Camp

It's time to start raising money for camp again! We have about 35 kids we want to take this year. Some from our church but mostly kids who have been abandoned or taken from their home for various reasons and have very little hope of ever going back. The cost of a week at Camp Joy is $50. If you would like to send a child to camp please contact us.

What Adoption Means to the Twins

We had a visit from our social worker and the child psychologist last Thursday. We have all this paper work to put together again and turn in to receive a final court date. So, the twins new the ladies were here concerning them and they kept asking, "Is it almost done then?" I would say yes but then at the end of the visit I realized they thought when these ladies leave our house they would be Howertons! When they left Joey hollered out, "Is that it, are we Howertons, do we have blue passaports" (no I didn't misspell passports, that is how Joey says it). He asks almost daily if he is a Howerton yet. It's hard to explain to a 6 year old that we consider you a Howerton but that is not your offical name yet and it is also very important to him to have a blue passport but that won't come until our visit to the states, Lord willing next year. Gina is more independent and hard to read. She doesn't really ask questions about it, maybe to her she already is part of the family but Joey seems to realize that all of this is very important. It is also very important to him to have a blue passport like the rest of the family. He desires to be an American so badly! When we first got the twins Romanian passports last year so we could go to Vienna, Austria with them they were estatic! Joey always request to see his passport and always wants to show it to people. It was such a huge deal for him especially. But now he wants a blue one, his red one isn't good enough anymore :-). He wants to be like us.
We are close to having our paper work completed and then we turn in our file and wait some more. You would think by now I would be good at waiting but I'm not.

Barcelona

Thursday in Barcelona was sunny and cool. We went to a very quiet and peaceful monestary that was founded in 1326. We enjoyed riding the tour bus that you can hop on and off around town and visit different places. We enjoyed eating without 6 children. We are used to cutting up their food and telling them to be quiet and chew with your mouth closed so it was quite nice just sitting down and eating!
Friday, we walked a lot and looked in shops and just relaxed. Went and sat on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. It was so relaxing. Then on our last day, Saturday, we took a boat ride on the Mediterranean Sea which was so lovely. We then went back to the apartment we stayed at, got our luggage, walked through the crowds to the subway and got on...if you remember our last anniversary trip to Rome, Baron got pick pocketed on the subway so we were so careful this time but on our way to the airport with all our luggage we were prime target and Baron let his guard down and put his wallet in his back pocket. We were crowded by a group getting on the subway and they got his wallet. Our instinct when he knew his wallet was gone was to jump of the subway because the guy that stole it in Rome ran off so we thought we could catch him that way but we realized too late it was the group of people that had been acting really strange and they actually stayed on the subway. Right there in the subway station Baron called the bank and thankfully we cancelled all our cards before they had a chance to use any of them. They did get away with 90 Euro and Baron's DL, and permanent residency card but we are trying to be thankful because it could have been much worse. We actually believe they may have gotten in my purse too because my makeup bag was missing from my purse. We are so thankful they got that instead because that left me with a bank card so we could access our bank account still. We decided to go to the police station at the airport to fill out the report so we headed to the airport bus and to our surprise when we got there the driver told us the airport was "clos-ed"...we thought he was joking with us but we didn't think it was very funny seeing as how we had just had our wallet stolen! There were a lot of other people standing around though and when we found someone who spoke English sure enough, the airport was clos-ed due to the volcanic ash from Iceland! The airport closed around 4 p.m. Saturday and opened back up early Sunday morning but we missed our flight. We flew Wizz Air which is a discount company so there is no Wizz Air office at the airport and no one there can help you...that is the price you pay flying discount...if there is a problem you are in trouble! So, we were fortunate enough to be able to go back to the same apartment we stayed in and she let us have it for half price because she felt sorry for us! Baron called Ionita back in Romania and asked him to call all our church people and to go to church to wait for anyone who might come to let them know why there was no service. The Tylers fortunatley agreed to just keep the kids a while longer :-). We got up early Sunday morning and decided just to head to the airport in hopes we could get a flight. We then found out there is no Wizz Air office there and tried in vane to get ahold of the airline and put about 20 euro into the phone and kept being put on hold. We did find out there were two options, flying out Sunday night to a city in Romania but we would arrive in the middle of the night and there was no train to Lugoj until the next day or flying to Budapest, Hungary on Monday morning. Thankfully our good friends the Tylers said they would be willing to pick us up in Budapest. After 6 hours in the airport we realized we weren't getting out that day and we got a hotel close to the airport for the night. Then from the hotel we finally got a hold of Wizz Air and were put on the Budapest flight for the next morning. We enjoyed dinner at a Pizzarea that Sunday night ( it was a really weird Sunday for us). We got up and the airport shuttle took us at 7:15 to the airport. The flight was scheduled to take off at 8:55 a.m. When we arrived at the gate it said estimated take off was 11:30 a.m. So we sat at the gate and around noon someone came to the gate and gave us all free snack voutures and told us they had no idea when the plane was actually coming. The plane finally did come around 1:30 and we got out around 2 p.m. We arrived in Budapest at 4:30 p.m. and then had a 4 1/2 hour drive home. We stopped to pick up the kids and finally at 11 p.m. Monday night we arrived home! What a memorable ending to a wonderful anniversary trip!

Day #1 in Barelona.

Day One in Barelona. Right away we could see the beauty of Barcelona. We stopped and had a donut and coffee/hot chocolate for breakfast...yes it was chilly enough that hot chocolate was yummy. Then we walked a little further and spotted...

So we had breakfast number two which was even better then the first one! It was a little overcast and drizzling rain but by noon it cleared up and was just chilly. We took the tour bus around town and even made it to Toys R Us and got the summer birthday boys a gift (toys in Romania are soo expensive).


Barcelona, we found was a quiet city. We stayed right near the beach in the Barceloneta area and it was very quiet. We loved it and thought it was a beautiful city.