June!!!!!

On June 30, 2006 at 6:00 am we “turned over” the most amazing gas station we have ever built. It is the Speedway station on Milham Avenue just down from Westnedge in Portage. We started this job on May 9, which makes this a 52 day job, and as far as we know; a World Record Built Gas Station!!! This job went so fast that our subcontractors didn’t even have time to bill us! Today, July 4th, we are trying to pay them so we can get waivers, so we can get paid!













We also said goodbye to some very dear friends! Anthony and Lianro, who are moving to Florida, where Anthony will be a pastor, and Lianro a school psychologist! We are going to miss them so much! They are such fun and wonderful friends! The folks in Florida are really lucky!!!













Last week, Jerry’s sister, Terri and the kids came up to visit, Greg couldn’t come. We are going to Chicago for a couple days this week. Gotta’ visit the American Girl Place and of course the Lego Store!!! The guys, Jim, Jerry and Robby, are going to go to a White Sox game, while we girls, Ruth, Terri, Christel, and Maggie have dinner at the American Girl Café. We are going to have fun!!! Maybe I will get a glimpse of the Chinese Consulate office!















On the Adoption front:
We have not heard anything from Kazakhstan yet!!! We are getting anxious!! Our Dossier has been there for over 9 weeks! We thought we would hear something at 4-6 weeks…



On June 26, our Dossier was complete for China! It was a beautiful package of paper!!! We Fed-Exed our “paper baby” to World Partner Adoption, so they could check everything and get it out to Faith International so they can send it to China!!! We are so excited!!! Our 171H (the approval from Homeland Security to bring an orphan into the USA) even had approved us for twins!!! Oh that would be amazing!!! Probably won’t happen though… but we will see in about 12 months!! This is going to be one long pregnancy!!!!!

The Babies' Room!

Here's the nursery! We have had so much fun decorating the room!In the corner above the glider we also hung these beautiful "balls" of lights. They are Christmas lights that we found at Frankenmuth, when we went there for our 8th anniversay last December. We hung 4 of them. Blue, orange, multi-colored and dark pink! The multi-colored one sparkes! I think the Alex and Kimi are going to love them! The only things that we are missing are bookshelves above each bed, one on the floor, a toy box, and some babies!!!

We are expecting a letter of invitation [to travel] from Kazakhstan, sometime in the next 2 months or so. We are so excited! I can only imagine, right now, how we will feel the day we get to meet him! It is going to be amazing!!! See the doll in Alex's crib? That is a little Mongolian Boy. We also found him at Frankenmuth, where we of course were looking for everything Kazak! We were wandering around the doll store looking for Asian dolls when I saw him! I just knew he was Kazak...he has the big cheeks! The "nurse" at the counter said "her" name was Mongolia... After we bought "her" we said to one another, "Mongolia is not a name!" So we named "her" Lily. When we returned home, I was showing "her" to Tissiana on the website (we frequently show each other stuff on line while we are on the phone), Tissiana suddenly says, "Its a boy!" We were mortified, as if he was alive or something, and we had mis-judged his gender! We searched online but couldn't find a Kazak name that we liked! Maybe that is because we can't pronounce any of them!We finally decided to call him Ivan, until we find out Alex's Kazak name, then we will rename HIM! Ha!

Because the room was done before we received the news that Kazakhstan was only allowing the adoption of one un-related child at a time, we will be leaving Kimi's bed ready for her until she comes home. Originally we thought we would be able to go get Kimi about 6-8 months after Alex came home, but recently the referrals have been taking 11-12 months from the day the Dossier logs in, in China, to referral. We are sad about that, but we think once Alex is home later this summer, time will fly! Because we will be having so much fun with him!

Tulip Time!

Sunday Heather, Ryleigh and I went to Holland, MI for Tulip Time Festival. It was a beautiful day! We had so much fun, we walked and walked, and I (crazy) took about 200 pictures! But I got some amazing shots of Ryleigh with the tulips!

Kazak Tulips!

Here are some pictures of my Kazak Tulips that I planted in January. I was so excited when I saw them coming up. They are not your "normal" tulip! They have the neatest shape, and such pretty leaves. The coral colored one is a Kaufmann, and the red/orange are Greigii. They were discovered in the Tien Shan Mountains in Kazakhstan that border China and Kyrgyzstan. I discovered them in the grocery store of all places! I had been searching online for weeks last fall, and could not find any to buy. Because I love flowers so much I was obsessed with finding some of these bulbs. Everywhere I went I would check through the tulips to see if they had any that even looked like the native Kazak ones! One day, there they were! I was shocked! Next year I will get more!

Our Trip to England!

On April 15, we left for a trip to England, but not just any trip and we did not fly to England, we cruised! Or as we soon learned it was a "Crossing" not a cruise.

We boarded the Queen Mary 2 through much security and found our "Stateroom" with no problems. Our Stateroom was about 12 x 20 including the 2 closets, bathroom, a desk, a table, 2 chairs, 2 twin beds, and 2 bedside tables, and no window! We were going budget style! ha! The room was a little cramped, but the beds were comfortable (we figured out that we could have the steward put our beds together)! We didn't spend much time in the room anyways! We Scrapbooked! Poor Jerry! Really, he did good, all the girls were impressed with his quick learning. He had fun too. He was tired of it by the end of the trip though, so he worked on his bid for the next job. We got tons of cool free stuff in our classes everyday. (We had to pay $25 more to bring our overweight luggage back home! It was worth it!) Our dinner mates were 3 ladies from Alaska who were on their annual scrapbook cruise together! We are lucky to have sat with them. We so enjoyed each dinner we spent with them. The food wasn't too bad either! *wink*

When we landed in South Hampton, we discovered that the Mayflower had sailed from that harbor. Of course it looked a lot different then, but we read the plaques and went into a small museum.

We rented a car there. That was fun! Driving on the "wrong" side of the road. But Jerry had it down in no time, in fact, after a couple days, when we came to an intesection where there was not a round-about, we weren't quite sure what to do! ;) Driving through the countryside was our favorite part of the trip. It was peaceful and so beautiful, as it is Spring there too. We went to a most amazing garden called Leonardslee, it was unbelievably beautiful, and we were a month early for the majority of the flowers! We also saw several castles, and cathedrals! It was amazing how old some of the stuff is. Some were nearly 1000 years old!! Crazy! It was all so beautiful!

We finally ended up in London. We saw the London Bridge (which makes me start singing that song from childhood!), and ate Italian, Indian, and Thai (not at once). We also went to the zoo, and the Phanton of the Opera at the Theater. That was fun! We love that we can drink the water there and they have just about every amenity there as we do here in the US. That made the trip very relaxing.

On our way home we stopped in New York City to visit the Twin Towers site. We had been there the week before it happen in 2001, and not since. The day we were there the clean up crews had just finished, and the construction was planning to start the next day. We could see a lot of damage from the buildings coming down, many of the nearby buildings are still not repaired. So much work to be done! It was quite sobering, but we are glad that we went.

When we returned home we found an email letting us know that our Dossier had been released from the Consulate's office in New York, and it was back in Kazakhstan already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Baby Shower!!!

WOW!!!!!!
Last weekend my friend Tissiana, threw me the world's most amazing baby shower! We had about 40 of my friends there! It was so much fun and I still can't believe it was in honor of us! We recieved so many wonderful gifts! We got books, books, and more books! I loved it! Now I think we are completely ready for the babies! Except diapers and the carseat. Here are some pictures from the party. Every thing was decorated with the spring/baby colors. We had Fannie May chocolates and lots of other yummy foods. Everyone dressed up in tea party attire and looked so beautiful. Travis and Jerry had the job of filling 200 balloons with helium for the ceiling. They had a good time. Then they went to play with the 4 wheelers with the guys. We had baby shower music and the ladies played some games and then I opened "millions" of presents! It was amazing. We had to make two trips home with the gifts... we recieved several large ones.

This is Tissiana, my friend who hosted the shower! My wonderful friend!

Our friends Heather, Paul and Ryleigh. They came home from China in December with precious, precious Ryleigh. 

Richard and Margaret, Christel�s grandparents, live in Nebraska. They are retired and love to travel, entertain, visit with family and pass on family history.
 

Heather and Mark live in California. They have 2 children so far, Nick and Rachel.

 

Jim and Ruth adopted Terri and Jerry as infants and have been the most wonderful parents anyone could ask for. They are really looking forward to more grandchildren joining the family 

We are Jerry and Christel Cook. We met online in February 1996, when Jerry happened across Christel's website. Of course he thought she was cute, so he emailed her. The rest, as they say, is history. We married in December 1997. We started building our new home on 13 wonderful acres in November, before our wedding. We finally finished and moved in August 1998. Of course we never stop doing projects on the property.