VALUABLE INFO. TO SHARE WITH YOU ALL....

Did you know that on your computer keyboard there are 2 shift keys????!!!! I feel sooo majorly lame, but I just learned this!! My left shift key broke a week or so ago and I have been telling people when i email them that my shift key is broken so I may not capitalize when I need to...today my 14 year old tells me that there are 2 shift keys!! Although it is weird to use the right one..I am so excited to learn that it is there...so I thought I would share with you, in case you didn't know...or am I the only lame one who didn't know that?

LOVE U LOTS!!!!

I have gone to the dark side

After being many shades of blonde/light brown etc. I had Todd dye my hair this morning and this was the result!! Not sure about it yet. Very weird!!

Family!

Below is a picture of my beautiful sister in law and my sweetie pie nephew. I was so happy to be able to spend time with them last weekend when Gavin turned one!
I ran across www.smilebox.com it's a cute website!
Have a beautiful day!

Make a slide show, scrapbook, or ecard

November update pics....oh how happy I am to see pictures of my boys but..it makes my heart ache to be with them. I miss them so much. They are my children...why can't i be with them?

 

 

 

 

Our families Christmas gift from a friend....

Last night a friend of mine said they had a pure bred Chiuahua that needed a home. They didn't want to sell her, they wanted her with our family. They have another dog and these two do not get along. By the end of the night she came to live with us. She is only 5 months old and is super sweet. She is very loved already!
Hugs,
Renee

 

 

 

 

What has been happening...hmmmm
*My hubby and I went to see Karen Kingsbury (wonderful Christian author who adopted 3 boys from Haiti) at a local church. She was speaking with Alex Smith (49'ers quarterback). He has a foundation Alex Smith Foundation that helps foster kids who are 18 and now have no support at all. I never really thought about that. How sad it that? I would hope that my kids will be able to support themselves at 18 (having grown up in a somewhat normal home) but chances are they will still need a family!
Karen was wonderful and spoke about spending time with family. We were very touched by her and encouraged. We then got to meet her and Alex (as cute as Alex is I was very excited to hug Karen and tell her that I learned about Haiti from reading about her adoption story!!)

*Operation Christmas Child!! I love this Ministry and for about 5 years I have spearheaded this at church. After being in Haiti and seeing these kids get 'simple things' and being so happy, this has meant even more to me. You can check it out for next year at www.samaritanspurse.org It is easy, you fill a shoebox with simple things, toothbrush, washcloth, toothpaste, soap, socks, crayons, lolipops, etc.
We advertised at church for people to donate money (if they didn't have time to do the box themselves) and I would be a personal shopper. That really helped and i was able to fill 100 more boxes that way! My friend and I shopped and put all 100 boxes (with our kids help) in a day.

*Jessica update--still has mono--but i think she may be on the mend!! She is so behind on school. Please pray for her to go back to school on Monday and be able to survive school and then homework...then makeup work. She is very smart, but just needs energy.

*Adoption update!! Well we have our adoption decree and now our I-600 approval as well!! Yippee...now we are waiting to hear that we are in MOI. We miss the boys tremendously. Jessica said last night that if the boys aren't home for christmas she doesn't want any gifts. She doesn't think it is fair.

Ok, well I better go for now!!
Hugs,
Renee

Happy Birthday Noah

Today is Noah's birthday. It has been a little more than a year since he went to be with Jesus. I am still processing how to deal with all of this. We had cake and sang to him. We miss him.

I don't want to ever forget him, our family never will. I am praying about a simple way to touch someones life, in honor of Noah. I want to bless someone, in Noah's name.

I just ask all who read this, if you feel led, to pray about a simple way to bless someone, to bring sunshine in someone's life, in honor of Noah. Our world was touched and our hearts filled because of Noah and I don't want his light to stop shining.

Hugs,
Renee

I have had a really busy week, but have experienced so many blessings along the way. As event coordinator at our church the Family Fall Festival is one of my big events. We had lots of fun games, trick or treat doors, astro jump, hay maze and a really BIG bouncy slide. Being as I was at church working the last couple days Taylor and TJ got to spend lots of time on the slide....and had to help us clean the darn thing for hours today! It was super fun! I had fun with the kids, and todd and pammi!
I am always so blessed to see so many people sign up to volunteer to help. I don't even worry anymore a week before an event when I am trying to recruit volunteers, God provides. I am so thankful for the many people who were willing to serve God, and it was sooo fun!!! Shanay even had fun when I made her do the FLUSHER..basically she had to sit on a toilet and let kids play a bean bag game with the end result being getting to flush the toilet which released a tank of COLD water on her head!! She did this for about 15 minutes!
Todd never ceases to amaze me with the amount of time he gives to the children's ministries at church, because he loves to serve God, and I ask him to! hee hee...I am so thankful for all his help. I wish I could find a way to be involved in Worship Ministries to help him out! I try to help by telling him which songs I want to hear at church! I actually did pick the special songs for Mother's Day (Carrie Underwood 'don't forget to remember') and Fathers Day (Rodney Atkins, 'watching you') Both songs made me cry! I am not that much into country music, it just worked out that way!

Oh, we did have some excitement the night before the fall festival. I had been at church all day and was standing with my friend Emily in my office. All of a sudden I thought it was hailing really loud, or else there was someone running really fast on the roof...then it all started shaking. Instead of running to a doorway, Emily and I just held onto eachother. It shook for a while. It was a 5.6 earthquake centered 6 miles from our house. I immediatly called home and Tay and TJ were scared. Jess was home with them. She made them go in the doorway. I was proud of her. She kept calm. Todd was in the sanctuary running musical rehearsal. He yelled 'go to the glu lams' or something like that..apparently that is what the big beame in the sanctuary are called! But of course being involved in the planning of the building he only knows these things so everyone was thinking todd was freaking out! Hee hee...anyway, we had lots of aftershocks after that. Yesterday we had a pretty big one but i was too busy to stop and think about it. :) Gotta love CA!
ok, well...that's all for now.
love you all...
renee

Yipppeeee!!
Our adoption is COMPLETE!!!! Markenley and Solomon are legally our children, in Haiti's eyes!!! WHAT A HAPPY DAY!! THANK YOU JESUS!!!! We are praising God for this news. Please continue to pray for the rest of the process to go smoothly...quickly!! We want our boys HOME...FOREVER! SOON! We continue to lean on the Lord for His guidance. We still have to get through MOI, passports and Visas.
Please continue to pray for all the other families waiting. For files that are stuck. For families who are so desperatly waiting for good news. My heart aches for them.
Please pray for Markenley and Solomons birth families. My heart aches for them. I can only imagine the pain that they feel. The loss that they will feel when they leave Haiti. The relief that they will feel knowing their children will have an education.
HUGS,
Renee
Mommy to Sharene, Shanay, Jessica, Taylor, TJ, Noah, MARKENLEY, and SOLOMON!!!!! :) PRAISE GOD!!

Hi.
Life in the Dunn home is as busy as always! We still can't wait for our bundles of JOY to come home.
Let's see, what has been happening? Well, Shanay is now 15 and this summer was eventful...oh how i wish i could post all the fun details...but i think she would be mad at me!! She did have 9000 text messages one month, and then Aug was better 22,000! Ahh but now she is in school...no more text messages!
Anyway, it was amazing to see how God worked in her life these past couple months. She is closer to God than ever. Making very WISE choices. She has always done well in school, but this year is truly focused on school and wanting to do really well. Her old attitude was "jessica is the smart one, C's are fine for me!' Last year we had to wake her up for school. Somehow she couldn't wake up on her own. I was wondering when we were going to have to stop gettin up in the morning to get her up. I envisioned her as married with kids and us having to trek to her house in the morning to wake her up to get her kids ready for school! Well this year she is setting her alarm and waking up at 6 am to have her quiet time before school.

Jessica turned 14..now in High School too! WOW! (I am OLD!) She made the JV volleyball team. She LOVES it! Well, the last month she has been sick on and off and very tired! We weren't sure what it was. Volleyball was 6 days a week and so i thought maybe it was all the stress over volleyball and High School. We took her to the doctor a few times. They did blood work, everything came back fine. A week later they did more blood work. She was also having pains in her side. Some times she would seem ok..usually on the weekend. Again, i thought it was emotional stress. It wasn't adding up. Even the doctor suggested that maybe it was emotional.
Well last Friday night we went to a Christian Conference in the town next to us. By the time we got there Jess was freaking out in pain. I thought she was being drama (she is naturally drama:) I went inside while todd was trying to coax Jess in. The conference started..no todd..finally he texted me to say that he took jess to the ER. He thought if she were faking it she would tell him to stop. Well, they got there, i felt bad because this conference was wonderful (I really needed to be there) The doctor was great. He said "if you were my sis, i would want to know what is wrong...let's run a bunch of tests..." So, they did a chest x-ray, catscan, and more bloodwork...it was midnight by this time and I was at the hospital with them. The doc came in and said that the mono test came back positive! (they had done the test already and it was negative, a few weeks ago) I guess it doesn't show up right away. So, yeah...we had an answer! She assures me she hasn't kissed anyone! It is sad because she cannot play volleyball..but still hangs out with the team when she feels up to it. We talked to the school and they say she can stay home when she doesn't feel up to going, but she can go if she is feeling fine!
I feel bad because Jessica was born with a multi-cystic kidney which was removed at one day old. At 5 she had kawasaki disease. She has had knee problems..stitches...the other kids haven't had any issues.

Taylor is doing good..6th grade! She just finished the youth discovery class and can now be baptized if she wants to! She does! She is busy with the Operation Christmas Child play at Church (the kids play). She is also has the lead kids role in the adult Christmas Musical. Her Daddy is the director, but that wasn't the reason! She was the best one for the role. Tay is also playing soccer. She is so good at soccer. I love watching her play!

TJ, our busy boy, is in 3rd grade. He likes his teacher! Our favorite day is when he brings his composition book home from school. We get to read all his stories he writes in his journal. He wrote about how he loves to go eat sushi with Todd..(as far as we know he has never had sushi!!) He also wrote about how he likes to jump out of airplanes with no parachute "it hurts at first, but you get used to it", he says! He is funny! He is playing baseball. He is playing on a Majors team, so a lot of the kids are literally twice as big as him. Our biggest problem with him is that he is trying to grow up too quick. At church it is hard to get him to go to class. He wants to 'help'. He loves to help with powerpoint, or at the sound booth.

I am running our Fall Festival and planning the event now. TJ isn't excited about going to play all the fun games, he wants to work at the event.
Todd is staying busy helping me run the kids here and there. He is directing the play at church and working on all the other things that his job involves. He is the worlds best husband. I appreciate him so much!

Anyway, I am writing too much, sorry! Today was picture update at the orphanage! I love that day. Markenley seems to have a big owie on his head. Solomon is getting new teeth!

We are praying that by the end of this month the boys will be legally ours!!! That will be a wonderful day.

Ok, well i better go!
Hugs,
Renee

<

Kenley's Mommy,

I can't figure out how to find you to send you a message. Can you email me? mailto:me?Noahsmommy_daddy@yahoo.com

Thanks.
Love,
Renee

Brothers!!!

Mommy's attempt at Marky's Hair!! It's Uncle Eddie's Job when you get home!!
Apparently the Nannie didn't like the way Mommy did your hair!!
Happy Baby!!
We love you Soly!!
Hallelujah!!!!

CHEESE!!! How can you not fall in LOVE with this smile???

The boys with their Haitian Moms.

Soly swimmin'!
Daddy did my hair!!

Hi Friends!

Well, we are back from Haiti and trying to get back into the swing of things. Between Christmas musical rehearsals, soccer, baseball, volleyball and homework...we are keeping busy.

I will start by telling you a little about our trip. Well, we got into Haiti on the Aug. 13th. We ended up being at the airport until pretty late so we weren't sure if the boys would be waiting at the hotel or not. They weren't there...boo...but soon after they were brought to the hotel. Solomon was sitting on the driver/security guards lap in the front of the van. He looked so small...at first we weren't sure if it was him...IT WAS. I grabbed him and just started kissing him. Oh he is amazing!!!! Then the back door of the van opened and the other kids were inside....out came Markenley!! Would he remember us??? I think he did. Todd picked him up and Markenley smiled and started touching Todd's face. I was HAPPY that we were there.

It was wonderful spending time with the boys. Solomon is starting to walk...he is getting to be a big boy, and I don't like it. Markenley is potty trained!! Since they really have no toys in the orphanage sharing isn't something that is easy. Markenley really didn't know who Solomon was. One of my hearts desires for this trip was to promote bonding between these brothers! Solomon would take something from Markenley and Markenley wasn't mean about it, but would look at me and point and say "Mommy", as if saying get my car, fruit snack, whatever it was, back for me! I would get it back for Markenley and a few minutes later he would give it back to Soly all on his own. It was so sweet. Markenley wasn't as strong willed as when we were there before. He is no longer 2!

One of the reasons we went on this trip was to file our I-600...we did do that. That gave us the opportunity to see more of Haiti. It is amazing how much poverty there is..it is everywhere. There isn't much hope in the eyes of the people. Life is hard in Haiti. I know for me, everything seemed harder, more of a chore. The heat is hard. We were staying in a pretty nice hotel...running water, air conditioner, tv..all the luxuries. Who am i to complain?? My heart aches for this country. I love America...we are so blessed. I feel so much guilt for that too.

I recently read through a blog...search 'dying in haiti'....wow...check it out.



We got the blessing of meeting both of their birth Moms and Markenleys grandma. It was great, but hard. Markenley clearly loves his Haitian Mom. She seems to visit often. I cannot imagine taking him away from her. I know that they want the best for their kids and you cannot get that in Haiti. Education, medical care...that is all a luxury in Haiti. The simple things we don't think too much about.

Todd did a few building projects...tables and benches. I focused on the boys and taking pics and videos..

Well, what is in store for us next...well...the boys are officially Dunns! We are now in the next set of courts where they draw up the adoption decrees. Once that is done, they are officially ours and we can go live in Haiti with the boys!! Well, will we??

As things stand now, I am feeling a sense of urgency to get down there to be their Mommy. There are families who have their children home who have told of sexual and physical abuse in the orphanage. Reguardless if this is happening to my sons or not, how can I stand another day not knowing what is happening to my babies? Also, it seems as if someone needs to be sitting at the Minister of Interiors office every day saying "please look at my file...and SIGN it!".



The problem is that it could be 1-3 months...longer or shorter..who knows. I know that when we were there for 10 days (and todd was with me) i was missing my other kids and America so much. I know it will not be easy. We are still praying about this. Financially I don't know how we would make this happen, only God knows the plan...



I have had such a hard time since we got back..emotionally i am a wreck. I have this huge pain in my heart...it is phycial and emotional. I miss my boys.



When we were dropping the boys off at the orphanage before we left, we were saying goodbye to Markenley and someone was translating. We set him down and he walked a few steps, sat down, put his head down and started sobbing. This sad cry. Not the throwing a fit type of cry. It was heartbreaking. How could we leave him????????

UGGHHH, i can't take it anymore.



I love these boys with my whole heart. They cannot be more 'my kids' than my own birth children. I did far less work to get my bio kids home!



Anyway...love you all!

Hugs,

Renee

Hi Friends,
Things are going well...summer is flying by. Our last camp of the summer is almost over! I love them, each one is wonderful but quite a bit of work. Jessica is in Arizona on a mission trip. I miss her so much. I will not see her for quite a while because Todd and I will be in Haiti when she returns. We are very excited to be able to spend time with Markenley and Solomon!!! We miss them oh so much!As far as our adoption process goes, we are out of courts..so we have approval from IBESR and parquet. Next our file goes to courts where the boys will get our last name, then it will go to 2nd legalization where our adoption decree will get drawn up, then off to Minister or Interiors office...then to immigration where we will get the boys passports and bring them home. This could take a month but things have been taking sooo long...we will be blessed to have the boys home by Christmas....we are praying though for much sooner.Love you all!Renee

Hi Friends,
Things are going well...summer is flying by. Our last camp of the summer is almost over! I love them, each one is wonderful but quite a bit of work. Jessica is in Arizona on a mission trip. I miss her so much. I will not see her for quite a while because Todd and I will be in Haiti when she returns. We are very excited to be able to spend time with Markenley and Solomon!!! We miss them oh so much!
As far as our adoption process goes, we are out of courts..so we have approval from IBESR and parquet. Next our file goes to courts where the boys will get our last name, then it will go to 2nd legalization where our adoption decree will get drawn up, then off to Minister or Interiors office...then to immigration where we will get the boys passports and bring them home. This could take a month but things have been taking sooo long...we will be blessed to have the boys home by Christmas....we are praying though for much sooner.

Love you all!
Renee

Hi. Happy Mother's Day. Things have been pretty well. As I sit here on Mother's Day I feel extremely blessed. The Lord has given me such wonderful children. It was a hard morning at church, I was missing my boys in Haiti, but most of all I was missing Noah. I remember last year on Mother's Day thinking that he would be with me the next year. I miss our son, but am blessed to have had the opportunity to LOVE him. The Lord is GOOD.
The kids are good, happy for the school year to be almost over. Taylor won the DARE student of the year. We are proud of her. Sharene is graduating from High School...wowww.. can it be? Jess will be promoting to High School. TJ is busy with baseball and loves to practice.
We were told a week ago that our adoption file is on the desk of the Director of IBESR...we have 3 out of 4 signatures for approval...as soon as the director signs we will have approval...then our file moves into courts and a few other steps...in the past, once the file comes out of IBESR the children come home in about 3 - 4 months. Well, there seems to be a hold-up in the MOI, (Minister of Interior) and they haven't processed any adoption passports since January. So, basically, all of these children who legally have families now, cannot go home. The orphanages now are caring for kids with families, which means that they cannot take in new children..it is very difficult for the orphanages, children and the families waiting. We are praying that things get back to running smoothly and these children can go home and join their families.
I have so much to keep me busy.....waiting for the boys....I went on a quilting retreat in Asilomar a couple weekends ago.
Todd and I are going to Sonoma next weekend to celebrate our 15 year anniversary...wow..15 years..and we are even more in love today!
Well, that's it for now...
Blessings to you all!

Hi. Things are going well...just super busy with home improvement projects, lots of yardwork...getting ready for our Easter outreach at church and all the summer camps that I am in charge of. Trying to catch up on scrapbooking and a few quilts that I am working on. TJ is in baseball and Jess made the volleyball team. It is so fun to watch. That's all for now. Lots of LOVE.
Renee

We are overjoyed that our file entered IBESR (the Haitian Gov't) for processing on Jan. 30th. We cannot wait for the boys to come home!!! We are staying busy, planning our Easter Outreach for our church, and I am also Directing our Sports Camp, VBS, Daycamp, and Arts Camp...our summer will be very busy...not to mention quilts I am making and scrapbooking to get caught up on...uggghhh!! We are blessed!!