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

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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!!!