Welcome to our story...

God has richly blessed us with a big, fun family...
We have 10 children... 3 homegrown & 7 born in our hearts!

Blake... our oldest is 25 and has a heart for the Lord. He enjoys; church, family, mission trips, making music, playing guitar & drums at church, and writing.

Brianna Faith... is 21 and has a compassionate & tender heart. She's a wonderful big sister. She began talking to us about adoption when she was 11 yrs old. She is "Faith in motion"

Brent... is 17 - he's an awesome guy! He's in highschool. He has a special heart for family and God. He loves sports! Brent loves to laugh & is full of life!

Bethany Lidia... now 15, joined our family in August 2006 at 9 yrs old. She's from the beautiful country of Guatemala. She started school for the very first time (at 9 yrs old) and is now in 9th grade. Lidia's passion is sports & dancing!

Benjamin Ross... 15 yrs old. We first saw his picture in April 2007 & came home in May '08. Ben is deaf, but his special need is that he needed a family. Ben loves making home-runs & hanging out with family & friends. Ben is from Tianjin, China.

Briella Xiyao... our beautiful 15 yr old daughter from Fujian Province, China. She joined our family in July 2009. She's always wearing a big smile! She has a passion for the deaf & very proficient in sign language. She loves basketball!!

Bellamei Ying... our Inner Mongolian princess. Bellamei is 14 yrs old and held my hand for the first time on July 18, 2011. She has melted into our big family seamlessly and it is truly an honor to be her mommy.

Brinley Grace FuChuan... is 9 years old and joined our family in July 2007. She's from Jiangxi Province, China. She has the most gentle, sweet spirit... she's an angel!

Bayla Shea Chao-Yu... our youngest. She's 9 yrs old, 5 months younger than Brinley. Bayla's from Hunan, China & came home at 11.5 months. She's bright, funny (and spicy!) We can't get enough of her hugs & kisses.

and our caboose... Braxton Emanuel Jordan - 8 yrs old? (see post below) He's from Guangdong Province and is now officially our son!

This 1 min video shows how we've GROWN!

School days...

School started August 25th. Even though Ben's bus comes at 6:30 in the morning, he runs down the driveway with sheer glee everday! He always prays at the dinner table every night (which is such a sweet blessing) and he never forgets to thank God for school. I was nervous about the early bus time, since he's not a morning person, but here it is already Oct 2, and he's gotten up every day joyfully at 6:00. He rides on a special bus for kids in the exceptional childrens program, although it looks like a regular school bus. There is always an extra aide on the bus, which is good because Ben usually sleeps the whole way home (45 min) and the aide wakes him up. The bus driver and aide are very nice, and seem to be hand picked to work with special kids. Ben waves goodbye to them everyday, until the bus is out of sight. I was very impressed with all of Ben's teachers, from his main teacher for the deaf, to his speech/language pathologist, the ESL teacher, and the interpreters that go with Ben when he leaves his class... like to go to recess, lunch, music, etc., where he and another boy from his class (Taylor) join a regular hearing class for those activities. Ben gets homework everyday. I'm learning a lot about teaching Ben. Since my ASL experience is only 1 year & Ben's is almost 6 months, at times we must break out the ASL dictionaries & the english/chinese electronic translator. It gets even trickier when the two ASL dictionaries have different signs! There are concepts that have seemed challenging to interpret, like subtraction with regrouping, math word problems, odd & even numbers, ABC order (he didn't know the american alphabet) and much more. But, Ben and I have gotten through it all... and in fact, he's brilliant. To my surprise, one night the teacher sent home 2 little books, and part of his homework was to read them to me. It was only a few weeks into school and I wondered, how will he sign this to me?? His written english was zero at the start of school. He's never been taught the signs for connecting words like "the" or "is"...because ASL drops all those types of words. In fact, the way Ben will learn written English is by sight. Meaning, he must remember each word by sight, instead of sounding it out like a hearing person. Well, I was impressed! I just had to video it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa & Mike,

I'm so glad I happened to check my email just now, to see the great little video of Ben. Doesn't he look happy! And thrilled to be learning to read English! He is an adorable boy, & he sure is thriving in the Jordan family!

Anonymous said...

Wow! I am impressed. He is doing great. He must have great teachers because school hasn't been in session that long. He is so cute too! :) Traci & Family

Laura Lee said...

Aww! How fun to watch this! Ben, you're doing great! Keep up the good work.

love,
The Temples

Angel said...

OH MY WORD!!!! He is so ADORABLE!!! I just love him to death. Look at him. :0) I adore how he says AMEN at the end of the books. How cute is that??? What a smart little guy. He is wonderful. Angel

bbeatley said...

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I am sending you this comment to let you know I have tagged you. I have never done this before so I hope you are OK with me doing it. I know many of you are very busy (either caring for sick spouses or in China bringing home your beautiful children) so please don’t feel obligated to do this. I just wanted to pass it on in hopes of meeting more people and learning more about everybody. I am very happy to be a part of blogspot, the people on here are so much more real to me then my friends and family on Myspace. I hope you all have a great day.
Bobbie