A special song for parents of special needs kids

This is a beautiful song! Enjoy!

"Your Child' by Jennifer Shaw - A song celebrating every life

Milka Chocolate Anyone???

Some of you may remember from our trips to Ukraine that I LOVE Milka chocolate!  Believe it or not, I'm really not a big fan of chocolate. I'll caramel instead any day. But Milka is different - oh so yummy - the best chocolate in the world says my Ukrainian friend, Max, and I agree!

My dear husband just returned from a 3-week trip to Russia for work.  I am SO glad to have him home. (He got in almost 8 hours late last night and had every imaginable type of delay possible, but he made it. Thank you Lord!)  Anyway, he picked up some Milka for me to donate to the Hidden Treasures auction. (Hidden Treasures auction runs every other month to support a family adopting from Pleven, Bulgaria. It's lots of fun!)  So, if you are craving some chocolate - some really, really good chocolate, hop on over to the blog site and put your bid in. It's super easy and just follow the directions here.



Here is the first collection. Pat was told the chocolate w/ the baby on the label is the best Russian chocolate, made in Moscow. I haven't tried it yet.




Here is the second collection. All Milka...yum...

Hope to "see" you over there!

Fun in the Barn!

Yesterday, one of our friends from church took Isaac and Rebekah to their house for the afternoon. It sounds like they had a lot of fun!

Thank you Mr and Mrs. M!!

Fun with Signs

Who says you can't communicate using signs?? Not Elijah!

Today I (Sarah) was sitting on my bed, and Elijah came in after waking up from his nap (actually I don't think he ever slept). He signs "sleep" over and over and climbs up on my bed, crawls under the covers and pulls the covers up. Then he signed "lights off please" and told Rachel (who had also just gotten up) and I to be "quiet". He laid there for a couple minutes and kept closing his eyes like this:

Then he sat up and signed "wake up" and "all done sleep". He got out of bed and told us bye, turned the light off and shut the door on us. I opened the door to see him running away laughing. Stinker!

Merry Christmas!!!

I know, you are saying, "Jill, it's long past Christmas. You are a little late."  Well, if you live in America, that may be true. But if you live in Ukraine, you are waking up very soon and it will be Christmas Day! So, Merry Christmas to Mama Tanya, Papa Igor, and my missionary friend, Max. :-)

Here's our Christmas letter.  (And no, I did not have it done before Dec. 25th. Oh well.) Happy New Year!!! I pray it will be a blessed year for all of you. (You should be able to click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Just a side note...when compiling this letter, I looked at what I wrote last year for each child. Not a lot has changed. But Jonathan's said something about being a very laid back baby. HA!  That is so NOT true anymore. :-) And I thought Elijah was the stubborn one... Jonathan has definitely learned being in a family has many, many advantages. One of them is being able to express your opinion about life. As his OT says, "Not all stages of development are pleasant ones." So true. We love him through it all though! Each one of our children are true blessings in our lives.

Playdate & the faces of Rachel

Sarah here - Tonight we had a playdate/get together with our local Ds group...

Both Elijah (right) and Jonathan had fun climbing around, and I think everyone else did too!

Mr. Monkey got a bit bored at times, but when you aren't big enough to climb much of anything, wouldn't you too?? (Helping him through was kinda outta the question, he's a chunk! Besides when we tried to, he freaked going over the netting.)

Anna and Jonathan, with Isaac and Elijah in the back...

 Anna and I (Sarah) also spent some time playing with and helping an adorable little girl with Ds around the playset. It's been awhile since I got to play with any girls with Ds (love you and miss you Bug and Bean!!), and Anna and I are both in agreement we need a little girl with Ds in this family!!!

After, we had some shopping to do, so the littles and I hung out in the van for awhile.

Rachel imformed me that she and Jonathan were holding hands nicely and wanted me to take a picture. ;)

She was asking me about the cars that were parking or leaving in front of us and who those people were, and why that car has it's lights on, etc. I finally told her when she said "Sarah?" for the 100th time that the answer is going to be I don't know. She told me that she wanted me to know so I could tell her. Good gravy does she like to talk! ;)

 She also makes pretty amusing faces.

Happy face

Sad face

Silly face

Grumpy face

She's a hoot. But don't let how sweet and innocent she looks fool you!

2 years HOME!

This is the little boy we called Elijah two years ago:

It's hard for me to believe he's the same child!


Happy 2 years home Elijah! We love you!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

I hope you had a wonderful day celebrating the Savior's birth!

So much heartache around the country this season, yet through Jesus, we can have HOPE and JOY!

Christmas Eve 2012

Pied!!!

I know...shocking...TWO posts in one day!  I copied this from Sarah's blog What It Means to Love. I'm so proud of hers and Rachel's fundraising efforts...but this video...I double-dog dare you to watch it without laughing out loud! :-)

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Remember this post??

Well guess what! Lilly has been over the $500 mark for awhile, but today Owen made it! His AT total now is..

They are both now over $500, so Rachel and I were pied. My little brother Elijah wanted pie on his face too, so he grabbed a handful and smeared it all over. :)

But guess what!! There's more!! Guess who else hit their AT goal today??? LILLY! She MADE HER ANGEL TREE GOAL OF $1000 thanks to a challenge that was set up!!

Do you want to see Michelle, the RR donations coordinator get pied?? Help us get Owen to $1000!! We only need about $500 more! That is soo doable!

THANK YOU SOOO VERY MUCH TO EACH PERSON WHO DONATED TO LILLY AND OWEN FOR ANGEL TREE SOO FAR!! You rock!!!

Go here to visit Angel Tree!

12.12.12, Sarah, Opie Taylor and MORE!

If you have been reading for awhile (well, at least 13 months), you may remember that I like these fun dates. The last two - 10.10.10 and 11.11.11 were significant for us in the adoption world.  On 10.10.10, our amazing church family held a benefit for our family to raise funds for Elijah's adoption.  On 11.11.11, we completed Jonathan's readoption with a court date.  What does 12.12.12 bring us in our adoption world???  Ummm...nothing.  :-/  Maybe we'll talk about adopting again...we'll see. :-)

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It's been quite awhile since I've posted anything on here about the boys, or any of the kids for that matter.  Sorry about that! Unfortunately, today will not be the day for that.  We are having fun with Christmas preparations and I'm trying to not get too stressed out about things. The boys have both had ENT check-ups and Elijah has had his vision checked. No big news there. I'll update more on that soon hopefully.

I'm so, SOOO very proud of Sarah!!!  She is currently in the middle of a 3-week stint helping to provide childcare for a large adopting family.  The family is adopting none other than sweet Maxim that I mentioned a few times here! She flew alone and even navigated O'Hare by herself!  I miss her terribly though. I can't say it's been easy for her, but she is learning a lot and is grateful for the experience.  You can peek in on what she's been doing HERE. It would be great if you would leave her an encouraging comment or two.  Stay tuned for a very, VERY funny video.  I'll let her post it on her blog first, but you will NOT be able to keep a straight face...I promise.

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Wanna see "Opie Taylor" in the flesh (if you are local)???? :-) Well, come to the "Mayberry Miracle" this weekend!  Our dear son, Isaac, has been working hard on playing the role of Opie in our church's Christmas production, based on the Andy Griffith show. Go HERE for more information. The Friday night performance is sold out and a few tickets remain for Saturday at 2pm and 7pm. So don't delay! This play is very well written and produced, and shares the real reason for the season.


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For all you homeschoolers out there! Please check out this AMAZING sale that ends tonight!!! Even if you only use a couple of things from this extensive collection, it will be well worth the $12 bucks.