I think these are all on her kids' first day of school.
I'm close to her kids. I started watching Payton as soon as she was born and then Eliot and then the others as soon as they got home from China. So I have no problem in lecturing or yelling... I mean correcting them.
Wow, don't you two look happy.
Gabrielle is on the left and Darby's on the right. Becki said the other day they were out to dinner when Gabrielle said this about the being adopted: "Basically, I'm sitting here with a a bunch of strangers." Becki responded, "you do realize you're one of the biggest miracles of my life?" Gabrielle is very sweet but not much of a comedian. Or maybe she is, depending on your sense of humor.
Gabrielle is the one that showed us how big our God is. Becki gave birth to Payton and Eliot and then in a few years she decided she wanted a 3rd child. I told her she better adopt because I was tired of watching babies. I had taken care of Whitney, Brady, Lyric and then her two. Becki said she didn't have money to adopt. I told her she had better start praying then. We both prayed hard for 3 months for God to give her money to adopt a baby from China. One day she came home and out of the blue the airport called her and said if they would not sue for the airplane traffic over their house, the airport would pay her. My sister had no idea they were going to get this offer and had heard nothing about this until about 3 days before when they heard rumors something was going on with the airport. My sister and her husband had made no phone calls, sent no letters, or done anything else complaining about the new runway that had been put in. Just a few days later they got another phone call saying they were going to be one of the first families paid their money. They received a gigantic check that took care of the cost of their adoption and a little more. That was years ago, and the traffic over their house isn't bad at all, and in fact I think it is worse over our house--and we've never gotten a dime!
Needless to day they knew God meant this money to be used for an adoption. They started the paperwork immediately. Eventually, Becki picked out Gabrielle. She was about 18 months old when they got her, but the story got even more miraculous just a few days before she and her husband left for China to get Gabrielle, her husband was sitting at the table filling out final papers and asked Becki what she wanted her middle name to be. They had already picked out the name Gabrielle. Just a day or so before Becki and I were in the car and talking about middle names we liked. Becki told him "Sammy likes Olivia." He wrote it down and we were all shocked when he told her that Gabrielle's initials spelled out G-O-D.
Oh and this is the house they did and still live in. Becki and her husband both consider Gabrielle their little perfect princess. Don't tell them I said that. : - ) She is a very easy, sweet child. I still make fun of Becki about what she said when they were handed Gabrielle in China. She said, "She is so beautiful I gasped." Yeah... she said that she gasped. LOL
Eliot and Jenna. Jenna is in the band picture below and she belongs to my older sister, Charly. My younger sister has Payton, Eliot and then adopted Gabrielle, Darby and then Sawyer. They adopted Sawyer older so I don't have any little pictures of him.
Eliot
Jenna and her big sis Erin-both Charly's.
