Monika's sorority sisters

The first weekend in January the girls and I made our annual trip up to Arroww**d for Monika's sorority group reunion.  This was our 9th year there (The travel group will be home for 9 years this coming June).  Monika has 5 sorority sisters from her orphanage, another sister and brother from a different orphanage.  Unfortunately we never have gotten all 8 families up there.  We usually can get all 8 families together in the Gotcha day anniversary.  3 families including myself have made it up there every year.  We go from Friday to Sunday.  It so nice to spend a weekend together.  They start out kinda shy, but quickly it turns around and it is like they been together this whole time.  

5 of the 6 Spicy Hunan girls

 

 

Halli, Sara and Monika,  Halli and Sara are the oldest two in the sorority sister group by 2 1/2 months

Joe the Rocker.  I was very lucky to have him in both Monika, Katie and Jenny's group.  His youngest daughter, Katie and Jenny are the same travel group, different orphanages.

Along with the fabulous Friday night pasta bar, the girls always get at least one bowl of dipping dots in the waterpark

My 3 girls on the lazy river

Tom getting pulled along with all the girls

Jenny

Katie

Monika

Most of the girls (missing 2 of the siblings)

Macy and Monika, they are one week apart, with Monika being younger

Monika and Sara checking out to see who is the shortest.  These two have gone back and forth on who is the shortest one in the group.  This year it goes to Sara

 Shortest to tallest in this picture.  I don't know how Monika was taller in the other picture, but we all thought it was Sara the shortest, but I think maybe it is Monika.  The youngest girl is the tallest now  There is a 3 months span from the oldest (middle one and the youngest the tallest one).

 Russ always gets down and plays "horse", the girls are getting bigger, so I don't think there will be many more years of them on him.

The last couple of years, we have had a potluck supper in our room.  It is really nice as it is cheap, and the kids and adult can sit around and talk, and we don't have to have the kids be on restaurant manners.   I had decided to bring the W ii up.  I brought just the dance games figuring that the 4 people on the remotes can play and the others can dance.  Everyone got into it, including the parents.  The above picture is two of the moms and one of each of their daughters.

Erin brought a friend (in purple) with.  I had decided that she would have a lot more fun, if she had someone that was deaf too.  Erin was a great friend and very responsible that weekend.  Her friend didn't want to swim the whole time even though Erin wanted to, Erin got out of the pool and hung out with her.  She made sure her friend was good and so forth.  She let me know where they were at all times.  I am very proud on how well Erin did.

As you can see, the parents in the back (yes even on the bed) dancing away to the game

4 of the 5 sorority sisters played.  Halli didn't feel comfortable enough to play.  It got really warm in the room, we open the patio door and seeing it was unseasonably warm, it didn't help a lot, so we open the room door to the hallway, got some weird stares from people when they walked by

Some of the kids rotated from the W ii and playing games.  Great times.

  

I tried to download more pictures of us dancing but it isn't letting me.  Dave and Jade drove up for the day which meant a lot to everyone.  They ended up staying a lot later then they thought they were going to because we were having such a blast.

Monika group is the only group I feel really connected with.  We see each other at least 2 times a year and I usually see some of the other members of her group throughout the year at the parties.  Katie and Jenny's group, we were the waiting children group so we only spend 4 days with them in China and usually only see them 2 a year.  Erin group is spead out all over US and she hasn't seen any of them since we came home.

Monika really feels the connection with her Sorority sisters, sister and brother, I am so grateful for this as I feel this will help her as she is growing up.  It really bothers her that we have never visit the inside of her orphanage or meet the nannies (we adopted her during the height of SARS).  

I am so grateful that we have such a wonderful group and that they are part of my family.  Amazing how God weaves that invisible red thread in our lives.  This group has multiple names, they are known as SARS stars, Spicy Hunan girls and company, sorority sisters and brother.