Thanksgiving Baking and Eating - 2016

During our Thanksgiving stay at the guest house, we had a lot of time to bake with the boys and have a sit down meal.   We always asked what was the favorite part of the day and that led to a lot of laughter.   It was fun doing it in two languages but we understood each other as any family does the bond of eating and laughing together.   The boys always helped set the table and they always picked up their plates and took them to be washed.   They are very polite.   Before they eat they have a little song of thanks that they sing and it is recorded below.   We made pumpkin pie, cookies, rice krispies, and a meal for another local orphanage and served it to them.   We we able to bring into the country three heavenly hams and plenty of food for an entire orphanage and had fun serving them.   Needless to say we all had a great time.  Here are some pictures and videos.

This last picture is of "rhum raisin" ice cream that actually had a good taste.

Thanksgiving Haircuts- November 2016

When we first picked up the boys and got them back to our guest house our translator wanted to send his good friend over to give them a haircut so that they would look for the week.    They were so pleased with their haircuts and watching them made me smile.

Before haircuts-

 During haircuts-

After haircuts-

They looked sharp.   After a couple of days of coconut oil to their scalp it was looking good and they were so happy. 

Our next blog will be baking and eating with the boys.

Beach Day - 11/21/16

As far as we know this is the first beach trip for the boys and we had a great time.   We were about 45 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince and we had a blast.  I can honestly say that I have never been to the beach over Thanksgiving but when you are on a Caribbean island go to the beach.  Here are my kids.

Here are some videos of the beach.

What a great day.  We had so much fun. 

"The Best Thanksgiving Ever" - 2016

That is what my children said after our last trip to Haiti over Thanksgiving.   We made the decision to take the whole family to visit with the boys for an entire week of bonding, and it was amazing.    My daughter stated that they actually became part of us on this trip and she is right.  It has been 4 1/2 years now in this adoption process and we have Skyped every other week and had short visits but never all together.  I do not know how much longer we can take of this but we continue to wait.  For those who are interested we are still working on changing the wording from simple to plenary (complete) in our paperwork and are not sure how much longer this will take.  This has been really tough on us because we are missing valuable bonding time but we hope that we will be able to make up time after we get them home.

The best way to show you just how much fun we had is to let you look at this video.   Darby, my oldest made it out of all of our little video clips and it is just the best.  There are a lot of our emotions in this video.

I am going to post some pictures and videos in the next few posts that are themed so be watching for them.