Answer to Prayer!

We had a huge answer to prayer today. We are prayer warriors for a little boy "Dennis" who is in an orphanage in Eastern Europe. We pray most days that God will provide for his daily needs but most of all that God would raise up a family to adopt him. And guess what??!! We found out today a family has committed to adopt him! Praise God! If you want to see a picture of Dennis you can go to www.reecesrainbow.org go to the Angel Tree and scroll right down to the bottom where the children with committed families are.

David was disagreeing with me this morning and making his point very loudly. Aiden walked up to him, said "No David", took him by the hand and led him down to the rec room. Is this an angel sent from above??

On Saturday we traveled to John's mom Helen's memorial service. It was a lovely day with over 300 people in attendance. It was very difficult to say goodbye for now, but also very sweet hearing the memories of Helen from her priest, and family members and friends in the eulogy. We were surprised by a few of our friends who came to support us.

John was very happy that late Saturday he shot his first deer of the season. He got it a 15 minute walk from our house then came back got his truck and went to pick it up. Oh I can taste the venison cutlets and smokies now!

Heather phoned last night to tell us that the wedding she was a bridesmaid in on Saturday was lovely. Now back to the books for her!

Krista had H1N1 and strep throat and had to keep working! Poor girl! That's the farming life! She is enjoying her new Dodge Hemi Truck that she bought.

Andrea leaves us tomorrow...
She has been such a big help and a great motivator for me as up until today my energy level was zapped what with a new addition to our family, H1N1 and John's mom's death. Andrea spear headed us getting all Aiden's adoption announcements ready. She also took our family photos and photos of John and I. We wanted to send out a picture of us for a thank you to many of the people who have supported us over the 25 years we have been married. And the family photos are now our Christmas cards hand made by Andrea. So all our announcements, anniversary thank you cards and Christmas cards/letters are in their envelopes, have stamps on them and are ready for the mail box! And it's only November 9th!! What a girl!

back to the laundry...

Aiden's Haircut

The hair came off without a hitch! He sat very well for the hairdresser. Oh what a relief as David still makes a huge fuss come haircut time. Even our mild mannered Brent would have to go back 2-3 times to have his haircut finished when he was younger.

John's mom passed away peacefully Monday November 2. This is a sad time as we mourn our loss but know that Mom is dancing with Jesus now in a brand new body!

I found out yesterday that yes I did indeed have H1N1! Krista has it now also. David, Brent and Karl have been sick this week too but not sure if it is H1N1. Heather is off to the doctor today too so we will see what her diagnosis is. She is in a wedding party on Saturday so needs to be well!

Andrea has come to my rescue this week. She is getting Aiden's adoption announcements and our Christmas pictures and cards and our 25th anniversary pictures/thank you cards done up and is making doctors appointments and doing many of my errands while she is here. She also took our family pictures last Saturday. We live on 2 acres and our neighbour said she heard lots of "kid" noise that day! We were pretty loud trying to get David and Aiden and our dogs to cooperate for pictures!

Today we are experiencing a rain and wind storm. A tree fell across our fence and trampoline. John said the trampoline is history and the fence will be rebuilt as soon as the weather lets up as this is David's safe outdoor play area and we wouldn't want him escaping through the hole!

Halloween was fun as we had three extra young adult friends join us so it was a walking party! We had a pumpkin, a princess, Scooby Doo, a pirate, a ninja, a gorilla and a lion. The new road we live on is kind of dangerous for walking on in the dark so we did trick or treating in our old neighbourhood. It was great to see all of our old neighbours. It was a picture perfect evening with a full moon to light the way. Once the kiddos bags were full we headed back to our place for a weiny roast, candied popcorn and a movie. A lovely evening!

On Sunday our Pastor prayed for Aiden and our family at church. That was a very special time for our family and our church family.

Aiden's Day

We just returned from our kiddos school. They can put their costumes on after lunch at school and then they have a chance to parade around the gym so all the parents and grandparents can see them. Then the gym lights get turned out, the principal counts down and then they light up all the kids jack o lanterns that are sitting up on the stage. They run strings of red Christmas lights with a bulb in each pumpkin. It is quite a spectacular sight!

We dressed Aiden, David and Brent in their costumes and joined all the school kids in the gym. Aiden loved the fun! He was dancing around and smiling at everyone. He was sitting with Krista when the lights went out and he yelled out the countdown with everyone else.

Earlier today, Aiden did errands with Andrea and Krista. They said he was very friendly with everyone he met and loved picking out some items he wanted to buy.

He was very excited this morning to finally meet Caca Heather and see that Caca "Angewa" Andrea was home!

Tonight we are celebrating Aiden's 9th Birthday with a Pirate Party. We are having a Bulgarian dinner-Shopska salad, roast potatoes with dill and sausages. Andrea said Aiden was very wide eyed when they bought the sausages. This boy likes his food!

So on the agenda for tomorrow is a haircut for Aiden! I will let you know how it goes...

Settling In

Well we are home, I am pretty much over the flu-Aiden was sick for about 2 days but bounced right back-it has taken me the better part of a week. Must be getting old!

Aiden was a real trooper on our trip home. He was a bit nervous to step on to the airplane so I lifted him on. But once he was in his seat he settled right in. The other thing he didn't want to do was to use the toilet on the plane! Can't say that I blame him!

Through the 4 flights, the layovers, which mercifully were all fairly short, lots of tv time, the meals, the naps and chatting in Bulgarian/English, Aiden had a big smile on his face. He was so happy that he was on his way to Canada! The orphanage staff did a great job of preparing him for the transition to his new family and new country.

Aiden clearly let us know that in Bulgaria he was "Mitko" but once he got to Canada he was "Aiden". So cute!

He is already melting hearts here. Our friend at church last week said he was the cutest child she has ever met! And cute he is! Even when he is being naughty he is smiling!

Aiden has been sleeping really well and eating like a horse. He is usually quite cooperative and the language barrier hasn't been much of a problem.

His siblings have been very accepting and accomodating and are starting to play with him, when he's not vacuuming!

Today we picked up his "Caca Krista" and tomorrow "Caca Andrea and Caca Heather" are coming home. He was madly in love with Caca Andrea in Bulgaria and has Caca Krista pretty much wrapped around his little finger already. Now it's on to Caca Heather tomorrow!

We want to thank all of you who prayed us through our journey to bring Aiden Mitko Ioan home. What a beautiful gift he is to our family.

We're home and we have pictures!

We're back! I'll let mom update you on the trip home as we split up part way through so I could come back to Sask. to work. But it might take her a day or two to get it up at she seems to be a bit under the weather. However it was my job to get all the pictures on here and so I will do that! Becasue we have over 100 pictures to share I have decided that I would put them all on my facebook and you could look at them there. They are much easier to load, for me, and much easier to look through, for you. So here they are, Enjoy!

We Have His Papers!!

We just received all Aiden's paperwork so are free to travel home tomorrow.  We will leave Sofia at 4:30 a.m. and arrive at our house by 6 pm (adding 10 hours for the time change!) which adds up to 23 1/2 hours!  I hope it is shorter than the 33 hours to get here!

Aiden says he does not want to fly in an airplane he wants to drive to Canada!  

We have our Bulgarian dictionary and phrase book in hand so hopefully he will not be too frustrated with Andrea and I when we are trying to figure out what he is telling us.  We have picked up a few of his words and phrases and he is picking up a bit of English, so I think we will be fine.  It has been easy here in Bulgaria as he can talk to everyone we meet in Bulgarian.  

We spent much of today at the zoo again then went to McDonald's for an early dinner and bought a few more things to bring home with us.  Our adoption lawyer and interpretor just left our hotel, after bringing all Aiden's papers over.  

Well it's off to bed soon so we can get on the road tomorrow.  Will blog again when we get home and when Andrea gets all the pictures downloaded.

PICTURES!

We don't have many pictures becuase the computers here aren't recognizing my camera but these pictrues one of the orphanage staff took and emailed to us. This is Aiden with the staff at his orphanage.

The zoo rocks!

This morning I managed to sleep in until 9am! I was so proud of myself... this might not seem that great of an accomplishment but yesterday am I was up at 3:05am. And we all got ready and headed up for breakfast. I got cheese on toast with tomatos again, it is very good! Then we came back to our room, finished getting ready and headed out for our adventure! We started the day by going to the zoo. The zoo is awesome! and cheep! It cost mom, aiden and I all about $3cnd in total to get in! So you're probably thinking what a dumpy zoo it much have been but nope it had everything zoo's should have (except for giraffes). I have to say it was the best zoo experience I ever had! You could get within 3 feet of a tiger! Lets just say canada takes lawsuites more seriously than bulgaria becasue I could have easily got into any of the animal pens! Aiden seemed to enjoy it he especially loved the tiger and the llamas.

After ther zoo we took a little walk (really we were trying to find a taxi!) and I thought I was going to die! Not becuase of the area of Sofia we were in... though it was a little sketch. But rather becasue people decided that the sidewalk would be better used to park cars then to walk on. So we had to walk on the road and I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not but the people here drive CRAZY! Well we decided, finally, that we should just get a bus so we did just that! Turns out here the busses are free! We got off when we saw some taxi's parked on the side of the road and we were driven to St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral. It's a beautiful church that was built in the late 1800's. Aiden was scared of it so mom and I took turns going into it. The right across the road there was a little market so mom and I did some shopping! We got a few things to bring home as gifts and a few things for ourselves. By this time it was 3 and we hadn't eatten so we decided to find a place to eat and we did just that! We found this little pizza shop that you can order pizza from the outside and they serve it to you on a piece of cardboard. After pizza we decided it was time to get some "grocery's" and by "grocery's" I mean, chocolate, cookies etc. All those wonderful things you need to bring back with you when you travel. I have to tell you about this grocery store. In Sophia at busy intersections rather than having cross walks you walk down stairs and under the road, smart eh? Well under the roads there are also stores! So yup that's right we bought our grocerys from an underground grocery store! Ok so after grocerys we got a taxi back to our hotel... There's another story but I will save it for my special taxi blog! Once we got back we relaxed a bit, went to the restarant for dinner and then back to our room to get ready for bed/for computer time. Well that is where you find me now. We're not sure what our plans are for tomorrow or for wednesday... that's my next task, to find fun things to do! talk to you all tomorrow!