Merry Christmas Everyone!

Our family would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!!! Our day began at 7 am today. Mandy had been awake since 5 am, but was being wrangled by my mom and was kept from waking the entire house up. She finally allowed her to go peek under the tree at 7 am, we then woke up and went and got J.R. out of bed. Mandy thought he had a little accident because his bed was wet, but he had not, he spilled some water that one of the kids had given him in the middle of the night! Anyhow he was shocked to see his wish come true. His Big Monster Truck was under the tree. Santa actually bought him a Artic Tracker that he had so wished for. It was wonderful to see all the kids interacting and sharing. The funniest thing did happen today, Mandy got a cupcake maker and Alexis an Easy Bake Oven. Mandy went ahead and tested her cupcake maker and made a couple of cupcakes with the help of AnaCarmen and Taylor. They were not very tasty but they were edible. The girls left one cupcake on top of the kitchen table. I heard my aunt laughing hysterically and asking me to come take a look at this. I went to see what she wanted only to find Julian hiding under our table eating Mandy's cupcake. Yes, I have a closet eater! Mandy was saying "hey he stole my cupcake", while Julian was busy stuffing it down his throat hiding under the table thinking no one could see him! Oh my word, this boy can eat! Anyhow, have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy our families pictures and a couple of short clips of our morning!

Feliz Noche Buena!!!

Christmas Eve is a really big deal in Latin family culture. Today, we roast a pig, have moros (black beans and rice cooked together), boiled yuca with plenty of mojo (garlic sauce) and the famous "platanitos maduros" or sweet plantains. Yes, we already sat down, give thanks to God for a wonderful year and ate like there was no end.

My day started a little lets say less than perfect. Alexis fell off her "ripstick" on Sunday and hurt her arm. She kept complaining about it and saying she couldn't move it. I took her to the pediatrician's office on Monday, they decided to give us a script to have an xray taken of her arm and elbow. They gave us an appointment for xrays on Tues, picked up the xrays today only to find out she had an acute fracture of the elbow! Ouch!!!! So we had to find an orthopedic specialist to take us in today and set her arm. We found one in Boca Raton who was wonderful. Her arm was set in a "baby blue" cast which she will be sporting for the next three weeks.... "Hint to all concerned parents 1) skip on buying your kid a ripstick, they are DANGEROUS! 2) When your child says their arm hurts after a fall, just take them to the Emergency room and forgo the pediatrician's office!!!

Ok, the tots are now in bed and the cookies where placed next to the fireplace waiting for Santa to arrive. By the way, Santa is going GREEN this year so nothing is being wrapped. All the gifts will have name tags and bows! LOL... I will be posting pictures of our Christmas morning tomorrow!

Very Interesting Information

I met someone through an adoption forum about 3 months after J.R. arriving from Guatemala. She sent me a private message via the forum that asked me what my son's birth name was. She had recognized the referral picture I had posted. It just so happened that when J.R. was about one month old she had accepted his referral only to find out about one week after that another family had sent in their power of attorney and she lost his referral. Imagine her surprise when she visited a waiting child listing and saw his picture on it only now he was six months old?? Well, she had already received her referral and had her daughter home. She was trying her best to see how she could start on his adoption when he was then marked as no longer available because we had begun his adoption. She was able to send me his newborn pictures that I was never able to obtain and I was and am still so thankful to her.

She recently posted this on her Blog and I thought it was such interesting and true information!!!

She compiled some statistics based on publications
from the World Bank, the CIA, and other sources. From those numbers she was able to calculate the following facts:

Out of 100 children born in Guatemala:

1 has been or will be adopted by a US family
5 will not make it to their 5th birthday
16 will be born with low birth weight
22 will never see the inside of a school
28 will never learn how to read and write
54 will grow up in extreme poverty and malnourished
74 will never make it to the 7th grade
84 will need to travel over an hour to reach a health care facility

By eliminating adoptions in Guatemala the government has solved the
"crisis" for 1 out 100 of their children. What about the rest of them?

Julian Has Been Home ONE YEAR TODAY!

Wow, it's more than amazing how time just flys on by without you noticing. One year ago today Julian was home forever and on the 20th of this month will mark J.R.'s 2 year anniversay home. We are now a completed family. It took a little while to stablize our family's everyday routine. We had two adoptions within a two year time frame. That in itself makes for two long unstable years of craziness. It's nice and comforting to have your family completed and to have your traditions set and your routine established.

Many within the adoption community celebrate what most call "Gotcha Days" which is the day your child was placed in your arms forever. That would have been December 11th for Julian and December 14th for J.R., so I decided to celebrate Julian's one year home anniversary with his favorite thing "a cake". Look at this guys face light up when he saw his little cake....

Save Money on Online Purchases~~~~~

My husband's broker came over last night told us about an ecommerce company that saves you money on online purchases. Not only can you save money but you can also make money too. I urge you to look at this company if you spend any amount of money on online shopping, it pays you cash back on purchases and has mostly all the major stores available. They also have lots of "Green" companies too choose from. We went ahead and joined in go look www.shoptoearn.net/rockthemall
Go into my account and on the very top of the page click on overview and listen to the 5 minute presentation. Its well worth the time. If you have any questions or are interested email me directly at alexismandy@aol.com and I'll be happy to answer your questions. If you just want to shop it will not cost you anything to start saving money, just click on the become a preferred customer and sign up to save, it's free!!! Have fun shopping and saving money! I know I do!!!!

More Fabulous Pictures

Love these pictures of our week together.

I'm Back!

I haven't posted in over a month! It's been a very busy couple of months for us. I've neglected the blog and the posts and paid much needed attention to my family.

We just returned from a seven night cruise to the Western Caribbean. We celebrated my birthday by going on a cruise and took three of the kids with us. Alexis is in fourth grade and could not miss 5 days of school to just vacation so she stayed home and was promised she'll join us next time and the other three will stay home. You can only have five people to a stateroom or you need to book two seperate cabins which is really non conducive for families with small children.

It was a seriously eye opening experience having two small boys and a 5 year old in a stateroom. Wow! I mean Wow!! I don't think that will happen again until they are at least 10 years old! Julian gets happy or annoyed he screams, a scream that kinda sounds like a whistle that a dog could hear. We tried the dining room one night and quickly learned it was probably not the best choice for us, so we visited the buffet the remaining nights. One thing's for sure we had some bonding time!

I had some portraits taken of the kids during the cruise. They were so cute I couldn't resist and bought three of them.

I'll post some of my favorite pictures of our seven days tomorrow. Today, I'm just adding the portraits we purchased.