Finally an Update from the States!

First night in a new bed

Molly and Tom helping us sing Happy Birthday to the Birthday girl!

Christine, Molly and Tom all picked us up from the airport, this was all of our stuff, we needed two cars to carry everything home

Aunt Becky and Uncle John wanted the Birthday girl to celebrate in style. Jalena was sporting her crown from them at Heathrow

Daddy and David enjoying a smoothy at 6 in the morning and Heathrow airport.

Last photo with Angela, our neighbor in Kenya. Right before we headed out to board the plane home to the states

Jalena's big birthday bash at the Chinese Restaurant, she wanted the Princess Tiana on her cake, blowing out the candles with her brothers and sisters from the Ark.

We just saw the movie over Christmas with Nana, Jalena LOVED it!

David and all his friends, our neighbors, Eric and Emil, school mates, Anna and Owen

David feeding Owen (Owie) he misses him soooo much!

Mommy, David, Mr. Rautta (our attorney), Jalena and Daddy at Jalena's big party!

Damaris (Jalena's braille teacher), David and Jalena

Riana Gables'(our apartment complex in Kenya) neighbors.

Good friends, Karen with her kiddos, Millie and Ethan and Tomi.

Colleen with Kieran, Allison and her sister in law in center

Jalena and David with Jalena's brothers and sisters from the Ark.

Tasha, Delva (Penny's kiddos), Katie, Jalena and David

Penny with her two daughters, Tasha and Delva and Jalena and David

Penny with David and Jalena

Jalena's first birthday party of the day, she ended up having three cakes all together. Teacher Benjamin is helping her cut the cake and Teacher Jackie is holding David back from jumping right into the cake!

Sorry I have been so behind with blogging, but life got a little busy as soon as we got home to Denver.

We finished our time up in Kenya with a great party for Jalena's 6th birthday on the night we took off to come home to the States. I will include a few pics. We left our party a little late, but other than that had a pretty uneventful trip home, the kids were really well behaved for the 27 hour trip home.

We miss all of our friends in Kenya tons and David all the time asks to go home to Kenya. He always had lots of his friends around our apartment and he really misses Owen, Anna and Emil. He finally is in more of a routine and starts full time at his new school tomorrow. Jalena on the other hand has loved every minute of being in the States. She mentions and remembers so much about Kenya, however she loves her new school here in Denver and all the family and friends that she had heard so much about when she was waiting to come home.

We hope all of you had a wonderful Holiday Season. We LOVED being home here as a family in Denver. We had a few other things going on, surgery on my foot, the sewer line backing up into the basement and flooding the basement while my mom and brothers were out for the holidays, and now the reconstruction of the basement. When it rains, it seems to poor! Oh, well, hopefully reconstruction will start on the basement next week and we will have the front yard torn up this week and a whole new sewer line put in by the end of the week. By the end of January we hope to be finally settled. We head out Martin Luther King weekend to Phoenix. Daddy was very driven and lost 40 lbs when we were in Kenya and now will be running his first Marathon in Phoenix. Jalena and David are calling it Daddy's "Sports Day" and are very excited about being Daddy's biggest fans!

Got to get to laundry and a few e-mails. Hope you are all well!

Lots of love,
Katie, Josh, Jalena and David

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all. We are very lucky that this Thanksgiving our family is together and we will be heading home to Denver tomorrow night from Kenya. The US embassy was amazing with our paperwork, finished it in a weeks time and we got the kids Visas in one day and can't wait to board that plane leaving Nairobi tomorrow night as a family, YIPEEEEE!!!!! We land in Denver on Saturday later in the afternoon and Jalena is getting the biggest birthday present ever, to become a US CITIZEN the minute we land! We of course didn't want to leave Kenya without doing some entertaining and a big bash, so for Jalena's sixth birthday we are having a party of 70, kids and adults at her favorite Chinese Restaurant. It should be a blast and will wear the kids out so when they sit down in their seats on that plane they just want to pass out for the nine hour flight to London.

We hope you are all well this Thanksgiving and we look forward to seeing you all again sometime VERY soon!

Katie, Josh, Jalena and David

Halloween Weekend and Lots of Pics

Jalena with her new and forever hair do for now, dreads! No more brushing!

Mama Owie and Kieran, Colleen and I with David and Jalena and Anna at the Chinese Restaurant

Colleen and I with the kiddos

Sunday lunch at Chinese David loves babies, especially baby Kieran

Can you imagine, Jalena loves holding babies even more

Our friend Alison with her daughter Anna who is the same age as David and baby Kieran again, he just got passed around on Sunday. I think Anna is ready for a sibling.

Baby Kieran's Dad , Finn, and brother Owen with David as well.

Finn, with David and Owen at the American Chamber of Commerce Halloween party.

David and his buddies, Owen (batman), Izzy (she is the pumpkin)

Jalena has always wanted to be a princess, so she was all decked out on Halloween

Owen relaxing with a drink

David was really spiderman, they have no costume shops and wasn't the super creative mom this year with making costumes. He did not want to leave his spiderman mask on, but seemed to like this Mickey Mouse mask, mickey is one of his favorites!

Last weekend was filled with parties and lots of fun for kiddos and parents! I haven't uploaded lots of pics in a long time, so I thought I would give it a try.

Fun with Friends and Happy Diwali!

Jalena and David all dressed up for Diwali at school!

Playing at the Chinese restaurant with Owie

David and his best little bud Owie!

Jalena and David dressed for school for the big Diwali celebration!
Diwali is the Hindu New Year. Jalena got to borrow a top from our neighbor, Meeta and David's was all the way from India from Daddy!

Pics that are long overdue!

The kids doing Cheers with their lollipops the night we got through the courts!!!

Celebrating out at Chinese

David not eating once again, stirring food into his juice

Jalena all smiles since she knows that now we can go home to America soon, most excited about seeing Daddy everyday!!!

Outside the courthouse on October 14, 2009, our final adoption approval day! From L-R, Grace (a social worker from Little Angels), Florence (our guardian), me with the kids, Franklin (an associate at Mr. Rautta's law firm that did most of our case).

Final Court Order, YIPEEEE!!!!

Today was our day, OCT 14, 2009, Jalena Shupavu and Hunter Minayo became Jalena Shupavu Neema Rubin and David Uhuru Rubin. There is still more paperwork to be done in the courts, but I don't have to be present and neither do the children, which is wonderful! Then we move onto the US immigration side of things to get home. We hope to make it home in time for Thanksgiving. My Visa runs out before Thanksgiving, so we really hope we can make things happen by then to be home as a FAMILY for the holidays!!! We will keep you all updated in the weeks to come as far as our final departure comes closer. The pictures from today unfortunately came out super blurry.

The kids were angels from 11 am until 4 :30 when we finally got to go in and see the judge, but as soon as David walked into the court room he totally lost it until 5:45 when we walked out of the room with our orders. We then went out and celebrated with Karen a good friend here over some chinese food. We did a cheers with our drinks and of course the kids got lollipops at the end of dinner and when we came home they were doing a cheers with their lollipops! Jalena just kept saying, "this is our celebration day!" David continued to be a madman in the restaurant, however I could have cared less, I figured he deserved it after sitting still for five hours! Got no sleep the night before court and we are all just exhausted, so need to sign off, but all of you who have alreayd sent your well wishes, thank you so much and we will be in touch and even better, we will see you all VERY soon!!!

Lots of love,

Josh, Katie, Jalena and David Rubin

PS Pictures to follow, the connection was interrupted when trying to upload, but I need to get to bed.

Hope to have some good news soon......

We hope by the end of this week we will have some good news from the courts, so keep your fingers and toes crossed for us! We have had a busy weekend so far filled with sleep overs and birthday parties. Last night some friends came over and we had a big sleep over with Karen and her two kiddos, Millie and Ethan who are 2 and 3 1/2. Today we went to Zoe's birthday party. Zoe and David had lived at New Life together. When we were first volunteering at New Life Josh and I met Zoe's parents who work for USAID and have been here in Kenya for a few years now. Zoe just turned 3 and had a BIG BLOWOUT! Jumping castles, face painting, henna, pony rides, puppet shoes and lots of cake of course! Jalena turned into a butterfly during the course of the day, but David was a bit more of a mama's boy throughout the day. We spent the morning at the hospital due to him having horrible diarrhea all night to find out after a stool sample that he had giardia. So, fabulous Flagyl for the next few days and staying away from other kids and hanging with Mom. As soon as we got our news, we booked it out of the party and home for the night. Hoping tonight is not as frequent as last night with changing diapers, every hour, ahhhh. So, I will load these pics and hop into bed. Hope you are all well!!!

Katie