Jenn and the kids came up and she requested cabbage rolls :)

Here we are tonite enjoying the cabbage rolls for dinner with Jenn and the kids. All of my children from Russia and Ukraine love them. It is a family recipe from my dad's mom who was Hungarian. Surprisingly my grand babies liked them. Jenn had requested them and so we made them Sat.. Because everyone knows they are better the next day.

 I used 10 lbs of meat, 2 lg. cans of saurkraut, 8 cans of diced tomatoes and 6 heads of cabbage with instant rice and diff. spices added. The girls and I made them Saturday and we made 150 rolls :) We still have some for leftovers and I promised Molly I would save her some....

 

Kloe is meeting and hanging out with her Aunt Jenn. Usually Kloe reacts to a person who she is not around...but not with Aunt Jenn :)

The twins first haircut...they make things so easy for us.....

These 2 are so easy all the time and so much fun. Some days I can't believe we have them home and they are ours....I mean look at these sweet smiles and such personality. They are doing so well.

Judah went first and he kept putting his finger in his ear as Leah cut....

Jesse watching and waiting for his turn. He looks a bit apprehensive but really he did not mind it at all.

Judah has such expressive eyes and mouth. You can also really see the difference in the boys sizes...Judah has always been the chunky one, more quiet and the biggest eater :)

Jesse is smaller and very verbal ( all english now) and he is the leader or boss of the two of them...unless Mady is around :) She is the queen bee for sure.

Lollipops were the reward . I think they would do anything for a lollipop.

We could all just eat them up....They have adjusted so well and life is more active, and louder but full of so much laughter and joy with these 2 around.

Celebrating Luke and some thoughts about an older child adoption thrown in for free :)

 I love the glow on Luke's face- He knows today (9/24) was his day. You can just see it and for a child that no one wanted it sure looks good on his face to me.

It looks like Luke is praying...

but he is waiting to be "gifted" that is how we do it here. Usually the little ones help give out the gifts and they are just as excited to be the giver as the birthday child is to recieve.

We had a gun battle for his entertainment...thanks to Keith and Joseph it was awesome.

Waiting for the battle to begin.

 

The ambusher- Joseph loves it as much as the little brothers do.Actually a very positive way to help an older adopted child to " have some part of their childhood" like play is to have younger children in the home. The older child ( some of ours were even 16 yrs old and never really had the "typical" childhood) can play with the younger siblings and you can tell they really do enjoy that play and their dignity is still intact as an older child. " I am just playing with the little ones mom" is something I've heard alot. I know the benefit the older one is reaping by having much younger siblings to "play" with.

The smiles of accomplishment

 

We have some new riders of their bikes with no training wheels....Gracie and Sari finally have been able to balance and ride their bike. Sari has a little issue with being able to brake correctly but she is practicing ( away from our parked cars :) I love watching my children gain a skill or accomplish something that they really wanted to....Way to go Sari and Gracie.

We do enjoy celebrating around here- Happy Birthday Leah

 

 

We actually have celebrated 4 b-days this month, 2 of our married children's anniversaries and 1 uncles b-day...Leah's was the first one I just did not get it blogged....but you can see we love to celebrate around here :) It does not have to be big either but it does have to involve food....Leah is now 19. We have 4 girls now who are 19. My brother, Johnny came up on Saturday and we celebrated his %$^& b-day :) My nephew, John came up too and we love when they come for a visit.

We are getting into our school niche...so to speak

We have had 3 weeks of school and things are finally getting into a " normal" schedule for us. The month of Sept. is always like this...I usually don't like the month of Sept. until towards the end because it takes us that long to get into a smooth schedule with our home school. Today it felt more normal and we had a great week. I sort of did a unit study on spiders and arranged the days around learning about them. We did lots of craft like projects to help us understand spiders. The weather was beautiful most days and we were outside as much as we could be taking advantage of the warm days and cool evenings.

Fu Fu- Ok so we tried it

I was in Baltimore twice last week with some of the kids for all day doctor appts.. There is an African market I always wanted to stop at. So I did and I bought a box of Fu Fu. Now how I saw them making real Fu Fu is not at all like I did. The 2 bottom pictures are from a "restarant" stop we made on the way to Kwahu - the place where our first group of children in Ghana are from. The lady folds over the dough quick ( or her hand gets stomped :) and the man brings down the wooden mallet. He would click his tongue as he stomped and there was a rythm to it. I never tasted authentic Fu Fu because it was always in a bowl like the 3d pic.up with "bush meat" and I like to know the meat I eat especially in a different country. So today for lunch I made the kids Fu Fu....my pics of the twin boys did not come out but they loved it and actually ate 2 bowls of it. Sari and Lila were not to fond of it but Selah and Isaiah liked it. I had placed chicken in a red sauce I made with paparika and chili powder in diced tomatoes and a tomatoe sauce- a little bit spicy. Most of the rest of us were not impressed with my Fu Fu but we liked the red sauce...Oh well :)