Our new baby nephew, and the one we have been waiting for!

We went to West Michigan last weekend for a few different reasons. It was a great trip, and we had so much fun being able to see friends and our family!

Reasons we went:

1). Kelsey Hendrick's my old roomate got married saturday morning, so we had the priviledge of attending their wedding.

2). To celebrate my birthday

3). My last weekend of christmas break

4). And probably most importantly to see our new nephew who was born January 9. Alec's sister Anne and her husband Rob had their third boy, his name is Will Ryan and he was just sweet as can be. I got tons of baby time during the weekend, and enjoyed every minute of it! Colin and Gage are so excited to be big brothers.

Alec thought he was cool because he could hold the baby and eat a sandwhich

In other recent news, Alec's same sister Anne and Rob, have been in the process of adopting a little boy from Haiti for the past 3yrs. It has been such a long process and we have been waiting patiently for him to be allowed to arrive to his new home in the US. Well with the recent events in Haiti we were wondering how this would affect their adoptive son (Cotter). We knew the process would probably move along faster, and then with the talk of them granting emergency US visas to these kids to get them to their families we got really excited. Well this afternoon we found out that he was granted the US visa and will be coming home as soon as transportation is figured out. Then this evening we found out that Anne and Rob are flying to Miami TOMORROW to pick him up, with 12 day old baby Will riding along.

We are just so excited to finially be able to meet Cotter, he is 4 and a half years old. So it is definitley going to be a huge adjustment for their family, espeicially since he does not speak english. God works in mysterious ways, and it took a huge earthquake to send Cotter home to his family. Right now Anne is scrabbling to get some clothing together for him as well as pack what she needs for her newborn baby to travel to Miami! So keep them in your prayers!

There are 2 videos on wood tv 8 website (local Grand Rapids news), one of which Anne talks. Rob is the one holding the baby in the background :)
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/grand_rapids/12-W-Mich-families-to-adpot-14-Haitians

Anne and Rob went to Haiti to sign some paper work, and meet their son

Kitty

We had a little bit of an adventure with a kitty! We were driving home last saturday evening after going out to dinner, and in the middle of a busy road we saw an adult cat run across. I thought that was kind of weird, and then we saw it go back into the road and there we saw a kitten! The mama cat and her kitten got across the street and went in to a Taco Bell parking lot. We followed them into the parking lot, they seemed so lost. Well long story short, we ended up catching the kitten and the mama cat ran off.

We estimated the kitten to be about 10-12 weeks old, which is plenty old enough to be away from its mother. Acutally usually the mother 'kicks' kittens out after that age. The kitten (a boy) was very scarred and was hissing like crazy. He took a few days to warm up to us, but eventually got a little more friendly. But still very unsure and nervous. It worked out really well that we got him, we never planned on keeping him, just taking him to Alec's parents house and trying to integrate him with all their outdoor cats. When we got there this weekend it became very apparent that kitty was not going to fit in and do well. Thankfully one of Lauren's (Alec's little sister) friends was willing to adopt our little lost kitty.

It was fun having a pet for a little while though, but if I am going to have a cat in my house I want it to be a bit more friendly than this one was.

In this video, we were trying to see if kitty would hiss, haha. It was his favorite thing to do I think, but he calmed down enough I guess at this point. Kitty was always on alert and never trusted us! We each had our fair share of kitten scratches from his little claws, but a few days later we got him purring and feeling a bit more comfortable. Sorry for our 'weirdness' in the video!

DeLange/DeKruyter Christmas Madness!

Our christmas week was very full and fun filled! We were constantly in the car though, but I guess that is what you get for moving to Wisconsin :)

Here is a break down of our trip:

Wednesday - Left for Grant, MI at 5am CST. Arrived and hung out there for the day.

Thursday - Celebrated christmas eve with the DeLange family in Grant. Hung out with family, played some Wii, played legos (with the nephews), and played games. In the evening we had the christmas party with Alec's parents and sibblings. It is tradition to make personal pizzas for dinner, so we did that and they were delicious! Then we opened presents, which was so much fun. We both got a new pair of Keen shoes (a brand of shoes the whole family is in love with) and some other clothing items, which is always great!

Friday - We left early in the morning for my parents house in Dearborn, MI. Arrived there and opened presents right away. We had such a good time, Alec and I got a space heater so we can turn the heat down in the house way low at night and use the space heater to keep us alive in our bedroom/bathroom. My mom made a fabulously amazing turkey lunch, so we all stuffed our faces as usual. We had an afternoon full of games and being lazy in front of the TV. In the evening Allyson and I were feeling a bit 'heafty' from our last few days of pigging-out and so we played DDR (Dance dance revolution) for a while to burn it off!

Saturday - We hung out in Dearborn some more with the family in the morning/early afternoon. Then headed back to Grand Rapids for the extended DeLange party. Allyson came back with us and hung out for the evening as well. We went back to Grant for the night and played some Ticket to Ride (best game ever!).

Sunday - Woke up and went to church, then came home and packed up all our stuff (which was all over his parents house....). We then headed to Holland, MI for yet another christmas party, the extended DeKruyter one. We had tons of fun chatting with family and then doing some snow-mobiling. We headed back to WI in the late afternoon.

All in all it was a great trip and we enjoyed all the time we were able to spend with our families. We are so blessed to have two lovings families and can't imagine not being with them over the holiday season. When we got home we had to take our christmas tree down pretty much right away.....it was very dead :( So now that christmas is officially over I am going to enjoy my last couple weeks of christmas break and look forward to starting nursing school on January 20.

We are heading back to GR in two weekends for a wedding and to see some of our friends we feel we have abandoned :) And we are also hoping that Alec's sister has her baby by then (whom we call Bitty). So we still have a lot to look forward too this month!