100 Good Wishes Quilt

A Chinese Custom. 100 Good Wishes Quilt. It is a custom to invite friends and family to contribute a patch of cloth with a wish for the baby. Part of the patch of cloth goes into the quilt for the baby, and the other part of the cloth can go into a creative memory notebook with the wish for the child. The quilt contains the luck, energy, and good wishes from all the families and friends who contributed a piece of fabric. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation.
We found out about 100 wishes quilts through our daughter Dawn when they were adopting Kya from China. It is a tradition to greet the new baby with a 100 Good Wishes Quilt. Although this is a Chinese tradition, it is a great tradition for any child to be welcomed this way. What a treat.

We had about 10 months to prepare for Hope's adoption and therefore were able to have friends and family send us 100 Good Wishes along with fabric. However, we found out about Joel the end of May 2007 and discovered that if we did not travel by July 11, 2007 to complete his adoption that he would no longer be eligible for adoption according to the Chinese Law, it gave us no time to make a 100 Good Wishes Quilt.

However, Mama Judy came to the rescue. Mama Judy is Hope's God Mother but she seems to have become the adoptive Mama Judy of all our adopted children and the quilter sewer of all quilts. She 4 adopted children's quilt and then she set out to completely make Joel's and designed it with all the the things that he loves. Bless you Mama Judy that Joel will have his own tradition and one that he will cherish and remember and can hand down to his own children from generation to generation and know that he is loved and wanted forever and always.

Thanksgiving 2008 A Blessing of Baskets Full

Most of my family together and a wonderful weekend, with a houseful of God's Blessings. Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jerry came for Thanksgiving Day what a joyful fun day we all had with the kids and each other. I just love having a houseful, it really seems like the holidays for me. I remember too many lonely holidays and finally the Lord has heard my crys and gave me the desire of My Heart and filled my life with the sound of children and the laughter of and joy of not only the children but with their parents. God is truly good to me in my years of maturity. On Saturday we took Joel and Hope for their regular Saturday riding lessons and Autumn and Kya also were able to ride.

Now we are up to Halloween

Joel just loves Star Wars and so he went as Adacan Skywalker and Hope went as Tinker Bell, dressed in her favorite color, PINK!!!!!

October brought Autumn and also Birthday Celebrations

We visited Dawn (better known to Joel and Hope and JJ) for niece Autumn's 5th birthday in October, a Spiderman event. Just a few wonderful pictures of the kids. To see the full event please visit Dawns blogspot http://ladybugsandfrogs.blogspot.com/. Then in November we traveld again for Kya's 5th birthday and this time we went to Chuck E. Cheese again the kids just had a blast.

LWML Convention September 2008

Joel was the Presidents Page and Hope the youngest LWML attendee and loved every minute.

More of Joel with his friends Carol & Henry

There were so many pictures well over 300+ so I had to take just a few and place them here on the blog site for your viewing. I can tell you one thing Joel had the time of his life. They visited a car museum, Homossa Springs, The Shriners Rodeo, Old McDonalds Farm. Talk about a weekend.

Too Long Since Posting - So BackTracking!

Joel Visiting Friends over Labor Day Weekend

Hope's First Day of School

She really did go to bed easily last night and I was amazed she was in bed and asleep by 815pm and that is unusual for her and that was after showering, picking out her clothes for school. She was a little tired and still laid on our bed this morning for a few minutes stretching and trying to open her eyes before she bounced up and started getting dressed.

She was so excited when she saw the bus coming around the corner, of course Mom could hardly keep the tears out of her eyes. Would you believe that had that big bus for three little kids, Hope is the oldest the other two are pre-k, one has CP and the other is profoundly like Hope. She didn't eat her lunch at school today, but did eat her snack. I don't know if it was excitement or what because she did eat her lunch for a snack when she got home.

Tomorrow she has to miss school for us to go to Jacksonville for her mappings of her processors due to tropical storm Fay and she is not at all happy. She tried to convince Joel and I earlier this evening that Joel could just go for her and it was okay. We are not really sure how Joel is suppose to do that, but she had it all figured out.

Her teacher sent a note home saying she did really well today and they read a story about a little racoon that went to school and his Mommy kissed his hand went he went to school and all day long he would look at his hand when he missed his Mommy and he would think about how much his Mommy loved him and he would remember his Mommy's kiss on his hand and he would not miss his Mommy, so they colored little hearts on a piece of paper and tonight for homework they are to cut out the hearts and leave one at home with Mom and take one to school that way Mommy has their heart and they have Mommy's heart at school tomorrow, so Hope is not happy that she can't have Mommy's heart at school.

I can't even begin to imagine in my wildest dreams how this little girl has grown up so much in the past year and a half. She has so much trust and I can on tell you that God has done this work in her. For this child to be deaf and have come with us from China to trust us with her surgeries and with so much in her little life to as you see in this photos just marching herself on that school bus is amazing, there is no fear that Mom will not be here at home waiting for her, she trust us so completely and that alone could only be from God, He has had to have given her that peace.

Please enjoy the photos of Hope's first day of school. God Bless.

Hope Turns 6 Years Old -Saturday - August 16, 2008

Hope's Second Year Home for her Birthday

I remember a birthday in August 2006 that I sat and cried I had so wanted to celebrate a birthday when one little girl was turning 4 years old, I sent her a package for her birthday, but it just didn't help the emptiness in my arms and heart. How 2 years have changed so much. Not only are my arms no longer empty, my heart is so full it could burst. At the time we were waiting for approval from China for Hope our family was enjoying our granddaughters Kya and Autumn (just recently home from China), in these photos you will see our grandchildren have grown as well we have Kya, Autumn, Lilly, Aaron and our own family has grown with Hope and Joel. What a Joy and a God Blessing I have. I can only rejoice what God has so richly bestowed on this family.

Please enjoy this video, I didn't add a lot of words, because Hope's expressions and those of Kya, Autumn, Joel, Lilly and Aaron say it all. God Bless.

Joel's First Prize Ribbon August 7, 2008

I am always late, however, my own Dad always had words of wisdom for me and one of those was "Better late than never". We have had a lot going on in the Kubicek Noodle Family.

Mom has been spending many hours in the early morning when the children are still asleep and then when the family goes to bed working on the LWML covention manual and to add to that I worked on a rummage sale, bake sale and car wash for the church for Saturday and then on that Sunday we had a farewell lunch for our interim Pastor that I worked on and helped plan and our Praise Team did the entertainment, so Mom's just been busy, by the end of September when the LWML Convention is over our lives will settle down into a normal routine. Okay Okay those of you that know me, know it will not be normal for most families, but it will be normal for this family and I promise to begin blogging a little more often.

NOW BACK to my important task blogging about one of my favorite people my son JOEL... Some of you are aware that we entered Joel in the Brevard County Homeschool Association Art Contest in July on August 7th they had the Art Exhibit and a Home School Show as well combined in Melbourne at a very huge Calvary Chapel Church. Joel placed 1st in his age category of 13 to 15 years group. We are so proud of him. He has had no formal art classes at all. They actually had two people that on art galleries from Melbourne come and judge the arts and crtique the art and they wrote up things for Joel to work on to help him with his art.

He was so cute in the beginning, because he has never won anything and didn't know what a ribbon was. He said "Mom it's just like paper, it really isn't anything." I said honey "money is only paper as well, but that's what you use to buy things with so it's worth something" then he understood" and when he saw the other ribbons said 2nd and 3rd place and others received nothing on their pictures he felt good about his own picture.

Of course this Mom is crowing...

Glasses for Hope

Life is just so busy always around our house and I keep hoping I can blog on a more regular basis and I am sure that will happen just as soon as the LWML convention is over in September. Right now Mom is spending almost 18 hours a day working ont he convention which leaves very little time for anything else and especially sleep. However, I do want to share with all of you a couple of pictures of Hope in her glasses. We went a couple of weeks ago to the eye doctor because she failed her eye exam at school. I knew from her eye doctor back last year she had astigmatism and probably would need glasses when starting school, but I was praying so hard she wouldn't need them, I just couldn't figure out along with two processors how in the world we were going to keep glasses on her little head as well. I guess the Lord knew better then Mom because the stay on pretty well. Hope was so excited, she really was upset we had to leave them at the eye doctor for a couple of weeks. When they called me yesterday to tell me they were ready and I told her she jumped up and down and raised her arms up in the air and said yeah, yeah, yeah!

Dawn, this funny story is just for you.. After the technician fitted her with the glasses he handed her a cute little pink plastic case for her glasses to go into it slides together. She pulled it apart lifted up her arm and applied her plastic case as deodarant. She had the entire waiting room and the other two technicians rolling in the aisles. I said I guess you have never seen the cases used that way before?

She has been real good with them all evening and has taken them off to play in her room and eat dinner and put them back on to watch T.V.

Of course big brother Joel, says she's not cute anymore, which Mom then gave him the MOTHER LOOK..... and said you better not let me ever hear you say that to Hope. He thinks she just wants to wear glasses. Joel had perfect vision and perfect eyes, he had his eyes dialated and has never had that before and got the big ole black pair of sun glasses that he has made into his robot glasses he calls them and wears them around to scare the dog now.

I'll have to take a picture of that in a day or so and post. This weekend is Hope's 6th birthday and will be posting again in a couple of days. Thank you for taking time to read our Noodle Kids story. They are great kids and I am just so blessed to have these two wonderful silly kiddos in my life.

Joel's Birthdy and Gotcha Day

Well Dear Son, Always forever in your life your birthday and your Gotcha day will be simultaenou, you will never be able to celebrate one without the other. We wanted this to be your special day and so we made it a very special weekend just for you. We started off with Dad taking Friday off to be with us and we went to Orlando to your favorite store the Chinese Food Market where you enjoy speaking Chinese to the elderly Chinese man there and of course Mom forgot to take you picture with him although I did get a couple of pictures of you in the Chinese Market. You then got to ride Star on Saturday morning and rather than go to a Disney Theme park you wanted all your friends (and you sweet boy have adults as your friends) over for Mom to cook a Chinese meal and that is what we did. We sure had a house full and I wouldn't change a thing. My life has been so blessed having you here and Dad and I can't remember when we have laughed so much. Why just the other day you made us laugh so much you brought tears to our eyes and my stomach began to hurt, with your story of being a snow boy. I'm sorry but I just have to repeat it here. Don't worry Hope get's her turn soon enough.

So Quantam Leap is back on reruns on TV, which is a favorite of Dad's, now a favorite of Joel's. Joel and John were watching it on TV and of course Joel is always confused by the leaps and why the character is jumping into someone elses body and why we see him on the TV as the same person but the people around him see him as someone else and why is he doing it. I go through the explanations each time. John sits and puts a stop as I explain each time. This time we are both laughing or should say trying not to laugh hysteriaclly.

The man leaps and becomes a pregnant woman. Joel says "Mom he leaped into a really fat tummy lady" why? I said honey she's not fat, she has a baby in her tummy. He said Mom, I'm sick. Why does she have a baby in her tummy? I said all babies come from their Mommies tummies? I said you and Hope came from your birth mommy's tummy as well. I DID NOT. I said yes honey, all people are born that way, that is the way God made us to be born. Not me, I came from the snow in a train station............... Don't you love it.

I love you my son, my funny one.

July 4th 2008

Not only was it my birthday, but we celebrated by being in the Melbourne 4th of July Parade. It was difficult explaining to Joel why America also celebrates their birthday when I do, but I just figure that as he learns American History he will eventually understand. By the way not only where we in the parade we were in a horse drawn carriage.

I have been emailing a lady in Melbourne since 2005/6 she has followed my journey to China when we left for Hope and then Joel. She was driving down the street and noticed me, strange, huh. I was standing beside the carriage at the park. She hollered at me from the car and I ran over and hugged her, she jumped out and we talked for a long time. Her and her husband Mike are also adopting from China. We have never met, but have been in contact for the past few years. It is such a small world and I was thrilled to finally meet her.

The kids just loved it and later in the evening we went to the old air strip and let the kids play around in the inflatables and see the antique airplanes and helicopters and watch the fireworks. Joel's one complaint was that in China he gets to do the fireworks not just see them. I said here son you see them not play with them. Hope was so loud with all her oooo's and auh's that she had everyone laughing around her. She loved it. Well, just take a look and see.

Vacation Time

Many of you don't know that the credit of this beautiful blog actually goes to my daughter Dawn Clark. I have for the past several months kept saying I need to get a blog up and finally she said Mom, I'm tired of waiting I'm going to do it for you and as you can tell I haven't even kept it up well.

So, I thought I might as well start with our vacation. We took 4 days and 3 nights and went to Flagler Beach and just didn't do anything but get up in the mornings eat a bowl of cereal and walk over to the beach, come back have a sandwich and jump into the pool, cook something simple for dinner in the room or bring something in. We spent time playing games at night and just enjoying being together as a family. I can tell you it just wasn't enough time for me, I was hooked on relaxing.

John still had a few days left before he had to go back to work and our grandson Aaron was turning 1 year old so we included a few photos of his birthday party along with our vacation. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed taking them.

Hope & Joel's Florida Readoption

Yesterday was the court date to readopt our children and give them official Florida birth certificates, it was not necessary for Hope she has a certificate of citizenship, however if she ever needs a birthcertificate she only has one from China and this could cause her problems in the future for college etc. So we felt since we were required to readopt Joel (due to that I traveled alone and required by Homeland Security) that we might as well give Hope a FL birth certificate while we were at it).

During this video you will see one of the things we did to celebrate yesterday was take the kids to Horse Sisters. It is for riders with Disabilites we tried another and just was not pleased with the uncleanliness of the farm and the disorganization and then one thing led to another with money and my getting sick. More than likely though it was just God's timing. Because on Mother's day coming out of Dixie Crossroads from eating lunch with Dawn and Dale and the Clan we saw Horse Sisters and they invited us to come out to the farm for a visit and we thought what better day than yesterday.

They have over 11 deaf children and they sign. One of the girls is 7 years old and goes in next Tuesday for a cochlear implant, she rides on Thursdays. It is truly the place we know that Hope is suppose to be. They told us not to worry about money, they will make it happen for our children, they want the children to receive and if that is what is holding them back do not worry about it. We spent 2 1/2 hours there with the kids getting the horses from the pasture, grooming them, putting the saddles on them, leading them to the riding arena and then riding them. They were just wonderfu.

You will see we have a solo photo of Joel, but we didn't get the camera in time to take the solo picture of Hope on the horse. She actual sat on the horse for an hour by herself and then road it into the arena and around it.

She is so excited. The instructor has decided by seeing Hope with the horses that she will indeed be a great horseman one day.

Hope that you enjoy our little video clip. Blessings, Pat