Mom I Want to be Brave!

When we first got to our condo we could see the Tower of Terror out one of the windows and I pointed to it and told Destina that she probably did not want to go on that ride because it was scary, and that it goes up and down really fast. She thought about it for a minute then said, "But mom I want to be brave and go on all the rides so that I wont miss any of them!" I said, "OK" and on the second day we went on the Tower of Terror, Destina and Delanie were crying hysterically by the time we got off, we took Avrie on it and she was more in shock, maybe she was too scared to cry but she did it, of course, none of the girls wanted to do it again. This was our whole group, all of the people that we hung out with all week, good times!
If you click on the picture it should get bigger so you can see the "terror" on Destina's and Delanie's faces!

Conversations at the Pool

One of the best parts of the trip for the girls was going swimming each day after walking around Disneyland all day, somehow they had a renewed energy and probably could have been at the pool all night long. Of course, I loved it too because Scott is the pool man and I stayed back in the condo, usually cleaning up dinner or making dinner, but I did manage to sneak in a few minutes of down time. But everyday when Scott came back from the pool he always had something interesting to tell.

The first day Scott was in the hot tub and most of the other kids were in the big pool and someone else in the hot tub said to the others sitting in the hot tub, "Why are those kids throwing that black baby back and forth? Who does she belong too?" Scott looked over and McKenzie and Tim and Katie and Andre were playing "hot potato" with Avrie throwing her back and forth, she loves the pool and has no fear! Scott said, "She's mine?" Then the same person asked, "Well who are the kids tossing her around?" Scott said, "There mine too!" Left them speechless!

Another day, the last day, Scott came up from swimming and said that as soon as he got down to the pool a little 4 year old girl attached herself to Scott's neck and would not get off. So he just went with it, he had talked to this girls mother and her sister the other day, and according to him they were hitting on him all week long even asking if he believed in bigamy! REALLY? He already has a wife and 7 kids, don't ya think that is enough trouble? Anyway, he had this little girl for quite a while and didn't see her mother until he was about ready to come up. She saw him and said to him, "Oh we (mom and sister) saw that she was with you so we decided to go do something else for a while." Again REALLY when is it EVER OK to leave your 4 year old girl with a guy you tried to pick up at the pool just 2 days before? Don't you think Scott had his hands full with his own 2 little girls?

Vacation Part Two

This is part of our crew waiting for us to get the tickets, it was our first day and everyone was excited to get into the park and go on all the rides. The older 8 kids took off and did their own thing the first day. The younger kids and the parents stuck together until about lunch time and then Eric and JT took off and Jayden went with the older kids. Scott, Sheree and I and took the little girls to Fantasy land and they had a lot of fun on the rides there.


This was Avrie's 2nd ride, we went on It's a Small World first to break her in and that was her favorite ride this one not so much. She was pretty timid about the rides the first day but by the second day she was warming up. Destina and Delanie were excited to go on all the rides and they loved all the roller coaster rides as well as the little kiddie rides they were the perfect age to take to Disneyland they loved everything, well almost everything!

The lines were so short that the kids could ride the rides back to back but once was usually enough for Avrie so while the girls went on the ride for the second time we took pictures of Avrie!

She did not like getting her picture taken with any of the characters at all she was not into the whole princess thing and waiting in line for signatures which was fine with me!

The older girls liked to have their picture with the characters as long as there was a very short line otherwise they could take it or leave it!



Ryan wanted his picture taken with these cute little guys! Ryan went on this trip a little hesitant, it had been 7 years since we have been to Disneyland and back then he was afraid of the rides, I know if you know this kid that is hard to believe, he will ride his mountain bike on the craziest stuff and snowboarding he has no fear! But roller coasters are another thing. He kept telling everyone that he was just going to wait while they went on the rides, but he really wanted to hang out with the big kids and they insisted that he go on the rides. After his first ride he was hooked and could not get enough, too bad we had to listen to him whine about it for a month before the trip!

On the first day of the trip my camera got knocked off a bench and my lens is messed up so I have no pictures of the trip that I took. Scott took these with his phone and I am waiting to get the rest of the pictures from the older kids.

Vacation Part One

We have been planning a Disneyland vacation for about 2 years, it has been a long time since we went on a real family vacation. We own a timeshare condo and 2 years ago we got a letter saying we needed to use our points or we would loose them so we decided to go to Disneyland it was warm, and it was within driving distance, more or less. We booked it for April of 2010, hoping that the girls would be home, then the earthquake happened, and the girls came home but we soon realized that they were not ready for that kind of experience yet and we could not afford to go, we had huge fees we needed to pay since the adoption was now complete, more or less. So we decided to push it off another year to this February and we started saving our money. Scott's parents have generously given the kids and us some spending money each month and we decided as a family to pool this money together and save every penny and we were able to have enough to get everyone in the park. So housing taken care of and park fees taken care of all we needed was the transportation costs and food .

We decided to drive down because 8 airline tickets are pretty expensive, we have 9 people in the family but our car only holds 8 so our oldest agreed to buy her own plane ticket. As the time got closer Kelsie our 14 year old found out she had a volleyball tournament the same weekend we would be driving decided to save her babysitting money and buy her a plane ticket for the trip down so she would not have to miss the tournament. Then Katie our 17 year old started looking around and realized that she would be in the car with all the little kids and that it would be her job to entertain them, she announced to us that since she has a job she would be buying her own plane ticket both ways. I am thinking, "Good more room in the car!"

McKenzie our oldest has been dating a guy pretty seriously and wanted to bring him along, and I thought it would be a great idea, I mean what a better way to make sure he can handle, put up with, stand, doesn't go crazy with, our crew even while on vacation. So he was flying down too.

Then Katie and her best friend, "boyfriend" wanted to come, it was a little bit of a harder sale but he could not afford to fly so we let him come and be the "manny" in the car with the kids on the way down and back. He really got put to the test 12 days with us and 6 of them in the car! And he did a great job!

My sister and three of her kids plus a boyfriend came too, she had her own condo but we hung out a lot!
We drove and we drove and it took forever to get there, the kids were very good in the car they each had their own entertainment and I think Avrie got in her yearly quota of Barney on this one trip! Destina has been trained to sit and do nothing all day long for most of her life so sitting in the car forever was a piece of cake for her, and the boys did pretty good too as long as no one was within their little bubble of space!

We arrived at our condo and were so excited I was ready to move in we booked the 4 bedroom 4 bath presidential suite, remember we had a lot of points we needed to use. It was great having so much space we were able to feed both families each night and not feel crowded.







These are the stock photos and our condo was a little different but this is pretty close, I loved coming home each day, and having somewhere nice to go.

The Happiest Place on Earth!

3500 miles
10 days
17 of my favorite people
7 states
perfect weather
no crowds
an amazing condo =
one fun, successful family vacation!

My Girls Are Home Safe and Sound

My girls are home, they are safe and sound and they even get to take luxurious bubble baths whenever they want. I should feel pretty good about that, but what about all the other children that are in Haiti? Wondering where they will sleep tonight or when they will get their next meal. This still nags me, I cannot look at my girls and not wonder what if....

Here is a picture of the new orphanage site, they "Bel Haiti" have joined up with another great organization, Haitian Roots, and they have purchased 8 acres to build a new children village that will have an orphanage, school and boarding house and a place for volunteers.


This is the man that will be running the orphanage, Harry, I cannot think of him without tears forming, there are not words to describe this incredible man and what he is sacrificing to help the children of Haiti. He is honest, hard working and cares so much about the welfare of the children of Haiti. When I think of modern day hero's he is at the top of my list. He worked tirelessly to help us bring our kids home before and after the earthquake.
Our orphanage is small right now, there is no huge corporate donations coming in and unlike some orphanages we are not sponsored by a church, our orphanage is small in comparison but has huge plans. We are trying to raise enough money to get started on building, the land is cleared and a perimeter fence is being built. We are putting out the call for a donation, any donation would be helpful, $5.00 to you and me is really not that much but collectively it will make a difference, if everyone that read this blog post donated $5.00 that would be huge. There is a one time donation button, and a monthly donation button, could you spare $5.00 a month? Maybe $10.00? All donations go directly to build the orphanage there is no administrative costs.

Shh...Be Quiet I am Reading

As I was downstairs cleaning I heard Avrie shout in her really loud voice...Mom Shhh I am reading! When I came upstairs she was sitting on the sofa with her novel reading. Both her and Destina will do this on a regular basis, they each have their own book with a bookmark to mark their spot, and they both like to sit on the sofa and "read".
So I guess their could be worse things that they copy me doing, I will take the blame for this habit it really is one of my favorite things to do, usually resulting in falling asleep which is even better! Except they never get to the falling asleep part.

What Worked For One...

I have loved Destina's hair so I went back to the store and bought another box of hair relaxer and did Avrie's hair. It is hard to tell in the pictures but the curls come out soft and bouncy. Avrie's natural hair mats up close to her head and is really hard to comb through and now she has soft curls that will be really easy to take care of and her hair looks so much longer than it did before. I love it when I find something new that actually works!

New Hair Again!

It has been a busy week, I have had a lot on my mind just not anything I can really blog about, yet anyway. So I am reverting back to my old stand by - new hair for Destina. We took out the yarn extensions about 2 weeks ago and I think she was ready for them to go and she was glad to have her hair back, that is until some of the kids at school started making fun of her. Scott was walking her up to school the other morning and a little girl that was walking a little bit in front of her turned around and said something not nice to her, with Scott standing right there! He didn't quite hear what she said so he asked her and she said "That girl (also another 1st grader) is always telling me that my hair is scary, my face is scary, and my skin is scary looking." Scott was none to happy about this and that day after school when he went to pick her up he saw her mom waiting and he went right up to her and said "do you know that your daughter is saying THIS to Destina? Scott said the mother's face went white as a ghost and she was so embarrassed that her little girl would say things like that, which at least I was grateful that the mother was not condoning her behavior or defending it. After further questioning of Destina apparently this is not the only other girl that has been saying this to her. What is ironic is that none of the kids that are saying these things are in her class, which leads me to believe that they just don't know her, and they are making judgments against her out of ignorance. Sad that this behavior starts in 1st grade, but she is dealing with it and she knows that she has a dad that will go to bat for her. She knows that not all kids say mean things and that she has a whole house full of people who think she is beautiful.
Now back to the hair....


I was at Walgreen's and they had a hair relaxer, not the straightener, on sale and I thought it just might give Destina the curls that she would love. So I bought the box and that night we combed out her hair, which takes forever, and applied the relaxer and in about 10 minutes she had soft bouncy curls, she could shake her hair and the curls just fell right back into place, she loved it. It is so easy to take care of just spray it down add a little leave in conditioner and throw in a headband and it looks really cute. Hopefully this will keep the mean kids at bay about her hair anyway.
And this is what happens when I was on the phone with a friend that I haven't talked to in a long time and my kids are left up to their own devices, Destina painted Avrie's fingernails and toenails and found some nice red lipstick, Avrie was trying hard not to get toothpaste on her lips!