By Faith......

Thought we would start off with a really cute boy picture from our evening at Southern Lights!

And, then, an homage to a really great Packer season....even if it did end too quickly!

AND next, well, only in Wisconsin can you get pulled on the iced over lake in a sled with a bike!

WHAT IN THE WORLD HAVE THE Ky KITZMANS BEEN UP TO? you ask expectantly.........

Ummm, well, there is a long version and a short version, and I'll TRY to give you something in between. We have been on quite a faith journey over the holidays......really over the last 2 years.

As I glanced back thru the posts from when we started our Ecuador journey, I got a little teary thinking about how this particular journey began. Expectantly, a bit fearfully perhaps, and very sure of where God was leading. Honestly, it was kind of hard to read again.

By Faith, we jumped onto the adoption train to Ecuador almost 2 years ago, and now, By Faith, we are jumping off the train. That's kind of hard to swallow, definitely hard to type. Everyone loves a good adoption story and I was excited to take everyone on one to Ecuador, it was new territory, and a sure adventure. 20 plus months is along time, not THAT long in adoption terms but long, nonetheless ......life changes, it ebbs and it flows, finances change, jobs change and God can even direct our hearts to change. Did we miss the signs at the beginning, did we not hear Him clearly, are we not trusting the journey, are we giving up too soon......all questions we have gone over and over and over. Sleepless nights, countless prayers, counsel, tears, you name it, we've felt it or thought about it.

In so many ways, the wait was productive and beneficial for our family unit. We gained invaluable time to go to conferences on parenting kids from hard places, continued with attachment therapy, and made great memories and bonds as a family of 3. Nick is doing so well and for that we are so thankful. We have continued to believe that God is completely in charge of this journey but our lives came to a point where we needed to decide if Ecuador was the best fit for our family or if perhaps another path would lead us further into God's plan. Ecuador has been basically at a standstill from the day we sent our Dossier. Of course, we were hopeful that this would change but it has not. We began to feel very strongly that God was urging us to seek out other options because the door was closing.

Now, I'll be quite honest, if there had been a big ol' banner in the sky, another child plopped in our laps, etc, it would have been an easy sell for both of us; But, losing such a large amount of money was really hard for me. God was so good to walk me thru a circumstance with a friend who was at risk of losing money over something that she did that required faith. Her adamant declaration that their money was God's anyway and if they truly believed that they were called to do this project then the loss was in God's hand and He would provide and take care.....and you know what, He did. God is so good to give you just what you need to take one more step of faith. Not to mention, this whole last two months, Pat and I were walking thru the book of Hebrews with Paul in BSF, um, yeah, that's the faith book....especially chapters 11,12, and 13. Every week, we would get built up and encouraged to live by faith, to just take the next step and know that God may be leading us from something good to something better. It's not easy and we have absolutely no idea where this particular faith journey will end but like Paul did when he was blocked from going to Asia to preach, he took the next logical step and trusted God's leading to Macedonia and God was faithful to walk with him even though it was another hard journey. "The one who calls you is faithful, and HE will do it"

We are anxious and hopeful to see what God is going to do, we are taking the next logical step and have started the state required adoption classes to be able to adopt from the foster system. Again, the faith it requires to walk thru another homestudy, another set of classes and mounds of paperwork is more than I can take some days but He walks with me and I would say that we have found a peace that I would call an uncomfortable, risky feeling, out of our comfort (my control) zone peace. And, that for now, is a very good place for us. We are still praying for the sibling or siblings that God has for us whoever they might be and we take comfort in our son's simplistic view of the whole situation...."this means they are going to speak English right, because I really want them to be English speakers". Yes, Nick, we can now say they are probably going to speak English. :)

And, now, lets take a big deep breath and move on to less heavy subjects and see some big fun and joy during Christmas in Wisconsin.

Our Christmas eve tradition with Ata Bob, the Christmas story from Luke with all the Grandkids. PRECIOUS!

Christmas morning downstairs waiting on everyone else to wake up so we could go upstairs to the tree goodies. yes, we had a long wait! Early bird he continues to be......

We got to meet sweet cousin Edrie for the first time. She is one precious 6 month old. Nick loved hugging on her and patting her head. I caught this sweet picture mid-hug.

I'm sure Nick is telling her some story or lecturing her about good behavior. He is great at "do as I say, not as I do" :)

Nick and his cousins Colin and Edrie. They had a great Christmas together but getting a picture together turned out to be quite the daunting task but they were so cute in their matching pj's.

Grandma and Ata Bob's present had to be found with a scavenger hunt including the boys. They had a great time running around in the snow and their pajamas collecting clues.

Auntie Tracey had great gifting ideas this year although she was spacially challenged and unaware at how big final products would be....This very cool rocket could even hold Uncle Brian who is in the 6'6'' - 6'7'' range. See him looking out the window. Great fun though!

State Foster/Adoption classes have been a trip and I'm sure to blog here and there on the journey and will most likely take the blog private once the classes are over as the state does not allow lots of things related to child privacy prior to the finalization of the adoption. So while our lives are crazy busy right now with 3 hour classes every week, I hope to at least log a few hours of the journey on the blog. Happy New Year.....a little late!

I'm "Falling" behind.........

Fall is here and I am falling further and further behind on this bloggy thing. I just don't have the verbal/writing energy to get it all caught up, not to mention we have a computer issue....we don't have one. We survive off of Pat's work laptops but keep passing the same computer at Sam's every time we visit and just not pulling the trigger...well, that and our cars are limping along and starting to nickel and hundred us every other week it seems! :) So, lets catch up a bit.....

Nick started second grade in August. HARD.TO.FATHOM!! He is so tall and handsome that I look at his little 3 yr old pics and just wonder where that little pea went so fast. He was overjoyed to model for mom on his first day....cant you tell?? :)

But he brightened right up as we settled in at our yearly first day of school family breakfast...this year at the Waffle House....Pat even celebrated with a breakfast steak...no, really, he did order a steak at waffle house.....a picky man, he is not. ;)

And the obligatory picture from behind that I so dearly love to take every year. Just love my boys! Although, I am wondering at what age he will stop wanting to hold dad's hand...sigh.

School has buzzed along at a quick pace this year and he continues to have a bit of a time with reading and spelling but overall he does great in school. He continues with after school private OT visits and we have been able to do Bible Study Fellowship this year which he has absolutely loved every Monday night. He and dad come in on Mon Evenings just chatting about the Lord and what he has learned this week. So cool to hear him discussing Paul/Saul and the Holy Spirits work in us....makes me get all teary sometimes.

We attended the Empowered to Connect Conference in Nashville this last month with Dr. Karyn Purvis of the Connected Child book fame. We have been finding that the principles that she gives are very biblically based, grace oriented and actually work. We have found the more we work on how we react to Nick and how we deal with his behaviors, the more successful we become with keeping him regulated and peaceful. Pat's parents came down from WI to take care of Nick and it was our first (more than 24 hours) away from him since he came home in '07! It was probably harder on me than him. I just worried about him dysregulating on the GParents but of course they handled him wonderfully and there was only one minor freakout over apples. :) Pat's parents usually visit us around this time of year and we pumpkin hunt together but with their September visit, we had to go to the patch on our own.....but we still got a cute picture of our pumpkin even if we had to carve it without the "expert" surgical precision of Ata Bob.

Our other big fall endeavor was our annual KazWalk for the orphans in Kazakhstan. This year we walked in Nashville at a beautiful park in Brentwood. I soooo tried to have a country singer sighting but no luck. Nick was sponsored by some wonderful friends and family and his Kaz Buddy Ben from San Diego sent Nick these team banners and best wishes!! Thanks BEN, JOSH, and SARAH!

Nick has taken on LL Cool Nick persona as of late and the peace symbol always makes it into our pics. Drives the momma crazy!! Nick was excited to be re-united with his buddy Charlie from Atlanta! These two can talk non-stop for hours. We all sit back amazed and quietly rejoicing because if they are talking to each other then they are not talking to us.....Score!

We were also walking with our other Kaz cousins Max, Allie, and Charlie's brother Alex. Max and Nick were rounding the cones and headed back for this shot.

Nick won for most money raised again this year so many many thanks go out to our generous family and friends who continue to bless us each year! He got a big bag of books this year and he has enjoyed reading thru each and every one!

We have really enjoyed the fact that the kids really are starting to remember each other when going to these events and great friendships are being formed. Nick calls his Kaz friends, his "special cousins" because "we were born in the same country". We even think that Charlie's brother Alex and Nick should be related somehow ...they are from the same region so you never know! :)

Last week, I was able to attend my first second grade field trip.....a corn maze and pumpkin patch. This place had huge pumpkins and the kids were cracking me up with their efforts to find the biggest pumpkin only to realize that you pick it, you carry it.

This place had this huge pillow jumpy thing that was just cool. The kids could all jump at once and there was plenty of room. I want one in our back yard. ha!

Nick was in jumpy jump heaven. I bet all those kids were so calm when returning back to school. Great sensory diet at this place! ha!

I still hope to get some summer pics up if I can figure out how to get smilebox on one of these computers ....too many pics to post separately.

We have no news on the adoption front and have had to renew all of our immigration paperwork. We go for new fingerprinting next week (cuz you know they change in a year and a half...oy!) and will make a quick trip to Cincinnati for those prints. Our agency has not had much information on why the referrals are not coming out of Ecuador. We have decided to wait a little longer for Ecuador although it seems that Columbia or China may be our next best choices unless Kazakhstan opens up in the next few months....then it might be a whole new ballgame. We are mostly trying to stick with countries that our agency works with at this point so we don't lose as much money. We are not too concerned about the waiting, it's just the not knowing.....but we serve an All Knowing God who goes before us in all this so we are learning to trust and have faith more each month that goes by.

We are so thankful for all of our friends and family and are especially excited this year that my entire family, Dad and mom, Sister, Brother in law and Kids are coming for the whole week of Thanksgiving. We will be excited to cook, over eat, and celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday together this year. Nick is so excited for his cousins to visit..... wait til he finds out they are bringing an extra Wii with them. He nearly might stroke. Pray for us towards the end as they pack it up to take back! ha! I'm sure the phrase "I'm the only kid that doesn't have Wii or Xbox" will be stated at least one trillion times on that following weekend. :)

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

The tooth is IN JAIL!

So, I am never really going to catch up on back posts but I cannot let Nick's Oral Surgery to remove an extra tooth that was growing upside down between his two front teeth. It was not an emergency but needed to come out. We had the most unbelievable chaotic path to the actual surgery but that story is for another day. I wanted to document the hilarity of Nick on drugs for today. Now I could never capture the whole mood but we pre-medicated with versed but the best way I could describe him is supermellow but talkative. The doctors that were prepping him were fun and went along with any path he was going down. We had glove balloons (super chicken as seen above) and superhero talk aplenty. When all of the docs started coming in getting him ready. He kept chastising them for not having it dark so he could sleep and the certainly weren't making it feel like home. :) They put the pulse oximeter on his finger and he was a little disturbed by it and because they were so focused on getting it on his finger, he looked over at me with a voice of concern and said "Mom, you brought me to the wrong doctors, hmmph sound, they are trying to fix my finger not my tooth." The docs were rolling.

I went out and sat with Pat for the duration of the procedure and as he woke up they called us back in. HE WAS LOOPY! When he started talking he announced with slurred drunkin speech, The Tooth is in Jail! (we had talked about the tooth being the enemy and it had to get caught by the tooth police).

But my favorite interaction of the day was when the dr. (have I mentioned that he looked like Dr. Kovatch from ER...wowza) wheeled us out to the curb to wait on Pat and the car. Nick was talking non stop from the clinic to the outside...I know, what a surprise...but we are standing there and Nick starts this interaction with him about Heaven. Nick said when I am in Heaven will you be there. The doc was kind of taken back and said yes. then Nick said where are you going to be when I get there. The doctor sweetly said, I am going to be looking for you to say hi. and then Nick said, well, I know where I'll be going, I'll be going to bow down to God!.....awww, bless a mom's heart for sure....but it was so funny because he was a little inebriated sounding too.

He was a very brave boy for sure and although it was a minor procedure, it was a major production just to get him in there and "under the influence" so we all feel so relieved that it is over and that pesky little upside down tooth can bother us no more.

Adoption Update: none really except we may be thinking about switching countries in Sept when all of our immigration stuff expires....we will let you know! :)

e are all going to SC this weekend to celebrate a birthday (Garrett's) with my dear Kaz friends. It should be so fun but we ready to stay off the road for awhile. Florida and Wisconsin within one month is some serious car miles. oy! Hopefully, I can do a disney post one of these days. We had a great time and Nick really enjoyed the mouse house!

A Winter post for a snowy Day.....but seriously, it's MARCH!

I guess a winter review is in order especially on the eve of such a snowy day in MARCH! It is so cold and the snow is actually sticking.....well, at least on Nick's sandbox but still... I have no idea where to start except for just where we left off in November, so that leads us to Christmas Vaca in TX this year. It was cold, Hot, cold, Hot, you know, TX in the winter. Nick was confused about the whole snow thing and we said that was only in WI every other year....he wasn't quite so sure Santa was coming if there was no snow! I would say that we (as in the Hensley family) don't have alot of must have traditions (we are now on a cookiepalooza two year run....almost a tradition?) but I challenge any family out there to visit as many friends and relatives as we do......plain and simple .....YOU matter and if a car can get to you, we will be there. :) So here is a simple run down of our visits over a two week period.....bless Pat's heart, he loves me alot! :) 1. Girls Day out - a day with my RD friends from school and first job in FT.Worth.....fabulous! Came home to Cousin's PD and Davidson and sons. 2. Christmas Eve - My family and their Church family for Christmas eve service. 3. Christmas Day - My family 4. Quick trip to Oklahoma ....stop 1 - entire cabin filled with cousins,cousins, and more cousins. stop 2 - Aunt, Uncle, cousins and their families. 5. Cookiepalooza - Larissa (friend from StL and sister of my friend MK who passed away last year) and MK's family (Bobby and the girls). 6. Lunch with Pat's BF from high school and his wife Beryl. They live in the area also. 7. Dinner with my cousin Scott and his family along with The Davidson cousins again. 8. mini Kazapalooza with the Howells and Stone's. Park playdate and dinner. :) 9. Tornado Day....literally....a stop to meet Selah Segebarth and visit with all the beautiful Segebarth women! 10. STL - first stop - Meet and greet with new baby Hoagland and their extended family was in town too. Second stop - New Years eve at Michele and Alan Sulzer with my favorite pizza and just a "few" of their friends for game night..... I did not count the people but you will see in the slideshow that it was impressive.....and we do not even have pictures of some of the events......crazy!!! but we are truly blessed with great friends and family and great husbands who tolerate our need to connect! :) This free photo slideshow created with Smilebox This is an awkward segue but I really think this may be the last January for Amigo. He will be 15 in April and he has gone down ALOT in the past few months. I would say he has alzhiemers, poor vision and poor hearing. All of that leads to some funny happenings but kind of sad too. We have come home and thought he was gone numerous times and then there are the times like below when you don't really know what happened but it is pretty funny.....he has lots of those I've fallen (or sat) and I can't get up moments.....maybe this is one of them?? :) OK, this next pic is a school brag pic....Nick is doing well this year and although I will need to translate because they let them spell phonetically (whatever)......Nick's imagination is crazy and I could not believe he wrote this at school. If you click on it, you can see it better hopefully. It says.....How did the Monster get into the jar? Nick's reply..... He falled into the jar! He cry out Help! Nobody Heard me! he waited. He was sad. He was a fly monster. He like bugs to eat. He was half bug, half monster. some monsters do not love me. and he escaped. he was a secret agent. The great thing is this story required him to have kind of a timeline of sorts which means MOTOR PLANNING .....a neuro developmental thing that we have worked on in OT and he is doing it wonderfully! yippee! One of Pat's PT school buddies has a son adopted from Guatemala and 2 home-grown ones and we have enjoyed hanging out with them lately as the boys love to play together. I just love all the joy in this picture....such handsome boys! Baby Mason is not in the pic but equally handsome! We have now completed our fourth but first non-social worker required post adoption report (only 11 more!). We made our annual pilgrimage to the Capitol for the apostille and took Nick's friend Logan. Congress was in session and we got to see inside the big halls of the House of rep and senate. The boys had a fun time running around or into congressman/women. :) As usual February is a busy month with Meetcha day, Valentines and Nick's birthday. We also seemed to be sick the majority of it. Nick had "croup" and shared with me and then Pat and I got the stomach ick....thankfully only 24 hours of big ick, then just weakness and fatigue. But, we loved celebrating our boys 7th year. We can now say without a doubt that he has been with us longer than he was in the babyhouse. What a journey the last 4 years have been for us all! Nick requested a scavenger hunt like last year so he had a playdate with friends (while daddy and mommy went to an awards ceremony) and then ice cream then the big hunt when we got home. The clues were all over.....a snowmobile batman was hiding in the freezer....brrrrr! :) He wanted the packages (7 for 7 years) to have a saying like last year too. I guess this will be a birthday tradition while the excitement lasts! The day after Pat and I were sick all night, I was upstairs sleeping and Pat was doing the "watch the boy while we lay lifelessly on the couch" gig and Nick being the best boy and back rubber ever made this and put it next to Pat in the chair. So sweet ....... We have started March with a bang as the Snow continues to come down as I type! We have plans to go to Great Wolf for Nick's Gotcha Day and swim and play some Magiquest. He is so excited that his friend Logan (and Logan's mom and dad) are coming with us to celebrate. We will also stop in for a visit with Glenn, Cincy Karen and their new brood. Max cannot wait to introduce Nick to his new brother and sister from Ust, Kazakhstan. I have already had my visit this week.....could not wait 2 more weeks! I totally tried some of my Kazakh phrases....kind of...I will try more next week. Allie even answered me.....that so rocks! :) Love Languages! Pat's folks will be passing thru the first weekend in April on their way North......will be fun to see them and start springbreak with their arrival. Fun times! Adoption news.....absolutely nothing. We did find out that we haven't been approved yet because they are missing enough people for a quorum to vote. Apparently it is the psychologist position that is vacant. So that is what the hold up seems to be at least for now. We are not too disturbed by this except for the just not knowing anything.at.all. As all our Kaz friends know, 2 months is a fairly big chunk of time to prepare for so a little heads up would be nice. I will say that we have really had some great days with Nick and are really benefiting from "The Connected Child" parenting guides and info that we get from our counselor. So, I believe that God knew we needed this time for Nick still so we are just at peace that it will happen as God ordains it.....He did hang the stars and spread the seas.....I think we are good to leave it in His hands! :) I leave you for now with a Nick-creation.....he builds little worlds on our basement floor ....beware at night in the dark but ....wow, his vision and creativity just makes us proud. The picture really doesn't do all the little scenes justice but it was hard to get it all in the picture. He has little "plays" going on all over the floor. they are connected yet separate.....he has free spirited play as soldiers fight near a submarine with a space station nearby. We have encouraged him to think outside the box and boy does he. You might have to click on this one also to get the full effect but it is just so fun to watch his mind at work. He now intermingles superheroes, starwars, and batman.....the stories are hilarious....one of these days, I am going to hide the camera and get him in action. Hope this catches everyone up. I hope to document a few good Nick stories for his "journal" of sorts. I do love to go back and read the old posts so I try to tell myself that when I get so behind that it will all be worth it for memories later. We wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day and whatever else we missed since Christmas! We did not send out Christmas cards this year...will do better next year.....know that we love all of you and remember if you live near where we are going, we will come see you! :)

October/November Review

It might be easiest to go thru the pictures first and then write a post with our update next. So, here is our October/November in pictures.

I was able to go on a girls weekend away to Brown County, Indiana to celebrate a friends bday and we made a pilgrimmage to Ikea where I found this cute Chair for Nick. Notice the red one that he has his feet on....that is what he had before..... a little small! :)

Our next trip was a mother/son weekend in Atlanta with the Karen's and sons plus Anita and son. We called it the Karenita weekend! ;) It was fabulous. Anita's husband, John was like the host with the most! He cooked and cleaned and generally took care of us the whole weekend! Score! The boys were hilarious in their super hero costumes......all boy, all the time!

A rare moment of calm which really makes us chuckle if you actually knew what happened after this picture. They were given adorable 'real' looking popcorn bags which apparently became fodder for "war" as it looked like it had snowed the next time we came down. We thought John was watching them and he thought one of us was checking on them.....ummm, so they were unsupervised for probably 30 minutes or so.......we wondered why little Max came up looking quite bewildered. I do not have the "mess" picture but it exists! :) so funny!

We took them outside as often as possible so Boys could be Boys......

We were joined by Holly and family who adopted Jon-Jon from the same baby-house as Garrett and Charlie. He had just had surgery on his legs but he was just as ready to join in the craziness! Another rare moment to catch them all in one picture. From L to R.....Max (Cincy Karen), Charlie (Anita), Jon-Jon (Holly), Nick, Garrett (MinniG Karen). Garrett and Charlie even have baby house pictures together as they were great buds even before they were adopted! So cool!

All the participants of the mom and son weekend.......in honor of our weekend, the Blue Angels did multiple fly-bys in celebration. REALLY, the did. I was in Heaven. They were so close to us and the noise was exhilirating and we all just parked outside with lawn chairs and had a fabulous time......again, with John doing the cooking! so Awesome! We had a low country boil for dinner!

I love this picture of Nick, Jon-Jon, and Max........This is one of those pics that just makes you ponder the what-ifs.....so glad God brought them all to their forever families so that they can grow up friends instead of group mates in the orphanage. And, on a not so serious note, PLEASE excuse the black socks on Nick....he had put those on so he could wear batman costume and then left them on to hurry outside.....yikes!

Charlie loves to dress "handsome" so he and Nick decided to dress up like their alter egos, bruce wayne and charlie parker.....Here is Nick forgetting to remove some of the Batman evidence! ;)

So, this next interlude is my homage to weird boys.....or maybe just kids. So cute in so many ways. Our neighbor was seeding her yard and had the big sprinkler going. Nick ran back to the car as we were just getting home from school, and proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes doing various in and out of the rain scenarios....... :)

This one was taken by dad when Nick decided to be a ghost....those were our pillowcases of OUR bed....huh? funny none-the-less.

And, now, a little walk down history lane. This next pic is from our first visit to the zoo, a mere 2o or so days after arriving in the US. He looks like such a little squirt here......3 1/2 years ago!

Fast forward, to October......what a difference! really, can a child grow from 37 inches to 48 1/2 inches in 3 + years......apparently so. He is so grown up now. :)

He is giving the Triceratops the "what for" and telling him the way it is.......I know that stance well. :)

October brought us our first Diorama project.....Umm, you mean parent project....seriously, Nick could have cared less. I made him go out and pick up leaves/branches and stuff. He decided which animal to use but then I ended up gluing all of it together. I did NOT like this project but at least it looked like a kid did it.....I was mortified by some of the entries the other kids brought in.....seriously, do parents not care if it shamelessly looks like the parent did the whole thing with computer generated graphics and all....really?

On to Halloween, we spent Halloween at the zoo....above pics...sorry they got a bit out of order, and then went over to a good friends neighborhood so Nick could have someone to T or T with for some goodies and fun. Peyton was Anakin Skywalker, and Nick was Captain Invincible Surprise-man...or as we called him, Zorro! :)

Of course, what Boy get together would be complete without swordplay and mayhem??

As I said before, the grandparents both came in October and we had two trips to the apple orchard/ pumpkin patch and lots of fun with beautiful weather. We always enjoy our fall visits from our folks. We had a mini family reunion/thanksgiving meal a few weeks ago with my cousins and it was great to see everyone.....AND, of course all of the good food. A country ham, cured and aged by my great uncle and cousin's husband. Amazing! It hung in their barn for a year or more......totally amazed this city girl and dietitian! ;)

We spent our Thanksgiving day as a family of 3 and Pat did his usual awesome meal. He so loves to cook the meal and I so love to let him. I made pies the night before with a friend and cooked the broccoli for our "green" and healthy item. Looking forward to leftovers today! Nick loves pumpkin pie and funny enough, eats it just like his dad. Pick it up and chow down....none of this fork stuff please! ;) Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!! 29 days til Christmas and a TX trip! :)