Flat Stanley Project

We had the honor of helping one of our nephews Tyson in Tennessee with a school project called Flat Stanley, for those who don't know this is a book about a boy(I think) haven't read it but anyway who gets flat and goes in the mail, so the aim of this project was for Tyson to send us a flat stanley in the mail and we got to take him around our city and show him the sites and then mail him back and tell of his adventures.  So I thought I would show you some of the places we took Flat Stanley while he was here in Raleigh.  It really was alot of fun and our kids enjoyed it as well!  First we went to Krispy Kreme, founded in Winston Salem, NC a must see while here and partake of as well.  Then we ventured to the Governor's Mansion, Capital Building and Monuments, Carolina Hurricane's building and NC State Stadium.  At the Stadium as you will see in the pictures our boys had on Duke t-shirts, they are of course Duke fans via their Papa who is a Duke fan.  So we walk in the office of NC State football stadium with Duke shirts on with a bunch of guys sitting in the foyer, who looked like football player types, don't know if they were recruits or already players but I didn't think that through ahead of time, but they just kind of laughed and said somethings that I couldn't hear.  But the lady was real friendly she took us around and let us go up and see the field from the second floor, the boys of course loved this! So enjoy the pictures of our adventures with Flat Stanley.

Krispy Kreme assembly line, HOT NOW is going on!

Governor's mansion

Capitol building

Capitol Building and Washington Monument

Canon, Anna trying to shoot Micah:)

Wolfpack Stadium

Inside Wolfpack stadium, they had lots of cool football stuff.

Wolfpack field, a little dark, I had some kids who were afraid of heights here and wouldn't move much:)

"Mama will the baby get in your belly when you get to China?"

Well this is the question Anna asked me the other day.  So the exciting news for our family, is that Lord willing there will NOT be a baby in my belly but rather we are in the process of adopting from China.  So you can see that our adoption talks so far, still need some work.  We have explained to the kids that the baby will be in another woman's belly who will not be able to care for her child and thus if the Lord allows, we will.  But we still get some really good questions like this one.

Here are a couple more:
Micah asked, "Will we ever give the baby back?"
"What does chinese skin look like?

And the debate for gender is still ongoing-so we will wait and see.  We are currently working to complete our homestudy which is the first step after applying to our adoption agency, we are using a little one out of Tennessee.  So this road of paperwork, fundraising, and training will be a long road I'm sure. 

We can't wait to see where our baby will come from:)) 

Conversations in the Car

The kids always find fun things to look at or do while we are driving around, usually to Target.
Some of these are:
1.)  Micah and Anna love to look for taxi's, I guess it is kind of like punch bug with no punches and taxi's instead of punchbugs... but its pretty funny, they will yell at each other Micah I saw a yellow taxi, oh where!  Isaiah has told them that we took taxi's everywhere in China so they think he saw millions of them.  So when Anna went to Turkey she had to count them for Micah to tell him.  And
she even got to ride in one and was so excited, and it was one of the first things she told Micah when
she saw him in the airport, "Micah I rode in a real yellow taxi!"
2.)  They all love to look for how close we are to home, they do this by looking for all the tall buildings of downtown.  They call them "the buildings of home", which we can see from many places as we near home.  Then we have the hill of home, the bridge of home, all the last of things as we arrive to our wonderful home.
3.)  Then just funny conversations...this was a couple weeks ago.  So Sammy had on one of Anna's girlie hats, he is still learning that boys don't wear easter hats so he wears them.  So I was trying to tell him in the car, Sammy you are a boy, boys don't wear girl hats.  Then Micah says I'm glad that I am not a girl, to which Anna responds, why and he says because girls cry when they have babies.  Anna responds, "what!  mom is that true do girls cry when they have babies.  I was able to tell her that yes, it does hurt to have children.  To which she said, okay I don't want any children.  To which Micah said, don't worry Anna your still a kid, only grownups have kids.  Then it started into being married, to which Micah said I don't even want to kiss anyone so he knew he didn't want to marry...to which his mom said, that is a good thing.  So right now my children know it is painful to have kids and they don't want to kiss anyone, so this is a good thing.

8 planes, 2 ferry boats, lots of buses, 1 taxi=fun in Turkey

Well we made it back safely from our trip to turkey where we spent 9 days with some dear friends from our church.  They moved over there about 5-6 months ago(can't remember now) with their three children, two girls and a boy.  Their oldest girl is Anna's age and was in her sunday school class, thus the reason we took Anna, not to mention she was the last one to go anywhere.(although Micah will remind us he doesn't remember his trip).  We had a wonderful time living life with our friends, seeing where they live in Istanbul, the big city, how they get around and how they are learning the language.

Anna' first plane ride, she earned these wings for listening so intently to the stewardess. 

Anna and Papa after plane ride.  Anna loved the plane, when we took off she yelled like she was on a roller coaster!

We toured some in the Istanbul, this is the ceiling of Hagia Sophia, amazing!

More Hagia Sophia

This is the Blue Mosque, also in Istanbul.

Anna, Samara and Naomi dressing up in a restaurant we went to.

Okay one of Travis and me, this was in a rug warehouse where our friends were buying a rug, fun pose!

Samara and Anna on bus ride to airport, Anna kept saying buses with no seatbelts, this is amazing!

This was the drive from the city of Batman to Hasankeyf, those tents are where nomads still live.

City of Hasankayf, this is the city where people lived in the caves of the moutains, some still do.

  Tigris River!!

Look for the holes in the side, these are the caves, truly an amazing site!!

Anna and Samara trying to make friends!

Slumber party!

I'll close with a picture of our dear friends, whom we so enjoyed seeing!

 What a view!

Off to Turkey

Okay!  We are leaving for Turkey today, that is Travis, Anna and me.  The boys will all stay with dear
church family members, of which we are so thankful.  You can keep up with our trip at this blog:

www.tccallpeoples.blogspot.com

And more to come when we get back!

Micah Turns 6!

Well our sweet Micah turned six yesterday, it is definitely hard to believe our little guy is six.  We had him right as TCC started so we usually measure our church by his age as well, so this year our church will be six years old too!  Micah's birthday comes at a busy season, so his celebration was a mixture of different things over a period of a couple days.  He even got to spend some time with his Granna and Grandpa, Uncle Steve, Aunt Lori and cousins Jacob and Tyson, will have to post pictures of that trip when I get them...so for now this is what we did.
 

Micah's toothless grin with his pirate ship cake! We celebrated with our community group on Wed night.

Then of course chocolate chip pancakes for birthday breakfast,I am improving on my numbers:)

Fun lunch at the park with our very best friends!!!

Isaiah and the Stanley Cup

Well this past week in Raleigh the All-Star hockey game was here.  This made for a lot of people in our city and a lot of activities going on in downtown.  So my dear friend Heather took Isaiah to some of the festivities downtown, he got to play a little hockey for the first time ever.  And he got to take a picture with the Stanley Cup.  He knew nothing about hockey until this event, and of course didn't know what the Stanley Cup was, but now he is educated a little in the world of hockey.