It's Sure Great Living in Colorado!

We feel very blessed to live in Colorado. The scenery is out of this world! It's great that we can drive just an hour and go from the 90's to snow! That's exactly what we did on Sunday. We decided to escape the heat on the plains. On our drive we got to see some buck elk with large racks as well as several marmots. There was still quite a lot of snow as they had just had more snow the previous weekend up there. They just recently reopened Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest continuous paved road in America, at two miles above sea level. You can always tell which people up there are not from Colorado. They are the ones wearing shorts and flip flops and freezing. We had a lot of fun just getting out in God's beautiful creation. Enjoy the photos!

June 23rd--Two Years Since Finalization

This Thursday I had to work in the morning. But, my afternoon was free, while Jay had to work. So, Penny and I got out of town by driving up to Horsetooth Reservoir. She said, "Mom, I think we came here just after I came to America, didn't we?" "Yes," I said, "that's right." Later we went to Watson Lake and the Fish Hatchery.

Again, she said, "We've been here before, haven't we?" It's fun to see that she's starting to have more memories associated with her home in America. I think in many ways it still doesn't feel like home for Penny. After all, she spent the first thirteen and a half years of her life in Thailand. She's still very apprehensive about meeting new people and not eager to make friends here. I'm just thankful that she is bonding and connecting with us as her family. In all of the adoption books I've read it seems that the main thing to remember is that your child must go through all of the normal developmental stages that any child does with their parents. That means that emotionally your child is the age at which they entered your family. So, it makes complete sense that at the two year stage in our relationship she feels safer clinging to her family and is wary of strangers. So, I'm praying that God will help her and strengthen her for the big transition to go to high school, where there will be so many people! Here are pictures of Penny from Jan. 2009, when we first got home and from this June 23rd and you can see how she has grown so much! There are also a couple of her on our recent trip to Watson Lake.

A whirlwind of Activity

It seems like we've remained busy ever since the "Big Party". For Mother's Day we had a picnic at a park.


There was Penny's 8th Grade graduation. Also, Penny took her first ever ballet class.
Then I had to figure out transportation for a couple weeks of fun activities for the first two weeks of June. On June 3rd we celebrated her 16th birthday.
During that first week she volunteered by teaching crafts for our church's VBS. And the second week in June she had her Youth Police Academy sponsored by the city of Fort Collins and the Poudre School District.
That Tuesday Jay and I took off for our 8th wedding anniversary. Then there were family ailments. The cat was deathly ill with a swallowed piece of yarn tangled up in a hair ball that was stuck for a few days on top of a urinary tract infection. I never knew doctoring a cat could be so expensive!

Then our computer crashed one day after our 3-year warranty expired. Thankfully, the folks at Best Buy had mercy and graciously offered a free one-month extension of our warranty. So, our mac went to the repair shop for two and a half weeks. Then I came down with a bronchial infection, along with a virus that I've been battling for close to three weeks.




We've had house guests for two weekends in a row and, meanwhile, Jay and I have been kept busy with our jobs. I've actually been getting a few extra hours in with some other teachers out either on vacation or because of illness/injury. So, it's been a while since I've been able to sit down and "waste" time on the computer. But, I sure missed keeping up with how everyone was doing. Isn't the internet great?! I feel like I have all kinds of friends out there, some of whom I've never actually even met in person. We're hoping that we'll be able to meet many of you at the Thai Family Reunion in Chicago this summer. My cousin in Council Bluffs, IA just warned me that we may be detoured as they are having major flooding along the Missouri River. But, hopefully, Lord willing, we'll be able to make it out there and meet many friends. I also can't wait to meet dear friends from my church I attended while I was a college student some twenty years ago. There have also been fun times in our daily activities, like the day when Penny and I decided to make our very own homemade dumplings or potstickers (gyooza in Japanese). Penny can't remember what they are called in Thai. If anyone knows, please let me know. They were a real hit. A lot of work, but Jay said, "Wow, those are so much better than the frozen ones from the supermarket! You can add that to your repertoire!" Speaking of Jay, we had fun celebrating Father's Day at a Mexican restaurant. Jay likes to get his Mexican "fix" once in a while since he spent several years living in Tucson, AZ.