we are approaching the 2 year anniversary of neiko's gotcha day.....april 15th.  just 4 days away.  

when he joined our family he was 8 months.  wren was 22 months.  tekoa had just turned 4.  shaeya and tyden were 6 and 9.  

and we've come a long way since then.....that is the CRAZIEST time for me to look back on!

with dave gone all day and all night building our house, trying to make decisions for the house, living out of boxes, going through a home study and adoption process, wondering if birth mom was gonna up and change her mind, taking care of 5 little ones- one of whom i was very unacquainted with :), and driving 2 kids to elementary school and 1 to preschool, and homework, projects, diapers, formula and so on.....

yes, we've come a long way.  i'm so thankful for what God has brought us through.

and i'm thankful that He always gives us the grace that we so desperately need for each phase of life. 

and also thankful for a wonderful beach vacation at the end of a long winter!!!

grandma and grandpa were very brave to take their 10 oldest grand kids to a movie on a rainy day

when we couldn't be on the beach :)

here's the whole group :)

thanks for the awesome picture of neiko, great aunt rachel! :)

www.momentscapturedbyrachel.com

what a great group of kiddos, huh? :)

made even greater by the fact that we were able to put the younger 4 to bed and leave tyden up with a phone to babysit a couple of nights while dave and i went out to dinner.  

woohooo!!!!!

3 date nights together in one week!!!!!

we had lots of time to bond on the car rides to and from :) 

and we were thankful to come home to some sun and a few nice days to play outside :)

neiko had had 3 really good days and i was feeling so excited that he was playing so good outside........

and then...... 

we had our friends over for dinner on sunday night.  and their daughter and neiko got some rocks and tag teammed their van.  scraped up the whole thing and threw rocks all over it and on top of it.....

DISASTER. 

one of those terrible things that you wish you could just undo somehow......

we obviously still have our work cut out for us with that little guy.  it is always a constant juggling act of staying as consistent with him as possible, and addressing every bad behavior, and still have enough time and energy to meet the other kid's needs and spend some quality time with them all each day.  

speaking of meeting the needs of each kid....somehow a major 5th grade project got overlooked in the midst of planning and packing for vacation.  oops.  poor tyden never asked for help and then turned in a little something he threw together on his own.  and his teacher refused to grade it.  and he gave dave and i a redo on helping tyden come up with something better.   oh the joys.  

so tyden's diorama of a scene mixing geography and history went from a shoe box with some easter grass and plastic animals in it (yikes!) to this-

the nile river with baby moses floating in a basket and miriam watching from the reeds....

poor guy.  i hate the thought of him watching each kid give their presentations knowing his did not compare at all.  we were glad for the redo and so was he.  :)

so yep, juggling act.  

and lastly, some good news-

my sister and her husband went to court this morning, and the judge ruled to terminate trey's birth father's rights! and trey's adoption will be finalized on may 3rd!

YES!!!!

and it's the day before neiko's adoption day which was may 4th :)

praise Jesus!! :)

2 beautiful little boys adopted into the family just a year apart :)

God is so good!!!!!