Family time (a long post)

We have had a lot of stress in the 3 peanut household lately. We are hanging in there but honestly we have not had a whole lot of family fun in the last month or two due to all of the obligations, health issues, Will's surgery, aggravating car accident and repairs and such. I do count my blessings though and realize we have a lot to be thankful for. So, this holiday weekend we tried to have some good old fashioned family fun and laughs....

First, we met up with our good friends at our neighborhood 4th of July "parade" and carnival.

Who doesn't love free watermelon on a hot and sticky summer day?

Kate loves a pony ride!!!

I know she looks all serious here (and she is).

BUT this is her favorite thing to do at these things.

Inside the heavenly air conditioned building, there were fun booths, a Dj and some great contests. There were bubble blowing, limbo and hula hoop contests...

I ROCKED the hula hoop contest. Seriously, who knew I had such a hidden talent? Not me. My hoop hit that pesky metal chair behind me or I would have gone on forever! I will say that my abs hurt for days after but I did advance to the championship round AND I won a stuffed animal (and you know how much I loathe stuffed animals).

Will obviously inherited his hula hoop talent from me too;)

We also played some fun family games at home like jump the brook and limbo. I bought a bunch of dairy free (coconut) ice cream and all the gluten and dairy free toppings I could find and we had a family ice cream sundae party! I did not take photos because I was too busy having fun.

We had dinner with some great friends and went to watch fireworks with them too on the 4th. Again, no photos. I was just trying to enjoy my family and friends in the moment.

Finally on Monday, we spent the day at a fun pool.

As you can see, Miss Kate LOVES the water!!!

I got a lot of questions after I made the comment about Kate's citizenship....

It is kind of a long story but if both parents travel to China, the child is a US citizen once they go through customs. However, if only one parent travels (such as was our case), you need to re-adopt the child in the US and apply for citizenship. We re-adopted Kate as soon as we could (VA required we wait one year). We got a VA birth certificate and then we tried like heck to get Kate a SS card. But we kept coming up against problems. We went round and round with our attorney and even our local congressmen only to find out that there is a specific form (N-600) that someone (Dave) needed to file when he returned from China. Anyway for 3 years, Kate has had a green card and been a legal alien. We surrendered her green card a few weeks ago and her passport arrived. So I was hoping she would have her citizenship certificate in time for the 4th of July but it did not arrive.

According to our agency, LOTS of China adoptee parents fail to register for their citizenship. They often find out when they go to apply for a job or apply to college that they are not a citizen. I urge you to check this out if only one parent traveled for your adoption. Apparently having a passport does not mean you are a citizen.

So, we are hoping that any day now Kate will become a citizen!!!!

(I know that these photos are mostly of Kate but the fact is...my boys (including Dave) are really sick of me taking their photos. Kate is a willing subject, for now.)