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.......

Good grief! Technology hates me. I have tried multiple different ways to get this picture to rotate correctly, but to no avail. Ugh!

Anyway, this is the letter/pictures to our future birth mother. We sent copies to the agency today to be shared with birth moms looking for a family to place their child with for adoption.  Thanks to my dear friend, Heather, for helping me get the picture collage completed without pulling all of my hair out (remember, technology hates me)!

We are still waiting to her from our agency on whether or not we had all of our paperwork completed. From there, we will schedule our home study so we are amxiously waiting!

Here's how our day ended......

(If the truth be told, our day has still not ended. It is 10 pm and we put her down 1 hour ago. She is still crying! Seriously?! Dear Teeth- Please come in so I will get my Natalie back.And my sanity)

On Friday, June 1st Brian and I finally mailed off our formal application and paper work for adoption number 2!  And this time around I already have our scrapbook ready to go. No last minute, throw together book like last time. I am so pleased with our book this time.

Many people have been asking how long our wait will be this time or if it will be any shorter. There is absolutely no way of knowing the answer to this question. First of all, we have to complete our home study. This will be the next step that our agency will contact us on after reviewing all paperwork.  We are so excited about our case worker this time around. Her name is Meghan and she is in the DFW area. This means cheaper cost on our part because she isn't driving from Waco.  We are also excited because we LOVE her. She is so easy to talk to, and has the best personality (unlike our last one who was very difficult to figure out).  Once our home study is complete, then we will be placed on the waiting list and website. From here, it is all in the Lord's hands on timing. We simply wait on a birthmother to choose us. This could be 2 months or 1-2 years. We just have no way of knowing.

And just to clear up the second most frequently asked question........we are open to a boy or girl, any race.  Let the wait begin...........

St. Louis Day 1

This Spring break we headed to St. Louis to visit some old college buddies, Ryan and Shondra. I have to be honest that I wasn't particularly excited about the drive ahead of us, but we were excited about seeing our friends.  This was Natalie's 1st real vacation!  We left Friday after work and headed to J'ville to drop the dogs off (thanks mom and dad), and to break up the trip a little. We got up Saturday morning and left around 9. We took the scenic route through some small AR and MO towns but it wasn't bad at all. We stopped in the big town of Walnut Ridge, AR for lunch. And this was the park we found....

Not so exciting, huh? We got a good laugh at this. I mean, not even a picnic table?! So upon a little more exploring we discovered....

there was in fact a play ground (whew!) and a picnic table that turned out quite nice!

 I couldn't get them both looking at the same time so you get to see both pictures!

We were on our way after an hour stop for lunch. Thanks to mom and dad we had 2 FREE Route 44 Sonic drinks as well as turkey sandwiches with all the trimmings so they saved us some moolah! And I like that!

This is how we kept Natalie occupied for parts of the trip. This was a tray from our high chair that we take with us on trips and it worked perfectly. Mimi had us a tupperware box full of crayons, coloring pages, cars, and play-doh! We were set.

She did pretty well on the trip between playing with her toys and watching Veggie Tales, but about the last hour she was DONE. She literally only slept 1 1/2 hours on a 6 hour trip. Agh!

Look forward to St. Louis day 2.......