Super Monday

Morning, all-

I'm up watching the Super Bowl, so thought I'd send along a couple of photos. The boys convinced Annette to let them sleep down here in the living room so they could watch the big game with me. The bottom photo shows what a Super Bowl party at 0230 on a Monday morning looks like (we're 8 hours ahead of the U.S. east coast these days). Annette made me some crab meat dip and I managed to wake myself up for the game.

We got the paper from the Kenyan courts last Wednesday, confirming Christopher's adoption, about which we were told the day after Thanksgiving last November. We held the papers in our hands for about 18 minutes before we turned them in to the immigration authorities to apply for Christopher's passport. We may have that early this week, so we'd be one step closer to getting him back to the States. Next is the U.S. process. We're getting there.

I ride my bike to work most mornings. I got knocked down on Thursday morning and scraped up my hands and legs. The boys have been impressed by the bandage on my right hand, which looks worse than it is given the amount of tape required to keep the gauze in place. Then I took the boys to ride their bikes on Saturday afternoon and Little Mark crashed, ending up with a big wound on the heel of his right hand. We got home and he ran to show Annette, who promptly came to me and said, "His efforts to be just like you are getting a little out of hand, don't you think?" We had twin medical wrappings on our hands this afternoon.

Joy often uses her sign language - Annette has taught all of them sign language to use in that 6-8 months between the time they know what they want and the time they learn enough words to say what they want - to indicate she's ready for bed during dinner. She did that tonight as we were about halfway through our meal. I was working on a rack of ribs when Annette brought her to me for a kiss goodnight. Joy feinted for a kiss, then dived into my lap. I grabbed her, turned her right side up, and sat her up. As soon as she got oriented, she pointed at the ribs and started smacking her lips. She sat up for about 30 more minutes, eating a couple of ribs worth of meat. No paternity test required.

Luke finally decided he's ready to ride a "big boy bike" rather than his three-wheeled push-along. He's still working on keeping his momentum going uphill, so he gets stuck going up into the garage from the driveway. Chris has made it his duty to jump off his own bike every time Luke gets stuck, sprint to him, and push him the rest of the way into the garage.

Mark, Jr. wanted to do some of his own typing earlier Sunday: "mark. i love you. School is fun."

I'm attaching a couple of other older photos - one of us sitting around on Christmas Eve, and then the obligatory 'baby eating spaghetti' photo. One shows Luke feeding a giraffe at a local park Another is the three stooges modeling some hats they got in a care package from Grandma and Grandpa.

Enjoy the photos,
Mark & co.