Jayden Playing Basketball

He is supposed to be guarding that guy not running away!
I think he is actually sleeping!
Is this game over yet??

It is Called Basketball

This is Jayden's first year of Basketball. The picture above is what the game of basketball looks like. The picture below is how Jayden usually played the game. It was his first year and we really are not TV watchin sports fans. Jayden started out at a disadvantage because he really didn't understand the game, has never seen it played on TV. So our time was spent while driving to the game explaining to Jayden that when the other team has the ball you guard your guy, and when your team has the ball you try to stay away from the other guy. No fail, at every game he was practically hugging the guy he was guarding while his team had the ball and when the other team had the ball he was usually hanging back at the center court line.
Jayden is such a cute boy it was funny to go the the games and watch him. Next year I am sure he will rule the court!

And Then There Was Cheer!

With all the focus on gymnastics the last couple of weeks, some of you probably thought I forgot all about cheer! Well I didn't, here are a picture of Katie and Kelsie at a recent exhibition performance. They have been involved with cheer for almost 3 years. It has been a good way for them to stay in shape and learn new things. McKenzie also does cheer but I thought I would focus on Katie and Kelsie for now. This is Kelsie's first year as a flyer. It is a little scary for her since she wasn't born with nerves of steel. I am proud of her for doing her best and accomplishing many new things this year. Katie has also been a flyer and she enjoys it quite a bit. We are winding down the Cheer Season with only 2 more competitions for Katie and Kelsie and 3 more for Kenzie. It takes hard work and dedication to a team to make it through the season. Way to go girls!

The Wonderful Pacific Northwest

A friend sent me the following the other day and I got a good laugh from it (thanks Jennifer)! Those of you who live here will get a laugh also, those of you from other places might not get it!
The Pacific Northwest According To Jeff Foxworthy:

1. You know the state flower (Mildew).

2. You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.
3. Use the statement "sun break" and know what it means.

4. You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.

5. You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.
6. You feel overdressed wearing a suit to a nice restaurant or to church.

7. You stand on a deserted corner in the rain

waiting for the Walk Signal.

8. You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it's Not a real mountain.

9. You can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and Veneto's.

10 . You know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon.

11. You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Haceta, Yaquina, Yachats, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima and Willamette.

12. You consider swimming an indoor sport.

13. You can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food.
14. In winter, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark While only working eight-hour days.

15. You never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho.

16. You are not fazed by "Today's forecast: showers followed by rain," And "Tomorrow's forecast: rain followed by showers."

17. You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.

18. You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of Mind.

19. You can point to at least two volcanoes, even if you cannot see Through the cloud cover.

20. You notice, "The mountain is out" when it is a pretty day and you Can actually see it.

21. You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50, but still Wear your hiking boots and parka.
22. You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks On.

23. You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.
24. You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists.

25. You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old Ones after such a long time.

26. You measure distance in hours.

27. You often switch from "heat" to "a/c" in the same day.

28. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit under a raincoat.
29. You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, winter, Still Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer & Elk season (Fall).

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Kenzie did great this weekend; there were 141 girls competing on Friday in two different sessions then they took the top 10 scores for all four events for Saturday's competition. On Friday she was in the first rotation on Bars and did a great routine when she got done the judges said that she didn't have all the elements for the 9.5 (out of 10) start value, although she had been doing the same bar routine all season and getting the 9.5 start value. (are you confused yet?) So they only gave her a 8.7 start value which means that if she did a perfect routine the highest score she could get would be 8.7 instead of the 9.5. They gave her an 8.3 so it was pretty darn close to perfect. So she was mad about that because that put her out of the bars competition for Sat. But she qualified on vault and floor (she was happy about not qualifying for beam).
On Saturday she had to compete against girls that were still doing club gymnastics and she has been out for 2 years. BUT she did great. She tied for 4th on Vault and took 2nd on Floor. It was her rock star day she had the newspaper reporter and photographer following her around, they had an article about her in the paper on Fri, Sat, and Sun. She was so happy. And she was picked to be one of 8 senior girls (20 applied) to go the the H.S. National Competition in May.
To top the night off U of Washington was hosting the U of U gymnastics team so we went right from her competition to that competition and it was a weekend full of gymnastics!
On the left side of the screen is a link to one of the articles and once you are on the Bellingham Herald site if you do an archive search for McKenzie Gordon it will pull up all of the articles about her.

Another Cool Picture!

Thanks Staci for this cool picture! We are headed down for the state gymnastics meet this will be Kenzie's last hurrah for gymnastics! She is excited and ready to have some fun. Good Luck McKenzie!!

Three Strikes Your Out!!

How many trips to the post office does it take to get a passport?? Well for us we are now on our third trip. We are trying to get Katie's passport done and the first trip there I picked her up from school and we got to the post office as fast as we could which is on the other side of town, and the times posted for passport interviews are between 10:00 and 2:00! So if you want a passport your schedule has to fit those times. So we turn around and go home. The next day I check Katie out of school early at 1:15. We get the the post office at 1:30, plenty of time! NOT! There were 3 people waiting in line and the person at the end of the line was told that she would be the last one because they close at 2:00 and didn't want to run past that time. So we turn around and go home again! So today I am checking Katie out on her lunch period, and hopefully she will get in. What a run-a-round!!

Donations for Hope for Little Angels of Haiti

All of the people that went to Haiti on our trip collected donations for the Orphanage "Hope for the Little Angels of Haiti". It was quite a site when we pulled up to the orphanage and started unloading bag after bag of donated goods. There were 20 bags in all weighing about 650 lbs. The director of the orphanage "Nadia" was completely overwhelmed. You see, up until just recently she only worked with French families and the French just come and pick up their kids and don't bring anything. Clothes, toys, medicine, vitamins, formula, books, crayons etc were all donated. Also, another couple had raised a good amount of cash to give to her. When she was given the money she started screaming "Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus! She just could not believe the generosity of so many people giving to help these children.
Katie decided to head up our donation drive as a project for her personal progress. (Kinda like earning an Eagle but for girls). She made flyer's and little postcards to hand out. I was amazed at the things that started coming in. People that we don't even know that well wanted to donate. When we left our house each of our 6 bags weighted exactly 50 lbs, the airline limit. We were amazed at how every donation fit into our bags, so thank you to those that donated to our cause it warmed our hearts to see your generosity and it made life a little bit better for 50 kids in Haiti!

More Gymnastics

McKenzie competed in the District Meet on Saturday and took 6th in the All-Around! There were about 100 girls competing with 2 different sessions and then all the scores were tallied. She is headed to the State Competition this Friday and Saturday! Of all the pictures I took at the meet this is by far my favorite! (Yes, I took that cool picture) She actually landed that jump too, Way to go Kenzie!!

Domino's Pizza Tastes Better in Haiti!

Our first couple of days in Haiti we ate the food that was on the limited menu at the restaurant at our hotel. This was fine because we had a stash of goodies in our room and we knew we could live the whole week on this supply if needed. So when we were told that there was a Domino's Pizza place not too far from our hotel, you would think we had just died and gone to heaven! Really it had only been probably 6 or 7 days since we last had pizza so it wasn't like this was some special occasion like Thanksgiving when you only eat turkey once a year. But, I have to tell you that was a really good pizza! At our house we rarely go a week with out pizza it is our family favorite and something that everyone loves! As a matter of fact that pizza was so good that we were willing to pay $20.00 per pizza (and we ordered 2) again the next night!
Oh yeah, don't tell McKenzie that I put this picture in she will kill me!

Picky Eater

For those of you who know my girls, you know that they are the pickiest eaters ever. McKenzie is not so picky but Katie and Kelsie are the worst. They would rather go hungry than eat something they do not like, I can count on one hand the foods that Kelsie will eat. Well, we have another picky eater to add to our family. Ellie, who by the way was malnourished, is a picky eater! That is how I knew for sure she belonged in our family! She would have nothing to do with formula, baby cereal or baby food. She also didn't like Teddy Grahams. She would eat Pedi-a-lite with vitamin supplement mixed in, and Pedi-a-sure, strawberry flavor, thanks Brent and Lori for the supply! But immediately her favorite food became Goldfish! She ate the whole bag I brought in about 2 days and I had to trade diapers for another bag of Goldfish to make it through the rest of the week. She would just point at the bag of Goldfish sitting on the counter and wait for me to get them for her, if I picked up something else other than the goldfish she would just shake her head no and point again at the Goldfish. By our last night there she was eating all the chicken off of my plate. She would have nothing to do with "baby" food and wanted the "real thing"!

The First Smile

We arrived in Haiti at 12:30 in the afternoon on Jan 10. By the time we went to our hotel and then made our way to the orphanage it was around 3:00. There were 2 other couples with us that were also adopting and they brought their children out first and then it seemed to take forever for them to bring our "Ellie" out. She was very quiet but came right into my open arms and rested her head on my shoulders. We held her and tried to play with her, but she was hungry and ate almost a whole plate of rice and beans. Finally, it was time to go back to the hotel, we loaded up the van with kids on our laps, and headed to our home away from hom for the next 5 days. When we got back to the hotel we attempted to give her a bath and that was the first sound she made, a weak cry not wanting to get in the tub, so we set her on the counter and gave her a bath out of the sink. We tried to play and we could see that she was warming up to us but, yet, no smile. The next morning at 6:00 we (Kenzie and I, Scott slept through the whole thing) woke up to a mess, poop from head to toe! After we got her cleaned up, Kenzie went back to sleep and I got out some of her toys, a little mirror with toys attached, and a frog that sings the ABC's, she started playing with them and at 6:45am, I saw her smile for the first time. She is such a delicate little child with with the most beautiful smile her teeth are so cute and perfect! From that moment on it was my quest to make her smile!

A little Bit of Bragging

My life right now is so focused on our adoption that I sometimes over look what my other kids are doing, only because they are here and I see them everyday and talk to them everyday and give them a hug everyday. So before I go into details about our trip to Haiti I need to do a little bragging about McKenzie. She is the oldest and so we have always told her she is our "experiment" at parenting. Well she is now a senior in High School but attending the community college full-time. She has worked hard and has dedicated the majority of her life to the sport of gymnastics. Two years ago she quit, not because she didn't love the sport but because she decided that she needed to give her body especially her wrists a break. It was one of the hardest decisions that she has had to make in her life. That is who she was "a gymnast" if she quit then who would she be? Well, she started coaching gymnastics and that helped but there she was at the gym and not working out while watching all of her friends work out. She went right into competitive cheer which was fun, and she made some great friends, but it was not her love. Well this year she decided to do High School Gymnastics just for fun. High School gymnastics is not at the level she was at but it has given her that second chance to fulfill a dream that she thought was long gone. She was amazed at how fast she regained some of her skills and how much fun she was having. The sparkle came back into her life. Well now that there are only 2 weeks left to her gymnastics career, she has had a great season. At the last meet she won everything. She took first place in the all around, the bars, beam, floor, vault. She is headed to the district meet this Saturday and then on to State. She gets to end her gymnastics on a positive note rather than on negative note. She has been in the local paper numerous times and is finally getting some recognition for years and years of hard work and sacrifice. So I am bragging a little I am proud of all of her accomplishments in and out of the gym. Way to go McKenzie!!

This is a First!

Ok so I like to read other people's blogs and since we have friends and family scattered throughout the country I thought I would give this a try. It might be a fun way to keep everyone informed with the going ons at our house. Right now our lives are quite busy and will go into more detail when I see how this works.