Photos from The Great Christmas Tree Hunt
Joshua is enjoying everything about Christmas. It has been fun to watch a 7 year old experience Christmas for the first time. We have Pete's family here on Christmas Eve and both sets of Grandparents with us on Christmas day. For the past several years, we have had a family tradition of going roller skating at Oaks Park on Christmas eve. It is great fun. We will go from there to our Christmas Eve service at church. All of the kids and Pete are involved in it in some way. Three days after Christmas, our nephew Matthew is marrying his sweet fiance, Britney. Anna and Joshua will be in the wedding.
Here is a quick review of our year -- more detail can be found here in this blog or in our blog that was used for our trip to China to bring Joshua home. (If you want to see the year in pictures, you could just scan through the posts from the past year...)
After surviving our big winter snow last year, a tree through the roof and power out until Christmas...
In January, my sister and her boys had my dad, Anna and I join them for a few days in Florida. That was a treat. It was some good Anna and mom time.
In February, Sarah and a couple of friends had a chance to participate in their first speech tournament. We drove up to Seattle for the tournament. To our surprise, all three girls made it to the final round, brought home trophies and qualified for the regional speech tournament.
In March, Pete and I celebrated our 20th Anniversary...with dinner at Olive Garden...well we were saving for a big trip to China...we'll try to celebrate a bit more later on... Also in March, Rachel had a chance to go to Gleanings for the Hungry in California.
In April, Pete and I ran in a half marathon here in Portland with my sister, her husband and a couple of friends. I was sick that day and almost backed out, Pete had a great day -- a personal best! Sarah and her friends travelved to Colorado for the regional speech tournament. In April we also received our LONG awaited approval from China to adopt Joshua! This started another long, roller coaster ride waiting for our travel approval.
The wait for Joshua--- US Immigration implemented new procedures, actually several new procedures, throughout our wait for Joshua. This complicated pretty much every step in the process beginning with our home study. We had just received word from US Immigration that they had approved some important documents for us when the first big reports of swine flu hit the news. The weird thing, was that the night before I had been awakened by a vivid dream that there was some international crisis that was shutting down international travel and keeping us from bringing Joshua home. I assured myself when I started hearing swine flu news that it really wasn't such a big deal. And, that has pretty much ended up being true, however during the time we were waiting for our travel approval, China decided it WAS a big deal. There were delays in sending travel approval and several provinces, including where Joshua was waiting, decided they didn't want anyone coming from North America. To make a very long story short, through miraculous circumstances, a mistake and someone having connections with the right people, we were allowed to travel if we agreed to spend a week in Beijing to prove we didn't have swine flu.
June 20, Pete, Mark and I left for China. We met Joshua on June 29 in Urumqi city. That name might be familiar to some because it is the city where the Uighur riots occurred last summer. The rioting began three days after we left Urumqi for Guangzhou to complete our adoption paperwork. Our travel journel is a separate blog -- a link is above -- or here -- http://jbarjendsofearth.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
Rachel spent a week of the time we were in China at Teenpact Survival Camp in Montana. She had a great time. Rachel loves all things teenpact. She has spent a week at the state capitol each of the past three years participating in Teenpact. This year, she will be on staff.
Sarah, James and Anna, spent part of the time we were in China in Central Oregon with good friends at Sunriver and with Pete's parents. They reunited with Rachel back at home the second week and Anna spent several days with the family of her good friend, Molly. They all seemed to enjoy the time during our long separation (18 days!) We were all so happy to be together again and to have Joshua with us.
We spent the rest of the summer helping him learn English and taking him on adventures to the mountains, central oregon and the beach. He enjoyed eating Grandpa Dean's and Grandma Dar's crawfish and the time spent with Papa Dave and Grandma Shirley that also included his long awaited chance to go fishing.
We were so glad that he came home during summer and we had time to do fun things and work on English before starting our busy fall school schedule. He has done very well with all of his studies. He is being educated here at home like everyone else. Our academics also include many outside classes and activities that have kept us very busy. Joshua is a good sport, participates when he can and has made friends easily. He played soccer in the fall and was a great player!
Joshua has done great adjusting to life in our family. We feel incredibly blessed. I'm always amazed to look back over all that happens in a year and wonder what God has planned for the year to come.
