Micah's trip to Haiti

Here are just some of the ton of pictures Micah brought back from Haiti. Some I have no idea how to explain. If you have ever been to an orphanage you may just understand that it's not something you can explain. It's so much different than you could ever think.



This is Fafane and Guerline with the cars that their Daddy brought them.


Being silly. These are some more people that went with Micah plus the kids they are adopting.


Jumprope! One of their favorite things to do!

Looking down from the upstairs balcony.

One of the nannys.

The street outside the orphanage. It's on a steep hill so you kind of have to get a run at it to get up it.

Braiding hair

Daddy with his girls!

At the Baptist Mission in Haiti.

Standing outside. Pastor Jean Fritz is amazing! That's him in the white and blue shirt.

Guerline. They all wear clothes that are way too small for them. I can't wait to get them home and get them clothes that fit them properly! Lord, make the process go by quickly and smoothly.

Guerline being camera shy.

Fafane eating a footlong hot dog. She also had a piece of pizza. The girls were so hungry (grangou).

Micah with his girls.

The footlong!

Eating... Yummy!

Fafane saying my daddy.

The girls really clung to Micah. It happens when they know you want to adopt them... and even when they just want you to adopt them or sometimes for no reason at all.

Guerline taking a picture.

On the computer with Skype. We love Skype!

Guerline on the ladder. They hang clothes to dry on the rooftop and they use this ladder to get up there. It rains a lot at night but the clothes end up getting dry somehow.

Looking down off the balcony again.

Should I jump in? They don't get baths very often so I'll bet it'd feel good if she was able to get in.

Beautiful!

Sunglasses

Eating Ice Cream! Yummy.

Random kids being silly.

Micah was so awesome with the girls. He taught them little bits of math with playing cards. How awesome is that. They caught on quickly he said.

Star-tacular!

Such a sweetheart!

Stephania looking at pictures that Micah was taking.

Guerline taking a picture of Micah.

Where Guerline slept each night, on the floor!

Babies sleeping. How awesome is this!

Taking pictures of herself. I have a ton of pictures of Guerline but Fafane is my shy one.

My Guerline loves to be silly.

Rummage Sale

We had an exciting and fun-filled day yesterday doing a rummage sale at the church. It ended up being just that a RUMMAGE sale. We tried to get stuff out of boxes and bags but a lot of it stayed in bags and boxes. It was nuts! We started setting up at 6:30 AM. People started coming by around 7:30 and of course it was not enough time to get all the way set up so people rummaged through boxes and bags while we set up. We had two trucks lined up for the event to help us get all of our stuff from our house to the church. One owner of a truck blew out his knee and couldn't walk so that was out of the question and the other guy... well, I don't know what happened to him. So we ended up with only our truck... it's a Chevy S10 (very small). A guy from our church came to the church to drop off donations and asked if we needed any help... oh boy he didn't know what he was asking for. Of course I said yes because all we had was the van and the truck to get the stuff over there. He said that he would help out with his truck (thank you Jesus) and started over to the house to get things loaded up. Anyways the sale went on and the kids sold lemonade. It was so cute I wrote on a sign Lemonade for 1.00 or more donation Refills .50. Alyssa apparantly didn't like that because she kept yelling out to people saying Lemonade 1.00 OR LESS! Haha... It was hilarious. We made quite a bit of money and got really sunburnt and sore! The kids were at the church all day and did an excellent job! They were so good. I love those girls! The day was hard and hot (94 degrees I think) but we made quite a bit of money off of it. We have quite a bit of stuff left over so we're going to have another garage sale sometime within the next couple of months. We started packing up at 5:00 and it took us until 10:00 to get everything packed up and back to our house. It was a long day but knowing that we are doing these things to get our girls home, it makes it all worth it! Thank you so much to all who helped out!!! We couldn't have done it without you! You will be blessed beyond measure!

Fundraising Ideas

Hey,
I wanted to get everyone's input. I need fundraising ideas for our adoptions! What is something that you think would sell or I could do to fundraise for our girls to come home from Haiti? Any ideas are appreciated! We need to raise this money so that they can come home! Thanks for all suggestions.

-Kim

P.S. If you live far away from us and would like to put on a fundraiser for us that would be awesome to! Thanks!

Thoughts of Haiti

One of our friends is in Haiti and I would like to share something that he wrote home to his wife. I didn't ask him if I could use what he said but she posted it on her blog so I don't think they would mind.

"I literally had to take a break for a while and try to collect my thoughts. It's a bit overwhelming to be grabbed at and touched by this many children. Not to say that I have attained Christ-likeness (is that a word?), but I wonder if this is how He felt as He traveled from place to place. No wonder He taught us to make sure we go to our quiet place everyday to connect to the Father and get refreshed. Maybe this is more what life should be like for all of us? We should NEED to get in our quiet place everyday because we are giving so much of ourselves away for others. God help me live this daily."

Wow! I agree with this! I went to Haiti in April and know exactly what he is talking about. It was absolutely crazy there. You have to get out of your comfort zone. You have the chance of getting lice, scabies, skin infections, ring worm, etc. just by being with the kids and letting them touch you so much. But you can't tell them no... you don't want to tell them no. All you want to do is hug them and kiss them and tell them that they are beautiful.

I'm having a really hard time this week. I am trying to put on a fundraiser and I just feel like only a few people want to help. I completely understand that people have things going on but it's hard work to put something like that on and I need people. God give me the strength to get through! The other thing is that trying to fund these adoptions seem impossible. We have gotten a few donations and are planning some fundraisers but it just seems so far away. God is a BIG God and I know that He will come through, most likely when I least expect it. I've learned waiting on God is the ONLY thing I can do. Lord, show me your way and help me to give this whole process up to you so that your GLORY will shine!

Guerline and Fafane More Pictures

This is Berlinda, Guerline, and Fafane where they were found. Our girls are the two on the left. This picture makes me want to cry everytime I look at it. Their parents just couldn't feed them anymore so they left them out in the mountains with no food, water, or safety! The people at the orphanage found them at took them to the orphanage and they have now been there for a year. Please God bring them home quickly and keep them safe while they are not in our care.

These are just some pictures that were taken with some of the groups that went to the orphanage. I got these off of facebook so hopefully I can get the actual copies so they will be full size.

Guerline is a lot more social and talkative than her sister Fafane so you'll see a lot more pictures of Guerline than Fafane. I hope that changes when we get a chance to go back.

Trying to figure out how to play cards when they don't know English is hard to do!

Wow

I knew this before but I am getting hit quite hard by it right now, that whenever you do something that has eternal value things get thrown at you that you never thought would. We had to go get our blood drawn twice because the person who drew it did it in expired tubes. So this delayed us about 2 1/2 weeks for that particular thing... which isn't a huge delay since I did get it going as one of the first things. But when I went to pick up the paperwork that stated that we were HIV and syphylis (sp?) free Micah's had the wrong birth date. I blame it on the military since they make you write it as dd mon year... example today would be 24 May 2010. So Micah wrote his birthday 01/02/1983 but was born on the first of February. Oy. The nurse said all she had to do was call down and get it changed and then reprinted so hopefully that is the case and we can get this taken care of. My first reaction was to be furious with Micah. (Anyone else know what I'm talking about?) And I did at first and then realized that with something like this there are going to be setbacks... which we've had a lot of already! My response to this minor thing showed me something about my character that I didn't like. I pray that I learn patience throughout this! I was told by someone before never to pray for patience, which I don't exactly, I pray that in everything I do I LEARN patience. Thank you to everyone who is praying for us or has helped us with any expenses... you are all true blessings to us!

Police Station

With all of the many things that go into a dossier, paperwork that will need to be sent to Haiti, comse many firsts for us. Today we got to experience the police station. We got Alyssa off to school but didn't have anywhere for Samara and Natalie to go so they came with us. They loved it. I had to explain to Samara that this isn't somplace you want to visit. The only reason why you want to come is because you have something to do because a lot of people go there to be put into jail for doing naughty things. So hopefully she now understands the importance of not wanting to go to the police station (I doubt it though because she was having so much fun).

Today I got a phone call from the people who did our bloodwork for our dossier and come to find out it was never processed! (Deep breath) She took our blood in expired tubes, which isn't a huge deal, but nevertheless they couldn't process them. So here we go back up to get our blood drawn... again. Please pray for us as this is a frustrating process. I'm glad we've been pulled and stretched as much as we have because I think we're flexible enough to handle this but it's definitely not the most ideal situation! Oy... oh well.

Thanks for all your prayers!!! We appreciate them!

Money

Hey all,
Please be praying for our family. We will hopefully be able to turn in our dossier in June but we will need $6,000 by then so that Pastor Jean Fritz will be able to higher a lawyer to start processing it. We know God is bigger than this measly $6,000 but we believe he lays on people's hearts to give to things such as this. Thank you all for your continued prayer and support!
-Kim Jones

Guerline and Fafane

Two days ago at about 7:00PM we were told that we are going to be able to adopt Guerline (8) and Fafane (10). We are so excited. I just wanted to post that but it's late so I am going to bed now. Enjoy the pictures.


Guerline

Fafane

A little about everything

There have been a few exciting things going on lately. What isn't exciting with three little girls running around? Here is just a mumbo jumbo bunch of pictures. Some of the fun stuff we've been doing latley.


We went to Science Night at Alyssa's school. They had an alligator and a snake that we could touch. The alligator and the snake would take turns getting touched. We stood in line for about 15 minutes for the alligator and by the time we almost got up to the table the alligator was put away and the snake was there. The kids didn't mind too much.

The girls learned how to make rain. You put a cup of sand in a plastic baggie. Then you add like 4 Tbsp of water I think. Then you zip it up but leave enough room for a straw. You blow into the gallon sized baggie with the straw and then when it's full you zip it up all the way. You set it next to a window and in a little while "rain" will appear.


Alyssa got her hair cut.


Another picture of Alyssa's hair. I didn't get any before pictures... I should have!

I also bought some foam curlers. When I was a kid my mom used to always put these in my hair. Especially on a Saturday night so that my hair would be super curly for church the next day. I remembered how much I liked that so I did it with Alyssa. She got super excited.


Posing... she's being goofy in her excitedness... is that a word?


This is her hair after the foam curlers. I took a curling iron to the front a little bit because it didn't do exactly what I wanted it to do. She said that she wanted curly hair like her sisters and I think this did the trick.


The back of Alyssa's curly hair.


Mara's new thing is she likes to vacuum. We started with her little vacuum which does suck up some dirt and things but Nattie now likes that vacuum so I let Mara use my big vacuum.


Nattie and her little vacuum.


Alyssa's tooth fell out today at school! I was kind of disappointed because I wanted to be there to help her with her tooth. But I got over that. She pulled it out at school because she said it hurt. When I looked in her mouth her big tooth has already started to come in. You can see it if you enlarge the picture above. She's super excited for the tooth fairy to come.


Another picture of her gap.

New Post

I didn't know what to title this post since while I am posting I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to post about. There is so much going on in the world, so much on my mind, and I'm eating burnt French fries because I forgot I had them in the oven. So there's much I could post about but I'm told by my wonderful sister, Angela, that I need a new post. When I came to the site to do a post I looked at the last thing I posted and I agree it's been quite a long time since my last post.

Okay so where do I start. Micah's Grandpa and Grandma Manville came down at the end of last night and left yesterday morning. We had a great time with them. The girls were spoiled... and I was too I'll have to admit. Our tradition every time they come is to go to Red Lobster and we all know that if Micah or I try to pay Grandpa doesn't allow it... not at Red Lobster! Grandma was a huge help with cleaning, making dinners, keeping the kids out of my hair while doing homework or whatever else I had to do. Thanks Meems! Grandpa even helped out a ton, especially with Nattie. When he put her down for a nap she usually stayed there. Thanks Old Grandpa!

For Valentine's day we went up to one of our timeshares and met Micah's sister, Erin, there. I was kind of a stick in the mud as I was exhausted from all the work I have to do being a semi stay at home mom and having a job 2 days a week and having 2 college classes. I had a ton of homework too which is so much fun when you're trying to have fun at a timeshare. It was a lot of fun anyways even though I slept a lot of the time trying to catch up on sleep.

I have been sick, laringitis and such, for the last week! I have had little to no voice for 4 days and have been couging and had a runny nose and so stuffy headed, I have been quite cranky. My poor Micah! He has had to take care of me. Normally I just get on with life but as I said before I think that because I'm so busy I'm taking longer to get over this. I'm on the upside though so I should be over it soon.

IF YOU DON'T READ ANY OTHER OF THIS POST READ THIS. I just have to tell you all... yes you all not y'all... not yet at least, Samara today vacuumed the upstairs all by herself. We have a small vacuum that the girls like to play with. It really works but doesn't get the deep in dirt. I went upstairs with the big vacuum today and asked Samara if she wanted to try it. She said then if I practice enough when I get to be a mommy I will know what to do. So precious!!! I love my girls.

We're potty training. Not fully but trying to get the concept down. Nattie's been in panties all day today and has had three pee pee accidents and two poo poo accidents. YEAH. She's doing better than last time where she didn't go in the potty once! This time she's pottied in the toilet about 4 or 5 times. She's gotten either cookies or skittles each time so hopefully she doesn't get on too much of a sugar high in this process. Hey if it works and I don't have to do diapers for her anymore than it will be worth it to live with the sugar high for a while.

Well, I'm going to try and post more often and next time I'll try and post pictures. Please pray for our family as we have big decisions to make. Thanks.

Impossible is not a word, just an reason not to try.

Celebration of Granpa Al's Life

So for those of you who don't know, Micah's Grandpa Al went to heaven to spend eternity with Jesus on the first of the year. He was a great man and I can't say too much without bawling because we miss him so much so if you want to you can read the other post that I made about him earlier this month. Here are some pictures that I enjoyed taking. One thing that happened through all this is that family that hadn't seen each other in a long time came together and got to see each other. It was awesome to be able to meet some of Micah's family that I hadn't gotten the opportunity to meet yet. Everything went so well it was amazing.


This was the table in the front of the funeral home that sat Granpa's chaps for horseback riding and his leather vest that he would ride his motorcycle with.


Grandpa's chaps.


Grandpa's vest that I think Grandma did all the stuff on it. On the front it had Al embroidered on it.

THE FAMILY!!! Yes we are a lovely looking bunch.

Micah and I.

Shawn and Lenny. This is Grandpa's sister.

Alan, Uncle Mike, and Patrick (Worm). In the middle is Grandpa's brother and the left and right of him are Uncle Mike's two sons.

The three girls.

Vickie, Gracie, Dave, Jacie, Rick, and Dick. Gracie is Grandpa's sister and Vickie and Rick are her kids, Dave is married to Vickie and Dick is married to Gracie. Jacie is Dave and Vickie's daughter.

What a beautiful family!

Did I say beautiful? I meant weird. I love this family!

The rest of us.

Joel and Peggy, Joel is Grandpa Al's son.

Grandpa Al's sons. Kris, Mitch (grandpa's adopted son... for all intents and purposes), Joel, and Ozzie, and of course Grandma Nita.

Cody, Jasmond, Uncle Kris, Kylar, and Kristian. Uncle Kris' kids.

Silly Family

After the celebration of Granpa Al's life, most people call it a funeral, we got a little silly. This costume, if I remember right, was a second graders costume that was given to Jay because it fits her. She is 4' 9 3/4"... Don't forget the 3/4" she gets kind of upset. Anyways it was just what we needed on this celebration day.


Here is Jay in the Monster's Inc. costume.


And Nattie.


And Mara.

And Syssa.

Busy

Hello all,
I was told by my sister and Meems, Micah's grandma, that I need to start updating my blog more. I'm going to try to update every Monday. I have been quite busy with school, gymnastics, Mother's Day Out, training for another triathlon, and just being a mom of three. We may have a special opportunity coming our way but I'll post about that some other time when I get more information. I'll post again today when I get on my other computer where all my pictures are. For now, everyone have a great day!!!

The New Year

Micah's Grandpa "Grandpa Al" passed away on New Year's day. This didn't come as a big surprise and yet it did. We knew that Grandpa had quite a few health issues but we didn't think it would be on New Year's Day. I don't think there is a way to prepare for something like this. I just have to say that he was one of the most wonderful, Godly men that I have ever met. Hewas so loving and excepted me into the family instantly. As much as he was Micah's Grandpa he was also mine. He will be greatly missed by many many people whom he has touched in great ways. We also know, however, that he is in a better place. He has received his mansion and is walking on the streets of gold that are talked about in the Bible. He was a preacher for a long time and even living with Micah's parents he started helping out at the Methodist church preaching every once in a while. I remember in July when we were back home and he had recently had his leg amputated and he was supposed to preach that weekend. We all told him to just sit down and preach, nobody would mind. Without showing any pain, he got up and preached a great sermon. He has touched my life in great ways and has always given Micah and me sound advice and lots of love. Like I said before he will be greatly missed but I know that I will get to see him someday! Alyssa says that he's with Jesus so he has to be happy and we'll see him again. What a smart 6 year old.

Christmas Play 2009

Alyssa was in a Christmas play last night that was fantastic. She was so excited. After all the rehearsals and all the time she put into it she finally got to do it. Samara and Natalie got to do a preschool performance. They sang two songs. Twinkle, Twinkle Christmas Star and Ring Those Bells and Turn Around, Ring Those Bells and Stomp Your Feet, and Ring Those Bells and Jump up High (sung to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn). It turned out really cute. The kid's play was A King is Coming to Town. They were talking about a king coming to their town. So they went through all the kings. First was Elvis, the king of Rock N Roll. Then, was King Tut. Next was the king of the jungle, an ape. Last was the most important, King Jesus. It was really cute. I hope to buy the DVD.


This is me getting ready to help the preschoolers with the motions to their songs.


Natalie is in the polka dotted dress (cutie). And Mara is in the red dress with her curly hair and back towards us.


"showing shepherds where Christ lies" that is what they sang on this part of the song. It turned out so cute. Although at first some of the kids were running all over the stage. That's okay though they started singing once we started.


This is Alyssa doing her king of Rock N Roll choreography. She did such a great job.


There's Elvis! Alyssa's to the very left.

Alyssa got to be King Tut's entourage. I hope one of my friend's has a better picture because she was precious!


This was the king of the Jungle one. She's beating her chest like the king of the Jungle.

It really was fantastic. I love to see Alyssa, Samara, and Natalie do fun things like this. Hopefully I'll start posting more on here too. I know I've been slacking but I know how important it is for some of you to see pictures!

Update

So I know I haven't posted for a while... again... I've been trying to balance everything from college to housework to gymnastics... etc. If you're a mom you know how it goes. I'll post some pictures maybe later on today since it's rainy and gloomy outside today. We're going to have a movie day. I have a college algebra test tonight so it'll be good to just relax today. I'll post again soon... if something else doesn't come up first.