The Smith Family

2nd garage sale fundraiser and current adoption status

2012-02-05T15:52:00.000-06:00

We are planning to have another garage sale fundraiser the weekend of March 17. We really made a lot of money from the first one so I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do at this one. I announced by email and facebook last week and we have already gotten lots of donation just in the span of 1 week so I'm excited.

We are still waiting to hear about our grant application. Our pastor told us we should give them 6 weeks to get back to us.

We got our I-600A immigration approval last week! This was big news for us because our agency really had us worried if USCIS was going to request more information. They didn't, and we got the approval, so that was nice.

We have to get new copies of a few things that are in our dossier because the expiration date of the notary stamp on some of our documents is expiring sooner than Congo would like them to be expiring. It's pretty annoying. I wish they could have told us that from the beginning to check those dates and we could have had a different notary do it. Brian is also having to renew his passport which we knew we'd have to do, it expires in April.

But our agency went ahead and sent everything (with the current notary dates) to the Texas Secretary of State to get certified and already got them back last week. Now they are sending our homestudy and power of attorney to the Department of State before everything will go to the Congolese embassy for certification.

So things are happening. We are truly just in waiting mode.

We went to a Parenting Conference at our church yesterday and it was great. It was our 2nd year to go and before hand I was thinking do we really need to go to this again? We are always so busy and it would have been nice to have a Saturday with nothing to do. I had to wake up at 4:50am to run a 12 miler before the conference (our longest run before the Cowtown half marathon coming up in 3 weeks), then didn't have a chance to take a shower but just changed clothes and hurried up to the church after the run. But I am so glad we did go. It was so nice to get encouraged and get new ideas about parenting and just feel refreshed in what we are trying to do as a family and as a parenting team.

Brian and I will be attending another conference in 2 weeks - Empowered to Connect. Since the parenting one this weekend has given me a new view of our parenting, I'm looking forward to that one giving me preparation in a new way for our adoption.

Dossier on its way to agency

2012-01-23T14:21:00.000-06:00

Well, that birth certificate I kept checking the mail for in my last post arrived on Saturday so that meant I had a stack of papers completed to send to our agency for our dossier. I mailed everything out today and I'm so excited because I think that is the last of the paperwork we have to do! I don't even know if that could really be possible? I'm sure there will be more paperwork. But for now at least we're done.

I also had an interesting call over the weekend. Whoever is reviewing our I-600A called to ask me a question. It was pretty weird and unexpected. But the question was why Gladney center for adoption had run a background check on me back in 2006. The answer was because I volunteered with them. Who knew even that bit of information was going to be something that came out in this investigation into our lives?! I'm glad it was an easy question with an easy answer. It was also fun to remember how my passion for orphan care goes back to 2006 when I was volunteering with them and to think how far we've come that we are now adopting ourselves!

Checking the mail

2012-01-20T16:42:00.000-06:00

I have reached the point that the mail coming is a very important part of the day. I remember a time when I could go a day forgetting to check the mail, or just not checking it because I was lazy or didn't care about it, but no longer! I am waiting on 2 important things to arrive and each day expectantly go and look for them.

The 1st is my birth certificate. Yes, I already had a copy of my birth certificate, but to adopt we had to have one issued within the last 3 years so I am waiting for that one to arrive. It's part of what is needed for our dossier headed to Congo. We have already received Brian's from South Carolina so surely anyday now mine will arrive.

The 2nd thing I'm waiting on is our I-600A approval. That is also needed to go with our dossier. So anyday now I will open the mailbox and those will arrive and it will be such a happy day! Unfortunately our mail comes SO LATE in the day - like 5pm late. So it hasn't arrived yet today and I just can't wait until it gets here! Maybe today will be the day!

Two things mailed out today!

2012-01-17T19:51:00.001-06:00

After feeling like not much has been going on with the adoption lately, today seems like it was a big day!

Today we sent out 2 important things. The 1st was a check paying the first part of our foreign fee to Congo. We had been waiting to pay this, hoping we would get our immigration approval first, but we finally decided it was time to just pay it. Hopefully our immigration approval will be coming any day now that we FINALLY had our fingerprints last week.

The 2nd thing was an application for our church's adoption grant.

Now that we've paid the first part of our foreign fee our agency can medically test potential referrals for us and start translating our dossier. Once we have a referral hopefully we will get the grant from our church and then that money will help us pay to accept our referral. So we are moving along now.

Hopefully I'll be back with more good news soon!

And I guess it is time to re-paint my fingernails.

Book Challenge 2012

2012-01-01T21:48:00.000-06:00

So last year I set the goal for myself to read 3 books each month - one fiction, one non-fiction, and one that would help me grow spiritually. While I didn't hit my goal, I did get pretty close. I finished the year having read 28 books out of my goal of 36! And I definitely think 28 is more books than I have read in recent years past, if ever. So I'm looking forward to challenging myself again this year.

My main reading goals this year are the entertainment of a good story, to learn more about adoption and adoption-related issues and more about Congo, running books since that's my favorite hobby, homeschooling books to prepare me for teaching Savannah and Colton, parenting books, and spiritual books to continue to grow spiritually.

So here are some of the books I'm planning to read in 2012:

January

The Scarlet Thread by Francine Rivers
Kisses from Katie
Running With Joy by Ryan Hall
One Thousand Gifts (started this one last year and am now reading it with my mentor so it will probably span a couple of months as we discuss it)

February

Baby Proof by Emily Giffin
The Well-Trained Mind (2nd time to read)
Adopted for Life

March

Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin
Run Like a Mother
Crazy Love

April

One Hundred Years of Solitude
A Charlotte Mason Companion
Fields of the Fatherless

May

Love in the Time of Cholera
A Charlotte Mason Education
Don't Waste Your Life

June

Pride and Prejudice
In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories
Family Driven Faith

July

The Hunger Games
In Their Parents' Voices
Raising Your Children with No Regrets

August

This Present Darkness
In Their Siblings' Voices
Loving the Little Years

September

Piercing the Darkness
The Connected Child
Grace-Based Parenting

October

The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling
The Ministry of Motherhood
To Be a Runner

November

King Leopold's Ghost
Don't Make Me Count to Three
Close Kids

December

Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child
Attaching in Adoption
The Power of a Praying Wife

So many good books to read! I'm excited so now it's time to head to bed and start reading! Hopefully I can keep up with this list. I'm sure there will be more I come upon throughout the year that I'll want to add to my list too. I can hardly ever make a trip to the library without putting some interesting book I come across in my bag.

Freeze Christmas day in time

2011-12-27T18:25:00.001-06:00

Many times this Christmas I found myself wishing we could just freeze moments in time. I want to be able to forever remember this Christmas so I tried to soak in every moment with the kids so I could have little snapshots in my mind to look back on when they're older.

Savannah waking up and saying, "Colton, Colton, wake up. Here's what we're gonna do -- go potty, go get Mommy and Daddy, and then run to our presents!"

Colton having trouble falling asleep because he had taken a nap on Daddy on the couch earlier that afternoon. So I let him lay in bed with me while I read one of my new books and then he fell asleep and I let him stay there until I woke up about 3am before I finally moved him to his bed! We never let the kids sleep in our bed, but he was just too precious laying there.

Christmas eve morning we spent doing all our last minute preparations for my family to come over Christmas day. I also had time to squeeze in an 8 mile run. :) Then we went to our church's afternoon service and out to dinner. After dinner it was dark so we drove around and looked at Christmas lights. Even though it was freezing Savannah really wanted to get out and take pictures by these lights, so we did.

I wish we would have gotten a picture of all of us on Christmas eve, maybe next year we'll remember! When we got home the kids were SO EXCITED and we were trying to get them to calm down and go to bed. We let them run around the living room for a little while and they set out the ice cream? and chips? that Santa requested and also some carrots for the reindeer.

The kids playing with some of their gifts Christmas morning -

Colton was all about trucks. Every gift he'd open would be "what is it what is it? is it a truck?" He liked the airplanes and trains he got too. Savannah's favorite gift she played with all day was her Strawberry Shortcake grocery store and she used her princess figurines to play there too. It was a great Christmas.

Our edible nativity

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

So instead of making a gingerbread house we made a nativity! Thanks pinterest for giving me the idea! Oh my gosh, this is one of those I was talking about in an earlier post that is giving me the love/hate. Putting together the manger was a major patience tester, as you will notice in the pictures...

Here are our cute little sheep with big marshmallows and black licorice -

Savannah working on baby Jesus made out of mini marshmallows -

Colton was playing something like cars with the graham crackers, banging them into each other and "driving" them all over the table so crumbs ended up everywhere. But Savannah is intent on what she's making.

Colton playing, Savannah working -

Colton having fun, Savannah getting frustrated (just like mommy, uh oh)

Our candy cane shepherd's staff -

That yellow guy is our shepherd, he's a little lopsided and I forgot to buy 2 sizes of gumdrops to make our people. I also forgot to buy the stuff for our donkey. :)

Savannah's ingenious idea for Jesus' bed! I didn't know how we were going to hold it together and she came up with the idea to put the gumdrops to hold it up!

Here's the finished product. Pay no attention to the manger. Oh my gosh our frosting would not hold our graham crackers together and I bought the cheap Kroger brand and should have got the real ones because they weren't even the right size graham crackers. They were only 2 rectangles instead of 4! Urgh! So I was having to use frosting everywhere to hold it together and it was not working. I broke so many graham crackers. But we finally got it up (kinda). There was no putting baby Jesus actually inside the manger. And our hay is coconut colored w/ yellow food coloring. The kids really liked doing that part, it was fun shaking the ziploc bag around and watching it change colors.

Savannah would not pose by the completed project, but Colton did.

And then I said "don't touch it don't touch it! Wait for Daddy to get home so he can see it". As soon as Daddy gets home they run to show him and the manger falls over. Savannah starts throwing a fit. I tell her it is just not gonna stay up, but at least we have some cute lopsided people and sheep. :)

Adoption update

2011-12-22T18:59:00.000-06:00

I feel like I need a better title for these adoption posts. I am always putting something involving the word "update" but that's what it is and I can't get any more creative right now.

I am posting a lot today! Catch up time!

So I probably should have posted this a long time ago, but am just now getting around to it. Brian had to go out of town for work for 9 days! This was last week and the week before. So of course his trip coincided with when our biometric appointment was scheduled which is part of the stuff we have to have done before we can get our I-600A approval (what we're waiting on right now). I just knew it was going to happen. He started hinting around that he was going to have to travel soon and I said whatever happens make sure you don't have to travel when our appointment is! But he has no control over it so we had to re-schedule our appointment. And because of government red tape you can't call and re-schedule, you have to mail in your notice and then wait for them to mail back your new appointment date. We have no control over when it will get re-scheduled so lets just hope it doesn't get re-scheduled for another time that he has to travel. Really I am not even that upset about that whole situation because something that happened before that has me more excited!

Our agency emailed us about a 2 year old boy in Congo. I wouldn't really call it a referral because I don't know what's going to happen with the timing of this, but just the fact that they emailed us about a specific child in Congo was awesome and totally unexpected! What made the whole thing even better is it was like a direct, immediate answer to prayer. The day that I got the email I was praying specifically for our I-600A approval to happen before Christmas and even boldly asking if there was some way we could get a referral before Christmas. I really didn't think there was much chance of that happening, but I know that it's ok to sometimes ask God for things boldly, so I did.

The other cool thing about this whole situation is that our agency's director was out of the country working on another adoption program and had emailed me before she left saying she wouldn't be communicating with me for the next week and a half while she was gone. She said she didn't see any reason she'd need to communicate with me because we were just in the waiting phase, waiting on our I-600A.

So imagine my shock and amazement when I get this email less than 1 hour after I had been praying, when I shouldn't have been getting email from our director in the first place! So right away I just started thinking, this is our son, this is who God has picked for our family. After Brian and I talked and reality has set in, I have calmed down now and I don't know what to think, but I am still thinking about this boy everyday and wondering what his life is like right now.

I can't wait to see how the timing works out and if this does turn out to be our son. But as of now we are just waiting for our re-scheduled biometric appointment and then waiting for our I-600A approval and then hopefully our dossier will quickly be sent to Congo and we can see if this is our little boy. A little twin brother for Colton since they are the same age. :)

Salt Dough Ornaments - Part 2 - The Painting and Decorating

2011-12-22T18:33:00.000-06:00

On Monday I babysat for our neighbor's kids (one of our adoption fundraisers!). That was the day we had planned to paint our ornaments, but we had lots of extras and I figured Savannah's friend would have fun painting with us. I mentally prepared myself that things could get crazy though with 4 kids 4 and under and paint, sequins, and glitter all around. So I tried to be extra prepared - all the kids got one of Brian's old shirts to wear over their clothes, and newspapers were laid all over the table.

Luckily the 1 year old kept herself entertained with some pom poms and other random things over here -

Colton had fun with his first painting experience -

Savannah liked decorating her's with the sequins and glitter -

Then I realized I should really probably put her hair in a ponytail!

So cute in Daddy's huge shirt!

Not too crazy of a mess!

Colton's ornaments, I helped him finish a few. It had been a while since I painted and it was fun!

Savannah's finished ornaments with only a little pile of spilled glitter

The kids did great with the painting and liked it and it helped the babysitting time fly by! I think I might have an activity like this for us to do every time I babysit in the future.

After all the ornaments dried all that was left was to put the ribbon through the holes. Unfortunately, some of the holes turned out a little too small and I could not get the ribbon through. GRRRRH! But it was only a few this happened to, so next time I know make the holes extra big, or buy smaller ribbon. And there is probably going to be glitter all around the house for a while.

Salt dough ornaments - Part 1 - The cooking

2011-12-22T15:34:00.000-06:00

I am having a love/hate relationship with pinterest. I had been on it for a while and didn't do much with it, but lately I have become addicted. My addiction probably started around Thanksgiving when I saw all the awesome things you could make and do Thanksgiving related. So now that's it's almost Christmas we've been getting even more crazy doing all kinds of Christmas stuff I've seen on pinterest.

I love it because it gives me good ideas of things to do with the kids. I see it and think "that is so cute, the kids will have so much fun doing that". But I hate it because once we actually start doing it I remember I am not crafty and it is always way harder than it looks.

But honestly I think I am coming around on the craftiness. Each project we do I am enjoying a little more, so maybe I will turn out crafty after all. I just need a little practice (and patience). :)

So one of the things we did were salt dough ornaments. I had all the ingredients in the house for them - salt, flour, water. So how hard could it be? They were easy, so long as you don't mind the kids making a mess.

Colton is INSISTENT that he help. It's funny because it has taught me how capable Savannah is of actually helping me because compared to Colton she really does a good job. Colton makes me a little crazy, but I am working on that patience part and trying not to care about the mess and tell myself I can clean it up later.

Reaching for the meat thermometer which he used to punch holes in the ornaments for the rest of the time -

Flour all over his back, how does that happen?

Playing with a meat thermometer might be a little dangerous -

Ready to cook -

*I added a "follow me on pinterest" button to the blog on the right if you want to see what I've been pinning for the kids.*

Homeschooling fun

2011-12-22T15:19:00.001-06:00

I got a laminator last week. I am so excited about it. I knew it had gone on sale last year around Christmas and I almost ordered it but then talked myself out of it. So this year when I still wanted it and it went on sale again I hurried and bought it. Our first thing we tried laminating were these number cards -

Side note: One of the things we've been doing for advent this year is putting a Christmas ornament on a little tree in the kids' room each day. The ornaments were things friends and I made and exchanged at a party. Each day we have a little devotional that goes along with the ornament. The kids have really enjoyed it and I'm glad my friend convinced me to be crafty and make an ornament because its been worth it. So the reason Savannah has God written on her hand in the picture below is because one of the days we learned about the word Immanuel = God with us. So we wrote God on their hands so they can look down and remember that God is always with them. The kids LOVED it. And I was surprised how much Colton listened and learned from that lesson because usually he is just running around all over the place. But later whenever people would ask him about the God on his hand he would say "God loves you." He's also been saying lately "I love Jesus." And I love the way he says love. He places lots of emphasis on the word love.

So the laminator worked awesome on our number cards and Savannah was able to easily erase the dry erase crayons off the laminated sheets so I'm excited to see what else we can laminate. I have a few more things printed out we'll get to...

And here are some cute pics of Colton -

In the meantime all this week we have been doing lots and lots of Christmas crafts! About to post about those...

Some random updates...

2011-11-28T15:00:00.001-06:00

We joined a produce co-op last week. One of our neighbors wanted a family to share an order with and it sounded interesting so I decided to try it out. I was really impressed with our first order. It's all organic fruits and veggies and it's fun to see what they give you. We got some cranberries and a butternut squash that I was able to use right away in some Thanksgiving recipes. And the kids ate tons of the fruit right away.

I'm thinking we might need to go up to the full share and not split it w/ our neighbor anymore. But we have 6 weeks to try it before we have to officially "join" so we'll see how the next deliveries go.

We got a letter that Dept of Homeland Security received our I-600A and is processing it so that was exciting! Any adoption news is exciting.

I'll try to post about Thanksgiving later....

Children of God

2011-11-22T14:13:00.001-06:00

Found this on another blog today and had to repost. This pretty much says it all! Look at all the precious faces in this video and listen to the words of the song...

Videos the kids and I watched today and I think you might like watching too

2011-11-18T14:47:00.001-06:00

Today has probably been the most successful "homeschool" day yet. I didn't really have any plans other than I knew we were going to do some Thanksgiving stuff I printed off. And I also knew there was 1 video I wanted to show the kids because I saw a post about it yesterday.

So after breakfast I had the kids come over to the computer and we watched this video. It's about people in Ethiopia hearing about Christ for the first time. A lot of what it shows in the video is the kids hearing about Christ by watching this video that was made in their language and it is really powerful. The post I read about it was from another mom who had showed it to her kids and they liked it. I didn't know if mine would be too young, but they really liked it too. I started crying and then I had to explain to them why I was crying which is hard to do when you are in the middle of crying. But I think they got something out of watching it too.

They immediately wanted to watch another video about Jesus so I went to this one. This is one of my favorite songs and I love how they have the scenes to go along with the song. This one makes me cry too and if you don't want your kids to see graphic stuff (Jesus getting beaten and put on the cross) you might not want to show them this one. I went ahead and let them watch (maybe I am a bad mom?!), but I figured it is good to know the truth about what happened to Jesus and it is powerful to watch. I think them seeing my reaction to it (the crying) is probably something they will remember too and it's a teachable moment.

Anyways, after that we went to a fun one. It's the song "God is Not a White Man" by Gungor. Great song with a fun video for them to watch. Savannah was mad that Jesus wasn't in the video and wanted to watch another Jesus one so I said ok, 1 more and went to another song's video I love. This one is Aaron Shust - My Hope is in You. Great song that was written by a girl who used to go to our church. Ok Jesus isn't technically in this one, but Savannah watched it anyways.

After that it was good we had a break where we got dressed, made our beds, brushed our teeth, then they were ready to sit down and be still again. We did some of our Thanksgiving stuff I've been collecting. I had 2 coloring sheets.

Colton pulled out this marker and yelled "PURPLE"! I was so excited, maybe he is finally learning some colors, or maybe it was a lucky guess? :)

Then we watched another video because I realized the kids needed to know the basics of the Thanksgiving story before we started on the rest of our stuff. (I was really loving You Tube today). I searched "First Thanksgiving" and then in the drop down popped up "First Thanksgiving Children" so I clicked that and we watched a great video that taught them about the first Thanksgiving. It was great too because we have our huge map up so I was able to show them where the Pilgrims came from and where they landed in America. (I also used the map when we watched the Ethiopia video. Then the kids could see how close Ethiopia is in relation to their baby brother or sister, where we have a pin on the map to show them).

So after that video we talked about these vocabulary words on these cards and then I had Savannah try to match the word to the picture by using the first letter sound. She didn't get it too much, but they definitely learned the words Mayflower, Pilgrim, and Native American/ Indian so that was a success.

Then we played with these cards making a pattern for a few minutes before Daddy called us to meet him for lunch. Fun morning!

Adoption update - feeling encouraged

2011-11-17T17:50:00.001-06:00

So things have been kinda quiet about the adoption lately, but good things have been happening behind the scenes. As I mentioned in my last post Brian and I had been working hard to finish up our online training. We also had to talk to a couple of families who have adopted so they could tell us all their horror stories and scare us off. Not really, that's what I thought it would be, but they only told me stuff I was already prepared for. Well, so our home study has basically been done this whole time, and our agency and social worker have just been waiting for us. So once we sent the word we'd finished everything they made the final edits of our home study and now our agency has the final signed copy from our social worker.

Our agency sent me an email that she sent our stuff off to USCIS today. This is for us to get immigration approval. They are now working on completing our dossier, which is all the stuff that will go to Congo. Most of the documents for the dossier we've already sent them, but there will be a few more things we need to send off for.

So I had a nice chat with our director today. One of the things that we discussed is Brian and I have started to lean towards only making 1 trip to Congo instead of 2. It was one of the adoptive families I talked to that kinda got me leaning this direction. Our thinking is not only will it save money and Brian's vacation time, but also pain in us and our kid in meeting them and then having to leave them for a few months while the adoption is finalized before we can bring them home. Another good point this family brought up to me is at the point we'll be at by the time we make a trip to the Congo to meet our kid, would we really back out of adopting them? Adopting is already a journey into the unknown, and adopting them before meeting them is just another step of faith that we're either totally in this or not. I don't think meeting them will help us decide anything that we haven't already decided. It was good to talk all that out with our director and we also talked about how I've been feeling this last month and everything was very reassuring.

And also adoption related, we have been very blessed raising some money lately. The money issue is always in the back of my mind because it is still a lot of money we have to come up with. But the photography fundraiser has been successful and I've been having a lot of fun doing it too. And we've also been selling some of our garage sale stuff that didn't sell at the sale on craigslist so we've been getting a little money from that too. And more donations for our spring sale are still coming in too. (And Brian is happy because he realized he had plenty of room to store everything on the side shed area of our garage so we can still park both cars in there). I have some babysitting jobs lined up for a little extra money and have an opportunity for a consistent babysitting job that would be from Jan-May. So little by little we are finding ways God is providing us some extra income.

And the other exciting part about our home study being complete is we can start to apply for some grants. The first one I'm concentrating on is one our church does.

So I wonder how long this upswing will last?! Haha. Hopefully we'll get good news from USCIS soon and then get a referral soon after that! :) We'll get notification when USCIS receives our info, then they'll have us make an appointment for biometric fingerprints, so those are the steps we wait on now...

I'm Thankful 4's!

2011-11-15T21:47:00.001-06:00

Well it's about time we got around to some more organized homeschooling projects around here. I have been doing a little better about reading to the kids more than just before nap and bedtime and keeping a weekly routine down where at least every Wed we got to the library, get new books, get crafts the library has all the supplies ready for and do those, then repeat the following week.

But now that we have FINALLY finished our adoption training that took us a whole month, I feel like I had some extra time to get some stuff organized for us to do. (The training took us a month because it was 19 chapters long including homework for each chapter and some chapters had as many as 3 or 4 homeworks! and the only time we could do it was after the kids went to bed. Since I wake up at 5:20am to run most mornings I like to be in bed around 9pm to start winding down. The kids don't go to bed until 8pm. So that leaves an hour to work on training. Well, a lot of nights we used that hour for training, and praise the Lord it's finally over so I can use that hour for something else!)

So anyways, I have been on pinterest and my usual homeschooling blogs I follow and got lots of ideas for Thanksgiving stuff to do with the kids. Our first project was the "I'm Thankful 4's". We each made a number 4 and each day from now until Thanksgiving we are writing something we're thankful for on it. Then I wrote the year on the back and the kid's name so it will be fun to look back and see what they put.

Savannah is holding up my 4

Colton is holding his (Savannah did his writing for him)

Colton liked to pretend his 4 was an airplane

Savannah's 4. She got a little dyslexic and wrote the T and H backwards in Thankful

Concentrating on her gluing. Love her tongue sticking out because that has been her trademark since she was a newborn.

This glue is really disgusting and I need to throw it away. But it appears to still work.

Probably one of the best pictures of Savannah ever and she isn't totally in focus! Ahhh!

Well the first thing everyone was thankful for was
Savannah - being tall
Colton - Daddy! :)
Lydia - medicine that helps us feel better when we're sick

It was fun and when we woke up this morning Savannah immediately wanted to work on her 4 again. So that teaches me I must keep doing more projects like this with them, they really like it. And I have lots more Thanksgiving stuff ready for us to do! Tomorrow is library day and we're picking up some Thanksgiving books I put on hold.

The Poisonwood Bible and random thoughts...

2011-11-14T21:11:00.001-06:00

I finished reading this book, The Poisonwood Bible. I really enjoyed it and it taught me a lot about Congo's history without having to sit down and read a history book. I've been sick for the last week with a cold which I think has now turned into a sinus infection. So yesterday Brian gave me the luxury of laying in bed all day and sleeping off and on and also reading. So that's how I was able to finally finish the book. It has got me thinking about the United States involvement in Congo's current political and economic situation. I don't really know much about politics or economics, but what I read in the book was stuff I had no idea about. The CIA being involved in assassinating Congo's first leader after they got independence from Belguim - Lumumba. I don't know what to think about all this...

Then today I learned about this organization called Falling Whistles. It's totally blowing my mind reading the stuff on their website and watching their videos.

I also wanted to write about an interesting thing that happened today that has got me thinking. This afternoon around 2pm a large black man rang our doorbell. There have been lots of burglaries in our neighborhood lately so everyone is on high alert. We're told we're supposed to make sure if someone knocks on our door they know we're home, but don't open the door to them. So I went to the door and spoke to him through the window. He showed me a flyer he was handing out and I opened the door to him. Just a few seconds after that a cop car pulled up. He asked me if I knew why the cop was pulling up. I was just as surprised as he was, but then I figured it must have been another neighbor that called the cops on him since everyone is being so vigilant against any character that seems to be doing something "shady."

Well, he got angry and started saying that the cops were called just because he's a black guy. I think I naturally want to trust people and I assumed the flyer he was showing me was legit and I was just going to tell him I wasn't interested and go on about my day. But seeing the cop pull up and then watching him and the cop interact and hearing part of their conversation has me thinking. Thinking about our child from the Congo (and I always think of our child as being a boy even though we don't know yet, I'm assuming it will be a boy) growing into a man and walking around our neighborhood and the cops getting called on him. Ugh. I don't know what to think about all this.

I think that's all the thoughts I can get into words tonight. I'm all doped up on cold medication and should probably head to bed.

Dallas Arboretum - Part 2

2011-11-11T09:05:00.001-06:00

I don't very often get a picture of me with the kids. It's not the greatest picture because we're squinting into the sun, but I was thankful someone was willing to take a picture for us.

Then we went and had a picnic and played at the pioneer village -

Then we went back over by the pumpkins and the kids spent a lot of time playing in the hay maze.

Another pic of me with the kids! They are getting tired.

The kids came up with a game where they were collecting pumpkins and putting them in a dead end part of the maze, but then some older boys came and started trying to take their pumpkins so they were defending them. It started to get a little out of hand and Colton started REALLY getting upset when they'd steal some of their pumpkins so that's when we headed home, figured it was much past naptime.

These next pics of the kids just crack me up! Savannah's poses. They were tired of me taking pictures.

Dallas Arboretum - Part 1

2011-11-10T20:14:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago we spent the day at the Dallas Arboretum. We went as part of a homeschool group we joined this year and it was our first field trip to do with them. We have a few more field trips coming later in the year. It was so great! The kids really had a great time and it's days like this that really convince me homeschooling is the way to go. I still just don't know if I'm totally convinced I have the discipline to do it.

Here's some pictures from our day -

They have these awesome play houses set up from different popular kids stories. Here are the kids at The Little Mermaid -

Jack and the Beanstalk house -

And of course they had hundreds of pumpkins everywhere to take pictures by. Savannah was loving posing for me but Colton was not really cooperating -

One of the best parts of the day was a one hour lesson we got as part of our field trip that was called "Pumpkin Circle" and the teacher went through the pumpkin's life from seed to a big pumpkin that had new seeds inside of it. The teacher was GREAT and really captured the kids' attention. And she made it perfect for their age. We all loved it and I can't imagine not homeschooling and then missing seeing their reactions to what they are learning. It was so neat to watch them interact with her and learn.

Here the bee is coming around and getting pollen or nectar from the flowers depending on if they were a girl or boy. They started as seeds in the ground, then got rained on, then grew into flowers...

Here they are being seeds -

Then they got their own pumpkin seeds to hold -

And went to tables that had lots of seeds they could look at with the magnifying glass -

Then they got to plant their pumpkin seeds in a little pot we brought home -

I have more pictures but Brian is trying to watch his football game which is streamed over the internet and uploading pictures to the blog is making his football game mess up. So this is a good stopping point and I'll post a "Part 2" later. :)

Photography fundraiser

2011-10-20T14:46:00.000-05:00

Thanks to one of our friends for giving me the idea for this. One of our friends wanted to help us with adoption expenses in some way and asked if I'd be willing to take pictures of them for their Christmas letter. I don't think I would have been brave enough to just offer this on my own, but since I am going to be doing it for them, I'd like to offer it to everyone to see if we can really raise some money from me doing this. It's the perfect time of year for those family pictures to put on your Christmas cards/ letters!

I am not a professional photographer, but I have done 7 weddings as the 2nd shooter, a retirement party, and a golf tournament. Plus just all the usual picture taking I do as a mom of my kids. I have a nice SLR camera and all the equipment I need to take pictures for you.

So if you were on the fence debating if you wanted to pay to get some pictures done this fall, but really didn't want to spend a huge amount of money, let me do your pictures! I am only going to charge $25 and you will get a CD of all your images so you can print off whatever you want! Usually when you have someone do your pictures you have to pay tons extra for all of your images. So not only is this a great deal, but the money is also going towards a good cause, to help us bring home our child!

So now for the important part. If you'd like so see some of my older photography I did of weddings you can look at my other blog here.

And here are some of my other favorite family pictures to give you an idea what my photography looks like -

So if you're interested comment on this post, or send me an email, or call me if you are one of my friends and have my number.

Blog Hop

2011-10-15T20:36:00.001-05:00

I joined a blog hop over at another blog I've been following, a family who is also adopting from DRC.

If you want to find other adoptive family blogs you can check out the blog hop here.

I love being able to read about and learn from each others experiences.

Our weakness, God's power

2011-10-13T21:29:00.000-05:00

All of a sudden it came to me today. I kept asking God, "Why?" Why would you ask us to adopt when we have so many "red flags" from our past? So many extra hoops it seems we have had to jump through to prove ourselves and then I remembered this verse and now it makes perfect sense.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

God is humbling me, we are so insufficient, but He is powerful!

Today we got our home study for our review. :)

Our agency asked us to send in our I-600A form which is what gets sent to immigration and is a big step. It can take about 2 months to get back approval on this. In the meantime we have 2 options.

Option 1:
Wait around the 2 months for USCIS approval. Then pay 1st part of foreign fee ($2500) and wait for our referral.

Option 2:
Wait for USCIS approval and pay $2500 fee at same time. This would get things started on the Congo side. I believe it covers medical testing on the kids and all the documents in our dossier being translated. This would shorten our overall time until we got our referral and our whole adoption but at the risk that if for some reason we didn't get the approval that $2500 would be non-refundable.

Our initial thoughts are to go with option 1. Its less risky and this would give us more time to raise money to pay the fee. So expect to see some new fundraising ideas soon.

Things did just get a lot more real though. We found out that there are children that the foreign coordinator met in Congo who meet our requirements. They still need medical testing for HIV and Hepatitis, but they fit our age requirements. He has pictures and videos and its hard to imagine sitting around for the next 2 months waiting for USCIS approval when we could be getting closer to bringing one of those kids home! So we'll pray on it.

But today was an exciting day!

Funny somehow I knew today was going to be a good day. This was my facebook status update this morning -

6 mile hilly run 12 days after the marathon!! Yes, I'm back!! Feels so good, gonna be a great day now!!

News on home study and psych evaluation!

2011-10-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

So today we got some good news. Our agency has our psychological evaluation and everything is good. Our home study is being sent for our review soon, I think sometime this afternoon. So everything we have gone through so far is getting wrapped up! Yay!

Funny I have been so worried and now my thoughts are why did I have so many doubts? God has been in control this entire time. I'm still not sure if it was really necessary for us to go through the psych eval, but maybe God will reveal his purpose for that at some point. Regardless, I'm just glad it's over.

Adoption really is an emotional roller coaster. I'm glad we've made it this far and I'm sure we'll have a few more ups and downs to come!

Feeling overwhelmed

2011-10-07T14:01:00.001-05:00

This last week (before the marathon) was pretty overwhelming. I guess it all started Saturday morning when I was doing my last easy 8 mile run. It was the last "long run" before the marathon and is easy after you've been doing 18 and 20 milers. But at about the 4 mile mark I tripped and fell because it was still dark outside and there was just a little uneven place on the concrete that caught my shoe. I scraped up my knee, shoulder, and hand and so the rest of the 4 miles back I was bleeding a little and hurting. Luckily I didn't really injure anything 1 week before the marathon!

Then my bad luck continued on Monday on the way home from Savannah's ballet class. She takes ballet in our neighborhood and it is probably 1 mile from our house, but they are doing some construction on some of the roads so I was trying to go around that and ended up on a road I hadn't been on before which was very narrow and while I was heading down the road a Cintas delivery truck was headed towards me. I knew we wouldn't both fit, so I stopped my car and was going to back up to a side street to give him some room, but I guess he thought he could fit around me and just went for it and scraped the whole side and back end of our car. Even though the wreck wasn't that bad, it was bad enough that I couldn't drive the car because one of the panels was pushed up against the rear tire and we had a burning rubber smell when we tried to drive.

We had our adoption small group meeting Monday night, so it was almost like this wreck was a way to keep us from going to that. Because now to go Brian had to drive home from work to pick us up, we had to move the car seats to his car, and then we had to drive to church. Then he had to drop us off back at home once it was over and he went back into work because he was working late all week to make up time before we went out of town. We still went to our meeting and I'm glad we did, it's reconfirming to be with other people who are adopting or have already adopted and know that we aren't crazy for doing this.

So the rest of the week before we're about to go out of town for the marathon I was w/o a car. Just to add another stress to life.

We still got ready to go out of town and got the minivan into the body shop and then had our fun psychological evaluations. I feel like it went pretty well, hopefully we'll hear something soon.

Also during all this our neighbor had offered to host an Arbonne fundraising party for us, which not a single person out of about the 60 I invited had RSVPed. When so many things are stacking up against you how can you not feel like you're doing something wrong?? I kept trying to remind myself of the awesome garage sale we had, and my feelings after that and from other times during this journey that I felt we were following the path God wanted us on, but last week I was not feeling it.

After the evaluations I really felt that if at this point they tell us we can't adopt we'll just cut our losses. I mean, we're not adopting to make our lives easier. It's going to make our lives a lot more complicated, so why are we going through all this? I feel horrible writing that, but that's how I felt.

In the middle of all of this, I did get 2 awesome letters from friends that were totally unexpected. It reminded me we are not in this alone when I really needed that reminder.

I also got this quote in an email from a friend which was perfect for the frame of mind I was in -

"May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us."

Anyways, we survived that week and we had an awesome marathon/ anniversary trip. I'll try to do a post on that later if I have time. And we have survived this week back to reality after vacation.

I just picked up our last missing document we needed so our social worker can finish our home study so I think most of our work for the adoption is done other than some training.

I still don't have a car so we have been taking Brian to work everyday and picking him up. Its actually been fun and Savannah will usually fall asleep in the car when we pick him up so it gives us a chance to talk about our day on the ride home. Maybe all this happened to show us we can sell the Prius to pay for the adoption and go down to 1 car? Haha.

Our home study - get ready for a long one!

2011-09-22T15:47:00.000-05:00

We had our home study interview last Friday. It did not go great. Funny how so far the whole adoption process I have been more worried about Brian's history than my own. For those who don't know, Brian had some wild and crazy college years and was arrested a few times. You never think that is going to come back to haunt you one day, but when you're trying to adopt, EVERYTHING will come out!

So when we first started looking into adopting early this year (maybe it was Jan or Feb) we were not even considered "eligible" to adopt internationally with Gladney. That was a pretty big shock, we never thought it would be that big an issue. After that happened we decided we needed to do some more research to see what exactly was on his record. He was sketchy on exact dates and charges because he never thought it was something he was going to have to think about again. So we sent his fingerprints off to the FBI and got back his record and lo and behold there was only 1 thing on there and from 15 years ago! So then based on what Gladney had told us about criminal records, we thought we were free to start pursuing adoption again. So we started researching more agencies and went through stressful waiting periods to see if we would be eligible to adopt with them and YES! we were! Not to say we haven't had to do extra work because of it. I've had to send letters and money to South Carolina and Georgia to get certified letters back that Brian does not have a record in their state. But back to our home study now....

These certified letters were one of the things we had to turn in with our mountain of home study paperwork along with a statement from Brian on how he has changed his ways. So needless to say I thought he'd be getting a lot more scrutiny than me during the interview. But little did I know his interview turned out to be the easy one! And now I am the one holding us up (kinda)....

Some of the things in my past gave our social worker "pause" and made her wonder if I have coped with everything and if I have good coping skills. I really feel like what happened is that I am so quiet and she could not get a good impression of me from things that I told her. I feel like if I would have had more time to talk and get it all out I could have explained things a little better, but I was caught so off-guard that she had concerns at all! I feel like a very healthy person physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I ever have been in my whole life.

But I knew once she left things did not go well so when I got an email on Monday from our agency director to call her I knew what it would be about. I feel like the conversation we had went so much better than the conversation I had with our social worker and once again I'm glad we're with the agency we're with. But they want me to go ahead and get a psychological evaluation done. It could be that this would be a necessary step for our dossier in Congo anyways, but I still feel like now they feel like I'm a crazy person who can't cope. :) The purpose of the evaluation is this - "to provide confirmation that you have no significant psychological issues or dysfunction and that you are a stable functioning adult who can handle the stresses of parenting". Awesome. I'm so glad we get to do fun things like this to be able to adopt.

I want to just get it over and done with as soon as possible so I don't have to stress about it so we made an appointment for next Wed. We leave for our marathon/ anniversary trip on Thursday so I'm hoping I won't be stressed about how the evaluation went and we can both just relax and enjoy our trip and hope that our home study will be getting wrapped up. Once our home study is wrapped up, most of our part of the work is done and then we just start waiting. So we are getting to a pretty exciting point!

I had a pretty negative day yesterday about everything and started having doubts about if I really am a good mother and CAN I really handle the stresses of adoption? And maybe the social worker was seeing something that I could not see even about myself. But I love how God had prepared the perfect lesson for me. The timing of all this worked out great in 3 ways. If you have looked under my reading page you can see how I'm doing our church's The Quest and the other day our reading was in Lamentations. I was thinking about my past and tough times I had to talk about during the home study and I loved these verses from Lamentations 3 -

¹⁹ I remember my affliction and my wandering,
   the bitterness and the gall.
²⁰ I well remember them,
   and my soul is downcast within me.
²¹ Yet this I call to mind
   and therefore I have hope:
²² Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
   for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
   therefore I will wait for him.”

This reminded me that even though I did have troubles in the past, I now know God as my Savior and about his love for me. I know he has placed us on this journey and that he works everything together for our good. And just in case I needed a little more affirmation, I then had 2 Daniel studies. Our church's women's Bible study is studying Daniel this semester and last week we had Daniel 2 and this week Daniel 3. I loved how from Daniel 2 last week we learned about having faith and obedience even when we are in the darkness. I knew that our home study did not go great and I didn't know what was going to happen so I felt that "darkness" of just not knowing the future. But I had faith that God does know our future and things are going to happen according to His perfect plan. Then yesterday after I made our appointment for our evaluation I started on my lesson for Daniel 3. I loved that we got to read a few verses that show what God is able to do because I needed some reminding -

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20) That one pretty much speaks for itself.

⁸ And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8) This one was good because one of the most stressful parts about the evaluation is that it is going to cost us $1000. Just add another $1000 onto the already huge amount we are trying to get for the adoption. Awesome. But this verse reminded me that God CAN bless us abundantly and we WILL have all we need!

²⁴ To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— (Jude 24) This one was good because God can present me any way he wants to the psychologist. He can present me without fault if that is His will.

And then to wrap it all up we also looked at a few verses that can encourage us when we are facing trials. I'll just put the one that speaks the most to me because I fell in love with the book of James this summer. I had the chance to study it twice (once at our church's women's Bible study and once through an online study).

² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

I do feel that this is an extra "trial" put in our path, but I know that God is producing in me perseverance and it will only make the day we are able to bring our adopted child home that much greater.

Whew! That is probably my longest post to date, hopefully you were able to read all that!

Fasting

2011-09-14T15:40:00.001-05:00

I went back to the doctor this morning to get my blood work done to check my cholesterol, etc. My first appointment was in the afternoon and there's no way (I thought) I could fast all day until an afternoon appointment. So this part was scheduled for 2 days later so they could get me a morning appointment.

My appointment was at 8:45am but I was still going around feeling sorry for myself that I couldn't eat breakfast or drink my coffee when I woke up in the morning. Then all of a sudden it hit me we are trying to adopt an orphan! An orphan who is living in Africa! An orphan who is guaranteed to be malnourished and I'm feeling sorry for myself because I didn't have anything to eat from between my huge dinner the night before until after my doctor's appointment which was about 9:15am! I did run 5 miles in between there so I was feeling really hungry, but it was eye opening to remember that there are kids out there eating WAY less and feeling hungry all the time. It is really hard to keep that in perspective, but I'm glad I was reminded of that today.

Medical approval for Lydia

2011-09-12T21:50:00.001-05:00

Today I had my doctor's check up where I got my medical approval that I am in good enough health to raise a child. I would hope so since I'm about to run a marathon in 3 weeks! :)

Also while there I got my flu shot. I started worrying if that was a mistake because I AM running a marathon in 3 weeks and I don't want it to make me feel sick. So far I only have a hurt arm so hopefully I will be ok. It was a good opportunity for me to show the kids not to be scared when you get shots since they'll be going next week for their 4 year and 2 year well checks and probably be getting some immunizations.

One step closer on the adoption journey! I'm sure there will be lots more shots to come once we get all our immunizations before travel.

Savannah's first day of dance!

2011-09-12T21:39:00.000-05:00

Today Savannah had her much anticipated first dance class! Back earlier this year or maybe even last year I asked her if she'd rather do soccer, ballet, or gymnastics and to my surprise she picked ballet. We finally decided on enrolling her at Arts 5th Avenue which is right in our neighborhood. It's the perfect fit for us. I just want her to have fun, learn some ballet and tap, and us not spend a fortune, or be stressed with dress codes, recitals, driving far distances across town, etc. There are 5 kids in her class. The first half of the class was ballet and the second half was tap. I thought the tap looked more fun, but she said her legs were starting to get tired and she couldn't do all the tap dancing by the time it got to the end of the class. I told her maybe after more practice her legs will get used to it.

Here Colton is observing. I think he wanted to join the class too. But he had fun playing with his tractor on the little ramp to the dance floor. It was also funny that he recognized one of the songs they danced to as one of the songs I turn up loud in the car.

We also decided to try out an Intro to Art class they had right after dance. Most of the other kids in her dance class were doing it. The parents' idea was that it would help them wind down after dancing to sit and do some art. It was free, the teacher only asked that we donate to cover the cost of the supplies. She also said Colton could join the class even though it's technically for 4 year olds. He did a little coloring and even told the teacher his favorite color is green. So we stayed an extra 30 minutes and did that. I think we'll keep doing it. The kids liked it.

Here they are practicing piano in between dance and art -

And here is our little ballerina back at home after class -

Garage sale fundraiser!

2011-09-09T17:16:00.001-05:00

Saturday morning came and I went out to get 3 dozen donuts. We thought we'd try selling donuts for $1 each to make a little extra money from them too. We had this idea in our heads that Savannah could be in charge of them and she'd like collecting the money and putting it in her purse. I don't know why we thought this would work. She was acting so shy all morning and cranky too and didn't want to try to sell any donuts. So because we didn't have time to deal with selling them we just set them on a coffee table and Brian wrote "African Donuts $1" on them. Some people were wondering what African donuts were and they were not really selling. So I was a little bummed about that thinking that we had wasted $20 at the donut shop. But as it got closer to lunchtime people did start buying them and we sold almost all of them, so I think we at least re-couped our money from purchasing them. Next time we know if we're selling food in addition to garage sale items we need someone other than Savannah in charge. Haha.

When I got back from buying the donuts Brian was hanging up our signs we had made and people were already starting to line up at our gate.

At this point it was still not 7am and I was getting a little stressed because we still had a few items we hadn't carried out the night before!!!!!!! Ahhh!!! So we quickly started carrying out the rest of the stuff and unlocked the gate. It was probably about 6:45am. From 6:45am until maybe noon it basically looked like the pictures below -

Constant people, no break. We'd had garage sales in Saginaw before, but they don't even come close to comparing to this. Our street was lined with cars as far as you could see. Some people that bought the larger furniture items had to wait until they could get a closer parking spot so they could load the furniture into their car.

Our neighbor had better luck selling his nachos, hot dogs, and drinks than we had w/ our donuts. Everyone who came to our sale starting about 10am had nachos or a hot dog. Pretty good idea. Next time I think we'll do sodas or waters too because a few people asked us if we were selling waters. It started to warm up as the day went on and it would have been good to have.

The kids woke up about 30 minutes into the sale and we never had a chance to change them out of their PJs. So here's Savannah wandering around in her PJs. She kept asking when the garage sale would be over. We ended up turning on a movie for the kids just to keep them inside, there were too many people around and we couldn't keep a good eye on them.

My parents saved us midway through the day by bringing us lunch and then watching the kids for part of the afternoon. There's no way we could have eaten w/o their help.

This is the sign Savannah helped me make. She really wanted to do a hot pink sign when we were at Target picking out the poster board. People who saw this sign were a little confused until they saw the 2nd sign that I made. I really wish I was more creative, it is pretty plain looking, but it got the point across.

We had tons of people tell us stories about their adoptions or people or relatives they knew who had adopted. We also had people who would buy a few dollars worth of items, then pay with a $20 and tell us to keep the change. But we still had people trying to talk us down in our prices like any usual garage sale. We had one near fight over a table and chairs we were selling. That was a little awkward and I couldn't believe the one lady got so upset about the situation when the money is going towards a good cause.

We kept our sale open until about 4pm and also had it on Sunday from about 7am-2pm. After the sale was over and we started cleanup we decided to take our remaining books to Half Price Books and got way more than we were expecting from them! I feel like we made more taking the books to Half Price than if they would have sold at our $1/book garage sale price. So I have no idea how that worked out.

One of the coolest things that happened all weekend was after the sale on Saturday we went and ate at Steak n Shake with some friends. We almost didn't go because we had burgers for lunch, and I am not that big a burger person that I want to eat them twice in 1 day. But Brian told me to suck it up, so we went. After we were done eating I was standing by the door for a while waiting for Brian and our friends and there was an adoptive family waiting for their table. It was obvious they were an adoptive family because there were at least 5 kids and they were all different races and all really young. If you know me, you know I am super shy and I never go up and talk to random people. Something compelled me to start a conversation with them and we ended up talking for a few minutes. I told the Dad about our garage sale and our adoption. He then proceeded to pull out a $100 bill that someone had given them as they were walking into the restaurant to help pay for their dinner!! He said he wanted us to have it for our adoption, that they didn't need it, and he wanted to pay it forward! I couldn't believe that happened! It was definitely a moment that brought tears to my eyes and I had total goosebumps! God was totally involved in that moment because there were so many things out of the ordinary that had to happen for it to occur.

You can see the total of what we made on our fundraiser page...

Garage sale fundraiser prep

2011-09-09T15:26:00.000-05:00

We had a few busy weeks getting ready for our garage sale. Not only because of garage sale stuff, but just other things going on. We were overwhelmed with how much stuff got donated for our sale. If I was smart I would have gone through each donation as we got them and priced everything and started organized piles. But I was not smart.

I let everything pile up in our living room until our living room couldn't even hold everything anymore. The stuff the living room couldn't hold went into our garage. We had a couple of nervous nights when stuff was out in the garage because earlier this year our garage was robbed in the middle of the night. But luckily nothing was taken. :)

And of course Colton's birthday party took place during the garage sale collections so everyone that came to the party got to see the living room full of stuff. Luckily, we have a 2nd living area in the back of the house so we could all hang out back there. (I always seem to have the kids' birthday parties during stressful times).

I spent most of the week prior to the garage sale going through our own stuff and by Thursday Brian asked if I was getting stressed about all the stuff we still had to go through in the living room. I thought no, I'm not stressed about it. That's what Friday is for. Brian had Friday off work so after we both got a run in we got to work sorting through the massive piles of things!

Here was our living room as we started to get organized -

Also on the Friday before the sale, some friends brought over a trailer full of furniture! One of the friends who helped unload the stuff was from Africa. Coincidence? He told us he came from near Congo and that he thinks the Congo people are more musically gifted than any other people in Africa. I thought that was cool because I don't really consider Brian or myself to be musically gifted, so any of our biological kids would probably not get a gift like this.

Here they are unloading the last of the stuff off the trailer -

It ended up taking us ALL day Friday to go through everything. We tried to bring everything out to the driveway that night because we knew Saturday morning things would get crazy quickly. If I thought we had nervous nights with stuff just in the garage I was worried about getting stolen, I really had a nervous night Friday w/ all of our garage sale stuff sitting in our driveway. It was behind our gate which was locked, but still, I was on hyper-alert for any little sound all night.

We finally got in bed around midnight. I think I fell asleep around 1am, and our alarms went off at 6am, after multiple wake ups in the middle of the night to check on things.

Then it was garage sale time and that post is coming soon...

Some Congo links and brief update

2011-08-30T21:25:00.000-05:00

Brian and I have been busy working on our homestudy paperwork this week. Gathering lots of documents, writing our autobiographies, and answering lots of questions. I was hoping by giving us a "deadline" we'd get it done quickly. So we are aiming to turn everything into our agency this Thursday. Of course at the same time we are also busy trying to get ready for our garage sale which is this Saturday, had Colton's 2nd birthday party, start homeschooling stuff with the kids, and I'm trying to keep up with my marathon training. Whew! I like to be busy, but I think I'm about at my limit! And of course during all of it I got sick. I'm starting to feel better now though.

Here are some links if you want to read/ see more about Congo -

This is a book I read a while back, need to read it again. They have a short video at the link you can watch -
A Thousand Sisters

These pictures give a good overview of some of the stuff going on in Congo -
Portraits from the Congo

First homeschool project - Weather Board!

2011-08-22T16:53:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to get organized for our Preschool homeschooling the last few weeks. I was hoping I could start school today since it was FWISD's first day, but I still needed a few more supplies and had a few more things I needed to put together before I was ready. So maybe I'll move their first day of school back to 8/31, since that's when they would have started Mother's Day Out anyways.

But we did get to Michaels today and I got some of the supplies I was needing. One of the things I wanted to make was a weather board. So while Colton "napped" (in quotes because he didn't nap today, although he did play in his room for over 2 hours!), Savannah and I made her weather board. My plan is every morning after breakfast and chores, we will go outside to check the weather, then head upstairs to the "schoolroom" to put the clothespin on the weather for the day, then start our "school."

Here are some pics from the project -

The finished product is below. I let Savannah put all the stickers where she wanted and I did the words in her glitter glue. Haha, maybe my creative side I didn't know existed is coming out? It was a lot of fun to do it w/ her and it didn't really take that long. So much cuter than the one I bought from the Target dollar spot, even though it did end up costing us more than $1. The rectangle at the top we'll change out for each of the 4 seasons, but I need to find some more decorations indicative of the seasons. So far I only found the bird and dragonfly for spring. We had a snowman, but Savannah already lost him somewhere in our house.

One of the final things I read that REALLY CONVINCED me about adopting from DRC

2011-08-21T21:18:00.000-05:00

So Brian and I have been researching adoption for a long time. Years really. There have been a few blogs I have gone to off and on over the last 4 years to read about other family's adoption journeys. As we got deeper and deeper into our research I started looking for blogs specifically about adoption from the Democratic Republic of Congo since that's where we were leaning towards adopting from. I found this blog I am about to link to and one of her more recent posts is one of the final things that made me feel truly convinced this is what we needed to be doing. I've read it multiple times and it gets to me every time. It breaks my heart to think about all these children and I don't know how I am going to react being there for myself and seeing all these children in the orphanages, but I just know God has called us to this and I can't wait to see where this journey leads. Here's the blog - Amazing Grace and a Safe Haven.

Colton's big boy bed

2011-08-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

Got Colton a big boy bed last week. The first day after we got it assembled and I got the sheets washed and put on it, he asked to sleep on it for naptime. I decided to let him try and really didn't think it would work w/o a lot of effort on my part, but after playing for a little while he actually did fall asleep on it! He didn't come out of the room once. I think he hasn't realized he can come out of the room yet.

However, until yesterday he hadn't successfully slept on the bed again. I kept trying, but he and Savannah would just end up playing and after 15 mins I'd go in and move him to his crib.

Well, yesterday I got wise to move Savannah out of the room during naptime since I knew she wasn't going to fall asleep and was the reason Colton was staying awake. Sure enough, w/ Savannah out of the room Colton fell asleep and took a nap in his bed.

At nighttime decided to try the big bed again and because Savannah was actually really tired from not napping she fell asleep and even though Colton played in the room for a while, he didn't wake her up and he played himself to sleep! He stayed in the bed all night and even slept in a little - waking up at 7:30am.

Brian tried to get him to come out of the room after he woke up, but he doesn't realize he can walk out of the room on his own yet I guess. So sweet. I remember Savannah doing the same thing. Of course, I also remember Savannah falling asleep right by her door and not in the bed. Colton hasn't done that, maybe because we have hardwood floors at this house and he knows it would be uncomfortable.

But he is taking another nap in the bed right now. I guess we'll see how bedtime goes tonight, but I'm thinking we might be dis-assembling the crib and taking it out of the room soon! Unbelievable! 2 potty trained and 2 in big boy/girl beds! It's definitely time for another baby around here.

Here's the pic of Colton napping in his bed for the 1st time -

Little update on the kids

2011-07-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping a word document trying to keep up with new things the kids are doing better. That way once they do something I can enter it there right away, and hopefully one day get around to writing about it on the blog. So here's a few things the kids have been up to in the last few months...

Savannah:
April - making requests for baby brothers and sisters. She found a dandelion and picked it and was blowing it and I asked what she wished for and she said "a baby sister."

May - I caught her reading to Colton. She will sometimes ask him if he wants to read, he says “yes”, then they go and sit on her bed and she "reads" to him. It is the sweetest thing ever. They are also starting to play games together – hide and seek (Colton just counts “2” but holds up 1 finger and then goes to find Savannah. He really seems to understand the game, surprisingly), ring around the rosy, london bridge, and they will play w/ toys together too (sometimes w/o fighting). Savannah is also trying to help me convince Colton to use the potty.

July - Starting to figure out swimming. She can swim a few feet on her own. We've been working on learning letter names, letter sounds, and writing letters. Savannah is catching on and is getting good at writing her own name. She's also learning how to spread her own peanut butter.

Here's a picture of Savannah playing a letter matching game - matching lower case to upper case letter, which she did really well at -

Colton:

March - throwing fits. Throwing himself on the floor fits. Also said “spicy” after eating a spicy shrimp and “belt” for Daddy's belt.

May - learned how to jump and likes to sit on the potty. Colton's newest word is cereal. The way he says it is priceless, took me forever to figure out what he was saying. He also says “Bop!” for Stop!

June - Potty Trained!!!!!!!!!

July - calls peanut butter “butt”, more “butt”, need “butt” he tells me. Learned how to climb out of his crib.

They are so sweet and growing up so fast I just can't believe it!

Summer at the pool!

2011-05-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

I talked Brian into letting us get season passes to NRH2O for the summer and I'm so excited! Today was the first day the kids and I went and we are going to have so much fun there all summer long! Some of my best childhood memories are going to Surf 'n Swim (our neighborhood pool) all summer long so I'm excited to be able to take Savannah and Colton swimming a lot this summer and hopefully they will come to love swimming as much as I do. Savannah already LOVES swimming, Colton is going to take a few trips to remember that it is fun again (he liked it last year). Towards the end of today's trip he was loosening up a little and starting to play w/ some of the splashy things in the water, but he is still a little cautious. He definitely doesn't want to get in an inner tube and float the lazy river w/ me.

Here's Savannah eating our picnic lunch while Colton is playing in the background. "The Stream" was his favorite attraction, just a little stream that he could walk through and splash his little feet in. So he chose to walk back in forth in that and come and get an occasional piece of watermelon instead of sitting down to eat his sandwich.

More of Colton in the stream -

Sweet brother and sister posing together for me -

And now the moment's over and Colton is trying to get away while Savannah tries to keep him there -

TCU all-comers meet

2011-05-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

Last night we went to the TCU all-comers meets for the first time. Savannah ran the 100m and 200m and I did the 4x400m relay with Joe, Charlie, and Heather.

The kids had so much fun watching the runners. Colton loved saying "GO!" and "fast". Everyone that ran by us was fast to Colton.

When we first got there we had a picnic, the kids warmed up around the track, and we hung out w/ the Averetts and watched some of the earlier events. It was really fun watching the really fast runners warmup. Even their warmup was done at an unbelievable speed.

Here are some pics playing in the grass before running -

Watching the 1500m runners -

Getting ready to run their 100m -

Watching the rest of the 100m runners. I couldn't believe the kids just sat here w/ me and watched all the remaining heats of the 100m, which was for at least 10 more mins. They loved watching them and I loved it too.

Back to playing in the grass. Colton would throw himself on the ground b/c he wanted Savannah and Adam to get on top of him, believe it or not.

Now getting ready for their 200m -

Mile Markers

2011-05-22T16:21:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading a running book. All I have been reading lately are running books because I am obsessed with finding the perfect training plan for my marathon and trying to mesh different philosophies into something that will work for me and what I want to accomplish. But this book that I just read was a little different and was by a runner who is also a Mom and she had tons of cool insights that are things I think and agree with too, but I could never put them into words as well as she has. So here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the book -

"No matter how tired I am, I will get up at 5am just for the chance to catch some miles in good company before my family has a chance to miss me. When I return to the fold, sweaty and breathless, I am restored. I am a better woman and therefore able to be a better mother. I am ready for whatever the day holds, which, when you are a mom, can be anything. I can pour myself out all day long, filling everyone's cups, because my pitcher has already been filled."

It took me a while to get back to running after Colton was born and I was locked in an endless cycle of feeling tired and not doing anything for myself. I thought I could never wake up earlier because it would only make me more tired. But now that I am waking up early every morning for a run, I see that this is what I was missing and running is what fills me to get through the rest of my day.

Another quote I liked -

"Remember what you love to do. Don't put it in a chest in the attic of your being and leave it for your kids to find long after you are gone... Mom was a runner?... Let your children see you do your thing.... Let your husband fall in love again with that cool, interesting chick he married. Let yourself be you."

I love getting home and the kids are awake and they are so excited to see me and they know that I have been out running. Savannah wants to be a runner too and is going to run her first 100m track race this Thursday at TCU's all-comers meets. I love that they get to see me as a runner and know that this is something I enjoy and I don't have to put it away all the years that I am raising kids. I would say that because I am a runner I am a better mother. I am thankful for everyday that I am able to get outside and run.

Stone Soup

2010-11-17T13:52:00.000-06:00

I am really loving Savannah's new school! Today they had an activity called Stone Soup which is an annual tradition at her school where they read a book by the same name, all the kids bring an ingredient for vegetable soup, and then invite the dads to come eat lunch w/ the kids. They also bring extra canned goods to give to the needy and it is all about sharing your food w/ others.

Her school has a parent's committee that puts all these events together that they have throughout the year so after finding out I could put Colton in free childcare while I helped, I decided to sign up to be on the committee. We got all the tables set w/ sandwiches, soup, cookies, and water for the dads and it was so fun to be able to see the kids arrive from their classes and wait for their dad's to get there! Savannah saw me from across the room and she got a big smile on her face! I was glad I was there volunteering just to see that.

Anyways, we had fun getting to eat w/ Brian. Can't believe I didn't think to bring my camera so all I had was the iphone, but it worked out ok. Here's some pics -

This last one they are singing the Stone Soup song w/ their music teacher. Something like "the soup is boiling up, the soup is boiling up, stir it round...."

Halloween

2010-11-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

After hearing rumors for a while about Halloween night in Ryan Place, I was really looking forward to a fun night! Some neighbors had told us about how crowded it gets and that it's a lot of fun. Some told us they gave away 400 pieces of candy in 45 minutes last year!

So Halloween arrived and we had our candy and decided we were going to take the kids trick-or-treating for a while, then come home and hand out our candy to other trick-or-treaters while relaxing on our front porch. Here we are getting ready to head out - Savannah was a medieval princess, but she didn't want to wear the hat I made for her, and Colton was a lion -

Not just any lion, but the cutest lion there ever was!

Savannah is ready to go -

But wait, we need to start an annual picture taking tradition before we go trick-or-treating -

So many of the houses in our neighborhood were decorated, and our pumpkins we had carved a couple weeks ago had already rotted, so Brian got the idea to make these cute little ghosts that he used to make when he was a kid and he hung them from our doorway so we at least had a little decoration.

This is one of our neighbor's house, they had the grandmother come over to hand out candy while they went trick-or-treating w/ their son. I guess that's what we were supposed to do b/c that's what our other neighbors did too...

Walking down Elizabeth Blvd. Not too crazy yet...

Waiting in line to get candy. Never in my life have I seen this before -

This clown boy freaked Savannah out -

It is pretty dark, but maybe you can make out the CROWDS of people on Elizabeth Blvd. -

Here they are -

After 1 1/2 hours of trick-or-treating, back at our house to hand out candy -

Our next door neighbor's daughter came over to play w/ Savannah and they handed out the candy for us -

When we ran out of candy, Savannah wanted to give away her candy. We let her give away some, but we didn't want her to give it all away, which she was ready to do. A good lesson in generosity from our daughter!

Can't remember what was happening here!

It was a fun Halloween night and I look forward to repeating it year after year here in our new neighborhood!

Pumpkin carving fun

2010-11-01T13:11:00.000-05:00

Raising Children and back from a long hiatus

2010-10-29T14:34:00.000-05:00

I got this article below off my friend Corrie's blog, who got it off another blog... I liked it and wanted to repost it. Some of the things she said were exactly what I needed to hear.

I was downloading pics off the camera today because the memory card was full and Savannah's school was having a Halloween party and I needed to be able to take more pics. As I was downloading the pics, I started looking back at some old videos and found these of Savannah and Colton. Both are less than a year old. There is nothing that exciting to see, I can't just believe how babyish Savannah looks only a few months ago! She is growing up so fast!

I can't believe how fast the days and years are flying by so I hope I can learn to cherish the time a little more and not make this mistake - "But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."

Raising Children, by Anna Quindlen

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief.
I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast.Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, and finally what the women on the playground, and the well-meaning relations — well what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.
One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made.They have all been enshrined in the “Remember-When-Mom-Did ” Hall of Fame.The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs.The times the baby fell off the bed.The times I arrived late for preschool pickup.The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?” (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top.
And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me awhile to figure out who the experts were.

Daddy Daughter Dinner Dance

2010-06-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

Brian should probably be the one to write this since he is the one who can give the first hand account, but I can tell what happened from my perspective and share the pictures at least.

Our church has an annual dance for fathers/daughters and this was the first year Brian figured Savannah was old enough to take (although there was actually a 10 day old daughter there with her daddy so I guess Brian could have been bringing her the last 2 years).

Earlier in the week Savannah and I went and got her a dress from Kid-to-Kid. I wanted to get her something dressy, but all the really dressy dresses were not my cup of tea. I am just not into that. So I got one that I thought was dressy enough and cute. Plus I prefer her having a dress she can also wear to church instead of a one time use dress. Brian says next year Savannah should be dressier though after seeing how some of the other girls were dressed. Some of the girls even had corsages! I love the whole idea of the dance and I can't wait for Brian and Savannah to keep going over the years.

So anyways, the night of the dance I got Savannah all dressed and ready and then we took some pics before they left the house.

She really was excited about the dance all week and would want to walk around the house holding her ticket, so I don't know why she looks mad in this picture -

Ok, happy again -

At the dance -

About to get some ice cream from the ice cream bar -

Making some friends on the dance floor -

Uh oh, classic dress tucked into the panties -

Savannah took this one of Brian -

When they got home Savannah was deliriously happy. She showed me a rose that all the girls got to bring home and exclaimed, "It smells like pee pee!" And then I put her to bed. That's about all I can say about that.

Fun at the Museum

2010-06-20T10:04:00.000-05:00

The kids had such a good time at the science and history museum this last week. We went with our friends Jennifer, Huston, and Arden. Hopefully we can start going more often to get some use out of our memberships, but it is annoying that you have to pay for parking now.

I think both kids' favorite area was the grocery store. They LOVE getting all the food and putting it in the shopping cart and scanning it at the registers. And Colton LOVED pushing the shopping carts around and playing with various items of food.

We also spent some time outside playing w/ the water stuff and a giant sandbox where you can dig for dinosaur bones. Of course Colton loved playing in the sand too.

One of the current exhibits is toys from Mexico. They had hula hoops, little dolls in beds, tops, drums, lots of cool things for the kids to play with there too. Savannah loves to try to hula hoop and Colton liked watching her and was clapping his hands and so happy.

Colton right in the middle of everything -

Having fun playing the drums -

Trying to kiss Arden, but fell over in the process of leaning in too far -

My Birthday weekend

2010-06-01T14:23:00.000-05:00

This is a little late, but I just downloaded all the pics off the camera from our camping trip and saw these pictures on there and realized I'd never blogged about it.

Brian did a GREAT job of planning a birthday surprise weekend for me. I don't know how he is going to top it for when I turn 30 next year. He arranged for his parents to watch the kids for Sat. night so Sat. morning we woke up and stopped for breakfast at Dixie House Cafe before taking them over. He even packed the kids' bags for them! When we got to Bob & Janet's he had to take Colton's carseat out of our car so they could use it and I wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. But when we went to leave and get back in the car, he opened the back door of the minivan for me and had totally removed the other captians chair back there and had a cooler in its place. He had the cooler stocked with drinks and chips/salsa for me to enjoy while we drove to our surprise destination. He also had rented 2 movies for me to watch on the DVD player - New Moon and The Time Traveler's Wife and I had books to read.

He also let me make a stop at DSW in Denton because I had some coupons expiring that I wanted to use. He let me spend all the time I wanted there while he sat in the minivan and read the paper.

Then when I got back in the car he had a printout on my chair for spa services and said I could pick one I wanted. I decided to get us the couples massage. At this point he finally told me where we were going which was Winstar Casino.

When we got there it was still too early to check into our room so we walked around the casino and got an appetizer at Toby Keith's Bar & Grill inside the casino.

We had dinner reservations at The Grill just outside the casino area and had an awesome steak dinner and got a bottle of wine and then we got to do my other surprise which was go see Darius Rucker who was performing there that night!

Darius Rucker was awesome and after the show we hung out in the casino for a while. We decided we would budget $50 each for gambling. Brian went to play blackjack and I just watched. It was $5/hand and within about 15 minutes he had lost almost all his $50. So at that point I decided I wasn't going to waste my money on blackjack. I wanted to do a Sex and the City slot machine I had seen, but they were all full so we gave up and went to bed.

The next morning we got some lunch at the pizza place in the casino and I played a few hands of blackjack (where I won) and then lost all my winnings on a slot machine. It wasn't a lot of winnings, just like $5.

After that we had our couples massage which was awesome! It was Brian's first professional massage and my first one "just because." I think all the others I have had were running related, either because I had an injury from running or had just run a marathon. We laughed about how that was probably something we should have done on our honeymoon, but we were so cheap we didn't spend money on anything the week of our honeymoon. Now we have finally reached the point where we feel ok spending money on things like that occasionally.

After the massage it was time to leave and get the kids, but first we made a stop at the outlet stores in Gainesville where we both got some clothes from the Gap. Then we went to go get our kiddos! And that's when another surprise happened. I knew we were having dinner at Bob & Janet's, but I thought it was just us. Turns out my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, Kelly, and the Hoyt's all came too! A real birthday party!

It was a great weekend and the 1 night Brian and I had together without kids was much needed. It helped us remember what life was like before kids and how things were when we were just dating and could just have fun together.

The difference a year makes

2010-05-21T22:19:00.000-05:00

Brian likes to watch Texas storms from our porch. Savannah goes out there with him and now Colton is joining in the fun too. We had such a storm a week ago and when I saw one of the pictures, I knew I had one almost identical from last year.

Here is Savannah 6/10/09 -

And here is Savannah 5/14/10 -

This got me looking at lots of pictures from last summer and I can't believe how Savannah suddenly went from still being "babyish" to being such a big girl!

Strawberries

2010-05-12T14:44:00.000-05:00

We have had strawberries in our garden for a few years now, but this is the first year that we have been able to pick more than 1 or 2 strawberries each day. And by more than 1 or 2 I mean a LOT more. We didn't even plant any strawberries this year, but just let all the seeds from the plants last year take over and do their thing and nearly our whole garden filled up with strawberry plants. Usually I don't like to mess with the garden, but Brian was out of town for work so I went out there to get some strawberries before the birds and roly polies got them all. This is what I got - probably 2-3 lbs. worth of strawberries, and that was just in 1 day. There were lots more that were still to be picked in the next few days.

So I've been making lots of strawberry recipes lately. So far we have had a fruit salad w/ strawberries, a strawberry pie, and a spinach salad with strawberries. I'm hoping we still have enough left that I can make some strawberry jam. It's kinda shocking how much strawberries you need just to make 5 jars of jam though.

Colton enjoyed playing in the sandbox while Savannah helped me with the strawberries.

Then there was a little sibling rivalry in the sandbox -

So I rescued Colton and brought him over to the porch. He quickly saw the strawberries and reached for them. I thought I had read babies weren't supposed to have strawberries, but I was a little confused about the whole thing because I see baby food at the store that has strawberries in it. So I figured it would be ok to let him try one. And he LOVED them and had no bad reaction so I guess it was ok after all.

My little strawberry monster -

Trips to the Fort Worth Zoo

2010-04-27T11:18:00.000-05:00

Aunt Kelly got us memberships to the zoo for Christmas and now that the weather has been so nice we have finely had the chance to use them. We've been twice so far. The first time it was just me and the kids and the second time Brian got to join us because he was working his crazy 6pm-midnight shift all week. We went to the zoo after Colton's morning nap and packed a picnic lunch and had plenty of time to look at some of the animals and eat before heading home for afternoon naps. I like it because each time I've gone I've seen a completely new part of the zoo I didn't know existed and I know there's still more I haven't seen.

This was on our 1st trip, and my favorite, the cheetahs -

It was pretty cool how this turtle just swam right up to the glass like he could see Savannah looking at him. She loved it.

Savannah also noticed both times how the elephants were "dirty," commenting on how they had hay thrown onto their backs.

Here's some pics from our 2nd trip -

The whole car ride to the zoo Savannah was talking about seeing the lions "ROAR" because she's really into roaring right now. I just told her they might roar when we saw them, but thought to myself we would never see them actually roar. But amazingly, when we went to see the lions they did in fact roar! It was like they were really talking to each other too, the boy and girl lion were both roaring back and forth. Pretty cool thing to hear!

We've been experimenting giving Colton some table food. While we were eating our picnic lunch we had some baby food for him, but he decided the chips looked much better. I am a lot more lax with Colton than I was with Savannah. I probably wouldn't have let her have chips so soon, but since Colton grabbed the bag and spilled them everywhere I figured he could try one.

Savannah wanted to pose for these -

Brian having to take a work call -

Easter

2010-04-12T14:47:00.000-05:00

We did the same thing for Easter this year that we did last year. On Saturday we went down to the Stockyards for their Easter festivities and then went to church Sat. evening and on Sunday we had both of our families over for dinner.

I would say we're making it into an annual thing although I don't know if I really want to go to the Stockyards again next year. The egg hunt is a little chaotic - too many kids/ parents trying to get eggs in a small area and Savannah didn't even get any eggs. Luckily, Brian thought to go over to the 0-1 year old area and got some that were still on the ground there and let Savannah "find" those.

It was fun to let her go on her 1st pony ride though. She had a lot of fun doing that. And we had fun hanging out with our friends the Hoyt's and eating lunch down there before the egg hunt. We also got to see the cow herd go by. Funny that was my first time to ever see them.

We took some family pics while everyone was over on Easter Sunday.
Colton playing with Grandpa -

Savannah with her Easter bunnies. The blue one is supposed to be Colton's, but I don't think she's ever going to give it up -

And I made my first ham and it was delicious! Ham is actually surprisingly easy to cook. I just followed the directions that came on it. We had no leftovers of the side dishes, but I did have leftover ham which I made into a yummy ham & broccoli quiche and a bean with bacon soup that Brian and I are having tonight. Janet is teaching me about never throwing anything away and keeping even tiny bits of things leftover for later usage. (Did you know you can even keep the juice from a can of black beans to later use in a soup?) So the ham bone was used in the soup and a lot of extra meat came off of it after it simmered in the pot for a while. Hopefully the soup turns out good.

The rest of the trip to Steamboat

2010-04-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

One of the days that we didn't ski we went out for a yummy breakfast at a place called Winona's in downtown Steamboat.

Then we walked around the downtown area and did some shopping.

We also went to a paint your own pottery place. This ended up being even more fun than I expected. Savannah had a lot of fun doing it too. She chose a little dog to paint and I did a plate that I painted some mountains onto and then did Savannah's handprint with the year and Steamboat 2010. I also did a little tile with Colton's footprint on it.

After naps, we went to the Old Town Hot Springs. Savannah LOVED swimming last summer, but for some reason she panicked and did not want to swim here. It really sucked because Brian, Colton, and I were already in the water when she started throwing a fit and refused to get in and it's about 30 degrees outside so we don't want to get out of the water. So for about 10 minutes I tried to talk her into getting in (all the while she is freezing too because she has her bathing suit on in 30 deg. weather). Finally I gave up and got out and we went to the locker room and changed into our warm clothes and just watched Brian and Colton swim.

After that we went tubing. Brian and I had both bought tickets to tube and were going to take turns riding with Savannah while one of us watched Colton. But as we walked up to the hill I quickly realized there was no way I was tubing down it. We were doubtful Savannah would do it, especially after her freak out at the hot springs. But Brian just went to the top with her like it was going to be lots of fun and she did it! She actually really enjoyed it and her and Brian went down again and again.

Brian and I got our first ever paid for babysitter while in Steamboat. There's a well-known babysitting service for all the families on vacation that was recommended to us so we called them up and got a sitter for our last night there. We made reservations to eat at the Ore House which is a 100 year old barn turned into a restaurant. We got steaks and it was pretty good. Most importantly, it was nice to be out to dinner without the kids.

And the kids did good with the babysitter too. She was an older lady (grandmotherly) named Maureen. Savannah couldn't pronounce her name so she called her Reen.

Skiing in Steamboat

2010-04-07T15:20:00.000-05:00

On our first day of skiing we left our condo nice and early to make sure we got to the child care place with plenty of spare time for me to get to my lesson after dropping off the kids. The drop off went awesome. Colton is in a phase right now where he will fake cry/fuss when I first drop him off anywhere, but whenever I pick him up he is always fine. So he did his little fuss, but I was just glad it wasn't anything worse than that. Savannah walked right into her class and started playing with the toys so that was easy. Brian and I were so happy to be kid-free for a day of skiing!

Brian took the gondola up by himself and I headed to my lesson. They put me at level 3 even though I had only skied 1 time before?! I was a little nervous about that because we headed straight for the lift and I had never even successfully gotten off a lift w/o falling. But somehow this time I did it and even made it down my 1st green run. The first day of skiing I definitely still didn't really know what I was doing and anytime I would pick up a lot of speed I would panic and fall down. So I ended up with bruises all over my legs. After 1 really bad fall another guy in my class said I should think about getting a helmet. Brian and I were skiing w/o them the first day, but we picked some up for the rest of the time and I was glad we did even though I didn't have any falls as bad as that first day's falls.

The child care place would watch the kids until 4pm everyday, but my lessons were over at 3pm, so after the 1st day Brian and I went to happy hour at a restaurant right by the slopes that had a live band outside on the patio. It was so fun to sit out there in the awesome weather and eat some wings and drink a beer after a day of skiing (and still be kid free). After relaxing there for the hour, then we went and got the kids.

I had planned to only do a lesson the first day, but after the lesson was so great the first day I decided to get the second day, and then there was a deal that you buy 2 lessons, get the 3rd free, so I figured I might as well do the 3rd day too since it was free. I'm so glad I did because each day we would do harder and harder runs and I know if I would have been by myself I would have stared down the mountain and taken 30 minutes to talk myself into going down the hill, but with my class I just had to do it and since everyone else in my class was my same ability level and they were going down the hills too it gave me confidence that I could do it. On the 2nd day we tackled the hardest green run there and on the 3rd day I did my first blue run!

Brian and I skied together a little bit each morning before the lessons started. I think he was glad he didn't have to stay with me all day because I am too slow for him. But on the last day we ran into him before doing a long run down the mountain and he stayed with me for that whole run.

We had a good range of weather too. The first day was warm and sunny and got into the 50s. The next day was cold and it snowed the whole day. And our last day was warm and sunny again. It was fun to ski in different conditions.

The kids had a great time in the child care too. Each day they would take Savannah's class on a gondola ride and fed them good lunches. They had an outdoor play area they got to use on the days it was warm. And Colton's room had separate areas that were dark for the babies to nap in so he actually took good naps there and stayed on his usual schedule. Then they gave us detailed reports of what the kids did all day which I liked.

After our 2nd day of skiing we hung out with the kids in another area of the village that had some music and free hot chocolate, granola bars, and water and sat around the fire.

And after the 3rd day we picked the kids up and took them to the patio we'd been to on the 1st day because we though Savannah might like listening to the band play.

Here are some of the pics Brian took while he was skiing -

Steamboat - days 1-2

2010-04-07T14:40:00.000-05:00

The first day in Steamboat we spent getting settled in our condo. We had a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom condo. It had a garage on the first level (which we never used because it was too tiny for the van), then stairs that led up to the living area. It had an open living/dining/kitchen area.

Here we are eating dinner our first night there -

On our 2nd day there we rode the local bus downtown to go ice skating.

To get to the rink we crossed over the Yampa River which runs all along Steamboat and we had a nice view of the mountain we'd be skiing the next day.

Savannah didn't like the ice skating very much and only barely stepped onto the ice before she started crying. So we got this thing called a Euro sled which she could sit on and be pushed around the rink. She had a great time doing that so it all worked out and Brian and I took turns pushing her around. Colton even took a turn on the sled.

After the ice skating we got some lunch at a place called The Shack. Savannah did not want me to take her picture -

That evening we picked up our ski stuff and were excited to start skiing the next morning!

Road trip to Steamboat Springs, CO

2010-04-02T14:43:00.000-05:00

I guess around Jan/Feb I started getting VERY motivated for us to take a family vacation. At first I thought this year would just be camping trips and a nice 5 year anniversary trip for Brian and me after I was done nursing Colton, but the daily routine was starting to wear on me and I wanted a break. Plus I had been looking thru our old pictures and saw how we had gone to Durango with Savannah when she was Colton's age and I wanted to prove to myself that we could still do a trip like that now that we had 2 kids.

So I started doing some research and Steamboat was looking like a good option. The first thing we had to decide was fly or drive? There were actually good deals on flights to Denver, but when we factored in that we would still need to rent a car and make the 3 1/2 hr drive from Denver to Steamboat and all the STUFF we would have to bring for the kids on the plane and all those baggage fees, we decided to just drive. And I LOVE a good road trip! So we picked our dates and booked our trip!

We left on one of Brian's off Fridays. Our goal was to wake up at 4am and leave by 5am, but it was hard to get up right at 4am, so after laying in bed and snoozing for a while, we finally got up and were on the road by 5:45am. We just moved the kids from their beds to their car seats and Colton went right back to sleep once we were moving. But Savannah stayed awake and had a million questions. Her favorite question of the day every time we stopped was, "Are we going home now?" But she asked this question because she didn't want to go home, she was having so much fun on "vacation." Our first stop was QT for gas, donuts, and coffee. Then we had to make about 3 more stops because Savannah needed to go potty, but each bathroom was not good enough for her. Finally we stopped at a picnic area off the highway and she peed outside on the road. She preferred peeing outside to peeing in a dirty bathroom.

The kids did great on the road trip. We hardly heard a peep from Colton the whole time. He liked just looking at Savannah and playing with random toys we would give him. And whenever he would start to get hungry but we weren't quite ready to pull over I would reach back and give him a little Gerber puff to eat. He loves those things. One time when he was getting really hungry, but we wanted to make it a little farther before stopping to eat, I was able to make it back to the 3rd row so I could feed him his baby food all while Brian was driving. This was an awesome use of the minivan.

I had bought Savannah a lot of toys from Target's dollar spot and those kept her entertained for a lot of the drive too. We had stickers, coloring books, and lots of different coloring pens, markers, and crayons. Whenever she would get tired of that stuff we'd put a DVD in for her or give her a snack. We had her lunch box stocked full of all her favorite snacks right within our reach.

We brought both of our coolers with us and stocked them full of food to eat while we were in Steamboat and also while on the road. I pre-made and froze 4 dinners for us plus made some fruit salad and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. That way we didn't have to spend extra money going out to eat for every meal and also take the kids out to a restaurant every night. We had planned to have a picnic lunch both days of driving, but the first day when we stopped at a rest area in TX it was already freezing cold so we ate inside. We had yummy chicken salad sandwiches, chips, pickles, fruit salad, and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. The rest area we stopped at had a nice playground that Savannah played at for a while too and then we were on our way again.

The other cool thing about this rest stop is that it was the same one we stopped at when we drove to Durango 2 years ago. Here's a picture of Savannah and our picnic here 2 years ago. Ok, a few pictures...

We had hoped to make it to Colorado Springs after the first day of driving and we probably would have, except there was a huge snow storm that hit the southeast part of Colorado right as we were driving thru that really slowed us down.

So we stopped in Pueblo for the night and stayed at a really nice Hampton Inn that had a yummy free breakfast in the morning. This was our first night to all stay in 1 room together and it actually went WAY better than I thought it would. Savannah was so tired from us waking her up early that morning that she fell right asleep. Colton was a little harder to put down, but after a little crying, he fell asleep too. Savannah woke up once in the middle of the night I think confused about where she was and then that woke Colton up so I went ahead and fed him and then he went back to sleep. Both kids slept until 6:45am which was 7:45am TX time so that was nice after our early morning the previous day.

We had a pretty big scare as we were all getting ready that morning though. Savannah started complaining her neck was hurting and then started gagging. I immediately knew she was about to throw up so I told Brian to grab a trash can. She threw up a tiny bit and then felt all clammy. It felt like she definitely had a fever. We instantly feared the worst and thought our whole vacation was ruined. We assumed it was going to be the nasty stomach bug that had been going around. But after about 30 mins or less of her laying on the bed, she felt fine and said she wanted to eat breakfast. I was a little skeptical if we should let her eat because I thought it would just make her throw up more if more food was in her stomach, but then I figured she probably wouldn't want to eat if she still felt bad. So we all went down for breakfast and she ate a huge amount and was acting like her normal self. And for the whole rest of the trip she was fine. I don't know if that was an immediately answered prayer from God that she got better so quickly or some weird kind of altitude sickness, but whatever it was we were just glad she was better. Especially because we still had about 5 hours of driving to do and that would have been no fun with a sick kid throwing up all over the car.

The last part of the drive from Denver to Steamboat was the best because the kids slept most of the way and the views of the Rockies were beautiful.

We made it to Steamboat around 3:45pm on Saturday, which was just 15 minutes before check in time, perfect. We got the keys to our condo and headed to it....

The most snow I have ever seen in TX!

2010-02-12T10:17:00.000-06:00

I am not sure the official amount of snow we have gotten, but it looks to be about a foot. Yesterday we went out and played in it a little. Brian and Savannah made a snowman. Savannah is still not a fan of the cold or snow although she did enjoy eating it. But after about 15 minutes she started complaining that she was cold and wanted to come back inside.

Brian was out of town Monday morning-Wednesday night of this week. I am so thankful that he came home Wed. night since it started snowing around 2am Thursday and who knows when his flight would have made it with this weather if he had a flight for later in the week. He decided to just work from home yesterday and I stayed home from Bible study since the snow was coming down pretty good. And since the roads are terrible today and I don't think we could even get out our driveway Brian stayed home again today too. So it's nice that I had 3 days w/o him but now we get to play catch up with him being home for a 4 day stretch.

Here are some pics of us in the snow and the snow around our house -

Colton 4-5 months

2010-02-08T10:05:00.000-06:00

I was eagerly anticipating the day Colton would turn 4 months so we could start him on solids. Since Colton was still not a great sleeper (some days he was ok, but others not so much), I was hoping starting solids would be the thing he would need to get him to consistently start sleeping well.

At his 4 month checkup he was 27 3/4" tall which is off the charts tall and 16 lbs 2 ozs.

After his appointment we gave him his first rice cereal and sure enough he devoured it! He LOVED it! He loves to eat. His first bite he was a little unsure, but after that he realized he liked it so much I had to make him a second bowl. He quickly started eating so much that Brian and I started worrying if it was in fact possible to over feed a baby?? And I felt pretty confident that he had been a starving baby for most of the first four months of his life. I'm sorry Colton!

Here are some pics of him trying his first rice cereal -

Since the rice cereal Colton has liked everything we have given him. I'm so glad I have had 2 babies that are not picky! He has had squash, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, prunes, peaches, pears, apples, bananas and oatmeal in addition to his rice cereal.

That first night after feeding him Colton slept 12 hours! I thought we had finally figured it out and all of our sleeping trouble would be over, but it only lasted a few days and he was back to waking up again. So I kept readjusting what I was feeding him and when I was feeding him until I got it worked out again.

Another thing that didn't help sleeping matters was him getting his first tooth right before he turned 5 months old and the second one a few days later. So he now has the 2 middle bottom teeth and they are so cute!

This month he also learned how to roll over from belly to back and back to belly and can even sit unsupported for a little while. I have a feeling he is going to end up crawling way sooner than Savannah did because he seems very strong and can already kinda get up on all fours. When he tries to move himself he goes backward, which I remember Savannah doing too, but not nearly this early.

Here are some cute pictures of our little 5 month old -

Outing at the Gaylord

2010-02-04T17:03:00.000-06:00

After celebrating Christmas/ Brian's birthday with his side of the family they also treated us to Brunch with the Grinch and ICE at the Gaylord. Savannah LOVED meeting the Grinch and Colton wasn't scared of him either. I was a little freaked out by his long fingers. Brunch was yummy, although I did have to pass on the green eggs.

It is impossible to get a decent picture of all 4 of us. There were some more out-takes in this series that I didn't upload. This was the 5th picture taken and you can tell Brian is starting to get annoyed.

Using our old trick of putting the baby in the Bjorn underneath the jacket. Colton slept the whole time and was nice and toasty inside Brian's jacket.

Some people in line said Savannah looked like a penguin. It was pretty funny to see her walk in her full length parka.

She quickly got annoyed with us taking her picture...

But she did like the ice slide -

Our first white Christmas, Colton's first Christmas

2010-01-28T16:17:00.001-06:00

Christmas this year was so exciting! It was our first white Christmas ever. I was so excited when it was snowing on Christmas Eve I could hardly stand it. We were also filled with anticipation for how Savannah would react to all her presents. She seemed to get the idea of Santa and told us Christmas morning when she woke up that she was hiding from him. Whether she was scared of him or hiding so she didn't accidentally see him and not get any presents we don't know.

We spent Christmas Eve getting all the food ready so on Christmas day I could relax and spend time with the kids opening and playing with gifts. We also went to our church's Christmas Eve service even though the weather was a little iffy. On the way home we took the scenic route through the nice part of Fort Worth and looked at some Christmas lights. We had planned to get something easy for dinner after church, but with the weather being bad decided to just head home and had grilled cheese sandwiches and canned soup. It was good considering the cold weather, but not as exciting as going out.

Our food on Christmas day included our traditional french toast w/ berries for breakfast (my 3rd year to make it for us), turkey (Brian rotisseried it on our grill - yum!), sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, fruit salad, rolls, and pumpkin pie. Everything was delicious!

My side of the family came over on Christmas day and then we celebrated with Brian's side on the 27th since that is his birthday and we were going to be getting together with them then anyways. More pictures to come from that...

Here are some pics from Christmas day -
Colton's 1st Christmas, such a cutie pie!

Savannah doesn't know what to think. This is a toy she plays with EVERY time we go to Albertsons so we got her one, but she was not as excited as I thought she'd be -

Brian trying to sled down our driveway which was a solid sheet of ice. It didn't work very well. Savannah slipped and fell 2 times though. She is not a big fan of cold or snow/ice.

Probably Savannah's favorite Christmas gift - the superbabies - they are Dora's twin brother and sister I think -
Eating some snow -

Another favorite gift - I got her some lip gloss and lotion because she always wants to use mine. She really applies the lip gloss all over.

Fun little photoshoot with Savannah and Colton

2010-01-22T09:31:00.000-06:00

For Christmas I got my parents and Brian's parents a picture frame that said "Grandkids" on it so I needed to get a cute pic of the kids to put in it. This was more work than I anticipated. I had tried one day before and didn't get anything good because Savannah wasn't cooperating. So I tried again at a later date and got these -

Savannah started "reading" to Colton mid photoshoot and it was so cute because he was really interested in her reading and wanted to look at the books and Savannah's knows her books well enough that she was telling him the stories pretty accurately.

This is her telling him to take his fingers out of his mouth. She can be a little bossy.

Then I got some of Colton by himself with this cute little hat on -

Christmas party with Brian's family

2010-01-11T14:57:00.000-06:00

On Dec. 13 we had a Christmas get together with Brian's extended family at his parent's house. There were tons of people there b/c Brian has a lot of relatives in the area and most of his cousins are married and have kids too. Savannah loved playing w/ her [2nd?] cousin Ella and we pretty much didn't see her the whole time. Colton even took a nice nap for us over there.

My current favorite family photo -

Savannah and Ella coloring outside -

The little kid table -

These are some pics Brian's cousin Sarah took of Colton and all the kids -

The 3 newest members of the family: Hayes born in July, Colton born in August, and Lyla born in November.

I love how you can see someone grabbing a hand in this one and Colton and Lyla are starting to cry... wonder what happened...

And on the drive home Savannah was very quiet, too quiet. I turned around and turned on the light and this is what I saw!

Colton at 3 months

2010-01-08T14:41:00.000-06:00

I took these while we were on our Thanksgiving vacation since Colton turned 3 months while we were there. As I was just looking through these to post them I notice Colton has lost a LOT of hair. His hair was so cute, I hope it comes back soon.

Colton at 3 months was a terror. He was past the point where I felt he should have been sleeping thru the night and starting to get on a decent routine during the day. But for pretty much this whole month he wouldn't take longer than a 45 minute nap. I tried everything from feeding him, rocking him back to sleep, letting him cry it out, burping him, giving him Mylicon... he just didn't want to sleep. He was sleeping ok at night, but never for more than a few days at a time. Of course I don't think our vacation helped improve his schedule at all. He nearly drove me crazy. Thank God he was so cute I could put up with it all when I saw his sweet smiling face.

Christmas events

2010-01-05T13:58:00.001-06:00

Yes, it is January and I am just now getting around to posting some Dec. Christmas-y things we did....

This year Savannah could actually help me decorate the Christmas tree. I let her hang all the non-breakable ornaments on it and everyday she would rearrange them a little bit. She loved it. And I loved it because it took considerably less time to decorate the tree this year.

We also went to Saginaw's Christmas tree lighting.

It was so cool - such a small town kind of thing. Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived on a fire truck after the tree lighting and it was seriously the most fun I have had in a while watching all the kids swarm after the truck and try to get to Santa (including Savannah). It was so fun to be able to see Christmas through the eyes of a 2 year old. Some of the local businesses did performances inside the rec center while you could wait to get your pic taken w/ Santa. It was things like little girls dancing and tae kwon do - so cute! Savannah loved watching the girls dance and did some dancing herself - she's got some crazy dance moves! She cracks us up.

I can't wait until Savannah is old enough we can enroll her in some dance classes and she can be one of the cute little girls up on the stage. They also had refreshments from local establishments such as Cici's and Starbucks - ha! And the mayor made a speech. It was a great time. The fun of living in the suburbs - after this night I began to wonder if I really do want to move to Fort Worth...

I was surprised Savannah actually wanted to get her pic taken w/ Santa. Not only did she want to, but she was actually really excited about it. Once she got on his lap her fingers went into her mouth (which is her nervous thing) and she wouldn't talk to him. Maybe next year she won't be as shy and will tell him what she wants for Christmas. But I'm impressed she at least sat on his lap and didn't cry.

Our Thanksgiving trip

2010-01-02T06:55:00.000-06:00

For the week of Thanksgiving we went down to Montgomery, TX and stayed at a timeshare that Brian's parents got. We had two condos - one for Bob, Janet, and Kelly and one for Brian, me and the kids. Our condo was huge - it was 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms so each kid had their own room and bathroom. We had a fun time and mainly just sat around and relaxed. I did some reading. Brian and I did go workout at the local YMCA once. We also did our own little Turkey Trot Thanksgiving morning thru the parking lot.

The condos were right on Lake Conroe, so Savannah enjoyed walking down to the piers -

Brian and I had a date night the 2nd night there. We went bowling and out for margaritas.

Little cutie pies in the bath!

Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot -
You can tell Brian is real serious about our run - bringing his coffee along...

Savannah wasn't very excited about the run either -

I love her crazy hair -

We had Thanksgiving dinner at this really nice resort area about an hour from Montgomery. They had alligators, turtles, and fish in a pond there and Savannah enjoyed feeding the fish. It was a good distraction when she got tired of sitting at the table and eating. Colton was in a cute little sweater vest outfit and I wanted to get our family pic taken with him wearing it, but unfortunately he had a diaper blowout during dinner so he he had to change clothes.

Having fun at a nearby park -

Savannah loves animals. There was a stray cat just walking around the park.

Sweetest serenade ever

2009-12-24T08:24:00.000-06:00

Savannah loves to sing and a while back we got this video of her singing herself to sleep. We were in our room reading and had just put her to bed for the night when we heard this sweet singing. I love how she makes Jesus Loves Me and the ABCs just run together like they are the same song. Sometimes she will put Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in there too.

Brother sister love

2009-12-24T08:15:00.000-06:00

Colton at 2 months

2009-12-24T08:02:00.000-06:00

Need to catch up on Colton since tomorrow is his 4 month birthday and I still haven't posted his 2 or 3 month photos. Here are his pics from 2 months old -

Savannah-isms

2009-12-24T06:45:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to keep a list of some of the cute little things Savannah has been doing lately. Here they are -

She says, "I can't want that" whenever I give here something she doesn't want. I guess she hasn't learned the word "don't" yet.

She loves to say, "Nanny do it." Nanny is her nickname for herself, her shortened version of Savannah. She loves to do things by herself these days including go to the bathroom (she will yell at me to leave if I am in there with her), dress herself (she can do her socks and shoes easily but the shoes usually end up on the wrong feet. She can also do her panties and sometimes her pants if they aren't jeans).

It is so funny for it to get real quiet around the house and for me to wonder where Savannah went and I go looking for her and find her in the bathroom using her potty! Such a big girl thing to do.

About the only time she will say her full name Savannah is if she's hiding and she will say, "Where'd Savannah go?" She loves to play hide and seek with Daddy, but usually if he hides she will come running to me and tell me she's scared. Brian likes to scare her too much.

She has also learned to say "excuse me" after burping and if she needs me to move out of her way. So polite!

And the final one is covering her coughs. It is so cute. But she has to explain to me that is what she is doing after she does it. She tell me she is covering her cough with her arm and I say that's good Savannah.

SNOW!

2009-12-05T20:41:00.001-06:00

It was pretty awesome to wake up the other morning to snow falling and there was a good amount on the ground too. Savannah was still asleep, but once she woke up we all went outside and took some pics and played for a few minutes before Brian had to go to work. Brian threw a snowball at Savannah which she did not like. They also built a snowman, but I didn't get a pic of that. I was worried Colton was too cold so I brought him inside after getting a quick picture of him seeing his first snowfall.

And I have to include in this post Savannah seeing her first snowfall which was on March 6, 2008 when she was almost 6 months old.

Hiking at Eagle Mountain Lake

2009-12-05T20:28:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while we get pretty motivated to do something outdoorsy so a few weekends ago when the weather was nice and we had nothing planned we went and got a yummy breakfast at our favorite breakfast place (The Dixie House Cafe) and then went hiking at Eagle Mountain Lake. It was an experimental hike since it was one of the first times we just let Savannah walk and I had Colton in the baby Bjorn in case Brian had to end up carrying Savannah on his shoulders. We were trying to get down to the lake which I think would have been about 3 miles roundtrip, but we probably only ended up doing a little over a mile roundtrip. Savannah was carried on Brian's shoulders some of the way. And we made about 10 potty breaks. I think after the first time she went by a tree she just thought it was fun and so every few minutes she'd tell us she had to go again and somehow she actually would go. I don't know how she had to pee so much. But it was a fun little Saturday morning hike.

Halloween

2009-12-05T10:15:00.000-06:00

We have been going to story time every week at the Saginaw Library and Halloween week they let the kids wear their costumes and read non-scary monster books. We just let Savannah pick out one of her princess outfits to wear because we didn't want to spend money to buy a new costume. So on that day she picked Snow White and was a very cute Snow White.

On Halloween night she decided on her Little Mermaid outfit. We just walked the 3 streets in our neighborhood that make a little triangle and surprisingly there were SO many kids out. People in our neighborhood were actually really into Halloween and one house had a cotton candy machine and a popcorn machine. Savannah was a little unsure of the cotton candy, but loved the popcorn. Another house had a scarecrow sitting in the front yard. As we walked by we were wondering if he was real, but Brian said, "No, it's an old couple that lives here they wouldn't do that." But sure enough, he was real and gave Savannah a little scare.

I carried Colton around in the Baby Bjorn and he slept the whole time. Trick-or-treating was pretty fun.

Colton's first camping trip

2009-11-14T14:24:00.000-06:00

We love camping and were excited to take Colton on his first camping trip. We took Savannah when she was just 8 weeks old and wanted to take Colton at a young age too before it got too cold to go. So we saw that Brian had an off-Friday week Halloween weekend and Colton would be 9 weeks old so we decided to go for it. We had been wanting to go to Dinosaur Valley State Park forever and it was always so hard to get a spot there so we reserved a spot weeks in advance - shortly after Colton was born I think.

Unfortunately, since we had to reserve so far in advance, we had no idea what the weather would be like and of course we got a crappy weather weekend. Actually during the day the weather was beautiful and the perfect temperature, but during the evening it got pretty chilly and rained off and on too.

But we still had a great time. We have a few kinks to work out now that Savannah isn't sleeping in the pack and play anymore and has her own sleeping bag next to ours. She is a pretty wild sleeper and was all over the tent all night long so we will have to work on that. Colton slept pretty good, but I was worried most of the night about him getting too cold so I kept alternating him b/w the pack and play and laying next to me to warm him up. Then once I got too uncomfortable I'd move him back to the pack and play.

Here are Brian and Savannah by the huge T-Rex at Dinosaur Valley -

Lots of people think we are crazy for going camping because it is so much work, and sometimes we think this too when we are packing up the car to go. But every trip we go on we have moments like these.... Savannah is having fun playing, Colton is just chilling out, and Brian and I can just sit back and relax and we have nothing better to do than sit because we aren't at home with a million things on our to do list. Then we remember why we go camping.

And since it was Halloween weekend, we had a pumpkin we brought along to carve. It was actually pretty cool that lots of the people had pumpkins at their campsites and some of the RV people really had their campsites decorated for Halloween.

On Friday we got to go to Fossil Rim which was awesome and Savannah loved it! Friends that were with us had a pickup truck so it was fun to put our camping chairs in the back of the pickup and just sit there while we drove thru the park and fed the animals. Colton missed out on that fun since he was asleep inside the cab of the truck, but I'm sure we'll go back sometime so he can enjoy it too.
The highlight of Fossil Rim was getting to feed the giraffes! Savannah was a little freaked out and some of the giraffes were more aggressive than the others, but it was definitely awesome to see them so close up and to have them eat right out of our hands.

Savannah and Adam looking at the cheetahs -

Having fun in the back of the truck -

I have never been to Africa, but I think it's pretty cool that the land Fossil Rim is on looks like what I picture Africa would look like so it's fun to imagine you're on a safari while driving thru -

The ostriches were a little scary -

Colton's 1 week old photoshoot

2009-10-15T16:41:00.000-05:00

One of my goals is to take photoshoots of Colton periodically and use some of my new camera knowledge from the classes I took at UTA while I was prego w/ him. For Savannah a friend of mine did her pictures at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and her 1 year bday party. So hopefully I can get some shots that were almost as good as hers at those same stages for Colton. Here are some of my newborn shots of Colton which I took when he was 1 week old.

Two kids!

2009-10-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

I feel like I finally have a minute to write a blog entry...

Both kids are napping although Colton is making some noise so I might not have much longer.

Things are crazy around here w/ 2. I have been polling my friends on how long it will take for me to feel like I am back to "normal" - have a routine, a schedule, feel like I can keep up w/ things, feel rested. So far I have gotten responses from 3-6 months. Three months I think I can handle - I am already halfway there - but 6 months oh my.

One of my biggest problems right now is forgetting something every time we leave the house. From Savannah's sippie cup to Colton's pacifier, burp cloth, nursing cover, breast pads. Some days I just cannot get it together. But my problem a few weeks ago was getting places on time. I feel like I have conquered that problem now, but b/c I rush so much to get out the door on time, that is why I forget a few things.

My other problem is just staying caught up on things around the house - the cooking, the cleaning, making it to the grocery store, etc.

And I really wish I had a chance to download and look at some of the many pics we have taken since Colton has been born, but for now they just stay in the camera on the memory card. I will get around to that someday I hope...

Well, Colton is waking up so that is all I have time for.

Tickle my back

2009-09-28T13:36:00.001-05:00

Last night I was putting Savannah to bed and she asked me to tickle her back like she always does before nap and bedtime and I suddenly just realized one day she is going to out grow this and NOT want me to tickle her back anymore. That is going to be a really sad day.

Brian and Savannah look alikes

2009-07-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

We looked at some old slides at Brian's parents and found this picture of Brian on his 2nd bday so at about the same age as Savannah. I think the resemblance is pretty crazy -