No More Paperwork!

I kept Jameson home from school on Valentines Day since I knew it was going to be a red dye fest in his classroom.  He was more than happy to go to McDonald's for breakfast and watch a red box with Mom instead of going to school.  I even got him some chocolate treats to replace the red dye valentines candy he would have gotten at school. This may be a tradition for us until he finally grows out of his sensitivity to red dye.  I wish I could say it all went perfectly, however, but in the days following Valentines Day he got quite a bit of contraband candy from his friends and we still had a rough few days.

These two boys are double trouble. I don't know who took this picture, but when I saw it on my camera it made me smile.

AJ loves to play with playdough but it doesn't last very long in his care. He opens it up, smooshes all of the colors together and then has a hard time getting it back in containers so he can use it again.

About 2 months after AJ arrived home we received his Certificate of Citizenship in the mail with this picture of him on it.  It was taken before we went to Ethiopia to get him so we had never seen it.

With his CoC and his adoption decree from Ethiopia I went to the courthouse and filed to have his adoption recognized in our state and legally change his name.  After the judge signed off on his name change the court sent an order to the state vital records office and they issued him a court ordered delayed certificate of live birth which will be the birth certificate he will use throughout his life.  Once we had his birth certificate we applied for a social security card which took forever and was initially issued in his old name. After a visit to the Social Security office over an hour away we got things worked out and this last week we finally received his social security card in his new legal name.  On Friday I finished the last bit of paperwork I will ever have to do for his adoption.  Because we changed his name we need the government to re-issue his Certificate of Citizenship with his new name so that all of his paperwork will match and he won't run into immigration problems when he is older.  After almost 5 years of running all over town getting documents, having everything notarized and then doing it all over again the next year I am finally done!! Yeah, it's a good feeling.  The amount of paperwork involved in international adoptions is INSANE!  

I had to take AJ to get passport pictures to send in with his new CoC form and in true AJ fashion once the camera came out he started pulling faces and laughing. We tried and tried to have him look into the camera with a neutral expression but he was having none of it.  The guy finally got one of him with a little grin and we went with it.

He has grown up a lot considering these 2 pictures were taken less than a year apart.

When you don't follow weather forecasts big winter storms come out of nowhere.  When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no idea that the biggest storm of the year was coming. 

When Adam left for church this morning it hadn't started snowing yet, when he got home he had over a foot of snow on the roof of his car and there is no sign of the snow stopping anytime soon. Apparently the local farmers have a lot of faith because this storm is going to be a doozy when all is said and done.

Birthday Boy

Johnny, Ace, Jameson, Beckett

Every Monday afternoon Jameson and 3 of his friends have swimming lessons together at an indoor pool. He has improved greatly and I'm excited to have him finally be proficient in the water this summer.

AJ had his 3rd birthday this week!  We thought a lot about him on his 1st birthday and again on his 2nd birthday wondering how he was doing and how long it would take to bring him home, but this year we got to celebrate with him.  It was also his first time celebrating since they didn't recognize birthdays at his orphanage.

These pictures were taken around his 1st birthday. We originally thought he would be home by his 1st birthday, but clearly that didn't happen.

This was the first picture we saw of him with any kind of a smile on his face.

These pictures were taken around his 2nd birthday.

I think of all of the pictures we received of him over a 2 year period this one is my favorite.  Look at that twinkle in his eye!

February 6th is AJ's legal birthday, but we have no way of knowing his actual birthdate.  He was found on April 6th and they estimated his age to be about 2 months old so February 6th became his birthday.  It's perfect for us because Jameson's birthday is also on the 6th of the month so now they are birthday twinners.

He has grown up in the last year, especially in the last 7 months of being home! He was wearing 18 mo clothes when we brought him home in June and now some of his 2T clothes are starting to get small. He is also our first child to be fully potty trained before his 3rd birthday. On his big day we took AJ and Jameson to the Fun Park to play in the soft play area.

And then it was home for pizza, cake, ice cream and presents with the older kids.  AJ is a ham so when I say "Smile for a picture", this is what we get.

He loved everything about his birthday.  I did learn however, that we will need to be prepared in future years for AJ to have a hard time on Jameson's birthday and for Jameson to have a hard time on AJ's birthday since that was our experience this year.

Britton was asked to Sweethearts by Kayla and they had a great time at the dance last night.

For Christmas I got tickets for the girls to see Alex Boye in concert with the American Festival Chorus (Directed by Craig Jessop), but then Alex bailed when he got an opportunity to sing at the Olympics.  They replaced him with a group that we had never heard of, but we already had the tickets so we decided to just go and be surprised with whatever we got.

I haven't been to Kent Concert Hall in a few years and was more than a little surprised to show up and see that it had been completely redone and had a new name. Wow. I'm really out of that loop!

The choir was like a mini-Motab with Craig Jessop at the helm (in fact they sang at Jon Huntsman's funeral earlier that day at the request of his family) so their music was great, but we really loved the group Take 6 who replaced Alex Boye in the concert.

They are an American a capella gospel music group who I found out is the most decorated a capalla group of all time with a slew of awards including 10 Grammy's. We thought they were fantastic and had a great time at the concert.  They did one song where they had people take out their cell phone lights and I got such a kick out of watching some very mature people who were swaying with their phones to the music. There was one gentlemen who had to be in his 80's standing in the aisle dancing with his cell phone light.  It was the cutest thing ever.

I spent 4 hours on Friday trying to get tickets to the Broadway musical Hamilton coming to SLC, but so was everyone else in the state and in the end I was part of the unlucky majority who didn't score tickets. What a bummer.

January Wrap Up

January got away from me in the blog department, but only because it was a low key month and I didn't have any pictures on my phone to blog about.  I found this one of AJ digging into the sour cream and enjoying every minute of it.  Considering they don't have sour cream in Ethiopia, I'd say that his tastes are very American these days.

And then there was the time that Korinne put one of her dresses on AJ and he was more than happy to cheese it up for a photo.

The weather this winter has been very atypical.  Yes, we did have a winter storm in January, but the rest of the month was unseasonably warm and felt a bit like March or April rather than January.  I know everyone starts to worry about water when we don't have a lot of snow, but I have really been enjoying the winter weather this year!

Yesterday was Jenna's first ballroom dance competition of the season down at Thanksgiving Point.  It's hard for me to get any pictures that aren't blurry but here is one where you can kind of see Jenna dancing.

I loved my yummy lunch at Zupas.

Jenna, on the other hand, didn't like anything there. I know! Her tastes still haven't moved past preschool so I had to enjoy this deliciousness solo.

Jenna's coach did the girls hair in this fancy bun thing for the competition.  When Jenna took it out that night there was so much product in her hair that it didn't even move.

The schedule was different this year so instead of leaving at 10:30 p.m., Jenna's team was done around 5:30 pm so we made it home plenty early. Ahh, it was awesome.