These Wednesday funnies are really fun to write.

Some week’s I have to think about what “funny” I will write about for awhile, but this one I have had in my head for a few days. It is a great reminder of just how different from ours the culture is that my son comes from!

On Saturday night we went to the rodeo as a family. Benjamin (almost 6 years old, home from Ethiopia for almost 5 months now) was really excited and enjoyed it a lot. We started telling him about other fun events that we have in the summer, and got to talking about the county fair that is coming up at... more

Happy Birthday America!! I hope you are all having a great Fourth of July. We had a great cook out last night with a family from our church. We met up a near-by park and ate “milk can dinners”, played softball and watched fireworks. In case you do not live in a place where “milk can dinners” are popular, the meal is basically ham, potatoes, carrots, onions, corn on the cob and cabbage, all put into a large steel “can” with water and heated over a fire. It’s delicious! More than half of my kids actually ate cabbage, which should really tell you it was good. :) I made two cakes, both... more

The fourth of July is a holiday that my family enjoys. As the mom, I enjoy it because it is not one of those holidays that involves spending a lot of money and putting in a ton of effort, such as Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc. The kids like it because it does involve doing something together as a family outdoors, plus they get to stay up late. There is usually water fun involved, whether it is the lake or a sprinkler and kiddie pool, and there is always lots of food. You pretty much can’t go wrong!

We started our celebrating yesterday, when we all went to our local... more

This week’s Wednesday funny is a story, but the visual images are the really funny part.

In February, Josh and I were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, adopting our son Benjamin Bekalu, who is five years old. His adjustment to us was amazingly smooth and easy from almost day one and we had a ton of fun with him that week in Addis, getting to know him and having him get to know us. Part of the fun was getting to know his likes and dislikes, much of which was through trial and error.

Food was an area that was lots of trial and error. (Rice Krispie treats- GOOD!) (French... more

For me, the best thing about summer is having time as a family to do the things that we enjoy. We love to be outside and we love to be active, and truth be told, a lot of us really enjoy being dirty. This weekend we were successful in being outside, being active and getting really dirty and it was one of the best weekends we have had in quite a while.

The fun started with our friends, who were off camping and invited us up to their campsite for a cook-out dinner, lots of playing and of course, smores. We live on the road to Yellowstone, so campgrounds and National Forest abound, and we love to take advantage of it all.

We got to the campsite and the kids took off in 9 different... more

I wish I had a photograph of the people, all of the very many people, in the children’s hospital in Vietnam.

Our daughter Maggie was eight weeks old when I made my first trip to Vietnam. She was outrageously small, had the wildest hair you have ever seen and ate slower than any baby I have every encountered, but seemed healthy overall. The absolute hardest part of Maggie’s adoption was that I had to leave my tiny, wild-haired, slow-eating baby in a crowded government orphanage and come home alone, and wait out a miserable six weeks before I could go back and bring her home for good.

Two weeks before I was to leave, my worst fears came true. We got a phone call and Maggie was... more

My stinking server has been down all day today (again!!!!) so I have not been able to get my Wednesday funny up. I have to get all the kids in bed here pretty soon, but I wanted to get something up quick.

This isn’t one of those comical stories with a punch line or anything, but I hope you find it amusing and get a chuckle.

Maggie and Amanda are my two little Asian girls. We adopted Maggie from Vietnam when she was three months old, and then right before both girls turned two years old, we added Amanda from Korea. Amanda is three months older than Maggie, but was born... more

Happy Father’s Day everybody! I hope you all have a wonderful day today celebrating the fathers in your life.

Just a little history for you…not surprisingly, Father’s Day came about as a result of the Mother’s Day holiday. A woman named Sonora Louise Smart Dodd who lived in Spokane Washington, heard a sermon on Mother's Day and then decided fathers should be honored in the same way. She was raised by a single dad, who raised her and her five siblings after his wife died, and Sonora wanted a holiday to pay tribute to her own father and others.

After conceiving... more

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which are traditionally really fun, family holidays, can be more complicated when your family is formed through adoption. Children who are adopted often find these holidays causing them to think about their birth parents, whether they are in contact with them or not.

So as always, it is an important time to make sure that conversation is open and that your children feel comfortable talking about whatever may be on their minds. Since many adopted children do not have any information about their birth fathers... more

I have a lot of wonderful “Dad moments” in my head and in my heart…images of Josh at his best as a father (which is saying a lot). Many of them we do also have photographs of, but there are some that we’ve missed for one reason or another.

I didn’t have to think very long or very hard about what moment I would share for Father’s Day week.

I wish I had a photograph of Josh, walking down the road away from me, with Mercy on his back, that late-summer evening just a day or two after Mercy and Des came to stay with us forever. Mercy was nine years old, and was old enough to completely understand that her entire life had just been turned upside down. After nine years with her birth... more