We'll miss you...

Our good friends the "H" family are pulling up stakes and moving back East. Insert sobbing here...

We met S & K several years ago when we took a trans-racial parenting course offered for adopted parents (along with the Rowan's). We hit it off that weekend and discovered we were both hoping to adopt from China through a local adoption agency. Many months later we discovered we were both logged in on the same date March 11, 2008. During our wait we kept in touch, going to see a movie together, having dinners, or grabbing a coffee. Cory and I decided to switch gears and entered the China Waiting Child program and welcomed home our bundle of joy, Sylvie 

S, J, and Cory (July 1, 2009)...of course they can't take a 

nice picture for me - you will soon sense a theme!

A, K & Joyanne (July 1, 2009), notice we are all smiling!

S & K also decided after this time to also switch their application to the Waiting Child program, and we decided to adopt a second child. We both updated our home studies and waited each month for a phone call that would change our lives. S & K's phone call came in late May for beautiful Miss V, and our referral came in July for Mary. We waited together for our LSC's from China and finally our Travel Approvals.

 Late summer picnic while waiting for our LSC's & Travel Approvals (August 2010)

Finally all our paper work arrived and we were invited to travel to China to meet our daughters! Although we used different travel facilitators, we discovered to our great delight that we would both be in China together at the same time, and were in fact on the same international flights. After being logged in together years earlier, it seemed only fitting to share this moment of growing our families together as well!

Waiting during the first leg of our flight...

S & K helped keep our spirits up during our long waits in the airport.

Bumping into the H family at the Jade Factory in Beijing. The first time we get to meet 

their new daughter V, and they get to meet Mary. We had been skyping 

while in different provinces, but this was our first meeting in person. 

After returning home this past year, we have continued our play dates for the kids, gymnastics and music class for the girlies, lunches out for the Mama's, and wing nights for the Baba's.

 Ladies lunch out (January 2011)...

 

Celebrating St. Paddy's Day...

 Bundled up for the cold during a winter/spring walk (April 2011)...

 

Miss V and Miss Mary checking out some fishies this past spring (May 2011)...

Hiking the Greenway (June 2011)

The three kidlets...our last evening together (October 2011)...

 The Baba's...FINALLY taking a nice picture for me (October 2011)

 So it is with great regret that we say good bye to our good friends and wish them well on their new adventures out East. We are thankful K has family out here in BC, so there are bound to be visits back West for them. As well the Mama's have plans of taking the families to Disneyland in a few years together! Best Wishes H family! 

Don't cry V, we will see you again in Disneyland!

Camping Trip #5 - Mabel Lake...AGAIN!!!

Ok, I am shameless... I LOVE camping at Mabel Lake. If you have read our other post Camping Trip #3, you will remember that we spent four nights in July at this lovely site with family.

Luckily however, the weather cooperated beautifully for us and we had hot (30 degree Celsius), sunny, blue sky weather each and everyday. Sigh...I miss summer and camping already!

We spent this camping trip with three other families, all of whom are also teachers (poor Cory)! While we did slip into "teacher talk" every once in awhile, we spent most of our time on the beach playing in the water and on the sand.

We scored the best camping spots in the campground, right beside the beach. This was the view we enjoyed each morning from our trailer as we had breakfast...

It was only a 30 second walk down the path from our camp spot onto the beach. So as you can imagine, that is where we spent most of our mornings and afternoons (after nap time of course). The girls loved playing with the other kids, building sand castles and getting pulled around the lake in the kayak by willing adults. 

The Daddies on duty...

At times we had four kids piled into the kayak and paddling...

We also took many little walks around the campground looking for squirrels and searching for yet more interesting rocks to put into our pockets. On one of our walks we checked out the small waterfalls nearby with Mary and Sylvie's little friend "S"...

A happy Daddy...

A happy Mama...

A Happy Mei Mei...

A Happy Jie Jie...

The best part of camping? Seeing the friendships form between all the little kids...

 Well...friendships and falling asleep exhausted because of all the fun you had playing outside all day long in nature!

Camping Trip #4 - Fintry Provincial Park

*I have been super busy with going back to work and school start up. I had several posts written that I didn't hit publish on, so they will appear over the next couple of days. 

Our fourth camping trip this year was spent with a group of families who have adopted locally. Cory and I have been very blessed to connect with some amazing families who have been a great support system as we jumped head first into parenting. Many of these families have welcomed children into their homes during these past few years and friendships have flourished between the children (and the parents) while enjoying our play dates, summer camping trips, park days, skating afternoons and winter cabin weekends away.   

Last year, as few of the families got together and rented a group site at a local provincial park.

 
We had a great time and decided to do it again this year. In the end we had close to 60 people, with about 45 of those kids. It is a great low key camping weekend with families visiting and no set schedules of events. The kids spent their days and evenings splashing in the lake, tubing/wake boarding behind the boats, playing on the playground, hiking the local trails, roasting marshmallows, running around with glow sticks, and generally just having a great time.
(Side note: I don't have many photos of my kids without others in them, and I don't like to post those pictures unless I have permission from the parents, so photos are lacking in the cuteness factor!). 

The playground where many hours were spent...

 Some families went on one of the local trails to check out the Fintry Falls...

One of my favorite memories was the large group game of "kick the can" one evening. This game is similar to hide and seek, with almost all the 45 kids (toddlers to teenagers) hiding together behind tents, trailers and picnic tables.   

We even had our (now) annual communal pot luck dinner of deep fried turkeys and all the side fixin's as we all gathered together to share a meal of thanksgiving! On the following day many more adoptive families joined us in the afternoon for a BBQ lunch, it was quite busy as there was close to 125 people (and several hundred wasps lured in by the smell  of food!). I'm sure we must have confused many other campers about how we were all connected! The BBQ was hosted by the Adoptive Families Association of BC - thank you Diana for bringing all the food and hard work organizing the BBQ! 

If you live locally and have adopted (or are currently waiting to adopt), keep your eye out for the dates for our next year's AFABC Okanagan family camping trip!   

Our little Jawas....

Sigh...it appears that my techie/science fiction loving husband is trying to indoctrinate educate our children on some of the essential classic sci-fi movies.

On the top of his list is Star Wars. In order to foster a connection he is focusing on the various short stature characters, starting with...the Jawas. For those of you who have lived under a rock since the late 70's and don't know who the Jawas are... (you can read about the Jawas HERE)

Jawas as conceived by George Lucas.

How is he doing this you might ask? Is he subjecting them to hours of movie watching with pop quizzes afterwards? Is he testing their knowledge of obscure facts about the different movies, or asking them to hum the theme song? Is he helping them to speak wookie, you might ask? No, he is much more diabolical and covert than that. 

When drying off the girls at night after their bath, he asks them if they would like to be burritos (arms wrapped up) or Jawas. The girls usually ask to be jawas. I think they are a little cuter than their counterparts above, right?

 "Daddy, we want to be Jawas!"

They of course find this hilarious and laugh and laugh...

Double sigh...not sure how he is going to incorporate the other characters into their vocabulary, but I am sure the Ewoks are next. George Lucas would be proud. 

Better late than never!

Yes, we have been home for ten months now, but we've been busy! I can't believe how much she has grown over such a short period of time! Her smile continues to make my heart sing with happiness...I can only hope we can give her the same measure of happiness she has brought into our lives. 

Our announcement cards will be going out in the mail sometime in the next week or so depending on how my the school start up goes, so those of you in our families who actually read our blog now have had a sneak preview - watch your mail boxes!

More visiting with family...

After spending our four camping days at Mabel Lake, Cory's brother and his family came to our house for a few days to continue the visit (and maybe sneak in a shower and a couple loads of laundry - remember we had no electricity or water).

Burning off energy in the back yard

Daddies hard at work..

Playing at the splash park

Checking out the snow birds on BC day, a spectacular albeit short show this year.

Luckily we had front row seats for the show. Cory's work is right down by the waterfront, so we took in the show from the roof top! No crowds, clean bathrooms and a clear view - score!

Some audience members had an even better view...

Thank you for the wonderful visit Uncle Kevin, Auntie Laura, Cara and Katie! Looking forward to seeing you all again next year!

Camping Trip #3 Mabel Lake

Although our summer weather was rather delayed, we had scheduled a camping trip with Cory's brother Kevin, his wife Laura and their two little girls earlier in the year.

We decided to go to one of our favorite recreation camp sites (no running water or electricity) Cotton Wood Beach on Mabel Lake. 

Afternoon view of Mabel Lake, finally the sun is out!

Our girl's were so excited to see their cousins who are similar in ages. The girl's ages are 4 (Cara), 3 (Sylvie), 2 (Mary) and 1 (Katie). Four children, four and under. But just wait, Cory's brother had a friend from university traveling out this way camping so they decided to join in on the fun. Their daughters are 5 and just about to turn one. So SIX girls, five and under. Yes, there was a lot of estrogen in the air.

The Drinkwater Grandchildren! 

Katie, Cara, Sylvie & Mary!

Here are a few pictures of the memories we made over the four day camping trip. We ate too much, drank too much, played in the sun a little too much, stayed up late a little too much, missed our afternoon naps too much, giggles and laughed too much... life is good!

Making the girls into "mermaids"!

Building sand castles...

Getting dirty...

Swimming...

Our girl's don't get to see these cousins often as they live in Saskatoon, a measly 14 hour drive east...where there are NO mountains....only canola fields. Luckily for us, they drew the short straw and drove out here to visit us this summer, so I guess that means that we are on for next summer. Hopefully the mosquitoes next year won't be so plentiful or hungry in Saskatoon as we heard about (I know, what am I thinking?)!