Jason Wiebe Dairy

Tonight we are hosting a picnic in the park for all our past and present cheese business employees and their families and our present dairy help.  The reason being that we have now made 500 batches of cheese since we began in the kitchen about 10 years ago! We’re expecting about 65 people all bringing food and lawn chairs! Should be a fun time!

Today is also 4 months ago that we met our little Julie for the first time in Miami, FL.  She is now very much at home with us and an interesting addition to our family.  The swimming pool (stock tank) in the back yard has been a favorite spot the last 2 weeks.  And yes, Julie loves the water!  She had a bit too much pop and candy at the Memorial Day activities at the Antique Engine Show in Lehigh, KS and we were not sure she would ever relax and go to sleep that night! Tomorrow is her first trip to a zoo so we’ll see how that goes. And next week is her 3rd birthday and we’re so glad she is home with us to celebrate!

Our little Julie has been home now 3 months.  Things are going really well.  She’s potty trained except for the night.  A great delight is running after the cats with a stick and yelling.  Or the sticks work well on a tree stump like a drum.  She was pounding that stump and singing loudly! Still loves her milk…good thing she landed up on a dairy farm. This week she was also rescued from a mud puddle.  Screaming like she was dying and the mud squishing up between her toes.  So Mama carried her in to the tub and did a clean up job…don’t believe she learned her lesson though.  Later in the day she was hauled in by big sister and this time it took a complete bath and change of clothes to take care of the mud. Julie is also doing a lot more talking.  Lots of words and quite a few short sentences.  A mixture of English and Creole.  She is quite a noisy, joyful child and the noise level has increased considerably around here since she arrived.  The first ten days of silence are now a distant memory! We are also working with a lawyer on trying to complete her adoption. Grandpa and Grandma from Canada are making plans to come this week to meet her for the first time!  That will be fun!

We have reached the milestone of having Julie home with us for one month.  She is  a totally different girl than the quiet, exhausted child we brought home.  Away from home she is still very quiet and clingy. At home she is a little Tigger.  She is talking, laughing and singing.  She goes skipping and hopping through the house…and our hearts!  She was helping her big brother put wash in the dryer and I said to her, “Julie, are you helping Benji?” She folded her hands in front, smiled a big smile and gave 3 hops! She loves to play with little dishes and dolls. Also going outside is something she wants to do every day but is still abit leary of the dog and cats.  Nothing is as much fun as jumping on the bed! There are still some tantrums but much shorter and less frequent.  All in all I would say there has been a lot of progress and she is making herself right at home!

OK, so they supposedly don’t have all the information yet in Washington.  Melinda tells us that they need our fingerprint information yet.  We checked back on our sent emails, and it was sent on Jan 18, but we’ll send it again!!  But the good news was that at the US Embassy they told Melinda to keep coming back every day until they let them fly, so we’ll keep waiting…

This morning the Senator’s aide called and told us she had an email from the State Dept. that our paperwork was processed!  So that would have been great news if things were still like they were a week ago.  Julie would have soon been on a plane and we would be flying to meet her.  But now the Haitian government wants to sign off  on everyone before they will let them fly and no one knows how many days that will be.  We called Melinda (this means dialing about 15 times) and she was very glad to have the news.  Then we heard that the Canadian children were flying into Ottawa on Saturday so we got all excited to hear things were moving only to go crashing down on our roller coaster ride when we realized that only the USA has accepted this plan with the Haitian government.  The other countries are still flying their children home.  Melinda is planning to go to the Embassy again tomorrow to see if she can find out anything more.  If they want the 3  children there she will have someone bring them on the pickup.  All these precautions are because of the fears certain organizations have raised concerning children being smuggled out of the country.  Doesn’t make sense to me that once the paperwork is approved they still have to stay in Haiti.  Make any sense to any of you?

Today we felt like there was actually some progress made toward getting Julie home!  Melinda, the Orphanage director was at the airport at 6 A.M. but didn’t get a flight til 10.  She arrived in Haiti about 1:30 our time and had told Jason yesterday that he should try calling her after she had been in Haiti about 2 hours.  So after trying MANY times we got a hold of her.  She was at the Embassy but the security guard wouldn’t let her in because she didn’t have an appointment.  She asked us to try to get a hold of someone to call the Embassy and tell them she was outside with all the necessary paperwork and would the please let her in or at least help her make an appointment.  So we called our Senator’s aide and she put us on hold while she called the State Department which I believe is in Washington, D.C.  There ended up being some back and forth calling but in the end we were told that Melinda had been allowed into the Embassy.  We gave her a couple hours then called back (I don’t think it would work for her to call us as phone service is not the best over there yet).  This time I got her right away and she said she had left all the paperwork there for processing.  I asked if she was just going to wait for them to call her when it was ready and she said she would give them a few hours and if they hadn’t called her she would be back there.  She is not one to sit around and wait for things to happen.  I asked her if she was discouraged and she said, “Oh, no!”  She also said once the papers are processed, her understanding is that they will then go to the Prime Minister for a signature which would then allow them to issue travel documents for them to fly home.  She is just working with 3 children right now, one of which is our dear Julie.  We have no earthly idea when children will again be flying out of Haiti.  Melinda didn’t think any had left since Monday.  So I guess I will have another day of cleaning up the house, washing clothes and being ready to leave at a moments notice.  The sooner the better as far as we are concerned!
-Jason and Sheri

Today we listened to a 2 hour telephone conference for parents adopting from Haiti given by a number of different government departments all working to get these children home.  They say the Haitian president is completely in favor of these children coming home if their adoptions were already started before the quake.  They do not expect this to last long about not issuing travel documents.  They say people are working around the clock trying to get everything organized to bring the rest of the children home.  About 500 have already come to the US and about 200 more to go.  So the question is not IF but WHEN.  They clarified that all rumors about putting a stop to letting these children come home is NOT TRUE!  When we talked to the congressman in Florida working on our particular case this morning he still thinks Julie may be home before the weekend!  We also filled out paperwork today to say that we will sponsor her to give at the airport so she will not be placed in a child care facility.  That included making copies of our latest tax returns.   And we took good naps.  How wearying this all has been on mind and body.  But now it is just waiting, no more worries about IF.  We have so much to be thankful for that Julie is safe and fed, because we realize not all adoptive parents awaiting their children were not so blessed.

Our orphanage director couldn’t get a flight to Haiti til midnight tonight.  Hopefully she can make it to the Embassy tomorrow as they are still issuing Visas and then when the travel documents are being issued again everything would be ready to go.

Today we got the sad news of a terrible earthquake in Haiti!  We also received the welcome news that our little girl over there in the orphanage in Mirebalais is O.K.  A mason was supposed to come and check the building for structural damage before allowing the children to enter the house.  Our hearts go out to all the people of Haiti as, no doubt, there will be much suffering and devastation.

It is SOOO cold in Kansas!!! The crackling fire is just not keeping us warm—unless, of course, if we’re sitting right in front of it.  But not alot of work gets done that way.  Mr. Snowman is surviving longer than expected, only now he has truly lost his head…boo hoo! The Christmas goodies are being made. Yummy! And folks’ last minute cheese orders are being readied for shipping. In a few days the children will be home from school.

The 2 youngest of our children were playing chess on the squares of our tile kitchen floor. It has dark brown and lighter tan squares.  Our 9 yr. old son was a Knight and our 6 yr. old dau. was a Queen and they put their dad into King Check. I missed out on the show but Daddy said it looked hilarious the way they were jumping around from square to square with their hands behind their backs.  You really don’t need to go to the zoo when you have children…the zoo comes to you.

And the MUD is drying up!!

And no news on the adoption front except that other families are moving on so that is a hopeful thing for us to hear! We sent Julie’s Christmas present on its way. Hope it arrives safe and sound.  And we will keep hoping and praying with all our hearts to hear good news SOON!

Keep eating cheese…if you have never tried our cheese, the time to try it is NOW!