Pictures

Sorry for the delay in getting pictures up. Picassa has been giving me a hard time with uploading this past week.

Here's the link to pictures from this past trip. Enjoy!

Back home

It was a fantastic visit! Our plane got into Chicago late Wednesday night (we missed our original connecting flight out of Miami due to the loooong line in customs so we caught the next flight out) and then I drove back home Thursday afternoon. I'm working on sorting through the many pictures we took - about 1000 pictures total over 5 days, that must be a record or something, don't you think? For all of the other adopting parents from our orphanage, I have a bunch of pictures of the kids that I'll send your way sometime next week.

Today I'm just enjoying spending time with Jay & Josh after being away from them for the past week. I promise to get pictures and stories posted soon though!

Here's a picture from Sunday of David waiting to dive into his birthday cake. He turns 1 today!

We're here!

We made it here on Friday afternoon with no troubles. We spent yesterday at the two orphanages and then today David came to the house and is actually upstairs napping right now. I'll type more when we're back at home, but for now here are some photos from our first few days.

At the baby orphanage:


Playing:


Eating:


Going for a walk:


Ready for a nap:


Getting dressed for church:


Mom & Dad making friends at church:


Staring down his stuffed giraffe (he has a bit of a love/hate relationship with it):


Opening birthday gifts:


Enjoying the swing;

Off to Haiti

In less than 24 hours, I'll be in Haiti. My parents and I are all packed and ready to go. I'll update with pictures as soon as we're back next Thursday!

Some unrest in Haiti

Some of you may have heard about the recent protests that took place in Haiti this past week. I've been pretty glued to the internet news and various Haitian blogs, trying to get whatever updates are posted.

The basic gist of what's going on is that people all over the world are starving. As food prices continue to rise, what little food they were once able to afford is now too expensive. This has resulted in people taking to the streets and demonstrating. Some of these protests in Haiti became violent this week, leading to a lot of destruction and some deaths throughout the country. Even the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince closed down -- not exactly what I wanted to hear before getting ready to soon travel there!

To put the food crisis into perspective, you have to realize that food in Haiti costs MORE than it does here in the United States; yet, much of their population makes less than $2 a day -- that's less than $800 a year. Unlike in the U.S., Haitians don't have the option to start clipping coupons or shopping at Aldi if food prices get higher. So, when you can't afford food, you and your family don't eat.

The following is a quote from another blogger. It was written by a Haitian who has been through this type of unrest numerous times. I thought it was well-written and seemed to go along with what we'd been told and seen while we were there in January:

"There are several different things going on. First, many, many people are really suffering. They are hungry and they see no future for themselves or their children. People like that demonstrate peacefully - as is their right - and express their legitimate frustration and despair. But there are also people who are taking advantage of the situation to loot and steal. These people I saw today were not Jean Valjeans stealing a loaf of bread because they were hungry. They were taking 5 gallon water bottles and emptying them out, taking ice from the machine and throwing it in the road. They were going from one store to another and breaking all the windows. They were carrying away furniture and even the fire extinguishers. I don't know what all their motives were for this but clearly the motive wasn't to make food prices go down.Without exception, the people from this country with whom I have talked have expressed their disgust with those who are doing these things. They aren't improving the situation of high food prices and a difficult life - they are making the situation worse. Most people here are ashamed that the world is seeing these actions and associating this country with violence and destruction. This is not a violent country. Looters and destroyers do not represent this country any more than serial killers represent the United States."

Right now things appear to have calmed down, and as long as the roads to and from the airport are clear, we should be set for our trip in 2 weeks. The orphanage is far enough away from the capital, that I'm not worried about our safety once we get there. (By the way, I heard from our agency and everyone at the orphanage is doing just fine.)

So unless we hear otherwise from the people we're staying with, my parents and I are still planning on traveling to Haiti at the end of the month. Well, that is if our airplane gets there :-P

More Pictures

Thanks to Laura, here are some more David pics.
3 more weeks till I'm there snapping pictures of my own :-)

Missions trip to Honduras

This isn't an adoption related post, but it is related to kids worldwide so I figured I'd post about it anyway.

As some of you know I was in Honduras on a mission's trip last week. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere and the parts that we visited were some of the poorest of the poor. It was really educational for me and I came back feeling like I have at least a little bit better understanding of that part of the world; we were able to see firsthand the plights people are going through there as well as some of the amazing work God is doing. And as is true everywhere, kids are kids and they were goofy and fun to be around :-)

Below is a photo-video that we showed to our church when we got back. Enjoy!
(Sorry that it's blurry, but that's the only way I could post it without it taking a million years to load)