Guatemalan Adoption

Dear Friends,

Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has announced plans to suspend all intercountry adoption with American families on January 1 2008. Joint Council strongly opposes such a suspension and asks for your support in our efforts to ensure that all children retain the right to permanency through Intercountry Adoption.

President Berger’s plans also call for the suspension of adoptions currently in-process. Such a suspension would be extremely detrimental to the children referred to adoptive parents. If President Berger’s plan is actually implemented, up to 5,000 will unnecessarily remain in foster care or orphanages indefinitely.

This situation represents a pending crisis for the adoptive families who have lovingly chosen to provide permanency, safety and love to a child in need and most importantly a crisis for 5,000 children of Guatemala.

What can you do? Make six simple phone calls and one email.

1. Call your U.S. Senator.
· You can find your Senators’ phone numbers at www.senate.gov
· Ask to speak with the Legislative Director or Chief of Staff

2. Call your second U.S. Senator.

3. Call your representative to the U.S. House of Representative.
· You can find your representative at www.house.gov
· Ask to speak with the Legislative Director or Chief of Staff

4. Call or fax the Department of State’s Office of Children’s Issues
· Their number is 202-736-9130
· Their fax number is 202-736-9080

5. Call or fax UNICEF Headquarter
· Ask to speak with Ann Veneman, Executive Director
· Their number is 212-326-7000
· Their fax number is 212-326-7758

6. Call or fax UNICEF Guatemala
· Ask to speak with Manuel Manrique
· Their number is 011-502-2327-6373
· Their fax number is 011-502-2327.6366

7. Send and email supporting Intercountry Adoption to guatemala5000@jcics.org
· Write briefly or at length
· Joint Council will use the cumulative email petition in our advocacy for Intercountry Adoption


When should you call? Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday (October 8th, 9th 10th)

· For maximum affect, we are asking you to make these calls within a 72 hour window!


What should you say? Speak from your heart and give them the following information.

· The Guatemalan government has announced that all adoptions with the U.S. will be suspended on January 1 2008.
· Their announcement also indicated that there will be no ‘grandfathering’ of adoptions already in process.
· If children referred to families are not allowed to be adopted, they will languish in institutions or foster care.
· Your office must get involved and sign the CCAI sponsored letters to the President of Guatemala and UNICEF. These letters ask that all adoptions in-process as of January 1 2008 be allowed to processed to completion under the existing notorial laws.
· Your office should contact the Office of Children’s Issues at the Department of State. Their number is 202-736-9130.

Can you explain the problem behind the pending crisis? Here is some additional information…

· Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has announced plans to effectively stop all adoptions into the United States including those children who have already been referred to adoptive parents
· Over 5,000 children have been referred
· The birthparents for these children have already relinquished their parental rights. As a result, they currently have no family and the Berger suspension will result in these children having no prospect for a permanent, safe and loving family
· The government of Guatemala currently does not have the finances or facilities to even provide housing for these 5,000 children
· The Berger plan is a crisis waiting to happen

... but who is counting?

Do any of you count during your daily work around the house? Well I do sometimes and I wanted to share it with you.

I count especially during laundry time. I have two very busy boys. Seven days a week, two boys equals 14 shirts at least (well I believe it is never 14 shirts since they are boys) anyway now I have to add the soccer uniforms. So two practices and two games a week adds 4 more shirts. That makes 18 on a good week just for the boys (then add Emma's, Fil's and mine and you get the picture. Same goes with shorts and underwear.

The time when I loose it is usually during matching sock time. Lets count what I go through this time of the year. Two boys, plus their soccer uniform socks make 18 pairs of socks. Emma adds another 7 pars so do I and Fil. Well there is usually more since the boys and Emma manage to get outside in their socks before I find out what is going on it is too late. Are you with me? That makes at least 39 pairs that is 78 socks a week!!!...... but who is counting?

One More Day At The Beach

Today was a very nice day here in New England. I couldn't believe when I heard that it was going to be in high 80's. It is end of September and here we are still enjoying the sunshine. After we were done with school I took the kids to the beach. Since we are usually done before 11 am we had a great time by the water.
I thought for sure it would be cooler by the water but was I wrong. We did bring our beach toys and I did pack extra cloths for the kids so they all got wet.
Now here is woman on a mission.
I am in trouble next year. All summer Emma was not interested in rocks even though her brothers play there all the time. All summer until today. She decided it was time to get dangerous and get mama out of her chair. I am going to have my hands full next summer.

Are you Jellyn'?

We sure are jellyn' and jamyn'. If you have been reading my blog for awhile you know I have been working on jams this summer. I did a lot of strawberry jam and blueberry jam. I am pretty sure we are set for a long time.

Last week we got an e-mail from one of the families in our church that they had concord grapes ready for picking if anyone was interested. I didn't think about it too much until my hubby read the e-mail an informed me that he LOVES grape jelly. So guess what I did this week. Yes I made grape jelly.

I never made jelly before so I had no idea that you had to make the juice first. That took one day. The next afternoon I made three batches of jelly. You better believe we are jellyn' in this house

On the other hand my apple pie turned out great on Sunday. However, it was all gone before I could take a picture. Next time I have to do it right away. I did make this other dessert that looked like something from Europe and sure it tasted like it too. I didn't even have the time to put the icing on it since we ate it quickly as well. I am sure I will be making more yummy apple pies. Do any of you have any experience with freezing apple deserts?

Doorbell

There are three ways to get inside our house. Front door, back door and through the garage. I guess you could get in through the windows if you were creative. But lets stay with the three options how to get inside.

My kids play outside all the time and since most of their junk is in in the garage that is the way they go out. I usually leave our back door open to hear what is going on outside. So my sweet children have two ways to get inside the house if they need to. Our house is not that big so if one door is closed you can always run around to get in the other way (I do not lock my kids outside but it did cross my mind few times). Somehow the kiddos always want to get in through the door that is closed. I do not mind most of the time but sometimes I am working on something and I cannot get the door for them. I mean they can always run around to get in another way right? Not my kids. They will stand there banging on the door screaming that they need to go to the bathroom NOW.

Emma can get in any way except the front door since she can not reach the handle. She usually gets one of her brothers to open it for her. Well the other day they thought it was time for Emma to learn how to get mom's attention. They showed her how our doorbell works. Of course she thinks it is a invention of the year. She cannot stop pushing that doorbell. I ended up with a big headache by the end of the day. I wonder how many Ibuprofen I can take. I apologize to anybody who may have stopped by our house lately and ring the doorbell because I am ignoring it at this point.
Anyway here is our sweet little girl after she got caught ringing the door bell again.

This is one of the things big brothers are good for.

Apple Picking

Today we headed out to do some apple picking at an apple orchard. We usually go to a different orchard but some friends of ours recommended this place so we went to check it out. This place has it all; apples, hayrides and even homemade donuts. Actually they also have a lot of varieties of apples. Emma couldn't get enough of them. She couldn't stop saying APPLES and she is not exactly the quietest person in our family.

The boys took the hayride up to the orchard and I walked with Emma in the stroller. We had a great time. Since apples are much easier to pick then blueberries we had our basket full quickly. I guess there will be apple pie tomorrow. I will have to stop at the grocery store for some ice cream. Mmmm I can not wait.

Here is Fil with the kid on the way back from the orchard.
Emma enjoying an apple.



Detail of the orchard.
They even had some pumpkins already. I didn't get any but believe me we will get some soon.

My girl.

Left To Tell

by Immacule'e Ilibagiza

I usually don't write book reviews for a very simple reason. I read a lot at least several books a week and I don't find the time to write about them. However this one touched my heart and I wanted to share it with all of you.

It is a true story about Immacule'e a young girl who lost everything during the bloody Rwandan genocide in 1994. Million innocent people died in three months. Her whole family was brutally murdered except one of her brothers who was studying outside Rwanda at the time. Somehow through this whole ordeal she found the power of prayer and forgiveness even before the genocide ended. I recommend this book to everyone in order to learn a little African history and to learn a lot about the power of forgiveness.

Left To Tell

More Shots

Today Fil and I went to the Travel clinic where they specialize in immunizations for people who will be traveling to different parts of the world. Since we are people that do their research we knew we would be getting yellow fever and typhoid shots. We were not so sure about the yellow fever shot since it can have bad side effects. We are not planing on traveling outside of Addis Ababa but after more research we decided to get the shot. So far so good. We both have sore arms and I have a headache which is from the typhoid shot. Hopefully we will not get any nasty reaction later on. The rest of the shots I got at our doctor office and Fil will get his on Friday. We had to do this for insurance to cover the cost and since each shot is around $75 we were willing to split up where we got the shots.

It is my birthday today. The big 30. So I guess Happy Birthday to me. I can not believe I am out of twenties.

Feeling Blue

It has been a while since I have written anything about our adoption. Well there is nothing, nada, zilch to report. We are still waiting and waiting and WAITING some more. I wish I could write it is going well but I hit a bottom last week. Maybe I have been reading too many blogs.

Anyway it will be 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days on Tuesday since we finished the paper work part. I remember seeing 2m 2w 2d mark and at that point I was hoping we wouldn't see the the 3 3 3 mark. I was also hoping that we would know something by the end of the summer before school started. Here we are in the middle of September and NOTHING. The hard part is that we know there haven't been any referrals for about 2 months. I know that our coordinator was in Ethiopia for 2 weeks and Ethiopia just celebrated their millennium. Until this point the referrals seemed to have been coming regularly.

The hardest part has been not knowing if we will have our little girl for Christmas. I would love to but at this point we are running out of time. Fil believes we would have to get the referral withing next three weeks in order to travel by Christmas since it takes about 10 weeks with the court date and embassy and travel.

It is all in God's hands and I have to believe this is for the best. We are praying for our little girl every day that she is in good hands and has all she needs. We can not wait to hold her in our arms and I can not wait to see all of my children playing together.


On the other hand we started our shots. I got three of them today. OUCH! We also gave the kids Hep A shots since it has been recommended for family members who do not travel. We have an appointment on Monday at the travel clinic for the big shots like yellow fever and typhoid so I am sure I will post about that. We had to split it for the insurance to cover it. At this point the insurance will pay for all of our shot which is a big relief.

1st Tooth Fairy Visit

On Thursday my baby boy lost his first tooth. It seems like yesterday when we were excited about his first tooth and here we are few years later and he is loosing them!!! On his last dentist visit the doctor said that he will loose some this summer and sure enough he did. The tooth has been wiggly for a while but it got very loose in last few days. On Thursday he bit into an apple and came to me with his mouth open and his tooth VERY loose. I just pulled on it and it was out. I believe Fil was more traumatized by this whole experience that Sam (I guess his childhood memories still haunt him till this day).

Here is Emma expecting Sam's mouth.

We had to run out to get some cash for the tooth fairy. The boys have been discussing the whole tooth fairy business. Sam thinks she is a thief how else does she get the money she leaves under the pillows and Nate believes that Sam's tooth is now in heaven since God created everything so it should be back with Him (I flushed Sam's tooth after I left money under Sam's pillow that night).

Sam's 1st Soccer Game

At noon Sam had his first game of the season. We got to play against our pastor who is coaching the other team (his son Jacob is on that team and you can see here on this picture he and Sam were playing hard against each other). It was very hot and humid today in NH so we were trying to keep everybody cool and hydrated.



We were trying to keep them in shade and offering plenty of fluids throughout the game. We also sprayed them with water which was a big hit.
This year Sam is playing on a much bigger field and he also tried the goalie position for a while. I think he is much better on offense.

Good game everyone. I can not believe they played in that heat. We took the boys for pizza after the game. We will be back next week.

Nate's 1st Soccer Game

Today our Soccer season officially started with Nate's first game at 8AM (we have 7 more to go). Nate improved a lot since last year and we are hoping Grandma will came soon to practice with the boys in our back yard. She did such a good job last year.
It was a funny game as all these game are at this age. It was already hot already at 8am.
Here is the team after the game. We are now to two practices and two games every week until end of November. But I am glad the boys have the opportunity to be involved in sports at such a young age (and that there are no game or practices on Sundays).

Sunflowers

HAPPY FALL EVERYBODY !

I wanted to share some pictures of my sunflowers. This year I experimented with some different seeds and grew many seedlings in the spring. After I forgot to water some and after I planted them outside not all of them survived. Actually I only have four at this point. The kids trampled over some and I know some soccer balls took out some other. So I have three in the front and one on the side of the house. I was beginning to worry that they would never bloom but they started last few weeks. Aren't they gorgeous?
The bees are buzzing on them all day long.
Can you believe how tall this one is? I can almost touch it from our bedroom window. The neighbors have been asking what did I feed it with. Nothing special that I can think of. However I did pour few cups of leftover coffee on it. (By the way Sam took this picture. He does a very good job don't you think?)

Is Fall Really Here?

It sure looks and feels like the fall is here. There are some glimpses of fall colors in New England this time of the year.


This is my favorite time of year. Can you see why?