Enjoying A Beautiful Easter Sunday

A day at the falls

Kids Christmas Picture

Catchin' Up!

The holidays have been crazy busy for us, so I have not kept up with my posts! My parents and aunt & uncle came up here for Thanksgiving, which was lots of fun. Then Anthony came home for a two week Christmas break, so we spent Christmas with my family. And in the middle of all of this we had Johanna's 12 mo post-adoption visit. Now we can stop and breath. Even though my house looks like it exploded and we are playing catch up with our schooling. Anyway, this year we got to go out to the forest and cut down our own Christmas tree! That was lots of fun. Here are a few pics.
Also, a quick Johanna update..we had an appointment with her surgeon while we were in Ca. She is going to have another surgery this spring to try to close up the hole in her palate a little more, remove scar tissue from lip and she gets fat injections to try to even out her lip a bit.

Anthony Update

Yesterday we received our first letters from Anthony, and then just as we were about to go into church for Masters Club he called! We ended up sitting in the parking lot for about a half hour talking to him. Which was nice because when Pastor pulled up he got to give him some encouragement too. (Our pastor is retired army, so a great support for Anthony!) In the letters he seemed up and down. Positive one day, discouraged the next. But on the phone he sounded really good. He was very happy that they had been moved out of the processing phase to where they will stay for the rest of boot camp. Also, they had been issued their guns earlier in the day, so they all seemed pumped up from that! He had done the Victory Tower earlier in the day too and did really well. Please keep praying that he stays positive and just keeps moving toward the goal. Also, he is supposed to be coming home for Christmas, but in a company of 50 guys if one of them does something stupid they will all lose their leave. (I needed one more thing to worry about!) Please pray that he gets to come home! For everyone that has been praying for him, a huge answer to prayer came in his letters! He is finding a lot of comfort in reading his Bible and went to a church service. Praise God!

Birthday Girl

October 30th was Johanna's 3rd birthday and her first U.S. birthday! She had a fun "princess" day. We started off with a princess dress and crown that she wore all day, then had a princess breakfast. Which was really only cereal, but it's more fun when you are dressed up like a princess! We did crafts, baked a cake and made a special dinner. We also had a time of remembrance and said a prayer for her birth parents. Here are a few pics of our day.

He's Official!

Today we drove up to Boise to meet up with Anthony and see his swearing in for the army. He had been so nervous about all the testing, but he did really well and chose a great job that he is really excited about. Very strange feeling to have one of your kids becoming a soldier!
Here are a couple of pics from the swearing in.