Meet the Familia
I’m Kim, freckle-faced decendent of Pilgrims. Yes, the Thanksgiving ones. I’ve been married to Fred since 2003, and we have two sons we adopted from Guatemala in 2007. Prior to their adoption, I was a manager at a retirement community and a graduate student getting a masters degree in counseling. Now I’m home full-time with the twins, homeschooling, and in the midst of tracking paperwork for a second adoption process.
Aside from blogging here, I occasionally write for another blog Fred and I share with two of our best friends, Ethan and Jocie. In what spare time I can scrape together, I love getting together with friends, reading, gardening, and, as life would have it, cultivating my inner Latina.
Fred is a software development manager with a side-hobby of home improvement and home-improvement blogging (if you have that bent at all, check it out: www.oneprojectcloser.com).
He’ll occasionally post here too, but only when I promise to exchange him for some help on our basement-finishing project. “We’ve” been working on it for four years. But, no question, he’s put in far more hours than I have.
Heriberto (pronounced airy-BEAR-toe… bonus points if you can roll the “r’s”) is our firstborn – by 5 minutes. He and José were born in Guatemala and lived with their birth mom for two years. She contacted our attorney there shortly after our dossier arrived in the country, and we were matched with them. We kept their given names, but we call Heriberto “Bear” for short to help out all our non-Spanish-speaking friends and family.
Heriberto is in Kindergarten but can’t wait to be a big person. He’s smart, athletic, and a born leader.
José (pronounced “hoe SAY… no “zzz” sound) is our resident comedian. Even as a toddler he had an innate sense of how to get people to laugh. He’s also naturally aware of how everyone’s feeling and is right there with a compliment, kind word or hug.
He throws himself 100% into whatever he’s doing, so he’s usually sticky or dirty but never bored.
He knows he was born after his twin brother but is quick to point out that he was bigger. So yes, they have the normal brotherly competitiveness. Having been through a lot together, though, they’re very, very close and will tell anyone who asks that they are best friends.
AND…
We don’t know who our last two kids are yet, but we’re pretty sure we know where they are. In September 2008 we began the process to adopt another sibling pair, this time from El Salvador. After completing our homestudy and meeting U.S. immigration requirements, we sent all our paperwork to El Salvador in July. So now we’re in the waiting phase, and Salvadoran adoptions take years. But we know, as with the twins, one day we will say it was worth the wait.
