Brander Family 2010

Hopefully you came prepared with a cup of cocoa and a few minutes to spare, its been a wild ride at the Brander house again this year! A few times I thought to myself that if we were a reality show it would be called Four Teens and a Toddler! This year was filled with a lot of changes at our house....we will start right off with the kids!





Caila started off this year with turning 16 in February! We have a driver YEA! It been great to have one less child to chauffeur around! She is pretty busy and this year was no exception. She finished off her sophmore year at Cornerstone with a performance in Madrigals and a good season for track. She spent the summer helping with the driving when she wasnt at various youth conferences or missions trips. She got a shock when she found out at the very last minute that she and Nick were accepted into University High School. They both had applied in the spring but werent accepted. U-High is the labratory school for Illinois State University, and only takes a certain number of students from each school district based a combination of a lot of factors including your race and gender...so its really tough to get in! It was especially tough for Caila because someone had to leave UHigh for her to get in as a transfer. She dove right in head first and was running varsity for Cross Country and made the Varsity Cheer Squad. She is planning a trip to New York City with the Choir in the spring as well. I'm sure there will be many more good things to come as she finishes her junior year...prom is right around the corner!








Nick had an exciting year as well! He decided last fall to apply to the People to People program's trip to Europe and went to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in June. The picture is him scaling a castle wall. He learned a lot about Europe, living away from home and had a ball shopping with different currencies (and his own credit card!). He was really excited to get into U-high and immediately signed up for Engineering classes and got himself to football practice with the Pioneers! He had a great freshman year in football and is currently working on his football skill in Wrestling. Its definitely not his favorite sport but his coach assures him it will make him a better football player. Drivers ed starts in January...and in October we will have two drivers! So far U high has been a great fit for Nick and theres no end to the opportunities that he has there.




This year Ben tried out soccer in place of football. Last season he took a lot of hard hits and with Ben's track record of injuries we didnt need one that would take him out of sports for good. He took to soccer easily and although the team had a rough season he really learned a lot about teamwork and soccer. He currently is playing basketball for the 6th grade boys team at Cornerstone and enjoys it. He will go back to soccer again in the spring. He is also playing french horn with the band again this year and although he isnt crazy about it, his teacher says hes doing well! This coming year should give him a lot of opportunities to get involved in missions trips and youth conferences with the church, including the trip that he is taking with his Dad and Maren to Haiti this spring break. Surprisingly Ben will be involved with helping in a soccer camp for kids....funny how God worked that out!






Maren has become our resident photographer and substitute Mom to Eliana when I'm not home. Both seem to come naturally to her and she enjoys both of them! As you can see in the photos of our family posted here she has a great eye, and there are so many more that I cant post here. She has been busy this past year with volleyball, cheerleading, youth group leadership team, and maintaining a constant presence on facebook (any of you who are her friend on facebook know what I mean!). She also is looking forward to her trip to Haiti in March and I know she will be like a magnet to the children there.




Eliana has transformed this family into jabbering goofballs who will do anything for a laugh. Curious, independant and fearless are words that describe her everyday antics. Her pace is fast forward and loud is her volume. She loves to laugh, to imitate videos, to play on the ipad (yes she really is only 2..I'm not describing a 12 year old). She has recently discovered dress up, and high heels, and is real sight when she tries to run in them! She keeps us all laughing and tired! This year we hope she learns how to use the potty and increases her vocabulary. Especially with Please and Thank you! Its hard to imagine this family without her!


Other than that....Tom and I celebrated our 20th anniversary in Kiawah Island, SC. It was a great week without kids and an agenda! If you havent been to Kiawah..its on my list of must visit places. We also were able to go to Maui for a meeting in February with Eliana and loved it. I could pack my bags and move to either place permanently! We dont have any big plans yet for the next year, but we are learning that nothing stays still for very long in this family so there should be plenty of things to post next year! Have a blessed Christmas with your loved ones!

Its been almost a year since we were in China..as we approach the kid's spring break vacation I'm brought back to the anxiety that I faced last year at this time trying to get our congressman's office to urge USCIS to move along in granting our third clearance so we could go and get Eliana. Needless bureaucratic nonsense...but necessary!!! If you didn't know or don't remember...we got our clearance and had less than a week to plan a trip for all 6 of us to travel to China. It was chaos...and I know God carried me the whole way..because just trying to get our family out the door for school every morning is monumental..but going halfway around the world with a week to prepare is nuts!
Its a blur now...and our latest challenge is what to do with the sweet little chatterbox who wakes up at 1am every night to carry on about who knows what....and she prefers company to sit with her while she chatters to you! No sleep at 20...you can function...no sleep after 40? That will put you to your knees! Yes they know my face at our local Starbucks drive thru! This too shall pass I keep telling myself! She is adorable and the light in the eye of everyone in this house...trust me...all of the kids rush to see her after school! We cant imagine life without her...or what sleeping thru the night was!

2010!

One year ago we first saw the sweet chubby face of Eliana, and today she has become the biggest joy in our family. We have just returned from three days in LIfe Action Family Camp for their first annual Resolution camp. We played in the snow, read, were challenged and made personal resolutions before God for 2010. What a great way to start a new year. May God be Glorified in all we do in 2010!

Wow...I need to post!

If youre still reading our posts...thanks! August hit the map and I cant believe how much time has flown by! We literally got home from Michigan and started football for the boys and volleyball for Caila. The picture is Eliana at the park while we waited for Ben to be done with his practice. She now can spot anything park-like from the car and starts shrieking. She has a favorite word too...Up, and it literally means...up, or down, or help, or please. Its a universal plea for something. I really should be in bed, but when I looked at the blog and realized it had been so long I thought I better say something! I will try to be better about posting!

This crazy life

I'm sure that you have heard the term " You only have one life, so make it a good one " , well one thing about following God's leading for your life is that you never know where he is going to take you....and its usually places you never dreamed you would or could go. I never dreamed I'd have a masters degree...much less live in a 100 year old house of my dreams and have 5 kids! God is giving me the strength, patience and enough insanity to cope with the demands that are placed on me...and when people ask me (and I have been asked how I do it) I often say I have no idea. That's because its not my life! I know that people look at my life and think she has got to be crazy, or what was she thinking? But that's it....I wasn't! Giving God complete control over every aspect of your life doesn't look "normal". Our normal and God's aren't the same. We are all too often lured by our culture to think that certain things in life are worth aspiring to. Comfort, wholeness, peace, security, these things all sound good, but the problem is that we will pursue these things for our entire lives and never attain them on our own. These are all things that man has tried to pursue since Adam and Eve and to my knowledge...no one has ever achieved it! Its mans natural tendency to want those things but only God can truly give us the comfort we crave, the wholeness we desire, the peace in the midst of a storm in our lives and the security that there is a plan. I may not have a road map to my life, or even for my day. But I know that having the creator of the universe writing my life plan is a whole lot more comforting, peace giving and secure than I could ever hope for myself. God promises to make all things new and in his plan I know that in the end I will have compete wholeness...in Him, and that all the whys and wondering will be answered from His wisdom..not my little brain. Is it scary...sometimes...its like riding that rollercoaster with your eyes closed and knowing that you are slowing climbing the hill and peeking right before you plunge into the dive, but in the end you loved every minute of it, and want to go back and do it again. You trusted that the ride was safe and that it was designed for you to have the thrill of your life. Trust God to do that for your life...no matter how crazy it seems to others. You have all eternity to reflect on it and rest knowing that the ride was well worth it!


P.S. Just in case any of you try to contact me at home...we are in Michigan til August 1st. So email me at lov2stamp@yahoo.com!

Emily

In case you are looking for an Emily update...go to 

http://emilyhenrichs.blogspot.com/

You can get info there from today as well as info about sending her an ecard !

Website created for Emily Henrichs

I have created a website to update friends and family who are praying and supporting Emily and her family.  Please pray and subscribe the blog so that you can be updated on any changes.  You can find a link to her blog in the right hand corner of this blog.  Please continue praying.

Please pray....

We are asking anyone who reads this to pray for friends of ours, Andrea and Wayne Henrichs and their daughter Emily.  Today they recieved the news that the strange flu like symptoms that their daughter has been having are actually the result of a mass they have found in her head.  Nothing is known at this time about the details of the mass, and they are going to Peoria ( St Francis Medical Center) tonight to be admitted and an MRI is planned for tomorrow. Please pray for peace and freedom from fear.  I will try to keep you informed here if I recieve an update. 

When was the last post? What day is it?

I wish I had the words to put here for the past month after being home....the best way to say our lives is....looking for SLEEP!  Maybe its being over 4o, or transition to a new home, world, life, culture...but sleep is more valuable than $ right now!  There is a million distractions and only so many hours in the day with 5 kids ages 15, 13, 11, & 11.  So much to see and do...that naptime, and bedtime become a major challenge sometimes. Eliana is usually the biggest trouper of all. She is so patient with us forgetting her bottle time, or pushing bed time a bit past norm.  Flexible is her true nature, and patience is her strongest quality...or is it tolerance?  Its hard to tell!  Either way she fits right into our family in a healthy way.

She is amazing and so hand picked for us. Every day is a blessing to us!

Eliana's Mama

A day doesn't go by when I don't hold Ellie and think bout the woman who carried her for 9 months and had to leave her.  I don't think we will ever have the true answer as to why she couldn't keep her daughter.  Many reasons, perhaps she was single and couldn't provide for her alone.  Maybe she was married and already had a child and couldn't afford to feed two.  She may have simply had a son already and according to Chinese law she couldn't have another child.  There is intense pressure to not go against the good of all, and keeping the population down in China is for the good of all.  Having more than one child is seen as self serving and is looked down upon.  These are just a few of the scenarios that could have taken place, but ultimately Eliana's mother loved her enough to give her life, to deliver her and for 5 days care for her before placing her at the gate of an elementary school before dawn, knowing that soon someone would find her.  It breaks my heart to think of the agony that must have been for her.  Not knowing what has happened to her baby, was she loved?  And here I sit, typing this with a sweet baby in my lap, sleeping soundly...unaware that she is loved so much, and that all of this was already planned ahead of her birth by a God that loves her more than any parent could.  Its all really hard to comprehend, but I think it really is evidence that God still performs miracles if we look for them.

Proof that Maren did actually eat scorpion.

Many people have questioned whether Maren ate scorpion since she is pictured with an ice cream cone.  Although she did not eat her own scorpion her siblings were gracious enough to share.

Home

Wow..we made it home.  It really does feel like being on the other side of the world when you have to come home.  I realize now that we were gone so long that it started to become normal being there, because it feels strange being home.  Even been away so long that happened to you?  I am SO glad that when I walk out of the door no one was looking at me and starring!  It is also good to be able to drink water out of the faucet,  get what I need at the grocery store without having to guess at the picture on the outside, and know that the money in my wallet will be the right kind!  Its also good to sleep in my soft bed...I wasn't the only woman on the trip who complained of feeling like her hips were bruised....God bless Chinese women...I cant imagine how anyone gets used to sleeping on plywood.  That is just one of many ways that the Chinese have no idea what they are missing.  I was sent a link to a YouTube video while we were in China of Il Divo singing Amazing Grace at the Coliseum in Rome and it was blocked in China or "Unavailable in this country" is the way it was displayed,  and it made me realize that in many ways we don't know how much of Christianity and exposure to the truth is kept from the people of China.  I value my freedom now in ways I never could have before.

John 8:32  "For you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"

Eating in China

Ok so there are plenty of options when eating in China.  McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Papa Johns, and Scorpion.  Yes scorpion.  So our last night in Guangzhou and I was ready to treat the kids to a McDonalds ice cream.  Instead they chose to eat scorpion - don't ask me I don't understand either.  (Posted by Tom)

Thoughts on China

I havent had much of a chance to post lately, Tom has been adding video and things.  Its been hard to get a chance to think clearly, much less get online. Six people sharing two computers and all seven of us in two hotel rooms gets a little claustrophic.  Its a lot more intense outside of the hotel.  Its hard to explain what happens when you walk out of the hotel elevator here, but I will try.  When the doors of the elevator open you hear the clatter of construction, the bustle of city traffic and the noise similiar to what I have heard when watching reports on television about the closing of the board of trade....a constant chatter that you cant distinguish what is said but there are a hundred conversations going on around you.  The sights are just as intense...when you walk through the streets you notice that they are fairly narrow, some meant for only walking through, but cars still seem to try and squeeze through the people, bikes, strollers and merchandise. Right outside of our hotel there is a four block walk to Shamian Island and you walk through two different markets.  The first one is a pet market.  Lining both sides of the street are shops with simple plastic bins filled with fresh water and every kind of small fish or aquatic plant, right next to that could be a shop selling dog food, fish food or cat food with large bags open with cups and prices listed in chinese.  There are small cages of hampsters, gerbils, kittens, birds, turtles, rabbits and even puppies.  The chinese really like small fluffy dogs, and the ones that we have come across in shops are named funny things like Money...(for good fortune).  After going through this market we come to the specialized chinese medicine market (I get that from the map).  It honestly smells like walking into a spice closet.  All sorts of things are in bags lining the street on both sides, and all are dried.  Some look like dried flowers, ginger, and different mushrooms but others are not as obvious and smell a lot like fish.  I recognized a type of lizard that was dried and its tail was pulled straight and flat so that it looked like a triangular flyswatter unless you looked closely.  More than any of the strange sights the hardest thing to see is the reaction of people around us.  I know that seeing an American in China is a sight to begin with, but we are really an extra strange sight.  More than once when I have been in the back of the line of all of us making our way through the crowd I have seen in people's eyes the confusion of trying to figure us out.  In a place where there is only one child in the next generation, we now have five.  In addition to that, Nick is as tall as Tom and both tower over most chinese people.  Even Caila gets odd looks from people with her red hair and being so tall for a girl.  I have held up my hand to show "5" a few times only to see the people smile and nod back at me because they realize I see that they are trying to count how many children we have.  Its amazement... we have had people take our picture in restaurants and across from us in parks when they think we arent watching.  Its fun sometimes and sometimes its just tiring.  

We have had a number of college age students come up to us and ask if they can practice their english.  One girl who called herself Alice asked for our email and she actually has contacted me once.  It will be nice to correspond with someone in China if it continues.   

I am really glad that we were able to spend our time here in Guangzhou at the Holiday Inn Shifu, because we have had more culture of China here than if we had stayed on Shamian Island at the White Swan.  Its like a haven on that side of the water, with so much of the area being catered to adoptive families (all adoptions have to go through Guangzhou from China) but there is something neat about where we are staying. I love walking through the small streets seeing the hanging laundry overhead, noticing the small insence shrines at doorways and trying to imagine what living day to day as someone born in China might be like.  

I see so many of the Chinese young people looking like they are trying to be westernized. They dye their hair, have English written on their tshirts and when you talk to them they are eager to hear about how life is for you in America.  They see us as having all the opportunity and success that in many ways in out of reach to them.  Alice was so awestruck at how much school it takes to be a doctor, and it wasn't about the cost of schooling as much as it was about the ability to continue on at school.  Most Chinese aren't able to continue on into high school, and regardless of their desire for more, few are able to attend college.  Competition is tough, and spaces are few.  In many ways its a miracle to be born in China, and even more of a miracle to become educated and wealthy.  These are things that as Americans we have just taken for granted and hoped for our children.  I am sure that the Chinese hope these things for their children as well...and so when I look into the eyes of the people on the street, I wonder what they really see.   I hope that they see more than just 6 strange Americans.  I hope that somehow because we are different they see a glimpse of Christ, a sense of hope in something that they haven't seen before.  I hope its a seed planted.

Ok so as new parents of Eliana even the simple things like a diaper change can be a lot of fun.  Maybe that is because it has been about 10 years since we have changed our childs diaper but in any case we could not help but take a video of this.  (Posted by Tom)

Eliana at her medical, boys at the garden and a day at the zoo.

Eliana loves to put her tongue between her lips and spit.  There is disagreement within our family in regards to the name of this behavior.  One person says raspberries another zerbert, Ben says fart noise with her mouth.  Regardless we think it is hilarious.  

What a day!

We are new parents! As I type this the kids keep running in here saying "Mom..you gotta see this!" There is excitement in the air. I think we are all in love. I know we are, because the whole family was awakened at 4am and hasnt been back to bed yet, and no one cares. I think they are all dancing and laughing in the next room. Ben told her I love you, and I dont think I have honestly heard that from him as a spontaneous utterance before. She is healthy, hungry and all the plumbing is working...hee hee. Today we go back to the same offices we got her yesterday (I'm too eager to type to look up the name) and sign more forms for the adoption and ask any further questions about her from the orphanage director. They loved her very much. Her caregiver was there and she cried and had to leave when she handed her to me. We did get some pictures with her (I think she is in the one with our family). Today I need to find out her name. She is a sweet sweet baby. I cant wait for all of you to meet her!