Sunday Snapshot: {sand, surf and sun}

On our last day of vacation in Maine we had the opportunity to meet and hang out with Stefanie and her kiddos.  Stefanie is the new Director of An Orphan's Wish and I have had the pleasure of working with her while volunteering as their Financial Coordinator.  It was wonderful to actually be able to meet her and her amazing kids.

We had lunch first and then headed down to the beach with all of the kids, 9 total.  Yes, you can totally question our sanity now.  Totally.

We had mostly happy campers...except for Aiden.  Thankfully, he cheered up and was off having fun with his new friends in no time.

This is Sophie.  An absolutely beautiful girl.  She just finished kindergarden.  She spent the day collecting shells for her momma.  Isn't she lovely?

Here is Isabelle.  She just finished pre-kindergarden.  I don't think there is a shy bone in this girl's body.  She was very outgoing.  I loved that about her.  There is just something about a girl who can hold a conversation.  She spent part of the day building a very nice rock wall.  The other part was spent surfing or tugging her brothers around on the boogie board.

Mr. Jude.  A lean, mean eating-machine.  Well maybe not so much on the mean.  Or the eating-machine.  He is a bit of a picky eater from what I've been told but oh what a handsome guy!  And he's pretty cool too.

Oh Shepherd.  How I love you.  Stefanie says he can be a bit of a sourpuss at times.  He tends to think he is too little to do most things.  I just couldn't get enough of him.  I seriously wanted to steal him and take him home with me.  I don't think Stefanie would have noticed.

Miss Vivienne.  She is the newest member of Stefanie's clan.  She just came home in January.  I couldn't get over how the littlest member of their family seemed to have the most power.  She didn't take any nonsense from any of the others.  And man does this girl move fast.  Nothing is going to stop her.

Sweet Dalton.  He was such a great helper.  He was very good about helping his momma with all the little ones.  And he was seriously great at entertaining the heck out of Aiden.

 

I didn't really get any good individual shots of Zach and Asher because they were insane in the cold water all day.  When they finally came out, their bodies were a nice bright shade of red from the cold water.  I am quite sure they were probably numb for the rest of the evening.  Brrrr...

Here are some group shots of all of the kids before Aiden got a little silly. 

And then Aiden was off and on a mission to entertain as usual.

Even Grampy couldn't corral this guy.  The photo session was officially over.

Stefanie and I were able to chat almost the entire afternoon while constantly doing head counts every few minutes.  She is quite an amazing woman.  She volunteers her time as the Director of An Orphan's Wish, blogs daily on Ni Hao Y'all, blogs and advocates frequently on No Hands But Ours which is a fantastic website to learn more about adopting children with special needs from China, helps run a fabulous tee-shirt company, Wild Olive, where they design and make some very pretty and powerful tee-shirts and she has 9 kids to raise in her spare time.  I'm probably not even mentioning half of what she juggles daily.  Anyone who can drag themselves out of bed and accomplish all of that each and every day and not lose her marbles, has my undying respect.  She is a saint.  And oh yeah, she rocks.

It was truly a fun day and I hope we get a chance to do it again some day!

And once again, I am extremely late in posting these pictures.  I am so not Super Woman...like Stefanie.  She had her pictures up weeks ago.  I am a bit behind.  Now where are those July 4th pictures?

To see more great Sunday Snapshots, head on over to Stefanie's blog at Ni Hao Y'all: