los primos y la piscina

Here is a slideshow of a recent trip to visit Eli and Solomon (Lucy's cousins), Lydia's birthday party (another cousin),and Lucy's new pool. That was a HUGE hit as you can see:)



Enjoy the pics.



PK

Reflections of a farm girl...

Most of you know that both of my parents are deceased, most recently my father. He died Nov 7Th 2006. He was 91 years old and died in the same room he was born in! Not many people can say that now days. To provide a little history for the confused readers out there. My mom was 47 and my father 52 when I was born. I know, an "oops" baby:) There's 25 years difference between my oldest sibling and myself.

Anyway.....That event brings me to my current post. We as a family needed to go through all the buildings and the house and clean out a 100+ plus years of accumulation as it was originally my grandpa's farm! We should have tackled it last summer but none of us could stomach it quite frankly. It was too overwhelming and WAY too sad to go through everything. In the words of one of my sisters, "It's like we're throwing THEM away!" I get it. Not to mention we received our referral for Lucy on Nov 30Th 2006, just a few weeks after the funeral. (Thank you! I like to think he and mom had a little something to do with that:) We traveled in Jan 07. Came home with Lucy Feb 28 07. You get the idea. We were a tad preoccupied.

I think we finally had the energy emotionally and physically to go up there and tackle the project. It's been hard work and actually fun too. We've gathered every Saturday since the beginning of May. We've made meals together, talked, cried, yelled. We've reconnected as a family. It's important to put some closure on it emotionally.

To give you a little idea here's what we've accomplished so far:

2 construction size dumpsters of junk
over 130 tires hauled away on Earth Day. We even were mentioned in the local paper on that one, not by name thank God!
countless trips to Salvation Army
LOTS of scrap iron
splitting up items between the siblings and bringing them to our prospective homes.

It's ALOT of stuff. And seeing, holding these things brings forth such memories and then laughter, tears and sadness. Upon seeing an old horse drawn sleigh, my brother said, " I remember when grandpa took that apart and set it in that corner". It's still in the same place, untouched, like a ghost.

So I think about how I grew up on this farm. My family, the traditions, the memories and....the nostalgia of it all. It will be an enjoyable challenge to convey all that to Lucy. She won't know her grandparents on my side, only through me. But I never knew my grandparents either. I guess a little history repeating itself??? Maybe I feel the weight of it because of that.

The great thing about all of this is that my brother and his wife now live on the farm. That makes it officially a 3rd generation working farm! Crazy huh? Lucy does love it there, seeing all the baby animals, running around like she owns the place. Which she really does of course:)


PK

Children's Museum

We recently met up with Cara and Joel (Lucy's Godparents)at the Children's Museum. They were babysitting their other god daughter, Savannah, so it was the perfect opportunity for a play date as they are so close in age. The two girls had a great time. Lucy LOVED the water exhibit. I finally had to drag her away kicking and screaming. What a little water bug! PK

Adoption #2 update.....

Well, I hardly know where to begin....I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. We received an update from LSS (Lutheran Social Services), our adoption agency. It looks like LP, as well as the other casa privadas (Los Pisingos, the private orphanage where Lucy is from) are not accepting any paperwork for new referrals for children 3 and under. We knew that our orphanage application was sent down to Colombia in Oct 07 only to sit on the in-country coordinator's desk because of the slow down in referrals. Hey, at least it made it down there. I know of families that have paperwork waiting here in the States. Sigh.... When I think of all the wonderful, loving, truly amazing people that we've met once we made the decision to adopt, I'm overwhelmed. Anyway...we were prepared for a longer wait for a referral than with Miss Lucy (4 mos), more like late 2009 this time around.

This is such a weird feeling, to actually have to hope that there are birth families out there that are faced with the heart wrenching decision to place their precious babies for adoption so that Kurt and I can have a family. More importantly so that Lucy will know what it's like to have a sibling.

Colombia is doing great things for families and children. They are providing more support so that families can parent children. Adoption culture is changing in Colombia. Orphanages are making successful efforts to find Colombian families for children. So thank God there are less children needing adoptive placements because I couldn't bear it knowing that kids are languishing in orphanages when there are PLENTY of families waiting!

So I feel at a crossroads of sorts. Do we adopt out of birth order in the Colombia program? Do we stick it out and hope and pray and pray and hope that referrals will start moving again? Do we stop with Lucy?

But, I have to be honest and say that right now I can't fathom a child from any other place. A little piece of my heart is still in Colombia. I want Lucy to have a sibling that is Colombian too. Kurt and I have always said that if our kids can't look like us, they should look like each other. I want them to have remotely the same experience of how they came to be the light of our lives. My heart just aches right about now.


I don't know what to do...

PK

St. Cloud or bust!

Some people go some where nice and warm for a winter vacation. We went to sunny St. Cloud MN a couple weeks back to meet Tim, Dina and their children Lexie and Aleah for a weekend get away. It was a great little trip. Very fun to reconnect with old friends. We don't do it nearly enough. Our daughter LOVES the water. I thought she was going to shrivel up into a little prune.

Enjoy the few pics that actually turned out:)

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a great Easter. It was so fun to dress Lucy up and go to church. She even made it through the whole service! We had to nix the actual Easter dress on account of oh...about 5 inches of snow on the ground. But she looked darn adorable in her outfit. Hey! It was yellow. That has to count for something:) We had a great time with all of Kurt's family. Boy does Lucy love her Grandma and Grandpa! I can't wait until she comes up with her own name for them. I wonder what she'll call them....You know kids, it'll be something dang cute,

Her language is exploding! She is signing a BUNCH(2+ word sentences), talking more and more, and even speaking a little Spanish.

Enjoy the pics. They are mostly Easter ones with one family shot of us at Como Zoo recently.

Smooch
PK

What's a Mom to do???

Lucy and I went to the hair salon yesterday when the strangest thing happened. There were 4 ladies that literally had us surrounded in a matter of seconds. That's when the questions started. Is she adopted? Where is she from? She is SO cute! Was it a hard process? She is SO cute! Oh, just look at those BLACK eyes! How long did it take? Then brace yourself.... How is her English coming along??? What the hell does that mean? I know people reading this will find it odd but this is not the first time I've been asked this question. I have a standard response (the only one evidently): How was your English at 17 mos? If you can believe it, that didn't shut them up and it continued for another 5-10 min. C'mon! Can't a girl just get her brows waxed? Does every outing have to be an adoption education session???? I know, now I'm exaggerating but sometimes that's how it feels.

I get it. People mean well. But is that enough to excuse rude questions? I also realize that this will not be the last time we're caught in situations like that. But it's one thing if I started a conversation about Lucy being adopted, or if I actually knew these people. But it really felt like Lucy and I were being pounced upon. I felt vunerable. I had this gutteral urge to pick Lucy up and run out of the salon. How do I protect her from things like that? Will folks have the good sense to stop with the questions when she is old enough to understand what they are talking about? I seriously doubt it. How do I prepare her for things like that? You know me, I'm direct. But in these situations I feel at a loss of what to say or how to respond. Mostly because I want to say just the right thing so that I ensure I'm a good role model for my daughter! Luckily one of the ladies had a dog with her (I know, that's a whole other story!) that Lucy was enthralled with so hopefully she wasn't paying attention to what was happening around her.

There are days that I look at that precious girl of mine and wonder how I could EVER be this lucky (pretty much everyday I guess). I just want to smell her and squeeze her and smother her with kisses. Yesterday was definitely one of those days.

PK