Life is wonderful!

Over the last moth we have been busy, really the last year has been a blur, and it amazes us that it has been a year since we left to go to Albania to meet our amazing Miss Mariada. Since we left on Thanksgiving Day last year and had a Christmas apart from each other we made sure to do it up this year! My mom had Thanksgiving at their house and we are doing Christmas here. Thanksgiving weekend we took Miss M to pick out a tree and put it up that Saturday, we usually wait a week or two but we are feeling the spirit this year so why not?!

We have already had a Christmas party and been to the Jingle Bell parade with party afterwards at a good friends house, we have a few more to go to over the weekend, so needless to say Miss M thinks Christmas in America is great, she loves to stay busy and for the “no Kid” parties well that means babysitting money! She has picked up a few extra clients and is saving for “high school” her big brother Ben told her that things get costly in high school and she wants to be prepared ;)

As far as school goes, that all A report card she was working so hard for came true, she aced every exam and ended the tri with a 4.0! She is so very proud (as are we) when picking her up from school she got in the car and said “Mom, did you know of the paper on Principal E’s window, honor roll, I am on it!” Yup, honey you made the honor roll! Just think how happy she was when I told her it would be in the news paper as well! She also went to the 8th grade Christmas dance she did the entire girl thing, got ready at a friend’s house, spent the night at another friend’s house and had a great time! Now we get ready for swimming, she can’t wait!

Another week we will have Ben and Sara and it will be Christmas, all together :)




After Dance Fun!

8th grade girl power!



Yes, Life is Wonderful!

Another month in the life...

I thought for sure once school started and summer was over that things would surely slow down, and we would be in a sort of grove. I was surely mistaken, but although things are busy things are good. We have moved the boat into storage, put away the summer furniture, traveled to our last soccer game of the season and I have moved my closet from summer skirts to winter sweaters. (Sigh) OK get over it, there are plenty of good things about winter.

It was a bit choppy but taking the whole day off to spend with just Bob was so wonderful!
See you next summer PPI!

That’s right; Miss Mariada played her last soccer games and guess what! Her team was undefeated! The last four games where a few weekends ago all in Detroit and the girls played their hearts out, beating the last team 10-1, that after playing two games the day before and an earlier game that day, and traveling more than 400 miles! They really are a great team and Mariada is so happy to be able to play with them! She cried after that last game and is still riding her bike down to the high school after school to train. She starts swimming in a few weeks and she is really looking forward to that, to be honest so are we, it’s a school sport so the travel is a whole lot less and meets are after school, rather than whole weekends! I don’t think I could do the every weekend and the holidays! She is also doing amazingly with school, the tri is over in three weeks and it looks like we may have a report card filled with all A’s! She loves her school and we could not be happier with how well they have helped her with the transition.
Coach Wright (best coach ever!) Mariada already misses him.
Before each game they hug and yell heart, coach tells them to do everything with heart, he even gave them each a bracelet with a heart charm displaying their number.
Mariada, going for another goal.
What a team! They even made the front page of the paper!

I think I told you that Fredi and Prenda where in the states and we really wanted to see them, they were in Kentucky, but that was the weekend of the four soccer games, so we had to catch them the following weekend, which meant a trip to Atlanta. Farther, but we really wanted to see them and this also meant that we would be able to see Roger and Cherie, the American head of Hope for the World. What we didn’t know at the time was that this was also the time that Kristina would be visiting Fredi and Prenda. Kristina was Mariada’s roommate back in the orphanage she was adopted about a year before Mariada and Mariada had just found her on face book about two weeks earlier. Oh the tears! Mariada was jumping up and down when I told her that she would be seeing Kristina, Fredi, and Prenda, their kids and Roger and Cherie! We went down from Wed. – Sun. and had a blast, it was wonderful to see everyone and meet Kristina and her parents. We went to the zoo and the aquarium, where I heard “MOM LOOK!!!” about a million times  cute. Roger and Cherie even had the girls spent the night at their house two of the nights so they could just hang out together.



Kristina and Mariada they had so much fun...
All the kids had so much fun..


Bob showing off his Snow White capabilities!

Other updates, Ben was home for a long weekend a few weeks ago and he is doing great, although he is having to study for the first time in his life, he is enjoying U of M and is excelling in the ROTC program. We even had a chance to take him out to dinner in Ann Arbor; Mariada’s last game was right down the road from his apartment. We are looking forward to him being home for Thanksgiving.

Sara, is staying in Michigan this year and training with Cary Adgate, former Olympic downhill racer, she is taking high school classes at a local collage and training during the day. She leaves for a race clinic out in Big Sky in just a few short weeks, and by the time she returns we will be in full race season. She hopes this will be her year! We continue to pray that she stays safe ;)

Lewis, he’s adorable and I can’t wait until he’s about three!

He still thinks he has the right to nap wherever he likes! Oh puppies!

Hope this update finds you all well and feeling every bit as blessed as we do. God is so good.

Saying Goodbye, for now....

It is with a mixture of joyfulness and sadness that I share that Dad Gezon has gone to be with his Lord. We have known for a while that Dad has been slipping away from us, but it is never easy to say good bye. Bob and I got to say goodbye hours before Dad past and for that we are grateful, Bob had been out of town and I called him while he was driving though Canada thankfully he made it back. Dad past on he and mom’s 63rd wedding anniversary, which is somewhat poetic seeing he told anyone that would listen that that was the happiest day of his life! We know that our loss here on earth is heavens gain and we feel so blessed that we had him for a father, father-in-law, and grandpa.

We got Ben and Sara back home for the service and they are both doing wonderful, we miss them both and it was nice to have all the kids for a long weekend. We spent time remembering Grandpa and spending time with family. Mariada had a soccer game on Sunday very close to U of M so we took Ben and his cousin back to school and having that extra time with him was great. It was also nice to see that he is doing well keeping his apartment clean! We also had a chance to spend some time with Sara taking her and Mariada into Grand Rapids to see ArtPrize and a free David Archuleta concert, we had fun.


We continue to take Mariada to soccer games, practice and school, which she loves and is doing really well at. All A’s right now, she does put a lot of time into homework, but for the most part she thinks it’s easy! She is even helping “coach” a team of five and six year olds. We are trying to plan a trip down south to see Fredi and Prenda, they are going to be in the states for a visit and we would LOVE to see them, praying that it works out.

Life is busy and we continue to try and fit it all in.

Endless Summer

Another very busy month has gone by and I haven’t done a very good job of keeping you updated, so hang on here we go!!!

We celebrated Ben turning 19, yeah 19! Yikes, I still can’t believe it. It was a quite night of grilling out with a few friends and watching yet another beautiful west Michigan sunset. After that it meant that move out date was inevitable and that I had better start getting things together. Ben asked us for only one thing for graduation, decorate his apartment! He knew that he was sharing an apartment rather than a dorm and he knew that it wasn’t going to feel like home if it had bare walls and zero dishes in the kitchen. So my mother and I put together an entire kitchen out of our old dishes with the exception of a slow cooker that Grandma gave him for a birthday present. (Doesn’t every 19 yr old want one?) So I hit Hobby Lobby and found some great Navy/Marine posters for the living room, and then found some fun linens for his bed, we then stocked his kitchen and gave him a cookbook with all his favorites. On the 26th we loaded up two cars and drove Ben to Ann Arbor, moved him in, left twenty dollars for he and Mike (roommate) to order a pizza! Until yesterday Ben’s truck was still in the driveway and it was hard to drive in and say, Ben’s not home, since Ben turned sixteen I would always have a smile on my face when I saw his car and say Ben’s home! It’s always the little things that get you!

On the Mariada front, well soccer, for her that’s really all that matters, she has been practicing with both her teams and had her first tournament this past weekend. Unfortunately she sprained her ankle in the first game and had to watch the rest of the weekend. She says that she will play this Friday, we’ll see. We had planned on back to school shopping this week, but with the ankle I don’t think the mall is a good idea, more sales next week anyway! On the 24th we had a party for Miss Mariada’s 14th birthday, it was a beautiful sunny day spent with three of her friends on the beach, then pizza, cake and presents followed by movies and a sleepover! She had a blast. We also had orientation this week and she has her new schedule for school this year, she can’t wait for school to start.

Somewhere in there we spent a day up at Great Grandma’s cottage for her birthday, Lewis spent forty eight hours in the emergency hospital, after eating 22 ibuprofen pills, and we had a few friends spent a few days with us :) Normally I look forward to fall, thinking things will slow down, but if you saw the soccer schedule we have you would understand why late November is looking like our first open weekend!

I wish I had pictures of Ben’s place but and I still can’t believe this, I forgot, the camera was there but I just forgot, so please enjoy a few from Mariada’s birthday and soccer game!



Ben took the girls tubing, they had a blast! I could hear them from up at the house, since it was teens only on the beach!

She told us it was the best birthday she ever had, what a great summer!

Wow! Summer goes by so fast….. So since the last post we have busy, we spent the fourth here at home with lots of great friends on the beach, watching fireworks from a friend’s home that thankfully kept us from too much of the crowds. We then started getting ready for our summer boat trip. This year we went with our dear friends Ben and Sue and their two kids. We love boating with them; they have been our boat buddies for years. We had stops in Harbor Springs, South Manitou Island and Charlevoix before heading to the North Channel. On our way home we stopped on Mackinaw Island and Frankfort. Ben and Sara both have summer jobs so they didn’t make the entire trip this year but Mariada had a blast she loved almost all of it with exception of the bugs and snakes, I don’t think she will be a camper! This works out fine with me since I have never really been one myself.

We left the boat and drove straight to East Lansing to drop Mariada off at soccer camp. Then I came home unpacked did laundry and drove Ben to Ann Arbor for orientation, the next day I drove back to East Lansing to pick up Mariada, and then the next day, yup back to Ann Arbor to pick Ben up from orientation. Last week I put some miles on the car! Mariada loved camp and Ben is looking forward to collage, even thinking of double majoring.

Mariada is now busy with soccer practice, she is playing for two teams, and Ben is working two jobs as well as Sara. Life is full around here. And this week is coast guard festival in our little town, basically our town of twenty thousand, is turned in to two hundred and fifty in one week! Last night was opening night for the carnival we meant with some friends that have a home right in the middle of it and before I knew it Mariada was asking for money and out of there with tons of teens to hit the scary carnie rides! On the way home she told me it was the best night of her life.

After this week, summer starts coming to an end and by the end of the month we will have celebrated two birthdays Ben and Mariada’s. Ben will be gone to U of M and we will be shopping for school supplies for Mariada! Wow...

Mariada jumping from her first rock!
Benjamin Island's
If you look really close you can see me reading on the front of the boat! I was not in the mood to hike this day.
Lewis did a great job on his first boat trip!
Hiking the Benjamin's
We decided to jump off the boat under the Mackinaw bridge.

It’s all about Ben

The last few months have been all about Ben. We have been getting the house ready for his open house, attending award ceremonies, banquets, dessert socials…. And of course the big day itself, graduation! Now I have to take a moment to brag on our Ben, really his whole class. There is always so much talk about this next generation and often it’s negative, but going to all these events let us see just how many of Ben’s peers are amazing kids. In his class of just under 200 there are kids attending, Harvard, John Hopkins, Brown, Norte Dam and a record number going to the University of Michigan. The list of amazing things these kids have done just blew us away, so many community involvement activities and missions it’s just so cool. And just to brag a bit more, Ben was in the top ten percent of his class and was given the largest scholarship, a full ride to the U of M!!! Go Blue! This amazing scholarship also added to our already busy schedule as we told Ben that if he achieved this we would take him anywhere he wanted to go. His first choice was New Zealand, but it’s winter there right now, so that was out, then Iceland, the day I went to book the tickets, yup, volcano, that was out, he settled on surfing in Hawaii. So I found us amazing deals on flights and a condo on the island of Kauai and two days after the party we where off! What a great time we had, it was really special to spend some time with just Ben talking about his “grown up life” and what it will look like. He’s an amazing kid that will most certainly live a full life; I can’t wait to see it happen!

So while we were in Hawaii, Miss Mariada spent some time being super spoiled by Grandma she even got to spend some time with Great Grandma up at her cottage, she had a blast. Now we are back in full soccer mode. Practice every week, camps and she’s even dual enrolled so she will be playing for two different teams! So basically its summer and we are busy as all those that live in the north can attest to we always cram why too much into three months!

One more thing, we have some bloggy friends that are on their way to Albania to adopt their second child! Would you please keep them all in your thoughts and prayers, as many of you know the process can be so much work, things you never thought would come your way are there tossed in with so much joy. It can be very physically and mentally exhausting.

Now on to pictures, lots and lots of them, it’s time to catch up!



Did I mention, this class was awarded 4.5 million in scholarships!


A very proud sister.
The "Big House" cake, so cool, and no I didn't bake it :).
I was so happy it didn't rain, since our porch was the plan B, forgot to rent a tent!
Our three on the bungee run, what fun!


Hanalei Bay our surf spot, so pretty. We packed a lunch.
The outside break is called summers, very fun wave and the locals had really good attitudes about us being there!
Na Pali hike, Ben ran...
we took breaks :)
The view from our condo, and yes that's a rooster and a rainbow. Sounds like a kids book!

A different break and Ben is on that wave, no really he is ;) I just don't have a good enough zoom.

We took a boat trip to the Na Pali coast as well, amazing....



On the way back a pod of dolphins joined us, so cool.
Our last day we flew over to Oahu and saw Pearl Harbor. That's the Mighty Mo behind my boys. We took the iPod tour, what a ship!