My Two Favorite Pictures

These are 2 of my favorite pictures! They just look so cute together!

Papa's Girl!

It took Destina a few days to warm up to her Papa, she was a little shy around him at first. As a matter of fact she preferred her Pappi (uncle) Brent to her Papa the first couple of days. But by the middle of the week it was all about her papa! He is the one that got up with her in the middle of the night to walk her to the bathroom, he is the one that gave her horsey rides, he is the one who pretended to eat her toes and she actually believed he would, in the end he fell in love with both of these girls.

Gracie

Gracie eating breakfast Saturday morning

As you can see by the end of the week Gracie was doing much better. She is such a pretty little thing and her eyes are so big a beautiful. At night while she was sleeping I would just stare at her trying to memorize every feature of her petite little face. We were feeding her baby cereal every morning for breakfast and she was fine with that the first part of the week but by Thursday she saw the peanut butter and refused to eat her cereal unless it had a big gob of peanut butter on the spoon also. Then after her cereal was gone we would slather peanut butter all over a little biscuit and she would pinch off the tiniest little pieces until the biscuit was gone it usually took her about half an hour to eat this little biscuit, she was savoring every bite.

Super Model??

Destina has such a fun personality. At first I was not too crazy about the idea of adopting an older child, you know all the "issues" that come with raising a child that has already lived 4 out of her 5 years of life in an orphanage. When I went down in June I was adopting Destina because I knew that was what I was supposed to do. When I went down in Oct I realized that I am adopting Destina because she truly is a part of our family and she is my daughter. I love her, I didn't realize how much I loved her until I saw her at the Orphanage and was overcome by emotion at seeing her again. My heart ached for her and I didn't even know it. Saying goodbye was one of the hardest things I have had to do, and I have had to do a lot of hard things. My heart ached at knowing I would be leaving her.
The kids went to the airport with us this time, bad idea, we had to leave them in the car as we got out and found our luggage. Good-byes were hard, I stared crying and as I was hugging Desitna and telling her how much I loved her, she was patting me on the back and brushing away my tears, as her tears were streaming down her face. Once she got in the car she curled up into a ball and started crying for her mama and papa it broke my heart. I handed Gracie off to Harry and I grabbed by bags and headed into the airport I could not stand there one more minute, watching my children cry for something I wanted to give them so badly but couldn't.

Another Great Story

If you are bored with my blog and need another great blog to read check out "Brent and Lori's" blog listed to the left. They had an incredible thing happen to them while in Haiti this time.

Best Friends

We had a big group go with us on this trip and that included the parents of Destina's best friends. They had so much fun swimming and running from room to room showing off their cool new stuff and sharing treats and toys. I brought Destina a play cell phone and she promptly went around to all of her friends showing it off. I didn't understand what she was saying to them but I imagine it was something like this. " Hey check out my new phone, did your white mama bring you a phone? Oh that is too bad for you maybe if you are nice to me I will let you see it" One of the boys pouted for 2 days about not having a phone and was not happy that Destina had one and he didn't. He made sure that his mama knew not to come next time unless she has a phone for him! It was funny to see the kids sharing and checking out what the other kids got! In the end they all shared snacks, lunch, toys except the phone Destina made sure she was in possession of the phone all the time.

Destina letting her friend Abby play with the coveted phone!

We Are Home!

We made it home later than we thought! Our plane was late leaving Haiti they said it was mechanical problems which was a little scary but apparently they got it fixed because they loaded us on and we made it to Miami. But we were landing in Miami when our next flight was taking off so we missed our flight! They were able to book us on a later flight to Dallas then to Seattle in the morning. We arrived in Dallas and went to the the free hotel at 1:00 am and had a wake up call at 5:45 to get to the airport. We made it to Seattle at 10:30 am Sunday morning. Other than missing our plane the flights were good.
I have so much to blog about the internet was down for most of the week and I was not able to blog too much while it was up, I was holding a sick baby most of the time or playing with a energetic, silly 5 year old!
We found all well at home thanks to Amber and Lance and Scott's parents for taking such good care of our kids and house while we were gone. And thanks to all for helping with the kids running them around and checking on them during the week. We have a great support system and these trips would not be possible without the great help we receive.
Some ask why I go down there, it is not the best of conditions, it certainly isn't a tropical vacation, and I came home with bed bug bites all over my legs. Here is why I go!

I know that the conditions that my children are living in are horrible by our standards, pretty good by Haitian standards. I know that there is a good chance that my kids will get sick, and I know first hand what happens when they get too sick. When I go down I give them the chance to live in a clean environment, eat as much as they want, and show them that there is someone out there that loves them and that cares about their needs. I give them hope to make it through this process, I give them hope that there is a better life in store for them. I give them a "normal" life for a week, a chance to be a kid with no worries.

Here is the before picture of Gracie

Here is the after picture! This was taken on Friday the day before we left. Although I did not get her to smile I saw a sparkle in her eyes and a determination and will to fight, which was missing on Monday! If only I had another week with her!!! Check out the frow, we picked out her hair to see how long it was and it was really cute.

Stay tuned for more stories and pictures!

A Better Day

This picture was taken on Tuesday and I will post more later when I get them off the camera! We started both girls on antibiodics yesterday and by this morning we could already see a difference in Gracie. She was a little bit perker and wanting to eat. Yesterday she was sleeping most of the day and we couldn't get her to eat very much. If i posted pictures of her naked you would be sick she is so skinny. I gave her a bath this morning and it was really hard to see how skinny she is. Destina is a typical 5 year old she has her best friends here at the hotel also and they go around from room to room causing trouble. She had a pretty good melt down last night she did not want to go to bed or even put her pj's on and she stared crying and flailing around on the floor like a sick animal. Finally after ignoring her for a few minutes she crawled on the bed and I started rubbing her back and she was out! Talk about over stimulation! I brought her a play cell phone and she has made all the older kids here jealous. On boy pouted most of the day wanting a "telephone" I guess that was the hot ticket item.

I haven't taken a ton of pictures because I have been holding Gracie most of the time, we are working hard to find a soulition to keeping Gracie alive until we can bring her home. I know all too well the reality of what we are facing and don't want to have to love a child for a certain amount of time and then loose her again.

Onto other things! We have not seen one cockroach! But we woke up with all of these bites around our feet and ankles - BED BUGS!! That is so nice to know and I get to sleep with them for 2 more nights! Wow this week is going by too fast!

A Picture is worth a Thousand words!

Both of my girls!

Destina realizing that her mama came back!

Seeing Destina for the first time!

We made it to Haiti

Just a quick up date to let everyone know we made it, we had a few issues at the airport, but once we got on the plane our flights were good.
I was very excited to se the girls. When I first saw Destina I just started crying and ran to her and gave her a big hug, I think she remembered me she started smiling and warmed right up to me. It took me a few minutes to find Gracie she was in the back getting her "diaper" changed. She has been sick with Girrida (sp) and is probably nine pounds, she has been very weak and sick so far. She is eating good but it seems to go right through her. Hopefully we will be able to get her feeling better this week.
We had our appt with the US government today and that went pretty good there are always issues but we got done what we needed to so we are happy about that. Now they can start their investigation into their "orphan status".
I will post pictures later the kids have been pretty sick so I haven't taken too many!

In God's Arms

Ashley Rae Gordon
9-17-08 - 10-11-08

We lost Ashley today! Her short 3 weeks here on earth has touched our hearts and our love for her will continue on. She brought joy and sadness to our family, she was such a little fighter! We might be tempted to ask why, why did she have to leave so early? Why did she have to suffer? Why did her family have to go through this trial? Why is it that infants, innocent children are taken away from us?

Here is what I know, after losing Ellie this gave me and my family comfort, as with Ellie we will see Ashley again, she will be made whole and perfect.

"This world is a very wicked world; and it grows more wicked and corrupt. The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth; therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil, and we shall soon have them again."

Me and My Honey!

Getting ready for our trip to Haiti is really all that is on my mind (3 more days) but I can't blog about that everyday so I have resorted to blogging about random things! It is my distraction from my real obsession. Yesterday Scott and I were out taking pictures, he needed a head shot for a business card, and since I work cheap... but then I decided to jump into a couple of pictures and they turned out pretty good! (Not too bad for a couple of 40 year olds!)

No Regrets!

About 2 months ago I got one of those random emails that go around and it said something like this "There was this man who was about 57 years old and realized that most of his life had passed him by. He decided that he would figure out how many Saturdays he had left if he were to live to the "average life expectancy of 75" and for every Saturday he would put that many marbles into a jar. Then as every Saturday came around he would take a marble out of the jar to remind him to live each day and to enjoy the journey. If he lived longer than the marbles that he had then he was a lucky guy, and if he died before the marble jar was empty then he knew that he lived his life to the fullest with no regrets. "
Well I forwarded this email onto Scott and he decided that he to would start his own "Marble Jar". Except he decided that his would be rocks, he did the math and he needed about 1870 rocks. So while we were on our day trip to Deception Pass Park in Aug he decided he would collect some of there rocks and get started. I know it probably goes against every nature rule and the environmentalist out there will probably have a fit, but Scott did it, he took enough rocks off the beach to fill his "Saturday Jar"!
He has been very diligent about taking his Saturday rock and placing it in his pocket all week long as a reminder to live each day to the fullest spending time with his family and having no regrets.

Fall!

Fall is here and it is usually a time that I dread! But having the trip to think about and anticipate has helped me be more excited about fall! The last couple of days have been rainy here, but these pictures were taken on Monday only 5 days ago. We truly have great weather here and when it is nice I really appreciate the sunny weather. When it is windy and rainy I hold on knowing that it will be nice again!

What Was I Thinking???

Only 9 more days!

What was I thinking when I committed to taking
125 lbs of food!
The bags are all packed I got all of the food to fit,
I even had room for all of the things for the girls!
The sad part is there is only half a suitcase left for our stuff!
We will be packing light,
taking only the necessary stuff like just one swimsuit
instead of two!
We will be the ones standing in the airport with food stuffed in our pockets,
wearing two layers of clothes,
weighted down by our heavy bags and backpacks!
But in the end it will be worth it, because
In 9 days we will be hanging out with them!