Our little men

The first week the boys have been out of school has been busy, and I think my little men

deserve some credit as they have also had their own sacrifices to make along this journey.  In particular, Thursday, they had the delightful opportunity to have their second round of the Hep A vaccine, which is truly not fun as I can remember being sore myself for several days afterward.  Little David has actually been running a low fever the past couple of days as a result, but at least now that is behind us and we can look forward to the rest of the summer with hopefully little to no torture!  There at least is some silver lining on this part of the process though in that these shots were covered by our insurance for both of the boys!  Yeah! Finally something in this adoption is free!! And it will last them for the next 30 years if they do any more international travel like mission trips as they get older.  Hopefully they will thank me then for getting this out of the way.  This small cookie cake was a unanimous agreement by the boys as we had to pick up a few things at Publix before there appointment.  I felt like it was well deserved to make the shots sting a little less-and for all they've put up with along this journey as mom and dad have put so much extra time into the process.  

Looking back over the year, we could not be prouder of our little men and how they've grown up and matured, and I am sure most of you parents would say the exact same thing about your children.  They still have their moments (and hours:) of course, but there have been many times when I have been so pleasantly surprised by a grown up response, or unexpected display of manners, which gives me hope that they actually are paying attention to their parent's attempt to raise them at lease some of the time:) But even more than that we are excited about their growth in faith and the knowledge of God.  And we pray that this trip to China would not only be the trip of a lifetime, but a trip that God would use to forever change their hearts and lives to be used for His glory.

And with that-we are planning to take them to a very fun but economical  getaway next weekend to Six Flags over Georgia.  Andrew's job requires him to travel sometime, but we as a family get the perks of hotel reward points every once and a while so we have 2 free hotel nights and also a discount to Six Flags through his work!  So we'll have the opportunity for some affordable crazy fun (before we drain our bank account completely) with just us and the boys before we bring Kailyn into our lives and so we'll not be going on roller coasters for a while.   China will be the trip of a lifetime-but at the same time it will not be the same as going to Disney.  Please pray for our boys for this trip-I know there'll be parts they love and parts that may make them hate it (jet lag, the food..).  Mom and dad will be giving a lot of our time and attention to another child-their new sibling- and we'll get her just a day or two after our arrival in China (so thank goodness for Aunt Sherry!)  So this will be a lot of adjustment for our boys.  We've been told that they will find kid friendly things for us to do-like the zoo- and other site seeing around Kailyn's province-which I am looking forward to.  And we will also be staying in a big city (the provincial city of Nanchang I believe) so this should be quite an experience.  But you all know what I mean- site seeing to a child, is not like a beach trip or Disney-particularly if you have two little men who need their chicken nuggets and mac and cheese.  So please pray that the boys will be just as enthused about their experience on the other side of the world as we will be.  Thank you!

Amy