September 2016

First day of preschool

Lexi loves baby dolls

Camping with the Petersons

Normal family pictures do not exist

Picnic lunch in the rain at a soccer game

Star Wars cake

Apple picking with Grandma

Celebrating Nate

For Labor Day weekend we went camping with the Petersons.  We camped at the CRC campground. The campground is very nice.  However, we will probably not camp there again.  Just too concentrated of Dutch CRC culture.  We have a lot of fun with the Peterson family and hope to camp together every summer.  Jim, Rebecca and Nate want the 4 of us to go backpacking sometime.  Backpacking does not appeal to me.  We'll see if they wear me down.

September was a busy month.  Stephen was a little nervous about preschool, but quickly loved it.  Lexi and I began attending a Mandarin story hour.  The teacher is a Chinese woman and there about 5 kids in the class.  One of the boys is 3 years old and recently adopted from China.  It was fun to watch Oliver and Lexi play together and also good for Oliver's Mom and myself to connect. We received a CD of children's songs in Mandarin.  Lexi and Stephen love listening to it in the car and singing along.  Julia is learning Korean again with her tutor, Hyeji.

I took beginner Korean classes for about 4 Saturdays this fall.  I am also now qualified to teach Trauma Informed Parenting (TIP) classes for foster/adoptive parents and had two trainings this month.

Caleb celebrated his 12th birthday!  He requested a Star Wars rebel alliance symbol cake.  One of his gifts was Pokemon cards.  Do you sense a theme?  Caleb had some friends over on the weekend- they played video games and ate junk food.  My little boy is growing up.  We are thankful for Caleb and love him very much!

Nate celebrated his 37th birthday.  I did not make a cake for his birthday because we are usually caked out by that point.  However, I do not remember what I made.  Honestly, Nate's birthday was a blur.  Just a couple days prior he had been told that he might have leukemia and he needed a bone marrow biopsy done. And so began a new chapter in our family's story.  I am not going to include much of that story in this space as we have a separate blog set up for that.  This blog reminds us that life is still happening and life is still good in the midst of seeming chaos.  We love Nate very much and look forward to celebrating many more birthdays together!