Sunday, May 7, 2023

Our Winter Highlights


Our winter started off with a great visit from some sweet friends. We meet the Lots family 9.5 years ago in China when we were adopting Abram. We became quick friends and have stayed in touch over the years but haven't seen them since then. We had a wonderful visit with them. 


In January, on the Sanctity of Life Day, D.C. is the site for the National March for Life. What a joy it is to live in a country where we can freely march, to be able to talk about defending life with our boys and have dear friends to march with. We missed it last year and we are so glad we were able to march this year. Such an important day!




This was the first year since we've been here that Chinatown had a Chinese New Year parade! First, we ate in a sushi go round in China Town... so fun and delicious! Then we watched the parade. Jack and Luke wore Chinese silks that our friends gave us. There weren't any fireworks, but the boys enjoyed feeding dollars to the dragon and seeing the dragons dance.






A highlight to our winter was seeing the play, A Horse and His Boy at the Museum of the Bible. It was an amazing production but more importantly, our piano and violin instructor, Lewis, was in it. The life size puppets were stunning. We were even allowed to go backstage after the play to meet the cast members and learn how the puppets were made. 




Abram went to a birthday party at a fun place called "Climb Zone." He came home and told me we have to take Luke and Jack! Surprisingly, they have homeschool days on Wednesdays, so we took the day off and went climbing. All three had a blast. 




To wrap up our quarter studying 6 famous artists, we took a field trip with our CC community to the National Art Gallery. We were matched with an amazing docent who took us to see works of art from the artists that we studied. It was incredible to watch it all come to life for these kids. To be able to see original works of art from famous artists- we are so blessed to live in this amazing place. We saw works by Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Rembrant and Gainsborough. 





Another highlight of our winter was our boys' first concert. Our family's favorite Christian artist is Toby Mac. We always have his music on at home and in the car.  We loved taking them to his concert. They had a blast watching him perform their favorite songs live. He not only performed, but he worshipped. It was amazing!



Our CC community had our Faces of History event in March. These students never cease to amaze me. They select a person from a certain time period, research them, write a paper, and give a presentation while in character. This year Abram chose to do God's Smuggler, Brother Andrew. We learned so much about him and truly came to see that God uses our situations for our good and His glory.


And we wrapped up our winter with surgery #10 for Abram. He had his bone graft surgery for the fourth time. They take bone marrow from his hip and put it into his gum line. After the surgery he has 6 weeks of liquid diet and limited physical activity. He is so very brave and he never worries or complains. He just knows this is apart of his story. 


Those six weeks are pretty tough for our family- but one night something pretty exciting happened! We heard a knock on our door and I realized it was my best friend's niece, Nykol. She goes to school in D.C. and Stephanie had her go get ice cream and root beer for Abram and deliver it to us. I feel like I think sometimes simple gestures aren't important, but after this night I realized it's the simple gestures that mean the most. To see the huge smile on Abram's face just brought me to tears. When he realized that someone in Houston had ice cream delivered to him, he felt so very special. 


 

And, Christmas is here!

 Christmas is always such a wonderful time of year. This year wasn't any different. Usually my family comes to see us and we spend Christmas together at our house, but this year we headed to Shreveport. My nephew got married a few days after Christmas. We spent Christmas day at my parent's house and had a great visit. 


The first weekend in December, our boys sang in our church's Christmas performance. Our church does such an amazing job worshipping our Savior through this performances and our boys love being a part of it. 


And of course, decorating gingerbread cookies was a highlight. I don't particularly enjoy doing gingerbread houses, so these cookies were a happy compromise!


We headed out a few days before Christmas to head to Louisiana- you know you are in the south when you start seeing signs for Buc-ee's! 


We enjoyed a visit to the Shreveport Aquarium to meet up with some dear friends, the Watkins. 




They did such a great job on Christmas morning. Since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, we went to church first and then we came home and opened gifts. They were so patient and didn't complain at all. 


The highlight for Luke and Jack was their gift from Aunt Julie... she gave the boys a pig to dissect with Uncle Jamie. They loved every minute of it!



But the highlight of our trip and why we came home was for Cade and Amanda's wedding. Our boys were the ring bearers. It was a beautiful wedding that we got to celebrate with our entire family. We were so happy we were able to be there. 












Also, the four of us got to get away to celebrate New Years in Dallas. We had such a fun time eating, walking (alot), watch fireworks and just laughing together. 




















Monday, December 19, 2022

Our Trip to Niagara Falls

 Visiting Niagara Falls has been on our list of places to see since we moved to the East Coast. For some reason, Chris and I thought it was the perfect time until we noticed the weather report the week before we left.  They had a huge snowstorm a few days before left, but we decided to make the trip anyway and we are so very glad we did! 

The snow was practically gone (our boys were disappointed) and there weren't any crowds. It was lovely! Lots of stuff was closed for the season (ice cream, zip lining, etc) but its stuff we would not have wanted to spend money on anyway. We decided to stay on the Canada side because we heard it was better and we already had passports for everyone! 


Our first stop was at the Bird Kingdom. Luke loves all birds and so he was just in heaven. 





When we went in this caged area, we thought we were going to look at the birds up close, but soon the guy inside told us to cup our hands and he poured some milky liquid into them. Immediately the birds started swarming us and we were all screaming. Then he quickly said, "smile!" So the smile you see in this picture is half scared, half confused and right after we took it we walked out. It's pretty funny now, but at the moment we were a little terrified. 


Chris is an amazing trip planner and he surprised the boys with a hotel room with a view of the falls. It was so stunning to wake up to this every morning and watch it lit up at night. 





The first place we ate at was a super cheesy but fun restaurant called the Flying Saucer. It's really old and the food isn't the best, but it was fun to experience just once. 


Then we walked around the local tourist trap, Clifton Hill, and ventured inside the Hershey Store to load up on chocolates and Christmas gifts. 



It was so fun to be there during this season because we got to see all the Christmas lights. We loved walking around in the evenings to see the town lit up.



The next day we set out to explore the beautiful falls. We were able to through 2 different tunnels to get a view from behind the falls. So cool! 





Those are the falls behind them. We were inside. 

This rainbow was out all day and it was just stunning!






After exploring the falls we took a bus to the Butterfly Conservatory. We were all blown away by how amazing this place was. The butterflies were so stunning and they let you get right up close to them, which was amazing! I could not get over their vibrant colors!







The last really cool thing we did (thanks to our amazing trip planner) was see a light show at the Niagara Parks Power Plant. It was interactive and really neat to see and listen to- a great way to end our visit to The Falls.