The Fourth Saturday - June 20, 2009

Good morning again - We arrived here in Majuro four Saturdays ago! Not that I'm counting (!), but this is day 23rd gone from home now. Above is the video from Laura Beach of all the kids ganging up on Peter - it's silly but fun - hope you enjoy it!

Friday morning we drove over to Boston's birth family's home and visited with them. A neighbor who had gone to high school in California was there - and she helped us a lot with translation. It was great to be in their home, to see a bit of what their daily life is....Emcilla was making pancakes when we arrived - one at a time on a hot plate. It took her almost an hour to make the pile of pancakes. They didn't want to go to lunch with us yesterday, so we made plans for that next Friday. I thought that I passed out my last batch of dum dum suckers to all the kids in that neighborhood yesterday - but when we got back to the hotel, I found one more whole bag of dum dum suckers!! Shouldn't be too hard to pass those out in the rest of the time we are here, because I am only bringing a few on the plane trip home just in case. Boston was sad when we left his birth family, but had the best transition afterwards so far. I thank God for how well this has been going - to live with us but visit his birth family occasionally. We 5 went out to lunch afterwards and the kids were all so well behaved. Boston literally fell asleep while eating his ramen - I saw his head bobbing right into the bowl! Boston is really affectionate with us all and seems comfortable and not afraid. He loves the routine of our daily activities here - running to get his shoes on whenever it is time to leave the hotel room, having taken over Hannah's water cup as his own, and other fun things.

In the afternoon we were all down by the beach at the lagoon and the kids had a lot of fun swimming. Mamwich, one of the security guards that we have gotten to know here, was hosting his church's youth group for a picnic and boat rides. He had just given us a big plate of bbq chicken, hot dog, rice and potato salad...and Boston and I made a trip upstairs to put it in the frig to eat it later. We were walking into our hotel room, and I looked out into the lagoon as always, and there goes Mamwich paddling a canoe and the boy in the front of it was Jacob! We hurried back down to take photos, but the ride was already over by then. Jacob loved hearing that I saw him from our 3rd floor lanai doors, and he was thrilled to have been asked by Mamwich to go on the canoe ride. The two pictures below are of the lagoon swimmers yesterday, some boats way off in the distance, and then the canoe Jacob went for a ride on - but in this picture it was other kids' turn.



The picture above was of Jacob and Hannah talking about something at the water's edge. I thought it was cute. And below is our happy Boston who loves to run around the beach investigating rocks and bugs and the taste of sand.

Showers and early jammies for the kids after the late afternoon lagoon swimming, and a quiet evening in the hotel room. The power went out for awhile this afternoon and the room quickly heated up. I was thankful when it came back on - we are very grateful for the air conditioning here.

No plans for today - some errands, and perhaps visiting Jacob's birth family again. Bye for now - Love, Lois