Relaxing on the blanket

Early Birthday Celebration

My mother-in-law is going to be in Florida on Brynn's birthday, so we celebrated a couple days early. Can't go wrong with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

Our Day

The weather here is crappy. There is no nice way to put it. Brynn went to a birthday party for a friend that was a pool party. Needless to say, there was no swimming. It was only 66 degrees. We shouldn't be wearing long sleeves and jackets in the middle of July.

So we did the next best thing to swimming, we played in the rain.

And had a cookout over the fire. Hot dogs, fried zucchini from one we picked from the garden and marshmallows for dessert. The perfect ending to a really good day.

Our girl

Smile

We don't get many pictures of him smiling his big smile...

The kids

Tattoos! Can't ever go wrong with Tattoos.

The 2 FengCheng girls

The girls and siblings

The Girls

Chinapalooza 2009 Day 2

We spent the day in Oglebay on Saturday. It was great walking around with some of the other families and just talking, while the kids played.

Chinapalooza 2009

We were so honored to host our travel group's reunion this year. Who knew this many families would be willing to travel to our neck of the woods!!

The reunion started with everyone meeting Friday night at our house. It was so wonderful to see everyone especially because some of us hadn't seen anyone since last year's reunion. It's cool to see the girls and what has changed about them.

Kai and the pinata

CANDY!!

Nate and his no-nos

Nathan's Post-Op

Nathan had his first post-op appointment today. We are so happy with the information the doctor had to tell us. His is so happy with the results. The palate is healing so well. He can have his arm restraints (no-nos) off and can eat soft food. He doesn't need to go back for 3 months.

We can not believe how well he has healed. We are so lucky that it has been as easy as it has been.

Excitement on the 4th

Now this is really not what you want to see in your yard.

As I am washing my garage windows, I hear my neighbor yell "Fire". To a person that has lived through a house fire, those words send chills up my spine.

I turn around and their playhouse is on fire. I run around the house and get Kevin. He and the neighbor's kids grab buckets to get water from their pool to the playhouse and also hoses.

The fire department comes pretty quick considering we live in the country. And we were surprised to see what fire department showed up. Thought it would be a different one. Who knew?

It turns out their son was playing with sparklers in the playhouse earlier in the morning. The playhouse still had some straw in it. The sparkler just smoldered until it burst into flames. The flames didn't show up until late afternoon. Literally, hours later.

The message--sparklers can cause fires. After you are done with them, put the in a metal container with water in it. Let them sit there for a while. It's worth the extra effort.

The result

Happy 4th!

Home!

Finally, home sweet home.


Napping with my no-nos and my ducky.

We think so too

Parents at the hospital have to wear tags explaining who they are. This is a security item for the hospital. We also had swipe cards to get into the wing Nathan was in.

While Kevin was getting his new sticker for today, the wonderfully sweet woman gave Brynn one. Kevin had one that said Parent/Guardian. Brynn's said Princess.

Yeah, we thinks so too.