Christmas 2009

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.

Happy Birthday to Joshua!

On October 18th, we celebrated Joshua's 7th birthday. We thought this was a good time to have a celebration to recognize his joining the Aldrich family, so we invited (or tried to -- sorry if we missed some people) everyone we could think of that had encouraged and prayed for us along the long journey to bring him home. It is probably a good thing that not everyone could come. As it turned out, we counted 128 guests that came to our open house. We had another little miracle that day in that the sun decided to shine and the kids were able to play outside. The day before had been an amazing rain storm, so the sun really felt like a miracle!

Joshua thoroughly enjoyed the day. He started out by putting on the new shirt he had picked out himself using birthday money from Grandma and Papa. He went to church in the morning while his sister Sarah, her friend and I decorated and prepared the house. He, dad and the other kids then picked up his birthday cake that he had picked out at Costco and some noodles from Panda express. Sarah and her friend decorated over 100 cupcakes and also helped me prepare a LOT of food. Joshua came home to a house of balloons and cupcakes. He was thrilled. He seemed to enjoy every moment of celebrating with friends and meeting a few people that he didn't know, but that had prayed for him. He was sort of a celebrity for a day.

As I was putting up pictures, laying out blog posts and the very thick book of paperwork that helped bring him home, I had some very surreal moments as those things took me back in time to the many, many months of waiting and trusting that God really had a plan here. Joshua is such a testimony of God's grace displayed and poured out on us here on earth. There are so many miracles marking the trail.

Joshua has come so far in such a few months. He is impressing people everyday with his use of English and his abilities. He has really done well with soccer. On Saturday, I watched the game he and Mark were in for a while and then walked over to the field where little sister was playing. When he came out of the game, he ran over to tell me he had scored 4 goals after I left! When I walked back over, everyone on the sidelines was also telling me about his 4 goals!

Tonight, we had an impressive and captivating display of his English ability as he opened a window into his past for us. Over dinner, we started talking about food and food he had while in China. Joshua was in a mood to talk and finally found enough words to tell us more about his life in China. For about 20 minutes, we all sat around the table completely captivated as he told us all about the "big house" (orphanage), how it was arranged, who was there and their daily schedule. I asked him if he remembered his first day there. To our amazement, he went on to describe the day that ended with arriving at the orphanage in great detail. He clearly has very, very vivid memories of that day. We had always wondered how much he would remember. We also found out he remembers a great deal about his home and family prior to coming to the orphanage. I tried my best to sit down and type out everything I could remember that he had told us -- including his very animated story about a mouse in the house!

We are constantly amazed at this sweet little boy's trust in us and take every opportunity to assure him that he is forever and completely a part of our family.

As he was recounting the details of the day he came to the orphanage and telling us how he didn't sleep well that night because he was scared, I kept thinking about how God knew even then that he had a plan to prosper and not to harm this child. As we were waiting to bring Joshua home, I had wondered about the day he came to the orphanage and had looked back in my journal to see what we were doing. On the morning he woke up in the orphanage for the first time, we were in the home of friends praying for the orphaned children in China. It was just a few days after we had first heard about Anna. We could not have imagined that three and a half years later, we would be bringing a 6 year old boy home from China, but God knew the plan already.

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Home Three Months!!!

Celebrating Joshua!

Sunday, October 18^th is Joshua’s 7th Birthday! (Although he insists he will be 8...we're still trying to explain that age is counted differently in China...) He is very excited about “Happy Birthday to Joshua.” To celebrate this event and his arrival in our family, we are inviting friends and family to an open house on Sunday, October 18^th. We are so thankful for the friends and family that prayed for him for the many long months we waited to bring him home. He has been blessed to be welcomed so warmly.

It is amazing how much a child can learn in a three month period. Joshua has been learning English, American Culture and the Aldrich Family Routine at an amazingly rapid rate! We are endeavoring to keep him using Chinese as often as possible, but he is clearly more motivated to master English. Today, when we met with our dear translator friend, Bonnie, he really just wanted to talk in English. Our hope and prayer is for him to be fluently bilingual. We will have to be very purposeful to help him keep his Mandarin. He adds new English phrases every day. One of his new English phrases this week was, “Anna, no whining…”

He is doing very well with school work. I think he’ll be ready for some more challenging work soon. I’ve intentionally tried to keep it simple enough to avoid frustration. He has been doing addition or subtraction sheets each day, some pages that review concepts like – up/down, right/left, between, etc., has two workbooks that teach phonics and one that has cutting, pasting and coloring activities. He has gotten a bit bored with his Go Go Learns English DVDs. When I flipped through the books the other day, I realized he has mastered most of the words. We have been using an Explode the Code book. He really likes it. It has been great for learning new vocabulary words. He was also interested in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book that Anna does with me and was especially interested when he learned there is a prize for completing the book! He has completed the first five lessons. I think he will be able to learn to read English at the same time he is learning to speak English. This is pretty amazing to me.

Joshua has been watching the other kids play instruments. I’ve told him that once he can read a book, he can try music lessons. He really enjoys drawing and does amazing work. I’ll try to post a picture of one of his drawings here. Despite the physical challenges of his wrists and hands, he actually seems less fatigued by writing than his older brothers. His surprising passion has really been his interest in sports of all kinds – really, all kinds. His latest interest is basketball. He watched a video about “Pistol Pete” and has been dribbling basketballs around the house ever since. He likes to get us to watch him while he stares at us and dribbles so that we see that he isn’t watching the ball. Try dribbling with the back of your hand sometime – not a simple thing! We expect this interest in sports to continue motivating him to work with us on treatments for his arms and hands.

Joshua still has occasional episodes where he withdraws. They are much less dramatic than they once were and to an outside observer would really just appear the behavior of a child pouting for not getting his way. He (and we) are able to work back out of them much easier. He is always back to his happy, fun and affectionate self when it is over. He is very generous with his hugs and “I love you”s. He seems genuinely happy to be part of our family. We try to talk about China with him and think those memories will be important for him to preserve in some way. Most of the time, he seems uninterested in talking about his life there, but once in a while he will decide to share some memories.

He and Anna are getting along better. They are very much like you would expect siblings to behave when one is only five and still learning how to consider the feelings of others. Most of the time they have great fun together and other times they provoke one another. Anna is learning to be “gracious” and very proud of her efforts. Joshua and Mark are having more and more fun together. One day, they were watching Rachel and James practice a fight scene for their upcoming performance in The Hobbit. A little while later, I saw them rehearsing their own fight scene. Joshua’s English may be limited, but he was able to direct Mark in just where to thrust his sword and when to turn and fall. What a dynamic duo they will be one day. As I’ve been watching Rachel in her first debate season, I can’t help but picture a debate team of Mark and Joshua one day.

Rachel, Sarah and James also have very good relationships with Joshua. He seems to look up to and respect them. James has really taken on the role of big brother, guide and peace maker. He is very quick to notice if Joshua is starting to get upset and possibly go into withdraw mode and has become very adept and diversion tactics.

It still amazes me to look back over the journey that brought us here. Joshua is such a testimony of God’s grace – as is my life and our family as a whole. I surely was not qualified for this and have to live on grace every single day. I’m so thankful not to have missed this adventure.

Rachel's Blog

There is a link to Rachel's blog on the left -- It is currently called "Carrying the Torch", but I think I heard she may change the name. It is fun the read and she posts a bit more frequently than her mother....

Let us Run with Endurance

This song and these verses from Hebrews Chapter 12 have been running through my mind all weekend. We have been contending in prayer for some friends going through a difficult time. It is painful to see friends going through a painful trial. It is a reminder to be thankful for God's grace and mercy in our lives.

If I were to pick "life verses" they would probably be the first few verses of Hebrews Chapter 12...it follows a favorite chapter in the bible - "The Hall of Faith" Hebrews Chapter 11...

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens and scourges every son He receives...Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord; looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled...Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire."

Kristine (accidently posted as Rachel...oops...)

Home Two Months!

Wow! Where did that last month go? It was another full and exciting month for the Aldrich family with little time for Mom to be on the computer.

We are mid way through our second week of school. We decided to start up last week before all of our outside activities were in full swing. I'm so glad we did. This year we have a high school junior, an 8th grader working on high school, a 5th grader AND a 2nd grader, 1st grader and Kindergarten student! This craft challenged mom has managed to start nearly every day with a fun craft. With the help of my older kids, we have also had music time. Joshua loves that -- most days. All six kids are playing soccer. Thankfully, they practice and play games at the same field and at the same time. We'll be trying to keep up with a German II class (Rachel), Spanish III (Rachel and Sarah) and hopefully a beginning Chinese class (everyone else). Rachel and Sarah are very excited for another year of speech and apologetics meetings and Rachel is adding debate (hopefully she won't be using those skills on me...) Rachel and James have parts in the play, The Hobbit. In between all of that we have people learning piano (x4), guitar, drums, Biology, Geometry, Algebra, Fractions, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction and which way the point the numbers, US History, US Government, Writing, Classical Literature, Reading, Phonics and how to speak English! No wonder I have trouble checking email or writing a blog post! Rachel has started her own blog...I might need to rely on her to update here too.

Sarah told me today how amazing it is to her that Joshua has only been here two months. She said it is already hard to remember life without him. I think we all feel that way. Joshua is working hard at learning English. Aside from every day immersion, we use a DVD program we picked up in China and have found that books that teach phonics are also good for learning vocabulary. His ability to understand us is very good and with the English he knows and some charades and pictionary, he is pretty good at sharing his thoughts, needs and questions with us. I can tell he will have a LOT to say when he has a full command of the language.

We all feel blessed to have this boy in our family. We are blessed that he wants to communicate, wants to learn and wants to test and trust us. 95 percent of the time, he is a fun, sweet, happy, smiling, obedient and cooperative boy. The other 5 percent of the time, he is testing us. It takes a good deal of energy and a need for us to be alert as parents, so that we are prepared to win the battles when battle lines are drawn. I usually try to avoid getting into battles, but sometimes it just isn't possible. Today was one of those days. For 30 minutes it was disruptive and it was exhausting, but it was so good and healing too. When it was all over, he was again a sweet and affectionate boy and he had learned an important lesson again about what is expected in our family and who is in charge. Tonight I told my husband I had been reflecting on this testing. Although it is exhausting, I think it is so very necessary for the process of learning to trust us. Our other children did this over a period of years from the time they were infants and learned to trust us when they were very small. If I were going to trust my entire life to something, I would need to test it too. If he were simply to comply with everything we asked and never challenge or test us, I wonder if he really could develop actual trust in us or if it would simply be him hoping we were what we said we were. Through this testing process, he is developing geniune relationships with each member of the family. When he quarrels with his siblings over a toy or who is cleaning which part of the room, he is learning how to relate with them too as the conflict is resolved. It has been fun to watch him ask his older siblings for help and to call Mark or James or Anna over to see something he has built with Legos. Last night, I heard a couple of adopting moms chatting at soccer, one was talking about how her son was just so happy to have a mom. I think I would say that of Joshua too. He seems genuinely happy to have a family, especially a mom. He still gives me tons of hugs and kisses and many "I love you"s throughout the day.

Joshua is a smart little boy and has been good at embracing the adventures that have become his life. He has probably seen and experienced more new things in the past two months than in the previous six and a half years of his life. He has been on an airplane, gotten used to a car booster seat, been to farms, the zoo, museums, the ocean (first time ever), climbed huge sand dunes, learned a new language, learned to use a camera, been to the mountains, been fishing in a row boat, eaten all sorts of new foods, ridden a bike, ridden a four wheeler, flown a kite, been to church, made new friends, gained grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, thrown a frisbee, baseball and basketball, started learning soccer, taken swimming lessons, won ribbons in the county fair, learned a bit about spending money, learned to vacuum and empty the dishwasher, been to the doctor, been to the dentist (four times so far....) Most recently, he went to an arthrogryposis clinic with Anna where they saw multiple doctors. He was asked to perform a variety of tasks, had his joint functions measured and was fitted for night splints. Through it all, he has been such a good sport. He seems to completely understand why we are taking him to hand specialists and is eagerly hoping they can improve his hand/arm function. He has been very good at wearing his splints each night. We think some of his motivation is a great love for sports. We hadn't anticipated this. He is especially excited by American Football of all things! He is also very interested in baseball.... He will no doubt keep life interesting here.

When I pause for a moment, I am still so in awe of what God has done. Working in our hearts to open our lives to this little boy and then working together all of the details to bring it to pass required such an amazing string of miracles. I recently finished reading a novel with an adoption theme that follows the life of a birth mom and adopting mom from their childhoods up until the adoption. It caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about Anna and Joshua's birth parents and Anna's foster family. I can't understand how it is that their lives were brought to the excrutiating decision to rip out their hearts, give up their child and entrust them to strangers in the hope they would have a better life, while my life has been so blessed. It is a sobering thought to reflect upon the great treasure that has been entrusted to us. I know that Anna's foster family was broken hearted to say goodbye to her. Joshua's birth family kept this child with an obvious disability for over three years before coming to the decision they couldn't raise him. I pray that I will never take this calling for granted. On the most difficult days of trying to meet everyone's needs, I am still doing it from the comfort of the most blessed nation on the planet, with the support of family and friends and with the oversight of a Mighty and Compassionate God who has already worked many miracles on behalf of these children.

How is He Adjusting?

That is the question I'm asked at least once each day. It is a very good question. I often try to put myself in his shoes and am at a loss to even begin to comprehend what it must be like to be 6 1/2 years old and have everything about your life change in an instant. The closest comparisons I can think of are the culture shock of traveling to Mexico or China or the adjustment of getting married and suddenly sharing everything about my life with another person. But those events really aren't fair comparisons -- I knew a lot about Mexico and China before I arrived, had translators available to me everyday and knew I was returning to what was familiar in a matter of days. When I married my husband, I had spent a few years getting to know him first before deciding to share my life with him. Joshua has had very little control over any of what has happened to him, little if any choice and most of the time has only a vague understanding of what will happen tomorrow or next week.

We are truly amazed by this smart, resilient and sweet little boy. We still see about one episode each day where he will withdraw emotionally and physically from us. Usually there is some small thing that has upset him. Today it was that he and Anna had a brief argument about whose turn it was to see a book. A few days ago it was because he had found a box of hershey bars (smore supplies) and wanted to bring them in the car and was told "no". Sometimes, he will just wake up in the morning or from a nap and be in this "funk" as we call it. He will spend 20 to 30 minutes looking sad. Sometimes he even has some tears. We love on him and keep him near us, often times going about our business in between giving him a hug and telling him we love him. Then, he'll just snap out of it again and join in with whatever is happening around him. He'll usually come give me a hug and kiss and be extra affectionate for a while. We think it just seems to be his way of processing all of the stress he has to be feeling from so many changes and the difficulty with fully expressing himself.

Today we had lunch with the dear woman who was a pediatric nurse in Taiwan for 32 years. Joshua really seems to enjoy visiting with her. I'm so thankful that he has had opportunities to converse in Mandarin. Usually, he chatters about things that are seemingly insignificant, but it must feel so good to him to be able to chatter and feel like there is some understanding of what he is chattering about. I'm quite sure that he will have much to say when he is fully fluent in English. I tried to ask about some of the most recent "sad" episodes. The only one he would talk about was the incident with Anna and really only said that she is always wanting to do whatever he is doing... Yes, we knew that. We talked a bit about how she is a little girl and was used to a lot of attention from Mom and Dad before he came and that she is learning to get along. He seemed to understand that. He really is very patient with her and shows geniune concern and affection toward her...she's just pushing him to the limit at times. I asked him what his favorite thing is about America and he said he really likes to go shopping! Yes, I knew that too -- hmmm, want to guess my least favorite thing to take him to do??? I asked him if he missed anything or anyone from China. Our friend wasn't sure what he was talking about in reply, but I'm fairly certain it was another narrative about the television shows he liked so much in China and that we don't let him watch here. It was all very light hearted with lots of smiles and laughter.

He is doing really well with learning English. Thankfully, he loves his English program and since it is DVD based, it fills some of that void left behind from those days of watching TV at the orphanage. Today, I took the kids and a friend on a long walk/run. For part of the time, Joshua and I started talking about "fast and slow" then "up and down", then "walk/run" then "feet/hands" and then I was pointing to various "flowers". He started walking along holding my hand practicing the harder to pronounce words. He is trying to teach me some vocabulary words in Chinese too -- I'm sure he is doing better than I am. Let's see, today I learned "shee gua" (that would be my spelling) for "watermelon" when he couldn't remember the word and resorted to drawing a picture (which he does very well!)

Here are pictures of Joshua's experiences this past week -- trip number two to the dentist (for the first 2 of 10 fillings...), crawfish with Grandpa, tether ball with Rachel, walking back to the car with siblings and friends after his first theater movie (love those free summer movies!) and the Shady Dell Steam Engine Park.

This week, I came upon a verse that I really liked. I need to figure out a way to put it into my own words so that I have an appropriate response to people that want to tell us what a great thing we have done. They are words spoken by Jesus regarding servants from Luke Chapter 17 (verses 9-10) "Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise, you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do. '"