Family Celebration and Embarrassing story

Kyle, Johnny, Luke and Daddy at the Drive-In
Luke managed to take Dad's place on the comfy bed inside the van.

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; Ecclesiastes 3:4

The expression "Emotional Roller coaster" could have been made specifically for anyone going through an adoption process. We like to keep the roller coaster spinning again and again by committing to the adoption of 5 children at one time. Whew... It's been quite a process and every word of the above verse not only describes what the experience is like but it is possible to even have all those emotions in just one day!

As you know from our previous post that 3 of our children in Haiti are now legally ours: Stephanie age 11, Jude age 9, Lovenie age 3! While we are so excited and celebrate this great event we also mourn a bit for Jacques and Vilner not being able to come home with them until much later. The idea of going and picking up some but not all of our children certainly combines all of the above mentioned feelings.

We wanted to have a special family day really celebrating the completion of the adoptions of Stephanie, Lovenie, and Jude. We had hoped Jim would have Friday off and maybe we would go to the beach or something. He ended up getting the day off (hooray!) but when I woke up early that morning I found there was a couple messages on our machine. Who would have called us in the middle of the night? It was Jim's work. He usually keeps a phone next to the bed in case there is a problem in the middle of the night and forgot this one night and it's of course the night they needed him and they called home and his cell phone again and again. I ran and woke him up and he ended up needing to rush in and spend half the day problem solving. Then he also had committed to a meeting regarding the new Calvary Chapel church we are involved in helping plant at 2:30 so now the beach was definitely out of the question! I was determined that we would celebrate and have a fun day so as soon as Jim got off work we all went to a Carls Jr. with a really fun playland and Jim scarfed down his lunch and then was off to the meeting leaving me and the boys at Carls Jr. for some serious playtime. The boys had a blast. I got to practise learning Creole while there and even got to catch up with a dear friend on my cell phone. When Jim returned from the meeting we walked over to a nearby Baskin and Robbins and had ice cream. When we got home we ran around gathering supplies to head to the drive in theater where we watched Underdog (Jim and I were dreading it from the previews but actually thought it was pretty good) and, since you get 2 movies at the drive-in, we also watched the movie Ratatouille.

It was our best drive in experience yet. I think we've got a great system figured out. When we find our spot we pull out the van seats and lean them against the back of the van making a long "couch" for the kids (as you can see in the above picture). We open the back of the van that now has a huge empty spot since the seats are removed and we roll out a memory foam mattress topper (sooooo comfy) and bring lots of blankets. We had great snacks that we bring ourselves like popcorn, candy, hot cocoa, and more. It is also a new tradition that everytime we go to this drive in we stop first at a nearby Red Lobster and get a take out order of Lobster pizza and Coconut Shrimp (delicious!). We had a really great family time! A full day (until 1AM) of family fun time.

Okay... Now I'm going to rat myself out for your own entertainment. We made a great comfy bed in the back of our van. To get in and out I would slip my sandals on and off and enter/exit through the side sliding door. Near the end of the night I had to walk a long distance to the drive in restroom. On my way back it was dark and I was tired (this is my defense). I walked over to our van, slid open the side door to get in, began to remove my shoes... Just then a woman popped her head by the door and said "Uhm, excuse me" Uhg! I had opened a strangers door and was about to crawl into the bed they made in the back of their van!!!! :) I apologized and told her I thought it was our car and sorry to startle them! I then slinked off to find our van (that looked exactly the same as the other one) just a couple cars over! Once inside our van I could laugh about it but I sure was startled and embarrassed! It was funny until the one van between us packed up and left leaving the van I tried to enter right next to us. I slinked down out of sight in our van for the rest of the movie!