Mom and Dad's Adventure! Day 1

Well, Mom and Dad have left on their grand adventure.
This is Rachel posting for them.
Here's what they've had to say so far!

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Our flight here wasn't too bad. We had personal video choices and I watched Blind Side -- cried my way through it again...then took a nap of sorts. We had a view of the alps as we flew in. Everything here was covered with ice and snow and looked like frozen tundra! We arrived at 10:00 this morning. We had a bit of a challenge navigating our way to the hotel, mostly because every street here has a name that is at least 20 letters long and it is hard to read the signs. I have felt pretty stupid since arriving here. I realized this is the first time I've traveled to a country without knowing at least some of the language. I don't even know how to pronounce the long, confusing words here! I will be going home trying to learn at least a little German in case I ever come back here again. I will not travel to a country again without trying to learn a little of the language. Rachel -- I wish you were here! You would love it. It all looks very German and very European. Pete and I had as much difficulty navigating our way around the subway station -- it really became quite humorous and was probably complicated by our sleep deprivation and jet lag. It was an adventure! We took the subway to Marienplatz which is a shop area, St. Peters church (originally on the site in the 1100s). It is a fun area, but it was so cold we kept ducking into shops every few minutes (even if we weren't interested in them) just to keep warm. I was glad Nancy talked me into knee high bamboo socks, even with those, long underwear, two sweaters, a coat, scarf, leather gloves and ear warmers --it was freezing even in the bright sunshine! Our first stop was to find some lunch since Pete was really hungry. He ordered a pizza, I wanted something "German" and asked the waiter to pick one of three dishes that I had no idea what they were. It turned out to be a glorified mac and cheese dish. We spent some time in the Bavarian gift shops. Most of them sell fancy painted egg shells, fancy coockoo clocks and intricate flat colorful metal artwork of people in Bavarian costume --many varieties -- many of them look like christmas ornaments. Also figurines. We didn't buy anything today -- other than food and "still" water. Our last stop in that area was the famous Hofbrauhaus. We didn't order any beer, but saw lots of varieties of beer around the tables. It was not too loud or roudy since it was mid afternoon on a Monday. Good time to go. Dad had a coffee and pretzel and I had a bowl of brussel sprouts! Tomorrow we are going to drive out to Neuschwanstein Castle. We bought some pretzels and bread back to the room (they sell them everywhere) so that we don't have to go out again tonight. We're both having trouble keeping our eyes open, but are trying to stay awake until 8pm. Haven't had showers since our flight -- so maybe nice hot showers will help. We're excited for our drive tomorrow and thankful for this opportunity to experience another culture see another little part of this interesting planet!

"Son"

About a week and a half ago, I was tucking my boys into bed. After chatting and praying, I started passing out kisses and said something to one of them that included the word "son". Joshua asked, "which one son?" That is his way of asking the meaning of a word. I responded that he was my son, Mark was my son and James was my son -- "three sons!" He then said, "where's four?" He proceeded to talk about his friend back in China that would be coming to America. He had mentioned before that there was a boy from the orphanage that was also going to be coming to America. It had only been a couple of months ago that he finally started to tell me the names of a couple of his friends and talk about them a bit. The conversation started out light hearted as he said he thought his friend should come here and I told him they had too many legos to fit another brother in the room. Joshua started to talk about a boy at the orphanage that was mean to the other children. I told him that I was glad his brothers weren't mean to him and that it was better here. At that point, his mood changed and he got tears in his eyes. I ended up holding him while he had a good cry. Eventually he started talking again and told me about the boys that wouldn't be adopted because nobody wanted them. He told me he had been sad when he went to bed at night and that everyone was sad. This was the first time he had ever said anything like this. He was always smiling and happy in the many pictures we have of him from his time in China and had always smiled and laughed when talking about things in the orphanage. We talked a long time. I asked him to help me remember to pray each night for those boys to have forever families. He has been praying for them ever since. It was hard to hear of the sadness, but also precious to hear his heart for the other children and to know that he wants them to have a family like he has. What a blessing. He is such a sweet and loving boy. For the past 2 or 3 weeks he has wanted to pray all of the time. He prays special prayers for all of us.
There is another chapter to this story. Two days after this conversation I received an email from the yahoo group for families that have adopted from his province. Someone posted that there was a boy from his orphanage on the shared list of waiting children. Long story short, I learned it is the same boy he has been talking about, the same boy that is in almost all of the pictures with Joshua that came from the orphanage. Apparently, his best friend. We are hoping and praying for a family for this precious boy. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was a family nearby? God has done such amazing and unexpected things to bring our two blessing from China into our family. We wait with expectation to see what He has planned and hope to do whatever we can to make sure this boy also has a forever family. Please pray with us. If you feel led to find out more about this boy. Please contact us.

Photo Update

Photo Update
Basketball Boys - Mark and Joshua are on a team coached by Pete. Joshua has a ton of heart and does well with defense. The other picture is James taking a shot. I think he made that one.
Wedding - Our nephew's wedding. Joshua and Anna were in the wedding. Our prayers are with Matt and Brittany as they prepare for Matt to deploy to Afghanistan.
Speech and Debate - January and February have been filled with speech and debate tournaments. Sarah is competing in four speech events - Persuasive, Dramatic Interpretation, Impromptu and Duo Interpretation (see picture with her equally goofy Duo partner - they got first place at their last tournament). Rachel is competing in three speech events - Original Oratory, Impromptu and Apologetics. She is also competing in Team Policy Debate, this year's debate resolution is US Environmental Policy. Both girls are doing very well in all of their events and have qualified all events for the Regional Tournament in April. Rachel is pictured with her beloved debate partner. They thrilled and surprised themselves in the last tournament, making it all the way to quarter finals in a big tournament. You can see some of their club friends celebrating the end of a tournament.
Home school science - you can see Anna was less than thrilled with the worm dissection lab.

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....