Adoption Ministry

For about a year now, Brian and I have felt the Lord tugging at our hearts to get an adoption ministry started in our church. With the size of our church, there is no reason why there shouldn't already be a ministry. I guess the Lord is waiting on us, huh?! Some friends of ours who brought home a precious little girl from China the same year we brought Natalie home have felt the same calling.  After a crazy busy year in both of our lives, we have teamed up again to put our calling into action.  Today my friend, Susan and I met to get our thoughts and ideas together.  We quickly realized our long term vision is quite large!  We managed to settle on a proposal for our church leadership that outlined a couple of different short term goals for this ministry.  I am excited to see how God leads us, and what he can do with this ministry. All great ideas begin with someone's passion. And passion for adoption and orphan care is definitely what we have!

On a side note: One week until our home study!

On the other side note: Look forward to hearing more about our adoption fundraiser!

And just because these posts are always more fun with pictures:

The back yard is blazing hot in the evenings so we took our fun to the front yard with water balloons and a water bucket!

Well I had others but this stupid thing won't rotate it. Blah!

Swim Day

Thanks to the Royse City splash park being shut down this week we ended up in Wylie at my friend, Liz's neighborhood pool. I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled about going to Wylie again this week (I'm trying really hard to stay on budget), but I'm SO glad we did. We had a blast. Her pool was huge, but it also had a mini splash pad, as well as a kiddie pool that was NOT a hot tub like ours. It was a perfect place!

The splash pad had sprayers that were much calmer than the ones at our park so Natalie actually played in them without me having to be there carrying her around. It was so fun!

On a random other note....

I walked outside my front door this afternoon to get the mail and discovered this beauty on my flowers!

It was the biggest butterfly I have seen in awhile, and especially on our flowers.

I was enthralled by it.

Family Fun Night

Friday night I declared it 'Make a tent in your living room' night at our house! I grew up making these tents and for some reason it is just plain fun. So of course I need to pass this love on to Natalie.

Here are a few good things needed to make a successful tent in your house.

clothespins, sheets (both fitted and flat) and a cute little kid like this one to enjoy it!

Daddy wasn't home in time to help us construct the tent so I needed to tap into my inner engineer. I will say this is our second time to make a tent, and I did much better this time around! One chair in the middle was the basis for every sheet I used. This is why fitted sheets are so great! They hook right on the tops of our chairs.

We made sure we ate dinner in our tent. Brian is such a good sport!

Natalie did a little bit of reading in our tent, but the highlight of the tent family fun was snuggling down to watch Tangled! This is the only movie that she will remotely sit still in. She laughs when we laugh, and covers how mouth while bending over like it is the funniest thing in the world. Precious.





We grabbed all the pillows off our bed, and her special lamb pillow and cozied up to our movie. We watched about half of the movie before it was NJ's bedtime. The tent was so much fun we decided to leave it up all day Saturday. She crawled back in it to eat lunch and play on her own. I would call this evening a success and one I will have to remember. Maybe a once a month kind of tradition, who knows!

Under Construction

My friend, Susan, came over today to help me learn a little more about this blog and how to change it up without really messing things up.  You know me and technology haven't gotten along lately! So, hopefully you can see the new changes on my blog. AND hopefully they are good changes.

I told myself I was not going to stay up really late tonight, and it is currently 11:15pm. Darn! I still haven't posted my tent pictures for the evening. Oh well! There's always tomorrow right?

See you then......

Granny comes to town

We had a mid-week treat for lunch today! Granny came to town. My mom and dad are taking my Granny to see her sister in New Mexico for a few days. What a road trip that will be, right?! My poor dad=) Trapped in a car with his wife and her mother, equally as bossy and stubborn! And guess what......I'm just like them! And I couldn't be more proud.

They stopped for lunch as they were passing through so Granny could see the house and see Natalie! It has been since Christmas if I remember correctly (and that is just sad!).  NJ sure has changed since then! Mom keeps her posted with pictures, but that's just not the same. I'm glad Granny got a chance to hear her chatter and laugh. Sweet, priceless memories. I hope Natalie will somehow recall these memories when she is older. It breaks my heart that she won't truly know or remember her Papa. He and Granny together are the family example for how to build a strong, Christian marriage. 67 years to be exact.

Granny took Nat on a ride on her walker and Natalie loved it! The funniest part was watching Granny (who obviously is not a quick mover) take off like she was racing to the door with Natalie making truck noises! I nearly got tickled seeing her move so quickly (relatively speaking). =)

I love this one.  One of the new phrases we have taught Natalie when we are joking around is, "I'm gonna bust you up!" We wave our fist around and act like we are going to take her out. She thinks this is hilarious, and always says whilst giggling,  'gin' wanting us to do it again.  Natalie's version sounds more like, "I bus you up!"  This picture capture Mimi saying it to her and NJ laughing hysterically. Love that smile.

And this one speaks for itself. "I wud you, Ganny."

This is what Natalie does when something is "oh so funny!"

Our time with family was super short but we take what we can get! They will be passing back through next week so hopefully we will get them for a short bit again. Thanks for stopping by! We love you Mimi, Poppi, and Granny!

                                                                             Bye!

Alamo Part 2

It has been roughly 12 years for Brian and 22 years for me since either had been to see the Alamo.  We definitely remembered it being bigger! ha! Funny how you remember things.  This time around (being older and more mature, I guess!) we really enjoyed learning more about the history leading up to the battle, and what happened afterwards.  We made a few stops around the Alamo to use the almighty iphone to read up on different aspects of Texas' history.  I would like to rewind back to when I was teaching my 1st graders our Texas history unit. I simply didn't do it justice! My Oklahoma-native friend and fellow teacher and I joked about having to learn it so we could teach it!

All joking aside, Brian and I began to understand why Texas is so proud itself! We just thought Texans were a bunch of prideful people thinking they were better than all the other states. Now we understand why, and it's pretty cool. Now, don't go getting any ideas here. I am still a proud ARKANSAN, but a little less annoyed by the whole 'Texas is awesome' mentality.=)

In our attempts to kill time before meeting our friends we discovered this Japanese Sunken Tea Garden. It was a beautiful find. We just spent some time walking around, enjoying the beauty!

Remember the Alamo!

Brian and I made a last minute anniversary trip to the Alamo this past weekend to celebrate our 9th anniversary. Thankfully my mom and dad carved out some time for us to be able to go so that they could keep Natalie for us. We really didn't have to twist their arm too much!  That's the beauty of dad being retired and mom working part time. What a blessing! These are a few other blessings....

 new outfits for Nat!

and much needed new pjs.

Thanks Mimi and Poppi!

Now on to the trip.....

Two days before we left we finally booked a hotel on the Riverwalk. We stayed at the Embassy Suites and it was perfect! We orginally had a king suite with no river view, but when we checked in the lady upgraded us to the 16th floor for a room with a view!





 My only requirement was that it provided breakfast so we didn't have to spend money on that. This place had the BEST breakfast of any hotel, EVER!  Eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, made to order omelets, oatmeal, pancakes, and french toast. And that was just the hot stuff!  Then there was fruit, yogurt, pastries, and cereal along with your typical morning drinks.......AND a soda fountain. Whew! We stuffed ourselves both mornings and took stuff with us to the room=)

On top of this every morning, there was a manager's special every evening from 5:30-7pm that served free drinks (if you are in to that which we aren't), fruit tray, cheese tray, veggie tray, pasta salads, chex mix, and some candies! What?! After the first night of eating that as an appetizer, we decided the next evening to eat that for dinner (saving money, folks!), then head to the Riverwalk for dessert. So we did! It was a great evening.

Nice people taking our picture!

We spent quite a bit of time walking the Riverwalk by day and night as we just love the ambiance of it all. And to top off the touristy thiings to do we caught a ride on the riverboat. Sorry, no pics here because we were on the last ride of the night at 9pm!  Our driver/guide was excellent and really made it enjoyable and fun.  It was nice to sit for awhile but we also felt like we got a bit of a history lesson as well as some good tidbits about the area.

All in all, we had a wonderful time getting away together, but we were ready to come home and see this sweet little face:

It was killing me not kissing her and telling her good night each evening. I knew she was just fine, and having a blast but goodness I missed my buddy!

Like I said, she was spoiled and just fine without us, but I wanted to be home with her again.

Alamo Part 2 tomorrow



Moving right along

This morning I heard back from the office manager at Generations who handles all the paperwork. She informed me that everything was good to go. Now we were to (what you don't know is that I had to stop at this point in my typing. I heard Natalie wailing in her room and then I hear, "Momma, oh no!" Brian comes in to inform me that Natalie has stripped her diaper off and thrown it out of the crib! bwahahahaha)

Ok back to the regularly scheduled message.....Now we were to wait to hear from our case worker to schedule our home study. One hour later the email came! Whoo hoo! Love me some fast responses. Our home study is schedule for August 6th at 10 a.m. Praise God!

The agency director sent out an email to waiting families last week giving an update on life at Generations. Right now we are one of 14 waiting families. Three of us are open to all races (we are one of them), and there are 9 birth mothers due between August and January. Wow! Pretty good odds there wouldn't you say?! The cool thing is that they have already placed 8 babies this year. My goodness this agency stays busy for how small it is.

Once our home study is complete our profile will go LIVE on their website and ready for birthmoms to view and choose. I wonder how God is working right now........

Weekend with Family

Our weekend was spent in Fort Smith with Brian's mom and sister. Brian and his dad have a yearly fishing trip over the 4th of July weekend so we thought we would spend it with Grandma and Aunt Michelle.

This was my movie partner while we were waiting on Grandma to get home for the evening.

 Grandma was kind enough to take us to lunch at my FAVORITE place, Fujis. It is a typical hibachi place but it has this AMAZING sauce that they call "Sexy Sauce." And let me tell you it is just the best. No other hibachi that I have found has this sauce and it is unfortunate. Also unfortunate was Natalie's reaction to the fire at the grill!  Funny enough, it wasn't even at OUR grill=) It was the table behind and caddy-cornered to us. Poor girl was done with that and spent the rest of the meal in Grandma's arms, never to turn around again.

The only thing she would eat was her edamame. Even scary fire won't keep her from that!

How pitiful is that? I noticed that she had a bean in her mouth and was trying to keep her awake long enough to chew and swallow. Poor girl's eyes were rolling around, but she was really trying to chew!

We discovered a new love for Natalie this weeekend. White queso! That's my girl!

She was literally drinking this stuff. She had cheese dip all over her hands, dripping down her makeshift bib, dribbled on the table. I mean we went through a ton of napkins. I had to cut her off after awhile!

Cookies with Mommy

This is one of the many things I looked forward to as I dreamed of being a mommy.....cookies with my kids! Of course, right now it's just cookies with my kid.

Natalie follows me around constantly during the day so I have to get creative in figuring out just how she can help me. We dragged her little table next to the island in the kitchen and I tried to give her as many 'toys' as I could and still get my own work done! I gave her a small chunk of cookie dough so she could do whatever she wanted with it.

This tub of cookie cutters got dumped several times during our cookie making adventure.

I guess she got bored by the end because she started playing with the pot holders and cookie cutters on her feet! Silly girl.

Mommy's little helper. This girl will make a great wife one day=)

We had a great day together.

Fourth of July

So I realize I'm a day late and a dollar short, but did you expect anything different? At least you are actually getting pictures this year=)  I am seriously making a goal to keep this updated more frequently than once every 6 months or so.

We had a low key 4th, but had some friends over for the evening. Sadly, these friends live 15 minutes from us and we haven't seen them since February or something like that.  Ridiculous!
Our evening started with a trip to our neighborhood pool so kids AND adults could get some relief from this Texas heat. Ugh!  We made our way back to the house and let the kids swim in the little pool while burgers and dogs were grilling.

Natalie and Mack

We joked how the white kid is the oddball out funny enough!

I think Brian needs a few more helpers here on this home-made ice cream! You can't celebrate the 4th of July without home-made ice cream, right? Thanks, Steph, for making it.

And of course, Miss Nat enjoyed herself and her food! She did have a bit of a hard time sharing her toys. Better get used to that my dear=)

No fireworks for us this year but we enjoyed our company. Do you have any cool 4th of July traditions?

Generations Reunion

Saturday we drove to Waco for our annual adoption family reunion with Generations Adoptions.  This is an event we have come to really look forward to each year. Our first year to attend (last summer) we were able to make so many connections with families 'like us.' By 'like us' I mean,
1. have suffered through infertility,
2. have been through 'the waiting period'
3. have dealt with birth family situations
4. have biracial, adopted children
5. have dealt with sharing news and complicated situations with family, AND
6. just understand what it means to be an adoptive family.

There is so much that goes into being an adoptive family that many of you will never understand because you will never go through it yourself. It sounds harsh, but true. Brian and I have said many times how much we wish we could go back and support our friends in totally different ways now that we understand what they went through.  The emotions, the unanswered questions, the uncertainties, the fears, etc. The list could go on.  The common phrase heard by myself and many of my friends, "adoption is the easy way out because you don't have to go through child birth or gain all that weight" is ignorant and hurtful.  And although it was not meant to be hurtful, only those of us who have lived the infertility life will understand how to console one another  and give good comebacks when we hear this. =) These reasons and more is why this one day for 2 short hours is SO VERY important to our family. Adoption is all about networking, and this is how we make those connections!

Most of these friends I only get to see once or twice a year because of distance, but we keep in touch via Facebook. Passing around questions about haircare, skincare, etc has been more than helpful in making sure I am taking care of my sweet girl! Those curls don't keep themselves pretty, folks!

This family has 2 biracial beauties (a daughter one year older than Natalie), but this little man is on our 'approved list' for Natalie to marry!

My friend, Maria and her precious daughter, Jori were some of our first connections through Generations.

The picture of the shirt at the top of the page is what we got for Natalie for being at the reunion. This is the first year they have done that  and I was so excited to see them. The shirt alone was almost worth this trip, don't you think?! It's about 4 sizes too big at the moment but there is room to grow.

We ended our trip with a visit a little further south with her birth family. We are incredibly blessed to have an open relationship with her birth family and we couldn't be more thrilled. We enjoyed our time together at the splash park and anchored down more wonderful memories for Natalie to carry with her always. She is loved by so many!  All in all, it was a long day but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Blessed by adoption.......