Starting Summer 2013

It has been brought to my attention that my blogging has been, well, somewhat lacking in the last few months. I will admit, I got a little caught up in life and, maybe as importantly, got a little lazy. Anyway, it has been since Easter since I did an update, and that is simply too much boring ole everyday life to catch up on. I think it significant to mention though that yesterday was the TEN MONTH ANNIVERSARY of bringing home Ethan, (how is that possible?) and tomorrow is Troy's and my SEVENTEEN YEAR anniversary (again, how is that even possible?).

It may seem hard to imagine, but after close to a year, we are just finding our comfort zone. Ethan is bonding, feeling safe and comfortable, and therefore he is starting to show some, how do I say this? Attitude. A lot of it at that. Aiden, the exemplary big brother in China, decided at some point that having a sibling is not all it's cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong, a majority of the time I think they love each other. Some of the times they like each other. They still make it a challenge most of the time! It is, though, a wonderful, fun, interesting, albeit exhausting challenge.

Take, for example, the simple task of family pictures. Ok, I just snorted at the adjective "simple." That word is misleading if not an outright lie. God bless Sara Sandbulte. She did an amazing job and did it with a servant's heart. I guess that should be no surprise. Here's how this photo session came to be; here's the message I received on facebook shortly after New Year's.

"Hey Diane! I'm not sure if you follow my photography page or not but the past couple weeks I have been receiving nominations for a free family session and CD of those photos from people who know of a family that would appreciate a gift like this.
This is what I had posted on my photography page:
'The Olivia Act, named after one of the children killed in Newtown, Ct., was started by a photographer who wishes to remain anonymous. Olivia’s family had family pictures taken a short time before she was killed. Those pictures are precious and now priceless to them. Upon hearing this, this photographer was moved to give away a 30 minute family photo shoot and has challenged other photographers to do the same. We go about our daily lives and sometimes we don’t take the time or have the resources to have family photos taken.'
Your family has been nominated and I am writing you this message because you have been chosen..."

What an amazing blessing. So, not only does she display a servant's heart, she also displays amazing talent! We've only seen one picture, but the fact that she got one is nothing short of miraculous. Between the distractions of the geese and ducks, the throwing of the rocks, Aiden's forced smile, the inability to sit still.....You get the idea. These two were a handful. And then some! Here is the sneak peak we got though.

We can't wait to see the rest. Even if we only got this one, though, we'd be happy. SO CUTE!

Next up on the Sturgeon Blogosphere -- my anticipation of my trip to NYC -- or rather, probably an a look back. I'm not so good at the timliness anymore. Suffice it to say, in all my tiredness, crabbiness, whininess about the craziness of my life with my boys, I am stressing / crying about leaving them for four days. From the day we have been blessed with their arrival in our life, I have not spent a night separated from them. I am freaking out! In brief: my generous-to-a-fault husband told me to go ahead and use my frequent flier miles; my well-contected friend is getting us tickets to one of the hottest Broadway plays, The Book of Mormon; and a dear, and might I add BRAVE, high school classmate friend is boarding us for the duration of our stay; therefore, I essentially get to go to my favorite city in the world for the cost of food!!!! Oh. My. GOODNESS! How could I pass that up? More later...!!!

Easter 2013 -- Ethan's First

Recently I was told that I have been remiss in my blogging. Well, I will try to remedy that tomorrow on our THIRD day off school this week. It IS Spring, isn't it? Would somebody remind Mother Nature of that? Ugh. This ice and impending 8" of snow and 40+ mph wind is for the birds. I just pray everybody stays safe even as the trees are falling around us.

Before I get around to updating the goings-on in our lives, I will simply put some pictures from Easter and say that we had a beautiful holiday and experiencing this first with Ethan was heart-warming! (And a side note? The kid is a rock star egg finder! Seriously. He was incredible. He is so observant, that he found them in record time!) Both he and Aiden loved all things Easter -- including church -- and we are so blessed to be able to share it all with them.

Without further ado:

Let the Easter egg coloring begin!


Yes, I was wearing gloves in an attempt to avoid stained fingers. It failed by the way....


You want me to do WHAT with this egg?

>
Ooooh....I see!!!


This is fun stuff!


The old pro


Up early and ready to hunt for eggs


Yay!!


Found one happy dance!


Easter is fun


The Easter Bunny is AWESOME!


Yes he is!

Six Month Anniversary

Tomorrow marks the SIX MONTH anniversary of Ethan coming into our lives -- into our forever family.


Ethan the week we came home


As cliched as it will sound, sometimes I find myself thinking, "Oh my goodness! Where has the time gone?!" At other times, it feels like Ethan has always been with us. I'm pretty sure there are times when he is thinking, "How did I ever get stuck in this crazy family?" Meanwhile, I know Aiden is wondering what happened to his world and what he did to deserve a little brother who follows him everywhere and copies everything he does. I can say with certainty, though, that Aiden would be absolutely lost without Ethan. As much as Aiden likes to boss Ethan around (dare I even say tries to bully him), Ethan has turned into Aiden's best buddy -- his partner in crime! I could do without the tatteling (Ethan can now CLEARLY say, "MOOOOM! Aiden hit me!), the monotony of the word mine, the fighting, and the whining over who gets Mommy time; however, I simply can't imagine it any other way now. And 'things' are improving. They fight less often, the *tantrums are fewer, and sharing, although usually a foreign concept still, is starting to improve. In short, they're brothers!


Ethan wasn't feeling well....

*As a caveat, overall the tantrums are fewer; however, Ethan is starting to assure us that he is comfortable with us and KNOWS he is HOME. He has taken to stomping his feet when he gets scolded, and in time-out, he will stare me down and hit the wall. He's started to stick out his tongue and blow "raspberries" at Aiden. Don't worry. EVERY time this happens, Aiden is sure to come running and tell me. Sigh!

Now, I do have pictures to post of Chinese New Year which entailed eating out not once but twice (UNHEARD OF!), the boys getting toys and "money" in red envelopes, and "shooting off fireworks" which amounted to snaps and pull-string confetti. I also have photos of our Changchun buddies visiting and Aiden's new hearing aid I should get on here, but I have been so remiss in posting / updating, that I figured I'd throw together a quick post with a few pictures (which for *us* is important because this is how I scrapbook. :-/ This is our memory book of sorts) before the 1/2 year anniversary got away from me. So, here goes.....



Some of our most recent pictures of our sweet, gentle, smart lil' guy from Chinese New Year's Eves Day. We are proud and blessed to get to call him son and brother.

How Vastly Different.....

It dawned on my recently that Ethan is about 27 months old. That, in and of itself, is nothing particularly noteworthy. It was the realization that followed. We adopted Aiden when he was 27 months old. It is an understatement to say the two are vastly different at that same age. I am fully aware that this can be the case with biological children with the same two parents brought up in the same environment. However, I think there is something to be said for orphans who come from a Half the Sky program and are in foster care -- Ethan -- versus children who spend 2+ years in an orphanage as Aiden did, even if the orphanage is doing the best they can (which we pray is the case). Aiden was wearing 12 - 18 months clothes when we brought him home.

Aiden wearing his 2T Adidas jacket at 27 months

Ethan wearing the same Adidas jacket at 27 months

I think it's safe to say there is a marked difference between the two!

We are happy to announce, though, that Aiden, now 4 1/2, is wearing 4T clothes, and some of those are starting to get a bit too short. It is amazing what good nutrition and oodles of unconditional love can do for a little one!

All we can say is that we are humbled and will be eternally grateful that God chose us to be these two beautiful boys' parents, to watch them grow and thrive. They are such a blessing!

Christmas 2012....

was beautiful and wonderful!

It was our first as a family of four

Ethan loved the excitement and presents

He loved having family and friends here -- and all the attention that came with it!

Aiden was genuinely excited with EVERY gift he recieved

It is such a blessing to be able to experience Christmas with our kids and "see it" through their eyes

We were so very luck to have Jeremy, Emily and Beck stop by for a bit so the Changchun buddies could see each other -- such a treat!

It was truly a blessed Christmas!

A Hectic Week and a Half

We're in the midst of a pretty "big" week and a half. As noted in the previous post, last Saturday was Ethan's baptism. We were blessed to have almost the entire family at our house for a couple days and we relished them. We had an incredible time! Now, we are finishing up the semester at school (which involves semester test study guides, last minute late work being turned in, semester tests, correcting semester tests....), yesterday was the four month anniversary of Ethan's Gottcha Day, tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of his referral (assuming the Mayan's got this one wrong -- haha!), and the biggest event of course is the upcoming celebration of Jesus' birthday -- CHRISTMAS!! Whew.

Now, I have to say, I am surprised by how calm things are at our house. If you know me, you may describe me as being, well, a teeny bit high-strung, a scosh tense at times. And that's during "normal" situations. With all that's going on during this time and me just recently returning to work and trying to find the new normal with that, one would imagine that I would be wrapped pretty tightly right now. I'm not. Who'da thought? Maybe I'm mellowing in my old age. Maybe being a mother of two is calming me down. Maybe I'm starting to see what's truly important. OR, and this is far more likely, I'm so tired, overwhelmed and shell-shocked right now, I'm numb. All of this has kind of crept up on me! I am mortified to admit that I didn't realize that yesterday we hit the four month mark with Ethan until I saw somebody else's post of facebook. I had planned to "bargain shop" for Ethan's baptism supper -- you know, keep an eye open for deals? Well, that went out the window on Tuesday when I realized I had only a few days to prep. Huh. Then, semesters were here, and I didn't have my tests done, but I managed to get them thrown together (thank goodness I've been doing this a while; I'd have fallen apart if I had been this woefully unprepared and in my first few years in the profession). Luckily, we're keeping Christmas pretty low-key. Also, totally out of character for me, about a month I bought all the food for Christmas that would keep and stored / froze it. I now need only buy a few perishables. Anyway, let's face it. So what if the house isn't spic and span? Who cares if the food isn't haute cuisine? Does it matter if the boys' gifts don't get wrapped until the day before or wrapped well? We will be together, we will go to church, and we will celebrate the birth of Jesus. We will celebrate the gift of family. THAT is what's important!


Happy Four Month Anniversary Ethan, our incredibly happy, outgoing, sweet, funny, smart, gentle lil guy! We love you!!

Ethan's Baptism

I have been horribly remiss in updating the blog. Life has intervened. To be more accurate, I'm trying to figure out this whole working-mother-of-two-thing. Yes, I know it's ONLY two, but ach, there IS a learning curve I'm discovering. A lot has happened since I last posted centering largely on Aiden and his new hearing aid, but that deserves a post of its own, so I will have to return to that another time. This post is dedicated to Ethan's baptism as my none-too-creative title indicates.

The baptism weekend started Friday night when I went to the airport to pick up Michelle and Drew from the airport. Turns out, I'm not a fan of NOT being the one being dropped off or picked up from the airport. ;) I was happy to go get them, though, and feel blessed and honored that they came all the way back from WY for Ethan's special day. Mostly we are grateful she agreed to be Ethan's godmother!

We got back to the house late, around 11:00. We stayed up and talked and both boys woke up around midnight (maybe because I took Michelle and Drew into look at them and maybe monkeyed with the boys a bit--hmmmm) and stayed up for a while, so Michelle and Drew got to meet Ethan and see Aiden for a while. We didn't get up til around 7:30 Saturday, and I got to start prepping for the rest of the day. The big concern was weather. We were supposed to get freezing rain and snow, especially farther north of us. This wouldn't have been overly concerning except Grandma, Grandpa, Grandma Jan, AND Dave, Jennie and family (who had come over from West River and spent the night in DeSmet Friday night) were coming from where is was supposed to be the worst. Fortunately very little of the freezing rain developed and everybody made it down. The only exception was Grandma Jan who didn't want to risk bad weather and the dark, and we can't blame her, but we are sad she couldn't be with us.

Dave and Jennie brought a TON of food for lunch: taquitos, egg rolls, guacamole, shrimp and more. It was a great snacky kind of meal. (Actually, the amount of food they brought supplied us with snacks after supper and lunch today!) We had a great time talking and finishing getting ready. We left on time and Mass was very nice. Father Mason is wonderful and gave a very nice homily. After Mass, we had Ethan's baptism. Sean and Michelle were godparents, and Ethan loves them both. He was more than happy to have either of them hold him, so it went smoothly. Having the water poured on his head bothered him not even a little bit, but he did seem to think having a bunch of us form the sign of the cross on his head was a little odd. He thought the chrism / oil was strange, too, but he took it all in stride which is amazing especially when you consider he was over-tired and hungry. We even managed to get some really good pictures of him smiling (thanks Megan's friend Morgan for being photographer extraordinaire). He looked amazing in his white Chinese silks!

When the baptism was done and we had taken a few pictures, the whole crew (plus Father Mason) made our way back to our house. And a crew it was! There were close to 25 of us; we filled two entire pews during church. :) When we got home we had pork loin, served two ways, corn, mashed potatoes and jello salad (thank you, Mom, for the taters and salad!). Fortunately it turned out very well, but we had JUST enough. It was ALL eaten -- and that was 8 1/2 lbs of boneless pork loin!

After supper and a very light clean up, we all sat around and talked and laughed and had a wonderful evening. The boys had a heyday and are going to hate to come back to reality. They were spoiled rotten with all the attention and playmates. I am never happier than when I have a house full of people who are well-fed, having a good time, and laughing! My heart was full to bursting!

Michelle and Drew left late morning when Jenny and Andrew came to get them to go to a family Christmas gathering; Mom and Dad headed to DeSmet around noon; Dave and the kids left early afternoon -- half time of the Vikes game more precisely. We are now back to a quiet (relatively speaking with two small boys around) household. It is something of a let-down (but it must have worn me out; I just realized I am still in my jammies at 6:30 -- ooops), but I feel content and beyond blessed after such a beautiful weekend....and we will have Christmas in just eight days!! Thank you, God, for such a fulfilling and heart-warming weekend.

Newly baptized!

Not sure what to make of this whole process

A final blessing

Ethan with big brother Aiden, godmother Michelle, Mom, Dad, Father Mason, and godfather Sean

Godparents and parents with Ethan

Ethan, Dad & Mom

Post-baptism family gathering

Dad and Sean talking with Father Mason

Relaxing and talking while waiting to walk through the food line