Smith Updates

Tomoyuki reading to Bethany, yeah right, he's not even looking at the book.....

Bethany reading to Tomoyuki, that's more like it................

Junko, Shoko and Baby Saran on our way, in the typhoon, to the family court to file Tomoyuki's petition for adoption.

Juda sharing his favorite book, "Go Dog Go" with his first grade class.

Juda trying to decide who to call on for questions to ask him about himself.

Just wanted to update the blog with the goings on of the Smith Clan. Been busy with the school year starting up and both Bethany and Juda are doing quite well adjusting to the new schedule. Tomoyuki and I are staying quite busy by day while they are in school. We have been able to get alot of things caught up at the house, ie...spring cleaning (after summer vacation cleaning) and some Ai no Kesshin work. He is really blossoming since he is staying well. He is now eating bananas on a regular basis with oatmeal cereal, green peas are one of his favorites, imagine that. He is grabing at everything in his reach, jibber jabbering all the time with da da da , blah, blah, blah. Always in response to some silly question we ask him, he is keeping us laughing. Yesterday we went to have our weekly Thursday lunch with Bethany and Juda and before lunch we went to Juda's 1st grade class that he spends a little bit of time daily with. It was his turn to be interviewed, ie, favorite color, favorite toy, what do you want to be when you grow up etc.....he did quite well with signing his answers, we are so proud of him. I shared with his class about Down Syndrome, the class was great at asking good questions and understanding the answers. They are so good to Juda and love interacting with him, as he is quite a funny fellow.

Junko, Shoko and baby Saran went with me today to fileTomoyuki's petition for adoption in the Okinawa Family Court. The clerk said he has never filed a petition for adoption and quite possibly that office has not processed one since Bethany's 5 1/2 years ago. WOW....He was not quite up to snuff with the way the process works. For instance, he thought we wanted to adopt Tomoyuki and Tomoyuki's birth parents......Junko tried her best not to laugh, she didn't tell me what he said until we got back to the car, probably because she knew I would laugh out loud, she knows me oh too well. We spent an hour with this clerk and walked him through the process ourselves. He was a little embarrassed that he did not know the process, however, he did have a manual to check from and sure enough, we were guiding him correctly.

Bethany is so excited about school and reading. She wants to set our books up just like the school library, and she is serious. We bought stickers to put on the binding of all their books. She says the easy readers should have "A" on them and as they get harder move onto "B", "C", etc..... sounds like a plan to me. So we made the first step toward running our own library and bought the stickers.....maybe during this typhoon we'll get motivated to open the library.

We are currently in TC1, or Typhoon Condition 1, as a typhoon is approaching Okinawa, and so is Tom. He should be in Tokyo now, returning from a week in Chicago at a conference and visiting with Andy. We are hoping that he will be able to make his way back tonight, if not, he will stay in Tokyo til the Typhoon literally blows over.