Eagle Island

It is pouring here again today. Happy birthday to me. Yesterday it held off though so we took the kids over to Eagle Island in the boat. It is a Maine State historic site and very beautiful. It was a private island with a summer house built for Admiral Peary and his family in 1904.

The Spark putting on her booties that all guests to the home are required to wear inside to protect the old, hardwood floors. Cupcake loved the booties and kept shoving them up her shirt as if to sneak some out for keeps.

Jason is home from Guate! Mission accomplished. Not any big steps forward but enough that we are least waiting for something again. He had a nice visit with Ali and her foster mom too. We all got to talk with her on the phone. She is non-stop jibber jabber, and Jason said movement too.

Our news story is supposed to run tonight on the 11 o'clock news in Boston. I'll post the link once they've put it on their website. She said that'll happen after the news, so not til 11:30 or so tonight. Maybe we'll watch it tomorrow.

Before I am computer-less for a few days while J takes it to Guatemala, I thought I'd update w/ a few more pics from our summer so far. Today is really our first beautiful, sunny, summer day. We've had a few decent days that were cloudy w/out rain, so those were pretty nice too. J will be in Guatemala by tomorrow night, deal with the Embassy stuff on Tuesday morning, spend some time at the hotel with Ali and her foster mom that afternoon/evening, and then fly home Wednesday morning. We are excited to get the ball rolling there again but ready to get his trip over and done. It will be a relief in some ways to know that we are really waiting for Ali again instead of just stalled out.

Here are the girls in summer dresses this morning that I made last spring.

#1's boat is getting very close to finished!
Cupcake actually let Aunt Heather do her hair during a visit this weekend.
#1 at soccer camp last week.
The boys with some summer friends playing with an ant at the beach.

Middle of July already!

It still hasn't gotten very warm yet. I love that! Except when I have to take cupcake to the pool because she goes in no matter what and I really should be in there with her. Today she did get the hang of swimming with her floaty on well enough that I could sit on the steps only halfway in the water but more than halfway freezing. The luckily it was time for the Spark's soccer camp so we had to get out and get her to soccer. She LOVES it. Well, at least she loves the coaches. Three young men from the UK, and she says she loves the way they talk. I'll try to get pics of #1 and Zippy at soccer camp tomorrow. They love it too- but for the actual sport.

And Cupcake LOVES the beach and the pool. One great thing about two year olds is that they usually enjoy sand boxes, so the beach keeps 'em happy. When we suggest going down to the beach, Cupcake yells "BEEE!" for beach. It sounds a lot like what she says for Boat, Bus, and Bird but with context we know what she's saying.

Jason is headed to Guate next week to sign the stupid I-600 and get our case moving again. Our attorney should have the rebuttal together by the end of this week, so as soon as the Embassy issues us the official NOID, we can have our Guatemalan attorney submit the rebuttal. Then...we wait. Something new and different.

Here are a few pics of the three youngers:

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

I give up fighting with Blogspot to let me put these photos in order, so they skip all over the weekend. Hopefully the captions will help to make sense of them. As for an update on our never-ending adoption story, I overnighted everything we've received from our Guatemalan attorney to our US attorney today. Phew! Out of my hands. She will begin sorting through the 4.4 POUNDS of paperwork (and that's just what I sent to her; she's also getting more directly from our agency) on Wednesday.


Gotta have an ice-cream cone on the 4th of July even if it is 58 degrees and rainy. Notice how she eats through the cone first like a little mouse- lucky for Cupcake it was cold enough that day that the ice-cream didn't melt.
The playground in Waterville Valley. Yes, Zippy has jeans without holes, but he always chooses these first.

Mountain-trike slalom on the 4th.

After 3 weeks of nearly solid rain, nothing brightens the mood like make-your-own-sundaes!

Our clowns after their dress rehearsal. That's Clover on the left and Binki on the right.

Cupcake on her new trike. She's almost starting to get the hang of the whole peddling concept.

Patriotic face painting for all! #1 was at skateboarding camp right across the way, so I'll have to try to post some of the awesome photos his friend's dad took of him skating. We were too busy trying to keep Cupcake out of the skatepark so she wouldn't get run over by a skate-punk teenage boy so we didn't get any pics of #1.

The Spark was eager to climb the wall & she did great!

And when trying to kill 14 hours in Waterville Valley while one kid is at skateboarding camp, we of course had to visit the ice rink. Cupcake looks bummed in this pic, but she loved it and would not willingly give up.

Earlier this summer...

Here are a few photos from events that got skipped in blogland because of travelling, misplaced cameras, and/or my laziness.

Zippy's graduation, hugs for head teacher & director

The Spark's end-of-the-year gymnastics show. She's the last one on the right.

Our sparkling gymnast!

That's #1 in a chicken suit at our local Lupine Festival in early June. Never thought I'd see the day he'd volunteer to do something like this, but the kids' entertainer that talked him into it promised him a cool T-shirt if he'd be the chicken.

Will it ever be sunny again?

Rain, fog, rain, mist, and more fog. We have not seen a the sun for more than 3 hours in the last 3 weeks. It's getting a little old now. Luckily the middles, Zippy and The Spark, have been enrolled in Clown College all week so they've been busier than the rest of us. They have a dress rehearsal tomorrow for the 4th of July show that they will miss since we'll be back in NH by tomorrow night, but I will try to get photos of the dress rehearsal. And for now, these above photos are a few more "summer so far" pictures.