About Our Family

El Paso, Texas, United States
We are James, Lisa, Patrick, Christian, Carson, and Ella Payne a military family serving our country via service in the U.S. Army. Jim and I have been married for 18 years and have 3 wonderful home grown sons -Patrick, Christian and Carson. We recently adopted our beautiful daughter Ella Grace Ana from Donets'k, Ukraine in September. Jim and I began our Army life together at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas and every assignment thus far has extended unique opportunities and challenges for our family to grow and learn; to become a stronger, committed, and a prepared Army family. Having recently lived abroad for six amazing years, we cannot express how thankful we are for the opportunity to have represented our great country and to discover the cultures and customs of other countries; to become close to the people and learn from them; to open our hearts and minds to the unfamiliar languages and way of life in other countries. Having now moved back to the United States, we are looking forward to discovering what new adventures await our family. Rest assured, wherever the Army sends us we will continue to serve you and our country proudly. Army life, we wouldn’t trade it!

April 5, 2008

March 30 - April 5, 2008

Finally, we have recovered (for the most part) from that terrible cold/bronchitis we picked up at the end of spring break.

It was an uneventful week. Jim arrived home from the off-site in San Antonio and then he worked the rest of the week, kids went to school - Tuesday was a field trip day to Faunia http://www.faunia.es/ to study the animals. Both classrooms have an endangered species project at school; each child has selected an endangered animal to study - Christian is raising awareness of the Bengal Tiger and Carson is highlighting the Black Panther. They have done a tremendous amount of research and will draw and make buttons to raise money for endangered animals at the end of the project. I finally made it back into the gym and began the purging process of all the "why in the world are we still holding on to this" items. I did make progess as all the ski & winter coats, gloves, scarfs, & hats are now washed and packed (4 large plastic containers full!) and ready for the movers.

Our RFO (Request For Orders) arrived and the process has been initiated for orders so we can begin making appointments for moving our household goods and cars, making arrangements for temporary furniture, lodging, and airline tickets...so much depends on those orders! Thanks to the NSE (Navy Support Element) for working it for us ~ you guys are great!

We received a call from our agency on Thursday - we hope to post later this week that we have a date for submission or have been submitted. We are waiting word from our facilitator (V) to verify information. We will send out an email to check our blog when this occurs. Thank you to (C) for calling!

Okay, that's it for us for now.

1 comment:

Chris and Virginia said...

OH, I remember those days. We still have some boxes in storage that were packed on our first overseas tour and we labeled them (do not open until last move). We've been out for 9 years now and have bought a house and yet, these boxes are still in storage. I'm thinking we'll have one BIG garage sale this year and finally get this stuff sorted.

This is our "spot" we began at the beginning of our journey in May 2007, to adopt a child from Ukraine. In August 2008, we traveled to Ukraine to bring our daughter/sister Ella Grace Ana home; and on September 12, 2008 we did just that.

While our journey to bring her home is complete, our journey together is just beginning. We will continue to keep our spot here, posting as frequently as we can; and keeping you updated on our next journey in life...maybe a second adoption is in our future.

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