Wow.  What a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend!  The weather was warm and dry!  I would have to say that it was pretty perfect.  The kids spent part of the day Saturday decorating our back patio with chalk!  Remember how, not too long ago, these girls didn’t want their picture taken?  We’ve come a long way, baby…

We spent Memorial Day at Kelly’s brother’s pool.  They have a lovely house and a beautiful pool  Next best thing to owning a pool is having both a brother-in-law AND a sister-in-law with beautiful pools!  Luke practiced his push ups in the shallow end!

Brittany and Nick worked on their early summer tans.

The girls talking to their cousin, Abby, who just had knee surgery.

My nephew, Daniel, takes a little dip in the hot tub!

Here is a view of everyone getting ready to head upstairs for lunch…

The family gathered in the kitchen to have some hot dogs and salads, your typical Memorial Day fare!

Then back out to the pool and the hot tub to burn off those calories…

Ali had surgery on her face this week, so in some of the shots, like this one with Nick, her face may look a little darker than usual.  But that is just the after-effects of the laser treatments.

Uh … could there BE more beautiful girls than this??

I am not sure if Uncle Todd appreciated jumping in from the hot tub into the pool, but when you invite little boys over, you get what you get.

Leah was a little tentative getting into a new pool, but this pool was really nice because it has an extended shallow area that allowed her to get in and sit without worrying about it getting too deep to quickly.  She is threatening to splash me and my camera for the excessive picture taking.

After the last pool party, when Riley didn’t get into the water, she “promised” that she was getting in this time.  And, true to her word, she did!

Brittany was helping her learn to swim, but became a little side tracked when her hair got caught in her sunglasses!

Ali took her turn trying to teach Riley to swim.

They enjoyed a little time under the waterfall also!

She isn’t heavy.  She is my sister.

Caleb took a little peek into the hot tub.

Jessie and I spent time “playing” together in the pool!  Jessie wants to “play” all the time!

The three amigos decided to make their way into the pool together.

Ali spent a little “swim instructor” time with Leah.

Sometimes swim instructions looks suspiciously like dancing!

And sometimes you need to use various tools to help you with your instruction.

Some pictures turn out cute …

… and some do NOT!

The hot tub seemed to get a lot of attention, especially by the “under 8 years old” sect.

Brittany’s legs look freakishly long in this picture!

Old Blue Eyes was in attendance.

The boys were being wise and making sure they applied extra sunscreen throughout the afternoon.  I am not responsible for what a goofball Nick is…

Late in the day, Uncle John spent a little time helping Leah also.

While the pool was beautiful, the hike in and out was a little rough for Leah.  She did great coming DOWN the steps, but going up proved to be a bit more difficult.

What a great day to honor those who have gone before us and sacrificed their lives in order that we can live free.  We tried to explain “Memorial Day” and “Freedom” to the girls this weekend, but these are concepts that seem to be lost on them.  How blessed we are to have been able to bring all these girls (and Caleb) home from areas of the world that do not have the freedoms that we do in the United States.  We do still live in a great country.

Cameron

 

 

It has been a very buy weekend for us!  I say that like that is unusual.  Yesterday we had an unique Saturday in that we had no baseball or softball games or practices.  Score!  We were planning on taking a short camping trip to get the new girls used to trailer living, but it has rained so much that there was no real way for me to get the trailer out without getting it and our van stuck and requiring someone with more power than I have to pull me out.  And then, I would have made huge marks in the ground that would have been unsightly.  So, we decided to go with friends to the US Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB here in Dayton.  If you have ever been to Dayton and have never gone, you are missing out.  It is amazing.  Yesterday they had a special day called “Space Fest.”  Every nerd in Dayton that wasn’t at Hamvention was at Space Fest, including us.

There were lots of Star Wars people walking about, including R/C robots of R2D2, one of which Caleb decided to lean on to take a picture with Brittany.

Everyone else went and talked to the guy that actually made the robot and spent a year of his life accomplishing that goal.  I can think of a few other things I would spend a year doing, but he did do an excellent job.

There were a lot of projects for the kids to do, including building your own Nerf-type rubber-band rocket.

Caleb and Luke showed off their finished product in front of an impressive B-52 bomber!

Luke and Caleb also made little Mars Rover models with index cards and straws, complete with a balloon for air powered movement.

For those children too old to make stuff, there were TV screens with various movies about space playing, so that occupied them for a little while.  Doesn’t seem to matter what is actually ON the television.  Teenagers will always stop and watch for awhile.

There was a lot of walking, and therefore shoelaces that needed to be tied.  Jessie kicked into “family” mode and helped Luke with one of his since his hands were full.  So nice to see that servant attitude of hers starting to come out!

While Kelly stood in line with some of the younger kids, I took Max and the rest of the girls over to the Space Shuttle exhibit, which allowed them to try their hands at various simulations.  The first had them try and land a model airplane on an aircraft carrier and hit one of two retaining bands across the back of the carrier deck.  Ali went first, and then Riley gave it a try.  With a little practice, they were both able to land the plane successfully!

It took a little convincing, and positioning, to get Leah to give it a shot, but she, too, had a successful landing!

Riley also tried out a flight simulator.

And Jessie looked at a promising career as an air traffic controller!

They had a space suit on display that you could walk up into, but I could only talk Ali and Max into actually doing it…

We went back to join the rest of the group that was working on building model Estes rockets that you could take out later in the day and fire off at a launch pad that had been set up outside.  We had three pretty good sized families there, so we took up a LOT of room!

Kelly worked with the little guys until I got back and started to help out.

Nice makeup, lady.

Brittany seemed more interested in socializing than in building, but that really isn’t unusual, is it?

We finally had some finished products that we could show off with our friends!

Nick didn’t build a model, but was there to provide comic relief and bother his sisters.

Believe it or not, Jessie actually ASKED me to take this picture in front of a B-1 bomber.  Who am I to argue??  (You can’t really see it because … well … it is stealth…)

Caleb took a turn controlling a R/C rover that was available for the kids to try out.

And then he and Max were the only two people in our party to successfully land the Space Shuttle in a simulator.

In another area, the kids built little air powered rockets out of straws and used an air launcher to land it in a bucket 15 feet away.  It took a few tries, but I think everyone was successful and ended up with a small prize.

The fun of going with friends is that our friends tend to be very animated!

On our way out to launch our Estes rockets, we ran across Darth Vader and a few of his friends.  Several of the kids wanted their picture taken with these imposing figures!

Sadly, after Ali snuggled up with the dark lord, she asked, “Who is Darth Vader?”  **sigh**

On our way out to the launch pad there was a HUGE space shuttle slide and several of the kids decided to take a run at it, including one “older” child (purse and all).

 

At the rocket launching pad, several volunteers helped by loading the engines in the rockets that the kids had built.

Then on to the eight launching pads that they had set up ready to go!

A launch commander went down the line launching each rocket in order.

This is the view if you are NOT watching the rockets shooting into the sky!

The hardest part was finding your rocket once it landed in the tall, wet grass surrounding the launch pad.

In the end, all rockets were found and in reasonably good condition!

We ended the trip as you should end any successful outing … on a high note:

Today was Graduation Sunday at church.  All of our graduating seniors stood in front of the church and talked about their plans.  Jake got up and talked about attending Cedarville University, taking part in ROTC while there, and his plans to join the Army upon graduation from college.

Our pastor then had a few words of encouragement along with a book that he gave to each of the students.

It is hard to believe that we will have our second child in college this fall.  Where in the world does the time go?

Tonight we went for a walk with 2/3 of the children, which, Kelly pointed out, is still a LOT of children!  So many of these girls from China seem to have lost some of their childhood.   The orphanage, by necessity, enlists their help from an early age in managing the needs of the orphanage and taking care of children younger than they.  Riley seems to have been the most affected, always willing and able to help out, always asking what can be done, but often times not always enjoying her youth as she should.  As Kelly and I came up the sidewalk tonight, Ali and Riley had run ahead and they were standing at the corner, both of them dancing around and just being silly.  Acting like kids.  Kelly commented about how nice it is to see them starting to enjoy their childhood again.  There are many things that these children benefit from when coming into a loving, adoptive family.  And this is certainly one of them.

Cameron