Happier Thoughts

It has been hard to maintain things around here with the kids and worrying about Larry. The kids internalize things in ways we can never imagine. I have been trying to keep up on the house and kids. It is fun to find time to make things with pictures, etc. Keeps me sane. Enjoy. The song playing is "Brown eyed girl"...thought that was appropriate. Anna has a serious LOVE for the zebra shirt! She wants to wear it all the time. It was my niece Faith's shirt and we have the sweetest picture of Faith wearing it the day we returned from China with Anna. Anna has always carried that picture around the house. I need to blow it up and frame it for her room. I will find the picture and put it below, too, when I can. It is very sweet. Happier thoughts. Motto of the day.

Oh...Anna's speech was evaluated by the school district since she turned three. She is doing great. I thought maybe there was a concern, but evidentally not. She was able to identify pictures like that of a 4.5 year old and name pictures like that of a 3.5 year old. She seems to be pretty darn smart.

Make your own | Click to play

Sad Times

My Father-in-law had lung surgery for his cancer on Feb 22. That went well and he was released eight days later. The following day on Saturday, March 3, he was rushed to the hospital and it was very serious. He had clots in both lungs, as well as his leg and a very large clot was found in his heart. On Sunday evening, it was determined that the large clot in the heart had moved and he needed open heart surgery to remove it. What a waiting game it has been and very sad. He came through the surgery by a sheer miracle of God and seems to be getting stronger each day. The family has really pulled together and that is just another testament that we can weather any storm. We still live day-to-day and minute by minute.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Jennifer

Fun with Friends!

Just trying out a new digital scrapbooking type program. There is music to this if you want to hear it.

Make your own | Click to play

Logan Crosses Over to Boy Scouts

Today was the Blue and Gold Banquet for Scouts. Logan and Barry had to make a cake for it with the ALOHA theme. They made a Hawaiian shirt and looked pretty good. All cakes were auctioned off and usually what happens is that we end up buying our own cake. This year, however, we had already bid on another cake, so luckily someone else bid on ours. Barry and LJ were supposed to plan the cake, buy the supplies and make and ice the cake with no help from me....flying powdered sugar and ALL! Logan crossed over to Boy Scouts and is anxious to give that a try. He and Barry will go camping next month and see how it goes.

Larry's Surgery

Barry's Dad has lung cancer and he had surgery 2 days ago to remove the tumor. He is still in ICU, but is doing OK. We were happy to hear that there were no cancer cells found in the lymph nodes and we are waiting to hear more next week from the Pathology report. We are thankful that he is doing well!

Anna Turns Three!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Anna! And Happy Chinese New Year's Eve! The day started off nice until about 9am when Anna got a big fat lip! Brandon was going down the steps at lightening speed and WHAM! It is a beauty!

We went to our favorite Chinese Restaurant for dinner and Anna wore one of her dresses we bought in China. My parents and sister also joined us. Chinese New Year officially starts tomorrow, so we thought it would be neat to celebrate that, too. Last week the owner of the restaurant invited us to celebrate tonight at 10 pm with them at their big party, but we thought we would be worn out from the big day. The woman gave each of the kids a red envelope with $10 in it. We were very surprised and a bit embarrassed. A Red Envelope, sometimes called a Red Packet is simply a red envelope with money in it, often decorated with lucky symbols, which symbolizes luck and wealth. It is called Hong Bao in Chinese. Children are given the envelopes with the money in it to bring good luck. They can then go buy holiday treats with the money. We had taken a Chinese New Year Card and given it to the owner as we got to the Restaurant.

After dinner we went back home to open Anna's gifts and have cake and ice-cream. Anna managed to open all the gifts at record speed and enjoyed her Little Mermaid-Ariel Cake. She had been singing to herself all day! When asked how old she is she says 2 and then 4. Ok...so we will work on 3!

I spent a lot of time this week thinking of Anna's birthparents. It is hard not to think about them. They made a decision to give Anna a future on Feb 28, 2004 that they felt that they could not. We are greatful to have her as our daughter and she has brought so much joy to our lives and so many others. It is hard for us to imagine what led to the decision to give Anna up. We will never know and I feel somewhat sad knowing that they will never know the wonderful girl she has become.

Anyway, we had a wonderful third birthday with our little Anna YanYi.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day! It was another NO SCHOOL day here in our snowy little town! We are hopeful that there will be school tomorrow, though.

Tonight was the Schmidt Annual Valentine's Day Treasure Hunt. The kids always look forward to this! It all started when Logan was little and Blue's Clues had just started on Nick Jr. Back then we made picture clues to a few surprises and it has evolved each year as the kids get older.

Here is a photoshow from our hunt! http://www.photoshow.net/schmidtfamily5

Happy Valentine's Day!

A SNOWY AND BLOWY DAY!

I don't EVER remember drifts like this. Blizzard warnings were actually right. Poor Barry had to shovel out 3 of the Credit Union Branches...now all a pointless effort. We worked some on our driveway so that we could get the neighbor's car off the street (snow emergency) and park it here. Fun day! Baked coffee cake and cookies and played all day. So....no school today and I really doubt that we will have school tomorrow. YUK!!!!

Pics from the trip!

Back from Disney World!

We had a wonderful trip at Disney World. We started the trip on Jan. 27 in Bloomington by visiting the Miller Family from our travel group and Robin and Kailee from our travel group were visiting there, too. The three girls had a great time talking and playing and the boys all had fun playing video games. We slept over at Michelle's parents' house and then flew out on Sunday at 6 am from Bloomington (after they de-iced the plane!)and it was 4 degrees. We flew to Atlanta and barely made our flight and then onto Orlando...but not before Brandon threw up all over himself and Barry. Luckily he missed the guy next to him. Brandon had never flown before and it got the best of him. It was much warmer that afternoon, but then got really cold around 6 that night!BRRRRRR. We lived in layers for the next 2 days and Anna was always wrapped in a fleece blanket that the Bentons gave us to use.

Sunday we ate at Downtown Disney with the Bentons...Barry's ex Boss' family ....at Rainforest Cafe. It turned VERY cold for Florida for 2 days, but it was still better than the temps in Illinois. It was warming up by Wednesday and hot by the end of the week.

We spent the week hopping from the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Epcot. Anna enjoyed every minute of it and had her occasional sucking of the fingers when she got tired. We were gone each day from the hotel for about 13 hours a day. We walked and walked! We saw many shows like the Lion King, Little Mermaid, Nemo and many more. They were all great! We all just had a blast! Even Barry who is usually "Mr. Anti-Vacations" didn't want to come home!

We returned on Saturday, Feb. 3 and BOY it was cold! Today it was -2 and the wind chill was much worse than that! I miss the warm weather already! I could go on and on forever, but I won't. All-in-all a wonderful trip! I will post a few pictures here and then there is a link to the photoshow site.

http://www.photoshow.net/schmidtfamily5

Enjoy!
Jennifer

Anna 2 year Referral Anniversary!

We were in Florida on Jan. 31, but I wanted to post this now.
Two years ago on Jan. 31, we received a referral from China of Jin Yan Yi. All we knew that day was that she was born in Guiping City, China, in the province of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. We were told that her birthday was Feb. 17, 2004, so she was just turning 11.5 months old. I received the phone call from our Social Worker, Andrea, that morning and I was just shaking with excitement! What a day it was. We were to receive the pictures of Jin Yan Yi the following day, but did not, due to a mix up. So, on Feb. 2, we received three pictures of our beautiful daughter. Hard to believe that it has been two years! Jin Yan Yi became our Anna YanYi and will be celebrating her third birthday very soon. We were ready to hop on the next plane, but had to continue to be patient and wait. Two months later, we left for Hong Kong and China to bring our little Anna home. She was 13.5 months old when we met her.

The referral pictures make me a little bit sad, but looking at her now makes me happy. She had little life and joy in the referral pictures and she is so full of life and joy now. She has brought so much happiness to our whole family. We do not know much about Anna's first 13.5 months, but we are forever grateful to her birth parents and God for allowing Anna to have a second chance in life here with us.

Spots, Dots and more!

We have been battling the usual winter ick here at our house with Brandon. He was on antibiotics for about 10 days and then came home from school looking like a spotted frog! His feet were hurting so badly from the bumps on them and the spots just kept getting worse and bigger.At first he looked like he had the Chicken Pox because the spots were smaller, but they kept growing larger and spread quickly. Now we know he is allergic to Cephalexin! After just one dose of the Predisone, the spots on his face were almost gone! Here are some pics of my Spotted Frog!

Anna convinced me one day to braid her hair. Probably won't do that one again. I didn't like it so well and she has a terrible time sitting still!

Things are still busy, busy here. One bathroom is almost finished and the second bath is on hold until the shower becomes available. Barry did a great job on the ceramic tile (with just a little help from our neighbor) and my dad helped him paint and prepare the bathroom for the new vanity and sink, etc. Thanks, Dad!

Logan had his Pinewood Derby last weekend for Scouts. He picked a very simple design this year. He didn't win any awards or anything, but we had a nice afternoon at the race. Logan also went to the eye Doctor today and we had to order new lenses, even though it has only been about 9 months since his first pair. He has been growing like a weed and apparently his eyes are changing, too. No wonder he complained of things being blurry lately.

I think that the kids (AND ME!) are ready for some nicer weather and Spring! It did snow some this week and Logan has enjoyed playing in the snow. We have hopes that Brandon will get healthy soon and have more energy!

Happy New Year!

We once again spent New Year's Eve at our neighbors house. The kids all played and the adults actually got to play cards! It was a fun evening.

We have had a busy January so far! After 6.5 years, Barry finally agreed to remodeling the hallway bathroom. There is always more that happens when you remodel and things often go wrong. Well, now we are redoing 2 bathrooms! Found a leak and some mold in the walls, sooooo....that led to redoing the master bath, too. At least we still have one fully functioning bathroom that has a shower! The other two will look nice when they are finally done.

And among all of this..... We booked tickets to Disney World for a week! Yeah! We are going!

NO snow here in quite a while. Very unusual!

New Christmas 2006 Photoshow

We have had a wonderful Christmas so far! The boys and Anna were all bursting with Christmas excitement! Yesterday we spent the day at Barry's parents house and the kids always have a blast playing with their cousins and opening gifts. Last night we went to the church that Barry parents and my parents all go to. Logan sang "Sweet Little Jesus Boy". Anna was noisy, so she and Mommy had to leave, but we did sneak in the choir room to hear Logan sing. He has a wonderful voice...and so does Brandon!

Santa came today and, of course, we were up at 6:00 to see what he left. Anna stayed asleep until 7:30-7:45 and I wasn't about to wake her up. She was very tired from being up late and her stuffy nose isn't helping things. She was very excited to see what Santa had brought, too. We had my parents and Grandma over here for Brunch. They brought the boys a giant game table. Air Hockey is my favorite!

After Anna's nap we went to my parents house and finished up celebrating with them and also my sister and Paul. The kids never did seem to tire of opening gifts and Logan is already plotting how to spend some of the money he received from all of his Grandparents. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and ate the delicious cake that Brandon and his Grandparents made for Jesus' birthday. YUM!

We are pooped and my house is completely trashed. Darn... Santa didn't leave a certificate for a maid to come in and clean! It will be in a state of chaos now for a while, but the kids will enjoy playing with their new toys, etc. The house can wait!

Happy Holidays! It is chilly here, but certainly not a white Christmas! It is spitting a tad bit of rain and since it is about 33 degrees, who knows.....maybe some white snow will appear and stick.

Here is a photoshow with pics from yesterday and today.
http://www.photoshow.net/schmidtfamily5

Can you believe it?

It will not be a white Christmas this year...that is for sure! It was 53 degrees yesterday and it felt a little odd to be seeing Santa! We thought we better get that in. Brandon was getting a little worried about not getting his "list" to Santa yet. Even Logan humored me and sat on Santa. We thought that was the ONLY way little Anna would be interested. Anna did fine. Logan had quite a long list and Anna played shy and agreed that she would like a new doll for Christmas when Santa asked. Then she said a DORA. Her favorite.

Today's weather will be 56 and it is still a blizzard out in Colorado!

53 Degrees and seeing Santa! NO SNOW HERE!

Merry Christmas!

Winter has officially arrived!

What a night! We did not get much snow, but we had the wind and freezing rain. No school today, so the kids have already been out in it. We lost power for a while in the night, but luckily we have it now....unlike my sister and thousands of others. It is supposed to be very windy again tonight and cold. YUK! Luckily Barry returned home from work at 10:30 am when the lobby's of the Credit Unions all closed. Is Spring here yet??

December 1, 2006 Snow Day!