A little update on things

It’s been too long since my last update and I will try not to let it happen again. So, the last I left you with I think was Joey’s mom passed on. As you can imagine 2007 has been a very tough year for Jo and we sent it out with a funeral pyre of sorts. We burned a calendar on New Years Eve. It seems though that 2007 was to have one last laugh. The calendar was coated in a film of some sort that made it smell pretty acrid when we burned it. We are sure that it was toxic and expect to all grow third arms in the next year because of it. Maybe that will help my golf game……
I’m traveling on one of my favorite modes of transportation right now which is Amtrak. I picked up the train in Holland MI and am heading to Chicago to get a flight to Burlington VT. We were home for the weekend so that Jo could go thru her parent’s house with her brother and sister. There is a mountain of stuff to go thru as any of you who have had to do this already know. Things are going well though probably not as fast as they would like. Jo is staying at least thru Wednesday and depending on how much is left may stay longer. Which means I might be doing this trip in reverse next weekend to help her drive back to VT. She and the boys are off this whole week for mid-winter break which for some reason is a whole week. Very odd!
I’ll try and catch you up with our life which as with many people kind of stagnates a little bit in January and February. It is because of this that we looked at moving to Vermont. It has definitely worked! We have done something every weekend since we’ve been home. First and foremost we’ve skied a lot! It’s been very fun and I am truly amazed at the progress the boys and Jo have made. I’m getting close to my peak abilities that I once had when in high school but I tell you what, I’ve had to re-learn a bunch because I am essentially 50 lbs heavier now than in high school and it’s just not as easy for me to throw my weight around like I used to. I mean I can throw my weight one way for turning but when it’s time to throw it the other to turn again it just wants to keep going straight! So I’ve definitely had to re-learn some things. I also (We interrupt this blog to say we just stopped in Bangor MI. BANGOR! Who ever came up with the plan to stop in Bangor! Why not stop in South Haven, a city people have at least heard of before. The conductor actually referred to it as beautiful downtown Bangor. For those of you who have been there you know what I’m saying, for those of you who haven’t, don’t bother, it’s a crossroads, nothing more, I think the houses there just got electricity! Back to the blog, I was talking about skiing.) have come to the realization that the boots I have are pretty bad because when I turn my feet my skis go straight because I have so much slop in my boots for my feet to move. I know, I know, just tighten the buckles. No can do, if I do that it causes my arches to cramp. Major ouchage! Time for new boots I think. We should be hitting end of year sales soon so I’ll try and snag some. Skiing is awesome in Vermont and we love the family atmosphere at Smuggs. Having every other Friday off helps me get to the slopes a lot too. Beyond skiing we have also been active in the area. We have some good friends out there that we do stuff with pretty regularly on the weekends and it’s been great. It has reminded me of how our parents and their friends have always done things on the weekends and it’s been great to get into that mode. Our town of North Hero has also started a winter festival this year that has spanned three weekends. The first weekend was a youth fishing derby among other events. All three boys caught perch and Zack got a 10.5 incher. Sean caught 5, BJ I think got 2 and Zack got 3. (Just stopped in St. Joseph and are running along the Lake Michigan shore. Quite pretty.) So the fishing derby was great and we may go get some fishing gear and do it out the front door on our bay. The ice is so thick (because it’s frickin’ freezing there Mr. Bigglesworth) that not only do people drive there cars and trucks out there but they bring there campers out there too. Ice fishing is big on the islands and north part of the lake. It’s very cool. Two weeks after the fishing derby they had a golf tournament on the ice. Oh yes, I played. It was tough because there was a foot of snow on the ice but they plowed a 10 ft wide ‘fairway’ for each hole and you could move your ball to that path if you found it in the snow. It was about 21 degrees with high winds putting the wind chill well below zero but Zack caddied for me(He really just played in the snow and snow banks most of the time and had a blast) and we were well covered up. I’ll include a link to the news stories here so you can watch the video from the fishing derby and the golf tournament. They both made the Burlington news. So we really have been busy and are having fun.
We have some decisions to make coming up about where we are going to live and much of that depends on the house selling in Michigan. We have continually dropped the price and are getting some activity again with an offer/counteroffer that may be accepted. We see about a 30% chance we may be back in Michigan but don’t know for sure. Our financial position is changing with all that’s happened this past year and we should be able to make the GH house sell now and that will free up our decisions a bit. My job is going well and I really enjoy it. Jo is getting more comfortable in hers as well. We’ll see what life brings us this next year but we’ve proven to ourselves that we can survive away from our comfort zone of Grand Haven. I’m not sure if that’s all that was behind this crazy idea of moving to Vermont but I have no doubt it was part of it. Regardless I am encouraging jo to realize that we can live anywhere in the world and if opportunities should arise we should grab them, even if it’s in Switzerland……especially if it’s in Switzerland!!! J. I am continually amazed at the ability of children to adapt to whatever their circumstance is and ours continue to do so. None of this really phases them and they make due with whatever we throw at them. They have pat answers for nearly every question and unfortunately the answer is usually ‘it’s in storage’. It’s actually quite funny. With everything in storage we have also proven we can make do with far less than we have. In some ways it forces us out more often which is great. Jo and the boys have started ice skating too. Ice rinks are far more prevalent in our area than in Michigan and it’s great to see them get out there. As is usual BJ does it spastically but because of that he learns quickly. Zack is more methodical like skiing and works over and over at something. Sean gets on the ice for 5 minutes then has had enough. I don’t have skates yet but am looking to get some so I can join them and they also have beginner hockey leagues which I would like to join. We actually do our skating in Rouses Point NY because it’s closest. I’m going to wrap this up now (Just arrived in New Buffalo) as I gotta pee so I’ll try and do better with the frequency of updates. Hope all is well with everyone and we’ll chat soon.
Further update…..We actually arrived in Chicago ahead of schedule and I hopped the blue line out to O’Hare and am chilling out watching planes take off. A few 747’s have gone off and it made me think of what we’ll fly to China when we eventually go. The wait is still unsure and I’m guessing still a few years out. Hopefully we’ll get an idea if things are speeding up with the March referrals. One good side effect of the wait is that many some families are opening themselves up to Children of Promise adoptions witch is children with special needs. So selfishly it helps us shorten our wait when someone does this but it also is helping more of the special needs kids get adopted. It’s not something I believe I could do but I applaud those that can. I just glanced out the window which I have been doing every 3 or 4 minutes as I write this but this time it was snowing. Just let me get out of here tonight. It’s 1:15 Central and my flight is out at 4:27 so I can’t imagine the snow will be a problem.

Link to ice golf news clip:
Once at the page click on the video feed shown right below the article title. I am the one in a yellow and grey jacket with a plaid traditional golfer’s hat. The little guy with me is Zack.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=7886714&nav=4QcS

Link to Fishing Derby clip:
Once at the page click on the video feed shown right below the article title. Jo is in the light blue jacket and BJ is in the orange and grey jacket with matching hat. They are also in the background skating when the guy is talking about the miniature zambonie.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?s=7813357

Visitation and Funeral for Joey's Mom

Here is the skinny.....
Visitation is Saturday from 4-7pm. http://www.vbkfuneralhome.com/ Spring Lake Location

Funeral Sunday at 2pm at Christ Community Church. This is directly across the street from the funeral home.

If you visit the funeral home web site you can leave a message for the family if you'd like. I checked tonight and June hasn't been added yet but will be tomorrow.

Thank you all for all the support you've shown Jo and our family. We'll try and put life back together this next year and will start as soon as we burn all our 2007 calenders!

Thanks,
Jim

June Ellyn DeBoer June 4 1947 - December 27 2007

June Ellyn DeBoer (Joey's mom) passed away this morning at about 8:45. This has been a long and hard battle with cancer and one she fought to the end. I hope that the family can not only grieve for June but also for Dale (Joey's dad) whom the family lost in August. I will follow up with more details as plans are made.
Jim

Skiing, China, June, & Lots O' Snow

First and foremost, I wanted to update you on June’s(Jo’s mom) health, for those of you new to the blog. Jo lost her dad somewhat unexpectedly this August. I say somewhat because we new he was battling liver disease and we new time was limited but it came on a bit unexpectedly. It also came during a time that June found out her cancer was back and the outlook was not positive. Jo has been going home the past few weekends to try and help out her siblings who have been caring for June. Her brother Pete stops by daily to see June and her sister Dawn has delayed starting her job to move in with June. They all want to be with June as much as possible as we get near the end of June’s battle. And a battle it has been! June has not just lain down and taken this. She’s fought it and I know her children are proud of her for fighting. I know Dale would be proud too. We are all hoping that we can see this thru one more Christmas and then move forward from there. It might not happen but it won’t be for lack of effort. Hang in there Who-neigh(nickname for June)!
China – I believe all of you know that we are adopting a little daughter from China. We received our LID (LogInDate) on June 13 2007. Put simply, that is when you ‘get in line’. The line however is currently 24months to get your referral, and you will typically travel 6-8 weeks after you accept your referral. So, we are roughly ¼ the way through our wait. Recently though I have gotten on Bethany’s(Adoption Agency) web site and joined their web forum. I did this for many reasons but maybe the most driving reason was that we needed to be focusing on the great events coming in our lives yet. Everyone has ‘the worst year ever’ at some point in there lives, and I think that year is 2007 for Jo. It’s hard to see another year worse than this. However it hasn’t totally been down. After all we did get thru the primary paperwork portion of our adoption and getting the word from Belinda our Adoption Specialist(Sorry if I got your exact title wrong Belinda) that we had our LID was equivalent to finding out you were not just pregnant but pregnant with the daughter you always wanted. I can’t imagine how empty this year would have been without this event happening in our lives. So as I was saying I got on this forum where we could find others going through this and various other stages of the process. As I understand it anyone else who’s paperwork went to China(DTC-Dossier to Country I think) on the same day ours did is now grouped with us and we will travel together to China. So I thought it might be nice to contact these people and also it helps me keep track of how the timing is going for other families adopting. I found one couple with our same DTC/LID. I’ve sent them a message but have not heard from them yet. They may not be interested in chatting at this point and that’s fine. We’ve found it an odd emotional trial with the waiting process. I know I’ve had to keep my excitement tempered because I’d be burned out by the time the actual adoption was here if I didn’t. That’s been the hard part, you can’t help but feel guilty that you don’t hang on to the ultra-high excitement of adopting a daughter the whole time you are waiting but we realized pretty quickly we’d burn-out if we tried. So, with that in mind I am now trying to start to slowly ramp my brain back up to this event. I am still learning Mandarin in my car on the way home from work, and we are finding ourselves drawn to anything and everything Chinese. I truly can’t wait for our daughter and more so I can’t wait for Jo to have the daughter she truly deserves.
I don’t know where all that was going other than you will probably be hearing more and more about China in these blogs and I have had many disconnected thoughts swirling in my head the last week or so about this. So now they are swirling in your head…..have fun with them, believe me we are!
We got our first real snow storm. Sunday morning we woke up to about 8 inches of snow from the first wave of the storm. We shoveled out and ran down to Costco realizing we probably weren’t going to ski as I don’t think the boys were thawed from Saturdays skiing. It was also going to be a slow agonizing drive so we just got some groceries and things. We happen to make this run between the two primary storm waves and then came back home to settle into the Patriots game. I think I’ve mentioned how nice it is to root for a team that wins. The second wave of snow came that afternoon and dumped another 10 inches. The wind was really not much and drifting was at a minimum but this morning the wind is whipping. We did have school but probably shouldn’t have. The roads were still icy. They would have been better leaving a thin layer of snow instead of scraping it all off to expose ice. The Mini Cooper looked like a big snow drift. Maybe more like an igloo, pretty funny trying to find it this morning. From what everyone is saying this much snow at this time is not normal for here. It’s sure is making our season passes to Smuggs worth it. I think we only have to go a couple more times before they pay for themselves.
On the subject of Skiing….We went Saturday and it was about 8deg. We dropped Jo off at the airport went to get the car battery looked at and then to the ski shop. I wanted to get some face coverings so the guys wouldn’t have any exposed skin. I also had to buy some goggles and then a harness/leash thing for Sean. I wanted everyone to go to the top of the mountain but didn’t dare without having control of Sean. So I got on the chairlift with Sean and BJ and Zack got on the one behind us together. I was a bit nervous as this was only the second time BJ had ever gotten on a chairlift but they did awesome. So did Sean, his first time, and he was amazed! We went to the top of Morse mountain which is Smuggs smallest of the three. There is a nice long easy run that we could take. They did great!! BJ and Zack got ahead of us at one point and I hoped they made the right choice of trails because if they didn’t they’d wind up at the wrong mountain base. They made the right call and all was good, but by the time we got back down to the bottom we were all frozen solid. Seany had cold enough toes and fingers that when we got in the warming hut and started to warm up, he got that burning feeling and cried for a few minutes. Have no pity for him…..it was his idea ten minutes later to go back out and do it again!!! We just went halfway up this time. That’s one of the nice things at Smuggs, most if not all of the lifts let you get off halfway up. So we ran down the mountain a bit faster this time and this time Seany was finished. It was half hour before closing anyway. Oh yeah, the harness I got for Sean. This is very odd, it works really well but I felt like I was driving a lone little pony or reindeer the whole time. It’s got two clips on each end of the strap and you connect both ends to him and that way you have two straps and you can kind of turn him based on where you want him to go, just like reins on a horse. They also clip at his front which is nice for being able to pull him on flat areas. What a great idea. It really enables us to go anywhere we want the older two boys to go. The other weird thing is that I can’t use my poles! I can’t tell you the last time I went down a ski hill with no poles. I also had to snowplow all the way down. Talk about thigh and quad burning! Anyway, BJ wanted to do a few more runs on the kid hill and Zack said he wanted to go halfway up the mountain again. So it was decision time. Zack has shown so much responsibility and determination skiing that I found it was an easy decision. I let him go solo on the mountain as long as he only went halfway up. I told BJ he could go with Zack but had to stay with him the whole way. BJ just wanted the kid hill though. So Sean and I walked into the warming hut and got our regular boots on and warmed up. It was only about ten minutes and I see BJ with skis in hand walking to the chairlift. I know he’s distracted enough and single-minded enough to ride it by himself. He’s not trying to defy me he’s just hyper focused on riding the mountain and how much fun it is and has apparently forgotten the rules. So I decided to go intercept him. To my surprise he stopped short of the lift line and looked up the mountain waiting for Zack. This was a very welcome display of discipline on his part and I was pretty proud that he was going to follow the rules I laid out for him which was only to go up the mountain with Zack. When I got to him I told him what a good job he had done. He decided he was too cold and was going to call it a day. That’s when I new it was time to call it a day. That boy would never come in out of the snow normally. Zack showed up a minute later beaming about his independence to make a mountain run on his own. I told him he had time to make one more run if he wanted but he too had enough. I forgot to mention, Zack also was running through a real basic kids slalom course that was set up on the kids hill. For only the fifth time being on skis I was pretty impressed. He’s really worked hard on learning how to turn. So I thought it was time to have him take the next step. Poles! Yep, we got him a set of ski poles, and he promptly tried to start a sword fight. Well, I think we all did that too when we got our first ski poles. I have this Friday off and will hit the slopes most if not all day. Jo and the boys have half a day and provided there is not an urgent need to get home for June, she is finally going to join us on the mountain the second half of the day.
Well, that’s it for today. I didn’t proof read this so sorry for any errors or hard to read sentences.
Catch you all later,
Jim

Ski, Ski again and then ski some more!

I had Friday off this week and decided to take advantage of it by skiing but had some things to do first. I had to go to Jo's school and help him set up for his Michigna journal presentation. He was given an assignment when he went home to do a journal. So I thought it would be better for him to put it into a powerpoint presentation so we did and Zack told me exactly what pictures he wanted to take and exactly what to write and I just did the technical part. I wrote it to a CD with its own viewer. So all you have to do is put it in and it starts by itself. This was far too complicated for his teacher who I truly don't think can turn a computer on. Yes, I have issues with this......moving along, so we ran it on the library computers and I didn't get out of there until 11:15. I also knew I had to have some ski boot work done so I took off for the mountain. I only wound up making five runs but they were awesome. It turns out they opened up all three mountains so I loved it. I can't even explain how awesome it wasor how much my quads burned. I did bite it twice though, the first was low light in a light flurry and I didn't pick up a bump in the middle of a turn, so it threw me up a bit and I over-rotated and backed off the side of the slope right into a huge very soft drift that was actualy a small pine tree. The problem was that I was sitting in the drift and when I put my poles down to push out they just kept going down so I was a bit stuck and laughing at myself didn't help either. I did get out and continued down the mountain thru a cloud by the way. That's a new one for me! I went home and we had some frieds over for some consumables and also, ( this next part is odd) some prime rib. This corner gas station/convenience store/grocery store/restaurant makes prme rib to go on Fridays for like $15 which includes a veggie and baked potatoe. Now this is not some tasteless chewy prime, this was nearly an inch and a half thick very nicely done prime rib. It was great!! So Jo had a few drinks and had to be on the road by 8 to get to Connecticut where her flight was out of. She was a bit hung over in the morning. BJ had a birthday party to go to (his girlfriends!) It was in Burlington at a Chuck E Cheese copy place oddly enough called Zacharys Pizza. Side story to this is how much Mikayla loves BJ. Her mom overheard me say Monday that I was taking the boys skiing and assumed we were not coming so she crossed us off the list. Well, Mikayla saw that and threw a fit like nobodys business!!! We got it straightened out in the end and things are back to normal, but it was quite an issue for an evening and morning after when she found out. So we dropped him off sat at 11:00 and Sean and Zack and I went to get a ski rack for the car......Yep, the four of us were packing ourselves in the mini with all the skis, boots, etc inside with us. Quite funny actualy. Things are much better now with the rack though. We had some other things to do too and got them done during the party. We took off for the Smuggs at 1:00 and had two hours to ski before close. It was a blast and the boys did unbelievable. Especially the human rocket BJ. This was only his third time on skis and he was already launching down the birm which is above the learning hill. This is about a 7 to 8 ft drop at a 45deg angle. It's awesome to watch how comfortable he is with skis on. It's a little spooky how in control of his balance he is. So he just goes crazy and figures it out as he goes along. Zack is much more methodical and takes one little suggestion or piece of instruction and then goes and works on it. Seany is still young enough to not really care if he learns much and is totally happy to just go. He's doing well also. The two hours went quick but it was enough to get them tired and to give them a burning, and I mean burning desire to get back there. We got up this morning after sleeping in to about 9 and got up and going after packing some lunches. We hit McD's for breakfast and got to the mountain by about noon. So we had four hours to ski. They made the most of it. By the end of the day I brought Zack and BJ half way up the smallest of the three mountains on the lift and they loved it. At the end of the day I brought Zack up to the top of that mountain and he was pretty blown away. I have added some pictures of the guys skiing so enjoy. Well, I'm gonna call it a night. I too am tired from being in the fresh mountain air all weekend. This type of weekend is a major reason why we moved here and it looks like the guys are happy about it. Now we just gotta get momma JoJo out there but she needs to take care of June as her first priority.

Later,

JB

Just a quicky.......

Ski season has begun!!!! Although we went last Saturday cause Jo was in Spring lake with June and it said the kid area was open but not the tow-bar. It didn't say the magic carpets were not going! so when we get there we see parents pulling/pushing their kids to the top and then chasing them back down. So as a good dad I said "Start walkin' boys". Just kidding! I went back to the car and put my work boots on and then proceeded to latch one child on each of my ski poles and hauled them up and turned them around and let them go. I gave them that all important advice first though, "If somethings gets in your way or you are going to hit something, Fall!" They did a great job although the quiet daredevil Sean tended to wait til the last possible minute probably in an attempt to give dad a heart attack! I am including a picture of the kids but unfortunately it was in the parking lot after so no action shots. As you will also notice the expression on BJ's face. That's no trick of the light, he's pissed at dad. His meds and my patience wore off at the same time. I think I just told him I was duct taping him to the roof of the car for the ride home. You can see Seany is happy with that prospect.

Moving on.....Jo is back and forth to Michigan every weekend to visit June. Things are not getting any better an we are hoping for the best. Her superintendent has been very understanding of her missed time and we are thankful for that. So we'll keep going forward one day at a time and see what happens.

Two quick things: Our address is - PO BOX 15 North Hero, VT 05474

The other is that I am hearing of people who want to be copied on the blog but the problem is that I'm not getting e-mail addresses for these people. So I state again, if you think someone would like to read it, forward it to them, then forward their e-mail address to me and I'll make sure they are on the update list in the future.

That's it for tonight, sorry for the brevity. You know, 'so little to do and so much time......strike that, reverse it!' (Name that movie).

JB

P.S. going skiing this Friday as it's my day off....Then the boys and I are going again on Saturday...BoooYaaaah! Everyone is always welcome especially to come skiing/boarding. We have 5 or 6 major ski destinations within about 2 hours drive. We have the room so please call or e-mail us. A few only about an hour including Smuggs.

A new home, well atleast a new rental home!

Well once again I'm late with an update, but we moved in that time period so it's kind of an excuse. The new house is great. We have way more space and modern appliances and a great view across Lake Champlain to the East with the Green Mountains as the backdrop. We have lots of room outdoors too and a big beach area for the guys to go rock hunting. The boys found a rock with a bunch of quartz crystals on it out there and spend hours trying to chip it off. It's very

cool. They are really adapting to this whole adventure. we also have room for guests now. It's only 12 hours from GH to here so I don't want any excuses!

Jo is back in Michigan for two weeks with the boys. June's health is slipping and Dawn needed some time to go to training for her new job. She also needed some time with her family together. So Jo talk

ed to her Super' and they let her go home for a few weeks. We'll have to take it week by week after that, but we'll try and get her home every weekend to see her mom. I fly home next Wednesday, yes you read that right, next Wednesday the busiest flying day of the year. it should be an adventure.

On a different front, we ordered our season ski passes to Smugglers Notch a week ago. I'm excited to be able to go skiing so easily here and on real mountains. The snow is already flying in the upper elevations. You can check out the snow reports on Stowe and Smuggs web sites. They are both claiming that they will open on November 23rd so you never know. You can bet I'll get out there every Friday off that I have. I'm guessing some of those Fridays we can convince the principal to let our kids out of school at noon so they can enjoy the mountains. It's really pretty neat to get up one morning and see the mountain tops covered in snow. I tried to get a picture of Mt Mansfield (Stowe

) but you can only just tell it's got snow on it. Just to let you all know what we are in for here, everyone still gets snow tires for the winter here. So me and my Mini are going to get some good ol' knobbys pretty soon! I was thinking of close pinning a few playing cards on the spokes too for that little extra bit of flair!

I'm going to post some pictures put in this now and that takes some time to upload on my dial-up. so I'm going to keep watching my Band of Brothers DVD's while doing that. Catch you all later and have a happy holiday.

JB