morning bright and early heading southbound. We arrived at our adoption agency training and spent about an hour there speaking to parents about being a transracial family. It went well, there were a lot of couples this time and we seemed to get lots of positive feedback during our talk.

Then we met up with Vivianna's birthmother, grandmother, and siblings. We spent sometime catching up with them. Her grandmother mentioned to me that they were at an event and she told a cousin that they had not seen us in awhile (it had been over a year). She said the cousin said, "well..see what I said...eventually they are going to pull away." I assured her this was not going to happen and that there would be no purpose to doing so. I told her to quote me to any family member that is trying to discourage them!

After that we drove another hour to see Keishun's brother and sister who live together in a medically specialized home as they have lots of medical needs. This visit was so great. They have an amazing mom and their own nicely decorated bedrooms. Billy had Keishun's 17 year old sister, "S" laughing hysterically for over an hour with all his silly antics. And their brother "T', whose 19th birthday is today, was such a sweet child. He kept listing to us all the members of his new family and the sports he plays at school and that he missed "Kiki so much"...Keishun's childhood nickname. He also mentioned "Moo Moo and the Baby" which are Terrance and Jayden. Awwww.

We fell in LOVE with these kids and so wish we lived closer to visit often. T loves people and is very affectionate, hugging all of us when we left. I hope to plan out many more visits, if we can afford the gas mileage as they live over 3 hours from us.

We finished off our time staying in a nearby hotel and swimming which of course my kids love, love, love to do. 

It was a jam packed but super fun Saturday

 full of so many memories.

This Weekend

Sorry I haven't been posting as much, Ya'll. I am busy busy these days with teaching part-time and running this house full time. Billy and I have been catching up on all of our episodes of
PBS' Downtown Abbey at night on the laptop via stream-tv. I usually fall asleep midway and have to re-watch it the next day during naptime! That show is greatness.

This weekend we have some travel plans ahead of us. We will be speaking at our adoption agency training to potential adoptive parents on the joys and challenges of adopting outside your race. When that is over, we have plans to meet up with Vivi's birth family for a couple of hours. We have not seen them in over a year and a half, so this will be a much needed visit. After that, we will drive an hour to the town where Keishun and Terrance's teenage brother and sister live. They were removed at the same time as the boys from CPS and they have not seen Keishun since that month in 2010. His brother has down syndrome among other health problems and I asked his foster mom if she thinks he will recognize Keishun. She said, "Well he talks alot about his baby brother, Kiki." I said, "that is Keishun's nickname!!" What a joy it is to hear that he remembers. We will be taking him some Dallas Mavericks gear because he turns 19 years old on Sunday. After our visit there, we will stay in a hotel before heading back on Sunday.

I will be very excited to post pictures soon after getting home, so stay tuned!! But until then, here is a funny Jasmine photo series. She was upset that Jayden had presents from Aunt Beth for his birthday and she wasn't allowed to open them. However, when she saw what it was, she gasped and got real happy. HA HA. 

What a scene stealer.

This baby face gets me every time...

But just to prove Jasmine doesn't get ALL the glory in this house, here is a little window into our boy world: a picture I snapped on hair cut Saturday which happens about every 3 weeks. 

I *LOVE* this photo.

**Disclaimer: the boys do not dress this casually outside the home**

The Moral Leader of Our Nation

MLK Jr's B-day!

 Yesterday in my preschool class, we learned about Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, which is actually January 15th.

 I read this book to my class:

I talked about how the legacy that MLK Jr. left, allows for families to marry and adopt outside of their race. I had baby dolls of different skin colors and talked about how sometimes our children come out of our tummies and other times they come out of a birth mother's tummy and then are adopted. The girls LOVED this center! 

Then we did a lesson on the unfairness in segregation.

We joined the two 4 year old classes and put apple stickers on some of the kids and the rest of the kids had a different sticker.

 Then we dumped legos on the floor and the kids that had apple stickers were instructed that they were only allowed to play with the red legos, and no other colors. As you can see, some of them didn't play at all at first. The little girl in the heart shirt is just touching her sticker and looking sadly at all the blocks she can't play with.

 If they picked up any other color, we sent them to the table and told them playtime was over. You can see how they felt about that!!

 We ended the game a few minutes later and cleaned up all the blocks. Then we asked the ones with apple stickers if they thought it was fair to them that they could only play with one color. Of course they said no. They said the game was not fun at all and I said, "no it is not fair or fun when we are not allowed to play with all colors. This is how Martin Luther King Jr felt in his neighborhood when the white and black kids were told they could not play together."

I showed them this video:

And then we colored pictures of MLK Jr. 

I was really happy with how the day turned out. 

The students seemed very engaged with all the things I had planned, it was a lot of fun for me too.

Little Doll

 I forgot to post these pics in December of Jasmine posing outside her grandparents house in Houston. She was sooo cute that day!

5..4..3..2..1: Rocket Party Lift Off!!

 

This wreath on the front door set the stage for our theme.

 Jayden's 5th birthday party was this morning. I chose to do a rocket theme and wanted the colors to be orange and blue. I thought a breakfast party would be fantastic and fun...different than anything I had done before and it was!

Jayden's Grandma has a scrapbook room in her house with a Cricut and she spent hours whipping up rocket invitations, a banner, and other rocket shaped decor items to go along with my theme and colors. This was a HUGE help in making the party room pop. Thanks Mom!

 I hosted it in the front room of our house and had tables set up so Jayden and all of his friends could relax and enjoy a yummy breakfast.

 

All of the food was rocket themed of course:

 A cereal bar: Moon rocks, Planets, and Saturn's Rings.

 Rocket wing waffle triangles.

 Donut hole Asteroids.

 Clementine Meteors.

 Yogurt parfait rocket pops and cinnamon roll cookies!

 

Orange juice boxes and syrup cups were set on each table.

 Jayden anxiously awaited the arrival of his peeps.

 

Breakfast was a big hit with all the boys.

We sang happy birthday and he blew out 5 candles on a plate of birthday sprinkles waffles.

 

I had a basket of craft supplies set up to make paper rockets.

 We lined them up to dry and later had a relay race.

With straws taped to the rocket backs, the children lined up and "launched" their rockets into the clouds.

 The first child to cross the line with a cloud won.

 Then we moved onto the outer space shoot out.

 

Because boys love to shoot nerf guns of course. :)

 After this, we all went outside for what was supposed to be the

 Big Rocket Launch.

 Well...not so much. It did shoot up a couple of times but not very high. Us moms all got a big laugh out of seeing the dads try, though.

We wrapped up the morning with gifts and party favors.

The party favors were cereal bowls with spoons, pop rocks, Reese's PB cups, fruity pebbles cereal bars, gumballs, glow in the dark stars, and popping aliens.

Thank you to everyone who came and made 

Jayden's 5th birthday so special.

To finish up, here are the 5 year portraits I did of him:

A Very Happy Birthday, indeed.