More golf

 

 

 

 

Justin reading.

Driveway dance slideshow, Sept. 1, 2007

I put this together, using several other persons pictures, along with ours. Did some cropping and editing and came up with the slide show. Again, click on the x in the small box, this should take you to slide. The quality of the pictures, when run through the slide program, seem to go down. So step back a little from your computer screen and things look a little better.

Thank you to everyone who took great pictures and to everyone who came and danced and helped out in so many ways.

Travels to WV, this summer

We traveled once in June and twice in August to WV and we plan on traveling back again, this coming November to celebrate Granny's 90th birthday. We're hoping we all can go at that time.

The above picture is of my dad's siblings. Uncle Mike, Aunt Judy, Uncle Harold and my dad.

These are my dad and his siblings. We were gathered for a memorial service to honor my Great-Uncle, who was the youngest in my grand-dad's family. My Great-Uncle Jr. had served in WWII in 5 major battles in Europe. Five of his seven children joined my dad's family at my grandmother's farm and for the service. It was a good visit and a good time to remember.

WV - Allen side, Uncle Jr. memorial

The black and white photos are first of my grandmother's house as I would have remembered it as a small girl. The next one is of my uncle while in the service, the last one is of my grandparent's in the late 50's. The next picture is of Justin in our house, it really doesn't go with the theme, but I really don't want to change it. He's eating donuts that his grand-dad got for him, while they were visiting us.

If you click on the collage it will enlarge.

WV

Birthday girl.

WV - Post Presley Reunion

After the Presley reunion some of us got to swim and play cards.

Later we celebrated Abbey's birthday .

WV - Presley side, reunion

Presley Reunion: August, 2007

These are the celebraties of the day. We usually gather them together then we do a "photo shoot", with all the cousins gathered around shooting pictures. The original siblings were 10. My mom who is at the bottom right of this picture is #9. Top left and across: Uncle Joe, Uncle Billy, Uncle Harold, his twin, Uncle Carroll left before we could get him in the picture.Bottom from the left: Aunt Geneva, Aunt Naomi and Mom. My Aunt Wanda was unable to make it to the reunion this year.

Like I said, the original siblings were ten. There are 30+ first cousins and we don't actually try to count the # in the next generation and the generation after that is growing steadily.

Our day was a good day of fun, food and visiting. What used to be a tense game of softball has turned into Bocce Ball, but still a lot of fun and lots of teasing.

WV - Presley side, reunion

WV - Granny

1st August visit with Granny. Daniel couldn't come with us, but after driving straight through the night we were able to spend the day with Granny. Justin got to do some driving, play cars with Granny and take a nap in his great, great, grandmother's bed.

More scenes from summer, Webb visit

More scenes from summer

Maggie and Justin playing cars

With Mr. Strand

Boys taking our dead tree down

In the pool afterwards,

we're really working on gettting a bigger one. :)

Bob and Daniel spent an afternoon at the race track with

Bob Speziale, Ed, Luke and Edward Baumgarten.

Baumgarten visit

More of the Baumgarten visit

Earlier Abbey made a trip with Resounding Voice to help work. I think you can barely see her behind Joseph. She was able to help Jessica at the Vision Forum table also. I'm not sure whose picture this is, but it was the only one I could find.

A little reading in the Hill House...

I was stacking up the books which had accumulated from different members of our family, in order to wipe the table, when I realized how funny our stack of books was. Intermixed between theology books and whatever were Dr. Suess.

Summer pictures

Playing Hyde Park, downtown. Rachel I. to the right, with the very long braid. Grant I. facing out, with the ball, left side. Red striped shirts.

Wendy ready to kick the ball, Grant ready for the assist. Rachel is in the far background. Rachel usually played defense, protecting the goal. Grant and Wendy would play forward.

More summer pictures

Wendy

Grant taking the stride toward the ball, left side.

Wendy looking on, ready for the assist, Grant with the ball.

Grant

Olivia....

Everyone keeps asking, "do we know anything yet?", so I thought I'd update something. Though there isn't much of anything to update. We started the paper chase process Sept. 2005, which included, stacks of paper, forms and documents, everything signed, sealed and notorized. Nothing can be, near being out of date, including your notory's stamp. Also, included during this time are the fingerprinting and back ground checks by our local, state and Federal governments. When complete it is quite the work. That large packet was translated and then sent and officially received in China Feb. 6, 2006. Once we were reviewed by CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs), our paperwork is placed in a pile and they just work their way through it, going by "Log in Date", ours being Feb. 6, 2006. The problem is there are just so many more adoption applications going into CCAA, that they can not keep up with them all. In our agency's small Chicago office alone, the number of China applications that this office sends to China has tripled. So imagine through out the Western world and Australia/New Zealand, that the number of all applications have greatly increased. When the CCAA gets to a certain point we can make a guess that our referral would come in about 2 months. (We are not to that point.) But we've made guess before, the latest guess that our referral would be here by Bob's birthday, Oct. 10, but that is probably not going to happen. Now we're thinking it would be really hard to even travel this year. Remember a referral is when we actually have a girl assigned to us. We would receive a picture of her with some brief medical or personality info about her. At that time we would agree to that referral or not. If so, then the referral would become official and we could plan on traveling to China in about 6 weeks to pick her up and bring her back here. At the time of travel, our baby should be about a year old.



So the update is really nothing, except we are still waiting. We know this entire matter is in God's hands and we can rest in that. So we keep waiting and praying and going on with our life. We're all quite busy and there is always something new and exciting to deal with as our family journeys on. Thanks for your interest and prayers.



Specific prayer request: pray for Olivia's safety and that God would prepare her for our family; and also that God would prepare us for her.