Kind of a rough night

My poor Amelia is sick -- or at least I think she is. Yesterday she laid down for a late nap. She always takes 2 naps, but every now and again she will want a third. So I laid her down before Kenny got home. Then he got home, we ate dinner and she was still sleeping, let her sleep a little longer and then thought if I didn't wake her up she would go to bed late. So I went in and got her up and she was burning up. And she has pretty much had a fever since then, its been from 100 to 102, but only once do I think its gone less than that and that was at 5 am. She doesn't have any other "symptoms" so it kind of worried me last night and I had her sleep with me. I can't say I totally mind that because once again, I like getting me some baby love! But I didn't sleep much at all. Honestly I don't think she slept as well either because she loves her crib, but I was so worried that her fever would spike really high in the middle of the night and if she was in her crib I wouldn't know it. So I got to sleep with a little radiator on top of me last night. This morning around 5, Isabella came in our room -- which she does alot of mornings. She will come in normally around the time Kenny gets up for work and she will get in bed with me. And say what you will, but I love it. We don't let her sleep with us at night other than every now and then we make it something special, like her birthday, Christmas Eve, etc. -- trust me she asks every single night though. But in the mornings I love it, Isabella will come in and put her little arms around me and be just about nose to nose with me and say "cuddle, cuddle, cuddle" -- I know this won't last long so I'm enjoying it while I can. Anyway, she came in this morning and thankfully it was early enough that Daddy was still in bed so she was able to cuddle with him. As much as she loves her Daddy, morning cuddle time is for mommy, she was a little upset when I told her to cuddle with Daddy because baby sister was in bed, but she was ok when I told her it was because baby sister was sick. Well, Amelia being the light sleeper that she is, popped up and started saying "Be be" or "Bu bu" she varies between the eh and uh sound which I think is what she has started calling Isabella because we keep trying to get her to "say" something for Bella -- I think it worked, I think she at least recognizes the B sound for her. Its so cute! I kind of laughed seeing both girls in bed with us -- I don't think Amelia will be asking for it like Isabella does, but maybe that will change. Amelia then got kind of squirmy like she wasn't getting comfortable and it felt like finally her fever had broke so I put her in her crib and she went right to sleep. A few hours later when she woke up -- back to having a fever. I now have an e-mail into the nurse at her pediatrician. I know its a low grade fever, but with the weekend coming and the fact that she doesn't have any other symptoms of a cold or anything, I'm a little concerned about it being some other kind of infection. And fevers can be kind of scary. I know my mom said when I was little that I ended up having convulsions due to my fever spiking so quickly so its scary just to think about.

On a lighter note -- so I don't leave you all just worried about my poor Amelia -- Isabella said something yesterday that I thought I would share. We try to teach her that when she disobeys that she is making Jesus sad as well because she is supposed to obey Him and He tells her to "obey your parents". Of course when she does things that she thinks are good, like giving the cats water (or just deciding not to be mean to them for one day) she will say "I made JESUS HAPPY!" Well, yesterday I said something to her that was funny (at least to her) and she said "Silly mommy, that made Jesus laugh!" :) Too cute!

Birthday Party

I'm finally getting around to sharing pictures from Isabella's birthday and birthday party. Its probably a good thing that I've been busy this past week because if not I definitely would have had all those emotional posts I was talking about. Obviously, I had her birthday, then the 19th was the actual day we found out about Isabella and got pictures e-mailed to us, then their was the 22nd when we got out to California and held her for the first time..... I laugh that Isabella's going to dread it as she gets older having to say all week "Yes, Mom, I know what today is" :)

Last Thursday, on her birthday we took the girls to Sesame Street Live, even Amelia enjoyed it. I wish we were allowed to videotape in there because Amelia was dancing like crazy sitting on my mom's lap -- I was laughing so hard. Then afterwards we went out to eat and she got a birthday present. You can probably tell in the pictures that she loves it. It is a Wizard of Oz collectible that actually moves around, the witch will come out and start the scene from the movie, the legs with the slippers on it shrink under the house and then Dorothy's shoes light up red..... its really cute and she loves to watch it. All day Friday I kept hearing it and I was wondering how much of "I'll get you my pretty" I could take. Then the next pictures start with her birthday invitation -- since it was a princess party, I found little "glass"(like) slippers and I made little pillows and sent them out as the invitations (only had 2 to do, so it wasn't much work :) Then you can see the decorations, cake, etc. It was fun doing a girly party. I think it looked cute and Isabella loved having a princess party and getting to dress up in a princess dress and crown. She actually loved being the center of attention. When I asked her if she wanted to go blow out her candles she said "Yes - and everyone sing Happy Birthday to me!" Although I didn't take a picture of it, we played "kiss" the frog prince (like pin the tail on the donkey, but with lips for a frog) and we also made a little craft -- which Isabella is holding hers up in one picture. The kids all had fun playing in the castle. Of course, I had somehow imagined that the girls would come in and put their little princess dress up stuff on that we got them, but no such luck they just wanted to play. My nephew Garrett did enjoy his "knights sword" though so I guess he kind of dressed up. Isabella also got a little dress up set from my parents that was Dorothy and Glenda the good witch. She had to put them on that night and in the one picture of her as "Glenda", she's saying "There's no place like home". The last few pictures are of Isabella in some new PJs that she got from a friend of my mom's. They're her "princess" pajamas. I asked her to stand by the castle and let me take a picture of her in them and she said she wanted to be the "bad lady" so that's what the ferocious pictures are from. :) Then she and I had some girly time together and painted each others nails -- -yes she painted mine, with me just steadying her hand or it would have been all over my hands. And of course I had to throw in a picture of Amelia, she likes to climb in the castle as well, she just tries to climb out of the windows. Isabella is now wondering when her birthday is again.... it's going to be a long year! :)

Happy 3rd Birthday Isabella

Isabella is 3 years old today (considering it is after midnight as I'm writing this.) I can't believe it - I know it is so cliche to say "Time flies", but really it does. On this date, 3 years ago at 3 in the morning our precious Isabella was born. It was a Sunday and we knew nothing of her or her birthmother. Right now her birthmother was probably in labor, I was probably getting ready for bed. Right now, I was totally clueless to the fact that I was going to be a mommy the next day. I can't even express to you how much I wish I was there, not the one giving birth to her because then she wouldn't be who she is, but just there to hold her the very first moments of her life. You all will have to be patient with me because I promise you that the next few days I might be doing the emotional posts-- its one of those 3 years ago today..... type of things that you will be hearing a good bit of. As I was thinking of Isabella's birthday and as I've been planning her birthday party (side note here, today when I showed Isabella the little dress that she is going to wear to her party she said in a cute little whispery voice "Wow, Is Garrett going to dance with me?" :) Anyway, as I was doing all of this, I came across some letters I had written to Isabella, and I thought I would copy and paste one here. This was the first letter I had written to her and she was almost 4 months old. I don't know, maybe this is too personal, but seeing that I don't have a large blog following, I'm assuming Isabella won't mind.

Wednesday, May 12,2004
5:00pm
Dear Isabella,
I just checked on you as you were taking a nap and I couldn't help but stare at you in disbelief. Each day I am still amazed that you are here and I thank God for you. You are so sweetly laying in your crib with your arms above your head and still "sucking" your passy even though it is laying next to you. You are not quite 4 months old and yet I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by. So many things have passed that we will never get back again. Even though I lacked alot of sleep, I loved getting up and feeding you throughout the night, just you and me in the quietness of the night. You would finish your bottle and then I would cuddle you up against my chest and you would fall back asleep. I do love the stage you are in now - you're smiling all the time, making all kinds of new sounds, "talking" (especially to daddy), rolling over, but I just wish for one more day or even just a couple hours where I could hold you again when you were not even 5 pounds. We have done so much and you have changed so much in 4 months and yet I still remember the feeling I had the first time I held you. All of a sudden, I'm a mommy and I have this tiny little girl that I love instantly and unconditionally. As the quote goes "When they placed you in my arms, you slipped into my heart." Actually, I think you were growing there all along and I just didn't know it until I held you. I hope you always know just how much I love you! I wish I could bottle up exactly how I feel and give it to you when you're older so you could feel it too - because I'll never be able to put it into words. I hope that you know the amazing grace and goodness of God like mommy and daddy have learned. You are our special gift! We prayed for you for so long not knowing that all along God already had you picked out for us. So many tears we shed in hopes of a baby and now we shed them because He has given us more than we could have ever imagined. You have given me something that no other child could give - you made me a mommy and you have shown me that God's way is perfect! So little, and yet somehow through you I have learned so much already. If the Lord tarries, we have just begun this journey with you sweet girl and I'm so excited for what the Lord has in store for you. As a mother, I wish that somehow the tears I shed in hopes of you will be more than the tears you will have to shed in your lifetime. Most importantly though, my hope for you is that you accept Christ at an early age, that you love God with all your heart, and that you learn early that His way is Perfect.
I love you!
Mommy

Gymnastics!

Today Isabella had her first gymnastics class and she loved it. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. For one, I knew that my hands would be full with Amelia, plus I didn't want to be this crazy mom taking her child to class for the first time and then constantly taking pictures. :) Since she is turning 3 this week, I knew that more things were available for her age. So we decided on gymnastics -- it seems like the best thing for her, she needs to burn some energy off, loves being around other kids, plus after watching them today this really will teach her some discipline needed especially for when she goes to school (Yes, I know its still 2 1/2 years away) -- she has to line up, follow instructions, not cut in line, etc. Plus its great for exercise and coordination and she looked like she was having a blast. I had thought about ballet but this seems to fit Isabella better -- even if I would love to see her in a little tu-tu. :) After she was all done she had to call Daddy and tell him all about it. I think she will probably take a good nap today. They really kept the kids busy doing things today and I love the way they had things set up. Plus, anyone that wants to work with a bunch of 3 year olds and can keep their sanity and the kids attention is good to me!! The only problem,.... she's already asking if she can do it again.

New setting

Just thought I would mention that I have changed my settings when it comes to comments. I didn't do this because I've had any bad comments or anything, a few people have asked me if I would think about changing things so they could leave a comment even though they don't have an account so I am allowing anonymous comments, but I am now doing comment "moderation" where I view everything before it is posted. That way I can still "protect" things, but more people can comment if they want. Hopefully this all works. Thanks!!!

Book Meme

I've been tagged actually by two people, Shawnda and Michelle for the same thing. It is a book Meme.

So here is how it works:

1)Grab the book closest to you
2) open to page 123, and go down to the fourth sentence
3) post the text of the following 3 sentences on your blog
4) Name the author and book title
5) Tag 3 people to do the same

Honestly, we don't have any books on our desk, except a dictionary -- so if you want to consider that the closest book to me the 4th word down on page 123 is Beef. (I don't think I really need to type the definition out :) So I cheated, first I decided to go to books I was reading last night. These are "Romancing Your Child's Heart" by Monte Swan, and the other is "Shepherding A Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp (I guess you can see how my heart has been burdened lately) First I chose "Shepherding A Child's Heart" -- Page 123: "What happened? Charlie's conscience was smitten by the gospel! Something in what I said struck a chord that resonated with his young, larcenous heart." Not a great 3 sentences to write since you'd have to read the whole story. Then I went to "Romancing Your Child's Heart" -- Page 123: "The childlike nature may become adultish, defensive and cynical. Children hurried in this way lose their fluidity of mind, and their spirits shrink, pull inside and close. For example, children forced to read before they are developmentally ready commonly have lifelong reading problems." Although this did make me think I should stop worrying about Isabella not knowing the sounds of all the letters...... Page 123 just had to be on child development rather than anything inspiring. So I thought I would go ahead and grab another book that, although I haven't read in a while, always has encouragment when I read it. This is E.M. Bounds On Prayer - This is a compilation of 7 books he had written. So -- Page 123, "The eye and presence of God give active life to trust just like the eye and presence of the sun make fruit and flowers grow and all things glad and bright with fuller life. Faith and ttrust in the Lord form the keynote foundation of prayer. Primarily, it is not trust in the Word of God, but rather trust in the person of God."
So there, it is, I cheated -- but once again I was encouraged and convicted about my trust in God and Who He is!

NOW...... who to tag....... I am going to tag Becky (partly because I'm just tired of seeing the same picture on her blog for the past 3 weeks! :) and partly because I'm sure she will either give me great encouragment or a good laugh in her book selection), Kris (you're lucky you updated your blog lately or you'd be in the same boat as your sister) and Stephanie (because I can feel her heart in her writings on her blog, and I'm hoping she's got a great book suggestion for me. :)

Worse than the DMV!!!

So today Kenny and I decided we need to go by the Social Security office to file for Amelia's SSN/card. Lets just say it was HORRIBLE!!!! I'm not sure how Isabella's went by so quick, but not this time around. We've tried to go before and it was the same way, but we really wanted to get it done before taxes so we went ahead and waited...... and waited...... and waited...... 2 1/2 hours to be exact!!!!! You know how the DMV always seems to hire the grumpiest people to wait on you -- well they weren't grumpy here, but unbelievably disorganized and most of the time had 2 out of 5 windows open. They give you different letters for what you are waiting for and then your number. So, one lady would call out E35 and then a couple minutes later another guy would call out E31 -- ITS ALREADY BEEN CALLED! But no matter how much people complained, a couple of them refused to be swayed into doing things correctly, which meant we had to wait longer because they would call 2 E numbers, then 2 F numbers, 2 H numbers so when they called the wrong 2 E numbers, ones that had already been waited on, it obviously made the wait time longer. Irritating!!!
Then after that I ran to a store, a store where when Amelia was only a couple months old I got a comment that infuriated me. Although some adoption comments bother me, I have really tried just to chalk it up to ignorance and somehow not think about it, but then there are those comments that you can't believe someone would say with your precious children present. (I might have posted this story before) I really think this lady "meant" well, but after talking about adoption she said "Its nice that there are people like you that take unwanted children" UNWANTED? What if my girls were old enough to understand that? At that time, my mouth literally dropped open and I didn't know how to respond. I kindly said something and walked away about in tears worried about how my girls would feel if they heard this comment when they were older. Back to today, I went back to this store to search for something and an older lady that works there came up to me and started talking, when she asked something about the girls being adopted, it hit me, this was her.... and sure enough she started to say it "Its so nice that people like you adopt children..." and that's as far as I let her get - as soon as she was in the midst of saying children I said "Well, my husband and I feel like we are so extremely blessed that God would give us these precious girls" She smiled, I smiled and I left (after buying the cute little "glass slipper" decorations I came for. :) Again, I don't think she was purposely trying to be mean. She's a much older lady and I tend to get comments or looks from older women because I don't think many of them understand adoption. With Isabella, one older lady told me that it was neat how agencies "match" up families to look alike. Which in itself cracked me up because Yes, Isabella has dark curly hair, but if that was actually how things worked, I doubt they would say "Hey lets match up this white family with a hispanic/asian baby." Things were done differently 40 years ago and I think some people are stuck in that mentality -- but for me I don't want my children to ever hear that, I don't want one "ignorant" person's, whether well meaning or not, comment undo anything we've taught them. And I definitely don't want anyone to think we have done something "saint like" by adopting our girls. I believe I needed them much more than they needed me!!

And it starts......

I had to share these pictures with you (as well as had to take these pictures before cleaning her up.) Amelia got into her first big mess today -- what am I headed for with her? She doesn't have an actual "highchair" just a booster in one of our chairs so I end up moving it around. Today I moved her into the family room, sat on the couch while I fed her some cereal and fruit. After she got done eating what she wanted of the cereal, I sat it down on the coffee table and went and got her a bottle. After the bottle and a little play time with mommy she decided she was ready to roam so I put her down on the floor, took the bottle into the kitchen, but totally forgot about the cereal bowl. When I came back in the room, this was what I found. I don't know how she did this in the time it took me to walk into the kitchen, rinse and load the bottle in the dishwasher, but I'm going to have to start watching her like a hawk! :) I'm not sure if the last picture there comes up extra bright on your screen, but I brightened so that the shadows behind her weren't so dark and you could see all the hair she is getting. Its so cute!!! She has the softest curls -- I love it!!! My mom keeps saying, boy when it all comes in you're going to have fun. I'm not sure if she is forgetting to look at what my hair is like now, or remembering too well how "fun" it was to comb very curly hair on a little girl. :)

Updates

Since Amelia turned 9 months just before Christmas, I thought I would give a few updates about what the girls are up to (in to) right now. Amelia, of course, is crawling around everywhere and getting into everything. She is really content just crawling around and playing by herself. Isabella on the other hand, still doesn't want to play by herself. She loves playing with her toys, but doesn't last too long with one thing unless mommy comes and plays with her. Like I've said before, she thrives on having others around her. In some ways this is good, because she makes friends so easily and really does great playing with others. I just hope that her and Amelia play good together as Amelia gets old enough to "really" play with. Amelia had been pulling up in her crib and on us for a little while, but then on Christmas Eve she decided she could do that other things as well. So now I get to worry about her around the tables, slipping on the kitchen floor as she tries to pull up on the cabinets, etc. The funny thing is that if she pulls up and doesn't have her footing just right, she can't figure out how to get down and she will start screaming -- I know I shouldn't say its funny, but it is. :) She still has no teeth, although this morning I thought her bottom middle gums looked and felt more swollen, so maybe soon. I'm not sure what we're going to do if she doesn't have any teeth to eat her first birthday cake in a few months. :) She still loves to suck her thumb and is just too cute when she grabs her little stuffed horse and holds onto it with one hand and has the other thumb in her mouth. I try to enjoy how cute this is and not think about how this might be a couple years from now. She still is such a good baby -- she is happy most of the time and is still so easy to put to bed. As soon as its time for a nap or bedtime, I lay her in her crib give her a blanket and stuffed animal and she will cuddle up and go to sleep. She loves all the little toys that make noise and is really cute squealing and kicking when you show her a toy. Oh, but she crawled over Isabella's little play vacuum yesterday and turned it on and wasn't too happy about that. She is even cuter giving her little kisses now, she'll give them to you when you ask and then sometimes just out of the blue. They are slobbery and normally open mouth, but cute nonetheless. And she likes to give you long kisses, she'll kiss you and then just keep it there with a silly little grin coming on her face until she's done. She loves to eat and now thinks anytime someone else is eating that she has to eat too. She's still a little peanut though -- long and lean, lucky girl, long and lean! She's still pretty fearful of strangers or pretty much anyone other than mommy and daddy -- at least until she gets to know them. She's actually a little scared of my brother Mike and we're not sure why. On Christmas she crawled over to him and was climbing up on him (I think she was thinking it was her daddy since Mike has dark hair and a goatee like Kenny) but then she looked up at him and freaked out. Certain people can talk to her and she'll smile, but others she will just start crying and she ALWAYS puts her head on our shoulder and grabs us a little tighter when someone talks to her. I'm actually hoping this stays this way kind of (although it would be nice to be able to leave her in the nursery once in a while) because Isabella is the absolute opposite, to the point that it scares me and I am wondering how to teach her about strangers without taking away the innocence of everyone being her "new friends". And the best thing of all about Amelia..... she's becoming more of a cuddler. Although it has been nice that she will go right to sleep in her crib, I've missed cuddling her as much as I did Isabella. She used to arch her back when she was tired so that we would put her in her crib, but now she has decided its ok if we want to rock her a little before bedtime. Isabella will be 3 in 13 days!!!! I can't even believe that, but we are in birthday party mode. We aren't planning a big party, just my family and her little friend Makenna, but I will probably still go overboard on thinking of how to decorate everything. She is having a princess party -- although she loves the Disney princess, we aren't doing any of those, just a pink and purple princess party. I think it will be really cute and I'll be sure to post pictures after. Last year she was so into Elmo that we had an Elmo party, against my hopes of having all girly parties. :) Like I said, Isabella is almost too friendly to people, her new thing starting this past month has been asking everyone (yes EVERYONE) "What's your name?" and that's not enough, if they tell her their name then she will ask "What's your mother's name? What's your father's, brother's, etc name?" We try to forewarn people and tell her to stop or they will be standing their all day. :) And she is quite open to introduce all of us to them as well. The other day when my cousin Alyssa was here (she calls her La la - yes she can say Alyssa, but long story) anyway, she asked the people in line behind us what their name was and then she said "This is La La." Right before Christmas we watched the Wizard of Oz and then Isabella became obsessed with it, she kept asking to watch it, but we didn't have the movie, so we decided to buy it for her for Christmas. She doesn't normally call it Wizard of Oz though, she normally calls it "The bad lady" (obviously for the witch) or "bad lady and the girl with the dog". Sunday after Christmas, while Pastor had the kids sitting up front before Children's Church he was asking them about what they got for Christmas. I couldn't hear what Isabella told him, but afterwards Jamie (pastor's wife) said "It sounded like Isabella said something like bad girl" I laughed and had to explain what she probably said. Thankfully no one else heard her or they would have thought we told her she was a bad girl and didn't give her any gifts. :) Ok, that's all the updates I can think of for now -- I guess it ended up being longer than I thought.

New Year -- Grateful for 2006

As we have entered into 2007, I thought I would post and say how thankful I am for 2006. I am really thankful for God's leading in our lives this year. (I know this may sound like a broken record since I have mentioned the same thing several times on this blog. ) Many of you got this picture on your Christmas card this year so I thought I would post it here now. When I had these printed off, Kenny and I went to pick them up and as I looked at this picture I started to cry. Of course, Kenny worried right away that I was upset about something, but instead I'm just too emotional :) I told him that in looking at this picture, I was in awe of how God had ordained these 2 girls to be our daughters!! I obviously don't know what its like to have biological children, but for me, just knowing that God in His wisdom had chosen these two precious girls for us and us for them, that He had picked them as well as their birthmothers for us-- to think about that just overwhelms me. Isabella was our miracle -- I still look at her and can't believe that God brought us throur our trial of infertility and gave us such a special blessing -- a miracle indeed! Amelia (although a miracle as well) to me is considered my "silver lining". After going through the adoption fraud, we were discouraged, but we couldn't give ourselves to that discouragement. Our silver lining --- we knew that God was in control and would bring us the child He had planned for us. I don't understand His reasons or all of His way, but she is that wonderful silver lining after that dark cloud. And I really can't complain, because so many people have gone through harder things and even many who have gone through that same trial have to wait for a long time until God reveals that silver lining.
We've started the Veggie Tales Family Devotional Book with Isabella and the first devotional was talking about this particular thing that God has a plan for everyone. The verse we are trying to teach her with this is one of my favorites: "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me; your love, O Lord endures forever" (Psalm 138:8) May you all have a blessed 2007 and I hope you see God's plans worked out in your life and see Him fulfill His purposes for you!!

Cousins

Here's the picture of our girls with their cousins on Christmas morning, you'll have to excuse the weird coloring, I can't figure out what is up with my Adobe. Anyway, the kids all had fun together that day (well, Tyler and Uncle Kenny watched a football movie) Of course, as soon as presents were opened, they spent very little time playing with their new toys and went straight to Papa and Noni's playroom and got out the old toys. :)

Our Christmas (finally!)

Wow - I can't believe how quickly Christmas came and went and now we are into a brand new year. We had a wonderful Christmas! On Christmas Eve we had a short candlelight service and it was great. I had never actually been to one like this before where the Pastor was reading Scripture and the Christmas story and they were using candles to represent Mary, Joseph, Jesus, angels, etc. It was really great and had a wonderful message. Christmas morning, I didn't take a ton of pictures of the girls opening presents because we were videotaping and if I can figure out how to add my videos to this I am going to put a couple on here, because Amelia cracked me up with getting excited about gifts. When she is excited or when she is upset as well, she throws her hands up in the air. Isabella was so sweet opening presents. When she got up, (She got to sleep with mommy and daddy Christmas Eve) before we left our room we sat down and read the Christmas story from a little pop up book that I found. I was so excited I found one that actually told the story rather than a more made up "story". We had a book kind of like it when I was growing up. Then we prayed and talked a little about it being Jesus birthday. When we got out to the family room, we had one of her presents a little play tent house set up and she walked out, didn't notice it at first and then saw it and whispered "Wow!" :) We decided that we were going to take turns opening gifts so that she could open a couple, then it Amelia's turn or it was mommy's turn, then daddy's - so that she wouldn't get too caught up in just opening and going to the next or doing that at my parents house later. I was pleasantly surprised at how sweet she was. She would open and then say "Your turn Mommy" (Of course, she liked to help me too) Then it actually took us a few hours opening gifts, not because we had a ton to open, just because she would open something and sit there and play with it for a while. We actually rushed her along at the end because we wanted to get brunch ready for my parents to come up. Then we had a relaxing day at home, got Isabella down for a nap so she wouldn't be too hyper later and then went to my parents where my brother and his family came down. As soon as Isabella walked in their door and saw Garrett, she said "I want to give Garrett his shooter" She had been so excited for weeks to give Garrett this little flying disc gun that she had bought him at the $ store. She was cute handing out her presents to everyone. Here are a few pictures from down at my parents house. I had tried to one of my nephews and niece with the girls as well, but blogger isn't allowing me to post it. (I guess I'm going to have to update to the new blogger even though I keep hearing problems about it.)

All together we had a really nice Christmas season, it just went by way too fast!

Then a few days after Christmas, my cousin Alyssa, her husband Todd and daughter Caiti (pronounced by Isabella as Kay -- Tee) came down to visit and celebrate New Years with us. This is the second year they've done this, so we're hoping this will become a tradition. It was so much fun having them visit and to be able to spend New Years Eve at home, shooting off a few fireworks and playing some games. Although, I'm late in saying it, I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and New Years!! Now I'm off to plan a 3 year old birthday party in the next couple weeks as well as going on a retreat with the youth group next weekend, so I guess I'll be pretty busy this month as well! :)

Ramblings at Midnight

Hope everyone is enjoying the final countdown to Christmas. I'm so excited about seeing Isabella open her presents this year that I feel like the kid waiting for Christmas morning. Of course, Amelia will be cute as well, and I'm excited about it being her first Christmas, but this is the first year that I think Isabella will be so much fun. I asked her yesterday if she wanted a present for Christmas and she said yes, and I said "Just one present?" to which she responded "No, I want twos presents" --- how cute is that, to which I thought, man we could have gotten off really cheap this year just buying her two little presents. :) I actually wrapped a couple presents and put them under the tree just last night. I hadn't done it before because I believe Isabella has my "patience" and "curiousity" where she would have a hard time resisting trying to open or peek at the presents --- trust me, I had my share of sneaking around to find presents when I was a kid. She keeps staring at the presents, touching them, asking about them, in anticipation of opening them. It was fun tonight, she and I wrapped up the gifts she will be giving everyone -- I think I mentioned that I took her to the dollar store and had her shop for her cousins, Papa and Noni, Uncle Mike, Aunt "Mimi" and Daddy. We got them gifts from us, but I wanted her to pick out things for them to give them. I had to ask her before we got in the store what kinds of things each of them liked -- if not she would look at the first thing in front of her or something she would like and say "Daddy would like this doll" Anyway, its kind of cute the things she picked out because of what she knows that they like -- I honestly did not try to change what she picked out so some of the gifts are kind of funny -- like hairbows with lady bugs on them for my sil because she said "Aunt Mimi likes ladybugs. She'd like hairbows" :) I guess Olivia will end up wearing them. The other thing I have learned is that this child cannot keep a secret. She bought her Daddy a pen and told him last night just that. When I told her not to tell Daddy because its a surprise, she got all "pouty" and said "But I got him a pen" (Like, why can't I tell him, its the truth.) We also started playing this game where she hides these little --- I can't think of the proper terminology for those little weeble wobble shaped people (ours are nutcrackers) that open up and have another one inside and then another, etc. Anyway, she hides her eyes and I take each of them and hide it around the room and she comes to find them. Then she wants me to hide my eyes and she will hide them, but when I open my eyes and start looking, she runs over to one and says "Right here!" She's too excited that she shows me, no matter how hard I try to get her to let me find them, she will at least stand right next to them even if she isn't pointing at it. Cute, but you might want to be careful what you tell her. :) The good thing is, she also tells on herself because she can't even keep that a secret. The picture was taken last week while visiting a "gingerbread village" -- my poor girls had to wear their bibs once again, they are going to think they had no other clothes to wear all December, I'm sure this will end up being some kind of joke with them when they are teenagers. :) I had hoped to put them all bundled in Christmas/wintery sweaters, but we are having very warm weather - even for us - this year. Just today it was in the high 60s or low 70s. Definitely not bundling up kind of weather. I haven't even used my winter coat once this season. Not complaining, we don't get white Christmases and last year we had a terrible ice storm and had a few big trees fall way to close to our house, so I'll take a sunny Christmas over that any day. Again, I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

My Angel

Thought I would post one picture from this weekend. We had our cantata at church on Sunday where Isabella got to dress up as a little angel. She and her friend Makenna are not quite 3 and Tessa the girl behind Isabella is 4 -- the rest of the girls were 8 and above. I thought the 3 youngest girls did very well. Isabella and Makenna were so cute holding hands walking down the aisle, but then when they got on stage they weren't sure what to do at first (we didn't rehearse any of this) so Isabella immediately started going for the center of the stage and boy was this mama worried. Every Sunday after church - actually any time we are in the church, Isabella goes up on stage and wants to sing with a microphone. Mommy would normally say no, but the others that are in the church say "Isn't she cute" -- so I don't even bother. Anyway, I saw her walking across the stage and I thought "Oh no, she is going to grab that microphone and start singing". :) Actually, she was just confused at where to go so one of the teen girls helped her and she did fine after she saw mommy and I reminded her to do the little praying hands like the older girls. I thought she was absolutely the cutest angel, ever! :) She really enjoyed herself, I'm not sure if she enjoyed dressing up or being on stage more. That night she asked to dress up again "like a... like a... I want to be a.... butterfly." :)

Isabella's Nativity

Ok, so we know that the shepherds came to see baby Jesus, the wise men came, but can anyone tell me where we learn about this guy......
Should I worry about what version of the Bible they are using in children's church, because I'm sure I haven't heard anything about a skiing snowman.

Saturday Night Snow

Thought I would post this picture today - although having 2 posts in one day is extremely rare for me! Saturday night we went downtown to go to a little "Holiday Village" they have set up. They had some live Christmas music, a carousel, and they even had snow!! Of course, it was a snow machine blowing little soap bubbles (kind of takes away from the cuteness of my child trying to eat the snow, doesn't it?) To Isabella, it was snow though and she loved seeing it and having it fall on her. It will probably be the only snow my child is going to see this Christmas (sad, I know) But isn't she just the cutest thing?!?

New Design and Christmas Greed

I've been wanting to change up the blog for Christmas since Thanksgiving, but I never got around to it. Now that we only have 2 weeks left until Christmas I thought I would at least change the colors and pictures for the rest of the holiday season. And I have to tell a little story because as I was putting the quote in there about the meaning of Christmas being in the hearts of children, it made me laugh. Two weeks ago, I was having one of those days where as sweet as Isabella is, she makes me feeling like I am doing something wrong as a mother. She was really in a rare mood, rather cranky, into everything (that's not new) and this was right after we had been sick so I thought that she was probably just needing to get out of the house, we hadn't been out for 3 days. So I took her to the library to get some books, play on the computers, etc. Well, while we were there she threw an awful fit! She's by no means a perfect child, but she is pretty easy going most of the time and I haven't had her throw a big fit in public before. After a quick trip to the bathroom, we checked out our books and went to Target. And of course we had to look in the toy secion. Ok - I know that I mentioned a couple posts ago that I want Isabella to learn about giving, but I have to say that along with that we are also having fun getting her gifts for Christmas and we have mentioned to her that she would be getting presents for Christmas, especially when we are in the toy section and I say "We're not going to buy any toys, maybe you'll get some toys for Christmas....." Anyway, so this day I'm already feeling like I'm doing something wrong for this child to be behaving unlike the angel I thought I was raising her to be. :) As we were shopping, I mentioned Christmas and I asked "Do you know whose birthday is on Christmas?" To which she replied excitedly "BELLA?!" "No, its not Bella's birthday, its Jesus' birthday" My hopes of feeling like a good mommy were shattered when she said "BUT I WANT PRESENTS!" I guess that day the true meaning of Christmas wasn't in Isabella's heart at all. I was definitely hoping for a little bit sweeter response than that. :) I decided not to even waste my breath that day talking to her about Christmas, but we have since talked about how it is Jesus birthday and I asked her if she thought we should give Jesus a present for his birthday. She said yes, and then I asked her what do you think He would like. She said "A comb?" Me: "No, He.." Her: "A shooter?" (she bought Garrett a little disk shooter at the $ store, so I guess she thought Jesus would like one too) I then tried to explain that we didn't have to buy Jesus a gift He just wanted our hearts and for us to love him, "Do you love Jesus?" Her: "Yeah,...(pause) I hungry, I want a waffle" I'm so glad that Jesus loves hearing the responses of little children. :) Right now, she is actually walking around the house with baby Jesus in her hand (from a nativity set a friend bought her yesterday) and she's singing a little song "My baby Jesus, baby Jesus, ....jingle all the way, ......" :) Ok and since I've already asked for suggestions on how to teach your kids about giving, what about the greed? I've always wanted to make sure we teach our children to be thankful for anything they get and right now Isabella actually is really cute when she gets things. I told my mom the other day that I hope Isabella is like this for everyone at Christmas. My Aunt Norma can probably vouch for this because last year at Isabella's birthday party she bought her a cute little outfit with frogs on it and as soon as Isabella pulled it out of the bag she gasped with excitement. Such a girl to do that over clothes. :) And just the other night Kenny bought her a little Cinderella cup for rinsing her mouth after brushing and Isabella keeps saying "Thank You Daddy" anytime she sees it. But those aren't on Christmas, on Christmas I know we have gifts for her, my parents will have gifts for her, my brother/sil will have gifts for her, so how do you teach your kids to not be greedy, how do you at this age, get them to open their presents and not ask for more -- I'm so afraid that in the midst of all the activity she will become overwhelmed with the excitement and overlook the presents as she opens them and just want to open more. Is she too young to understand? Should we not expect too much this Christmas? Hopefully she will be her normal cute, give her a sticker and its the best gift around, self -- but if not when can you really expect them to understand when you talk to them about greed?

My husband took this picture Sunday as we were getting ready for church and I love it for 2 reasons. Of course, I think its a sweet little picture of Amelia all dressed up and curious about the little choo choo train, but I also love it because it shows off Isabella's tree decorating talent. All those ornaments you see were hung by Isabella. Saturday we put up the tree and decorated it. We decided to do artificial again this year -- I don't like artificial trees and we don't have the prettiest artificial tree, but with Amelia crawling and grabbing everything it seemed better for this year. Oh - and the fact that a live tree here would cost us a small fortune was a pretty big deciding factor. I don't know how Isabella remembered, but I told Kenny that it was pretty sad when he mentioned to her about putting a Christmas tree up, she ran back to the attic and said "The tree's up there, Daddy". Isabella had so much fun decorating the tree and it was cute to watch her. She likes to overlap several ornaments on one branch. :) I'll have to take a picture of the little tree she decorated in her room as well -- she must have that "picasso" type of artistic eye. Anyway, our tree actually does look really pretty (mostly if you keep the tree lights on) I'll try to post some Christmas tree/decoration pictures later.

Another Parade... and another

This weekend we went to our 2nd and 3rd parade of the season. More parades than I've gone to my entire life! Isabella was so cute at both of them. At the one on Saturday night, she was expecting them to throw her candy so she would yell "I want candy!" "Throw me candy!".... until we finally told her they weren't going to throw any. Then she just kept waving and yelling other silly things. At one point she was yelling "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas,..... (and then as if she just remembered) I HAVE A CHRISTMAS TREE AT HOME!" Then on Sunday, she and her little friend Makenna had fun getting the gobs of candy they threw out (Daddy might have enjoyed this a little bit too. :) It was really like Halloween because kids had bags full of candy to take home. Surprisingly Amelia did very well at these parades, last week she was afraid of all the noise, but I guess she's become an old pro now. We really are into all the busyness of the season, and I'm hoping to enjoy as much of it as I can. One of the main reasons I try and get all my Christmas shopping done early is so we can do as much Christmasy stuff as possible. We had the parades, then tonight I want to take Isabella to the library to hear a Christmas story and make a gingerbread cookie, we want to go see a gingerbread village, a lights display, they've got a couple things downtown we want to check out, possibly a carriage ride in a little town not far from here, a progressive dinner with our youth group, church play, and then all the normal fun stuff at home. I love CHRISTMAS!!! Of course, in the midst of all the fun activities, we have other "busyness" as well. I just got done sewing a couple things for someone else, then I made the bib overalls for my girls, then I have a couple other things I would like to make for them, I have a couple more things to make for someone else, I have some Christmas presents to make and then last night at church our choir director's wife asked if I would make angel costumes for the cantata -- 12 of them!!! I'm hoping to find wings to buy and then I will do the no sew or little sewing outfits. Unless anyone out there has any other great ideas for making these cheap and easy. If I can't find wings at the dollar store or somewhere like that, I'm going to make them out of cardboard I guess and spray paint them gold -- cardboard doesn't sound so great to me, but I don't have time to do anything else in 2 weeks. My problem is I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I'm going to want them to at least look kind of cute. And Isabella is one of the angels, so she has to look adorable. :) We also decorated our tree this weekend, but I'll post those pictures later. Hope everyone else is enjoying the season as much as we are!!! Anyone else have Christmas activities they are looking forward to?

Great video to end National Adoption Month - I love this song (grab some tissue) (I took it off of autostart - click and then hit play to watch it)

Music Video Codes - MySpace Layouts

Thanksgiving Aftermath

After a great Thanksgiving day and a partial day of shopping with Mommy and Noni, my poor Amelia came down with the stomach bug. She puked once on Friday and has had diarrhea ever since Friday. Poor thing, it's miserable!! She still acts pretty happy, eats fine, sleeps good, plays some, but she is a little more clingy and cuddly than normal (I'm not complaining about this one!) but we are having to change and wash her clothes several times a day, that's definitely no fun! Then Sunday, Kenny and I got to do something for the first time in our 10 years of marriage.... we were sick at the same time. Of course, this had to happen after we had 2 little girls and had to try and take care of them in the midst of running to the bathroom. Yes, we as well as my mom came down with the bug too. Thankfully, Isabella hasn't gotten sick yet. And thankfully my dad wasn't sick either because he ran around for all of us. I did take Amelia to the dr today because I was a little worried about her losing weight, 8 month olds don't have much weight to lose so any scares me, and I wanted to make sure I was doing everything to keep her from getting dehydrated, etc. The doctor did say she had lost weight, but that everything else looked Ok so far. I have to say that I am very thankful for our pediatrician -- we always see the same dr and nurse when we go in and they always seem to know my girls (I'm sure they can't remember everyone perfectly, but they seem like they do). I'm constantly telling Kenny that anytime I go in or talk to them they are such "cheerleaders", like "You're really doing a good job ...." I love that!! Anyway, hopefully my sweet Amelia will get better soon and Isabella will still stay healthy. Isabella has never had anything more than a little cold, so I'm not sure how she would handle being sick. I hope everyone else out there stays healthy, this bug seems to be going around quite a bit!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I am just barely making this in on Thanksgiving, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope it was wonderful for all of you. We had a smaller Thanksgiving this year - which is very unusual. My brother and his family weren't with us because this was the year they were at his in-laws. We had hoped to travel and get together with family, but due to alot of things going on we had to pass on that as well. It really is just a crazy year! And then, normally, my parents have other people over to their house, but not this year. Although, its always fun with alot of people, we had a very nice Thanksgiving. Isabella spent the night last night with Papa and Noni and enjoyed watching Cinderella and eating Princess cereal (didn't realize until recently they actually made a "princess" cereal!) Then she "watched" the parade with them, or at least parts of it. It was definitely a more relaxed day, which is kind of nice every now and then. And with less people means extra pumpkin pie! Mom still had everything decorated really pretty. We cooked in the morning, had a wonderful lunch and then after we were done and things were cleaned up we put the girls in the wagon and took a walk and played outside because it was a gorgeous day. We then finished off the night by watching a movie -- Isabella had picked out that she wanted to watch the Grinch (the newer one with Jim Carry) we weren't sure how she would like it and sure enough she got scared of him, so we turned it off and gave her an early present - "Cars". Anyway, no matter how big the Thanksgiving, we definitely have alot to be thankful for!!! I know that God has so greatly blessed me in many ways -- too many to go into (I do only have 7 minutes until its Friday)

And how many are planning on going shopping Friday?!? Or are some of you already getting ready to wait at the doors right now. :) My mom and I normally go -- honestly I have most of my Christmas shopping done, and I rarely find any better deals on that day, but its just kind of a tradition -- you know such sweet memories of terrible traffic, hours of fighting to find a parking space, dealing with rude people who think Christmas shopping means shoving and dirty looks, and then standing in line for hours because you found one good deal - or better yet you just forgot to buy diapers the night before. :) I am looking forward to dressing my girls in Christmasy clothes -- I had hoped to make them something, but I'm so far behind on this that I will be spending lots of time sewing the next week. I know I should have started this earlier! OHHHHH and to make it worse, ur I mean better, they've decided to have a tax free holiday so that not only will people be out for any good deals they think they can find or because it just happens to be the busiest shopping day of the year, but now they will also be out to buy EVERYTHING tax free!! And do you think I'm disappointed that I have most of my shopping done and I didn't get to save on the tax -- yeah right, I might have saved up to $10 -- a nice amount to save, but its worth it to not have to fight over those items or wait hours in traffic or lines. But not to worry, I will still be fighting the crowds, and waiting in the traffic, because it is still a tradition and we can't break tradition!!

Christmas Giving

Before we had children, Kenny and I always talked about wanting to find ideas when we did have children, to help them learn about giving to others. We would get so frustrated at how materialistic the world was and how kids were so spoiled that they were unappreciative. We want to buy them gifts, we know others will buy them gifts, but we don't want them to become ungrateful. You know the kids that open a gift and say "I don't like this!" I want to teach my kids to be thankful for anything that anyone gives them. And we hope that as they get older we can continue to find ways to teach them about truly giving. This year we took Isabella shopping a couple times for other people and I thought I would share about me trying to teach my almost 3 year old about giving. The first shopping trip was for her friend Briana. Since her family just moved to Ireland as missionaries their family here got a list together of things we could buy them for Christmas and they are going to ship it all over there as a nice big care package. So I took her out and told her we were going to buy something for Briana -- she did good knowing that the toys we were buying weren't for her, I wasn't sure if she would understand that or not. This went well, so I thought she would be ready to learn about true giving. The next time, we went out and got toys to fill a shoe box for Operation Christmas Child. I love this ministry and definitely want to continue it with my girls and thought, maybe she is ready to learn about it this year. So here's the little conversation we had:
Me: We're going to go buy toys for a little girl that doesn't have any toys.
Her: Bella?
Me: No, Bella has too many toys. Its for a little girl far away...
Her: Nona?
Me: No, not Briana. We already have Briana's, its for...
Her: Nona's far away.
Me: Yes, Nona is far away. But these toys are going to go to a little girl far away that we don't know.
Her: Makenna?
Me: No, not Makenna - we don't know this little girl.
Her: Who is it?
Me: Sigh and laugh (Oh never mind!)

So then we bought toys went home and made up the box. When I got home I was looking at the list (because I had forgotten to take it with me) and noticed it mentioned a couple little things that I should have gotten -- so since Isabella had these I put them in. (I know, it says no used toys, but it was only things like bracelets and a little bouncy ball - nothing that was "used" looking, so I think its Ok, plus I once again thought maybe I can teach her about giving) She did good putting the gifts in there and knowing it was for another little girl, then she took the sunglasses that she was playing with and put them in the box.
Me: Do you want to give those to the little girl?
Her: Yeah, sure! (I wish you could hear her say this)
Me: (My heart swelling with pride) That is So sweet Isabella. Jesus likes it when we give to others.
Her: Yeah
Me: Mommy is so proud of you for giving to the little girl
(she walks away, a couple minutes pass and comes back)
Her: Ok, I get the glasses now.
I guess she was thinking she was just sharing. Oh well, so much for really teaching her about giving. :) I didn't fuss about her taking the glasses back out of the box -- I don't think she is quite ready to totally grasp the idea. And I honestly can't complain, I was afraid that maybe she would fuss when we bought the toys, thinking they were hers and she didn't. She did let me put a couple of her things in there, just not the glasses. :) I do hope as the girls get older we can continue this ministry, as well as find other ways to reach out to others at Christmas. Anyone have any suggestions of ways to teach your children about giving, especially around Christmas?

Some new pics

I thought I would post some new pictures and updates. Most of the pictures are from this Saturday, we had beautiful weather here for part of the day so we decided to see if there was any fall color left and take a little hike. Isabella was very excited about this because we kept telling her we were going up to the mountain. The picture where she looks like she is climbing the rock - she said "Wow, the mountain!" :) The picture of Kenny and Amelia isn't the best because it was too overcast to see all the pretty colors. We hadn't really prepared on taking a long hike anyway, but our hike lasted for a while, but we didn't get anywhere. As soon as we started walking Isabella was picking up all the little rocks, sticks, and leaves her little hands could hold. When she saw the big rock (the one she is sitting on) she told daddy she wanted that one - she thought for sure he was strong enough to get that one for her. I was actually wanting to get a picture of her trying to pick up that "rock" because she was trying so hard and had the funniest little face, but by the time I got my camera up, she turned around and gave me a cute little pose instead. Then she gave me the little pose by the tree. Then we got a little way down and Amelia got fussy, so I gave her a bottle and since she was out of the backpack, Isabella wanted to ride on Daddy's back. Honestly, I didn't plan very well -- I should have brought the sling or other backpack to carry Amelia and we might have been able to go farther. It did actually start getting cooler and looked like it was going to rain so we had to turn back anyway. Another couple was up at the start of the hike looking at the trail maps and asked us "How far is this hike, is there a waterfall on this hike?" We just laughed - we hadn't made it that far. But all together it was still a fun day, we might not have made it very far, but Isabella had a ball looking at everything and that's what it is all about right now. We used to take long hikes, now they may be shorter, but the fun we have seeing things through her eyes is wonderful!
And have you all noticed the little bit of hair Amelia is finally getting up top? Its so cute and soft! I had to add the little cheerleader picture of Amelia in the mix. This week Amelia has started saying Ma Ma - but only when she is crying (go figure!) For instance, yesterday I was getting ready to feed her, put her in her chair, sat the bowl on the table and went back into the kitchen to get a spoon and her little cup. Well, she was quite upset thinking I wasn't going to feed her and she starts crying then "mmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmma ma ma ma" I'm really starting to wonder if she is recognizing this word. She'll sit and say Da da at any time, but ma ma is only when she is crying, like when she wakes up, when she gets tired, or if she happens to bump herself while crawling everywhere. I guess I'll take it, maybe she is starting to want her mama in those "crisis" situations. Then yesterday it was so cute, she was eating and I started playing a little game with her, kind of the "I'm gonna get you" type of game and she started just giggling, which made me laugh, which made her laugh more, which made me... you get the picture. It was so sweet, we were just sitting there giggling with each other.
Yesterday Isabella made a new little friend - whom we may never see again. We went to the mall and ate lunch with my mom and noticed they had built a little play area. So after lunch and a little shopping, I took her down there. To begin with, my child cracks me up. She was trying to get into this one car - which actually was pretty high with no easy way to get in it for any of the kids and I see her climbing in it and asking all the kids passing by her "Please help me" :) Later another little girl was in the car and Isabella decided to climb in and join her, it was so cute a little boy was jumping on the car and sliding down it and the girls were both just laughing as hard as they could at him --- Hmmm, didn't realize flirting started this young. So for at least the next 30 minutes, Isabella and this little girl played together. The little girl was 5 - and was adopted from China. Her grandmother was the one that brought her and she and I sat there talking about the girls, adoption, etc. We decided we should probably both leave at the same time or both of the girls might be upset. When I went to get Isabella, she hugged the girl and said "I need my new friend! My new friend go to Bella's house?" Then for the rest of the day she talked about seeing her new friend again. I'm happy that Isabella makes friends so easy and then I'm a little upset about the fact that she doesn't have alot of little friends that she gets to play with on a regular basis. I guess I'll have to work on this - hopefully as Amelia gets older they will be good buddies! Ok, I think that's it, just a little update on life here. Oh yeah and for my husband, who will probably not notice me or my girls tomorrow unless we're dressed in blue and maize -- GO BLUE!!!!

Isabella's Adoption - Part 3

(This might be long, but I want to wrap this up today!) The next couple days were filled with lots of busyness as well as many answered prayers. Since Cathy was a facilitator, this still meant that we had to have an agency or attorney that could go out and get the relinquishments. Cathy recommended some people out in California and we were able to figure this out quickly so they could go by and get things signed. The only problem was that there might be a "situation" with the birthfather. E had contacted him and he never showed up at the hospital like he said he would and Cathy was afraid that he probably then not show up to sign the papers either. Although E told him to come by, she didn't think it was likely that he would. This would mean that it would drag things out longer, they would have to send someone out to try and contact him, and if they couldn't find him they would have to fill out for abandonment -- and of course all of this extra work would also cost more money, none of this sounded great to us. So Kenny told her that we were going to pray about it as soon as we got off the phone. That night around midnight Cathy called and said "I know its late, but I had to call you -- the birthfather showed up and he signed the papers - we are totally done with him! Tell Kenny it's a Godsend!!" I got of the phone and just cried when I told Kenny. God was so good to smooth everything out. The next day was filled with talking/emailing family, telling people at church, buying things for our new daughter, etc. From Monday night until Thursday morning- I don't think we actually slept much at all and everything we did was in high speed motion. On Thursday, my dad took us to the airport. When we finally got to California it was 9pm (later our time) and Kenny asked if I still wanted to go to the hospital or if I wanted to sleep and go in the morning. Well, OF COURSE I wanted to go see her. When we got to the hospital we were told to scrub in and then we were taken to the "Sandbox" NICU. When we walked in, we saw a nurse in the back right corner holding this tiny little baby with the most black hair we had ever seen on a baby. We knew that was our little girl!!!! I can't even express the emotions that flooded us. She was beautiful, she was tiny, she had gorgeous hair and big brown eyes and she was OURS! We were both in love already! After she was done eating, the nurse gave her to us to hold. I couldn't believe I was holding my little girl. She was so precious - at that time she was 4 pounds 6 ounces and looked SO much smaller in person than she did in the pictures. :) I don't think either of us imagined how much love we could have for a tiny little person that we just met. I'll probably never be able to fully describe to Isabella how we felt that night when we held her. Not only did we love her so much instantly, but here we were holding the answer to many years of prayer. Not only were we holding this perfect little baby, but were were holding God's perfect plan for us. Somehow our trial now seemed insignificant because God had given us a blessing beyond belief. As we left the hospital I was flooded with alot of emotions, one of which I didn't like - Worry! The nurse that night was nice, but I wonder if she was new because she made us feel like Isabella was a thin piece of glass that you could break at any second. Thankfully the next day the nurses were swaddling her up and passing her around like a loaf of bread and helped us see that she wasn't any more fragile than any other newborn. I am SOOO thankful for the nurses we had. For the next week, we would be at the hospital at 8 am for Isabella's feeding, would stay for her 11 feeding, then get some lunch, come back to feed her at 2 and 5. Then we would leave and get dinner, go shopping, call family because everyone had to leave the nursery until 7. Then we would go back for her 8 and 11 feedings and go back to the hotel. One day, Isabella started not eating well. The doctor came in and didn't like the result of a test so they said they were going to put her on antibiotics and IV fluids to feed her to fight a possible infection. To start this, they said they were going to have to "take all the food out of her stomach" that we had just fed her. I was so upset! We left for a little while so they could do things and Kenny took me to Target to register and take my mind off of things. I cried most of the way through registering and when we got home, I couldn't remember half of what we registered for. :) On Friday, Cathy came by and was so sweet to take pictures of us and Isabella and e-mailed them to our family! It was wonderful to know that our family was getting to be a part of this. The next week we got a call saying that they tried to get the divorce certificate for the birthmother and her "ex" husband, and they found out the divorce was never final. This threw another kink in the process. Now even though they weren't together, they legally had to treat the "ex" just like they did the birthfather. They were going to have to get him to sign some papers. The same problems could come from this, not finding him, taking more time, he might refuse to sign just to cause problems for E, etc. Once again, alot of praying to do. The next day they did find the "ex" husband, he was in prison not far from there and she was going to see him. She had to tell him about the situation and would then have to give him 24 hours and go get him to sign. Well, she went out and he said he would sign - no problems! But then she told us that he was supposed to be moved the next day - to a place that was alot farther away, which would mean she could go, but it would cost us alot more money for her to do that. We just prayed that God would keep him there one more day. Monday and Tuesday were the hardest days, finding out all of this, not knowing if he was going to be moved, Isabella was just slowly starting to eat again, and this was the only day we had a nurse that we didn't care for. But then God once again showed us how GOOD HE IS! They didn't move him and Jennifer was able to go and get him to sign the papers the next day and everything was done!! We also had a WONDERFUL nurse the next couple days . Another huge answer to prayer came on Wednesday. Our airline tickets were for us to leave on Thursday, but since Isabella was still in the hospital this wasn't going to happen. We knew it would cost alot of money to change the tickets and then if we changed them, when do we change them to? So Kenny called the airlines and asked the guy what we could do. He said there was nothing, so Kenny asked if there was possibly a supervisor or someone that he could talk to just to see. Kenny talked to a supervisor, explained the situation and she said "Ok, how about this -- we will waive the changing fee and you just call us and tell us when you want to leave and we'll get you on the next available flight" WHAT? Once again, above and beyond what we asked of GOD! The one nurse, Kasey, really helped us out - she told us things to ask the doctor, to see if instead of daily "upping" her feedings, maybe they could do this each feeding and see if she would continue to eat more and if her tests came out Ok that she could be discharged. He agreed! By Thursday, Isabella was eating good and her tests were fine. So miraculously, God worked it out and the doctors let us take her home on Thursday night!! Even the nurses said they were surprised that we were going home - they said the doctors don't normally do things this quickly. The funniest thing for me and Kenny was that even though I didn't give birth to Isabella they had to wheel me out to the car with Isabella. :) After the nurses gave us TONS of stuff to take with us, we were on our way to the hotel and we have the cutest picture of Isabella, asleep in her carseat with a big dimpled grin on her face. For the next couple days I didn't leave the room at all -- Kenny would just go get food and bring it back for us to eat. We had hoped to leave Saturday, but the Lord had other plans. They weren't able to get the info to our state in time to give us approval to leave. God had answered so many things, just like we had asked, but now He was showing us that He was answering things according to His plan and what was best for us. I really believe that He knew that we needed a few days with Isabella all by ourselves and especially daddy, would had to go back to work as soon as we got home, needed time with his little girl. I won't go through everything, but we did decided to get out and do some sightseeing -- we did the tourist thing and took pictures of us holding Isabella with the Hollywood sign behind us. :) Then that Sunday was SuperBowl and Kenny sat on the bed with Isabella on his chest watching the game. And as much as we tried to have her sleep in the little suitcase "bed", she didn't want to stay there too long and normally ended up sleeping on one of our chests. Already, wrapping us both around her little finger. On Monday, Kenny checked out of the hotel and said that hopefully our paperwork would be done and we could fly home. I was so READY to be home. We spent the day near the airport and called the agency to see about the paperwork, etc, etc. when we didn't hear anything for a while we thought for sure we would be checking into another hotel, but then we heard that the lady in our state said she would stay late that night and look at our info! We were so EXCITED!! A couple hours later we said we were free to go home. Then we called the airlines and at first they said that we would have to pay the difference in the ticket price. I said "Oh... Ok" They had already waived the changing fee so I was not going to say a thing because I was ready to be home. Then the lady put me on hold and came back and said she talked to someone and they weren't going to charge us anything extra. I was amazed!! We didn't want to pay extra, but I just wanted to be home, and God gave us another blessing! Another blessing when we got home was that the guy at the hotel took some money off the bill I guess because he knew we had been there for a while and Kenny would go and talk to him and (of course) had mentioned why we were there - such a proud daddy! So we left California, and early Tuesday morning we were home and my parents met us at the airport. We were finally able to share our little gift with everyone else! Isabella's name means Devoted to God and her middle name means Gift from God. We are amazed not only at the goodness of God, but also how perfect His way is - His will, His timing and His plan. Almost 3 years later, I am still in awe of how God gave us Isabella. I am thankful for all the many blessings along the way. I think of E alot, wonder where she is, wonder how much she thinks about Isabella, still hoping that some day maybe she would like some contact. I think about the other families whose babies were in the NICU at the same time. I can remember each of the babies and the families. I still talk to Cathy and she knows how much we appreciate her. We were actually able to see the nurses last year when we finalized Isabella's adoption in California and I will probably as long as they are there send them at least a Christmas card every year and let them know how much they meant to us. God led us each step along the way and when I think of Isabella's adoption the main verse that comes to mind is Psalm 18:30 "But as for God His way is PERFECT."

Isabella's Adoption - part 2

Ok, so I left the story yesterday that we had just sent our profiles in -- that was the second week of December. For the first time in years this Christmas was better for us. We always enjoyed Christmas, but it was an extra hard time because it made us wish for children more. We enjoyed our Christmas at home with my family and then were able to make a trip up to Michigan and spend time with Kenny's family. It was such a fun time up there -- not that we hadn't had fun before, but the weather was perfect! Normally we would get snow and freezing cold weather so you can only be out for so long or there would be no snow when we went up, this time there was snow but the weather was also nice and the whole family was outside riding the snowmobiles and 4 wheelers. Anyway, one night we decided to take a ride on the snowmobile alone and as we were sitting at the top of the hill I remember us talking about how much fun it would be to finally have children and how fun it would be for them to play in the snow and "wouldn't it be so cool if we actually were able to adopt before next Christmas" (this was all said at the beginning of January 2004). When we got home we had Kim come over for our homestudy on January 6th. Actually all during the holidays we kind of had our own little secret because we hadn't told any of our family yet that we were going to adopt and we had only told a couple friends that had to do recommendation letters for our homestudy. We did this for a couple reasons. One, we weren't really sure when to tell everyone because we didn't know how long we would have to wait and didn't want everyone constantly asking us "have you heard anything yet?" Two, I , as the dramatic or creative that I am, had always wanted to tell my parents in some "unique" way that we were pregnant -- and I decided I still wanted this for adopting too. We decided to kind of start decorating the nursery - neutral, of course, so we painted it a pistachio green, painted a very small little armoire white, got out the decorations I had collected for years and we had found the crib I wanted cheap, so we bought it and put it up. We knew this was probably pretty early, but we decided we wanted to start telling people and by golly if I wasn't going to get my creative way! We had planned on Sunday afternoon, January 18th, that we would invite my parents up for dinner have them go back to the room (we would have a video camera set up for this) and have them walk in to a nursery with a sign saying we are adopting! Well, they decided to go out of town for the weekend and weren't getting back until Monday night, so we would have to wait. On Monday, January 19th, Kenny had gone up to our church to play indoor soccer so I was home alone. At around 7:30 or 8, I got a phone call and it was Cathy. I thought she was going to ask me about something or better yet, maybe a birthmother would like to talk to us..... Instead she said "I have a birthmother who just had a baby girl." Then she told me about this beautiful little girl who was only 4 pounds 11 ounces, born a little early, she had big brown eyes and a head full of black hair. She explained the situation and how Isabella's birthmother, I'll just call her "E", had spent 7 hours looking at profiles and that she had chosen us. Then she asked if we wanted this little girl? I probably screamed "YES!!" She said, "Why don't you call Kenny really quick and let him know and then call me back" So I did, I called Kenny and he immediately thought something was wrong because I sounded frantic. Instead I said "Cathy called, we have a baby girl and we need to be in California tomorrow!" He said "What?! You're kidding! Are you serious?" He started to come home right away, but I told him to stay and he was able to pray with some of the men there. When he came home, we called my parents to see if they were home yet (remember our planned surprise - now it was even bigger!) and asked them if they could come up to the house because we had something to show them. (My dad later said he thought it was a new puppy. :) When they came up, Kenny was in the nursery with the video camera. I opened the door and we had a sign on the crib that said "We're adopting, sooner than we expected....You have a Granddaughter!" All I remember my mom saying was "What do you mean?" over and over. Cathy then called us and said she was going to e-mail us some pictures of the baby. So Kenny and I and my parents were all here to see the first pictures of our baby girl. And these are the pictures we received: (It was obviously love at first sight!)


The only problem we had was that since we had only sent our profiles in a month before, we just finished our homestudy 2 weeks prior, we hadn't finished our home equity line to be able to finance things. Cathy had told us that we needed to be out there Tuesday because E was getting discharged so they would be discharging the baby as well. For the next few hours Kenny was frantically trying to figure out what we could do - the next morning! As much as I wanted to be out there right then holding my baby, I remember saying "Well, lets just pray that maybe there is some way that we don't have to go out tomorrow." Shortly after we prayed, Cathy called and said the hospital decided to keep the baby for a couple days because she was a little jaundice and they also needed to have her on some antibiotics, so it would be better for us to wait for a couple days to come out. That way, they could also get the relinquishments signed before we came out, etc. As much as I wanted to be out there and I definitely didn't want her to have to be in the hospital long, I knew God had intervened. This gave us time to buy a few things to take out there, get the tickets, get the money in order, etc. The next couple days were filled with answers to prayer. I'll tell you all about those answered prayers tomorrow. :) (Oh and I forgot to mention up top, that Isabella was born on Sunday, January 18th, the day that we had planned on telling my parents!)

Isabella's Adoption - Part 1

I decided that since it is National Adoption month that today I would start writing about Isabella's adoption story. I might do Amelia's as well - although I probably covered it when I first started this blog. I guess I can start by saying this was not the way I had envisioned my life to be. I know there are many people that God gives them a desire for adoption before they are even married, but that wasn't the case for us. Ten years ago we got married and when we were ready for children, we assumed we would get pregnant and have children -- simple as that! I won't go into all of our infertility journey, it was pretty much just praying, waiting and hoping for years. And going through alot more emotionally than anyone ever realizes. In 2003, we had found out a couple things we surprisingly hadn't found out before and spent a couple months going through some tests, decided to do a couple IUIs (the inexpensive non-invasive procedure) but we knew that we would never do IVF. Not that I think that is wrong, it just would have been wrong for us. I personally didn't want to spend $20,000 on a slight chance that I would get pregnant and the possibility that I would have a miscarriage in a normal pregnancy was already increased, when I knew that we could spend the money for adoption. Yet, I got so tired of people, in my opinion uncompassionately, saying "Why don't you JUST adopt?" I didn't want to JUST adopt. I wasn't opposed to adoption, but I wanted God to show us His will and give us that desire. I totally believe the verse that says "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." We prayed that if our desires were wrong that God would change them. But He hadn't done that yet. I was still struggling with the desire to get pregnant and then we were worried about all the questions you have in adoption. From important ones like medical history, attachment, will I be prepared to deal with issues they may have as they grow up to the less important ones like "What if the baby isn't cute?" (Oh come one, you can pretend that doesn't matter, but you know we all want cute children and if my children ended up with chubby cheeks or crazy curly hair I could blame it on my genes ..... Oh wait.... :) ) Then in October 2003, I was listening to the radio and heard about an agency that was having some type of meeting or expo and I decided to look it up on the internet. This wasn't the first time I had looked up stuff about adoption, but normally got discouraged about different things. But this time it was different (obviously it was now God's timing!) I started showing Kenny some things and honestly to me it was the very first miracle in our adoption journey -- God gave us both this overwhelming desire to adopt! I honestly can't really remember the website, it was just totally God showing us that THIS was His plan. I don't know if its because I'm not a very patient person or just because we tend to "run with things" but we became as proactive as we could. I started talking to someone I knew was in the adoption process, she gave us the lady's name that did her home study and I called her and got lots of information and probably drove her nuts talking to her so much. As a side note, she knows that I think she is amazing, and I know that God sent her to us to do our homestudy and just encourage us along the way! Then in November 2003, we went to an international adoption seminar. We weren't sure if God was leading us to go international or domestic, but I was so excited about this seminar. I remember going to this meeting, tearing up during the video of people bring their children home yet after that sitting around listening to people, talking to some people and then leaving terribly discouraged. Have you ever been somewhere that you just felt you weren't supposed to be? That was how I felt - not at peace at all. I remember getting in the car and crying and Kenny asking me "What's wrong, I thought this was what you were wanting, are you not wanting to adopt now?" and it wasn't that, I was just so sure that God was going to show us which way to go and yet now I felt kind of empty. Once again, I thought God wasn't showing us, but He was by not giving us the peace to go this way --- its amazing to me to think now that Isabella's birthmother was pregnant with her at this time and God was just working us both toward each other. Then I went back to the internet and I stumbled across a website for Adoption Consultants in California. Cathy worked with domestic adoptions and I honestly got a wonderful peace as I looked at her website. I called her that night and when she called back we talked for over an hour. We spent time praying about it, thinking about it, and decided that this was definitely the way God wanted us to go. Our next step was that we had to create a profile - I remember spending several evenings doing this right after Thanksgiving. We then printed them out and got them ready to send to Cathy. I remember the day we sent them out - it was HORRIBLE!!! Honestly everything was going wrong! That night Kenny and I went to Michael's Craft store and while we were there I told Kenny that I felt like Satan knew that we were going to be getting victory and that God was going to bless us because he was doing everything that day to attack me and discourage me and trying to stop us from getting those profiles out. Right then in the middle of the store Kenny said "Well, let's pray about it!" OK --- I'm getting long, so I will write more tomorrow - obviously you already kind of know the outcome and that we did get our special blessing! But there is lots of things you don't know, so come back. :)

My Absence (I know you missed me?!?)

This is my 100th post, BUT I just don't have time right now, nor could I actually think of 100 things to tell you about myself if I did what many do for their 100th post. I've been away from blogging the last few days because my in-laws came in Friday and were here until yesterday morning. Then my sweet Amelia has been sick with a little cold - thankfully, she is like Isabella and doesn't get cranky when she gets sick, but Oh the snotty nose and coughing! And then Isabella - Oh my Isabella - boy has she just been trying us lately! Its been one of those weeks of telling her to do things like "When you go to the front of the church for the lesson (which they do right before Children's Church) you need to behave and listen to Pastor" just to have her go up front, sit on the step for 2 seconds, then decide to fall backwards with her feet up in the air showing the whole church that not only does she have tights covering those panties, but Kenny and DeAnna must not know how to control that child. :) The bad thing is that everyone else thought it was funny which just encourages Isabella's little entertainer personality and Isabella thought it was funny too until she stood up and got the look from both mommy and daddy. :) And she's done many other things that were much less "entertaining". I've been in tears thinking I must be doing something wrong for her to constantly turn around and disobey -- although now she will do it and then quote the verse we've been teaching her (obviously her own translation) she will say "Obey Bellas parents!" I just have spent alot of time praying that this is just her trying us and that God would cause her to be tenderhearted to things of Him. I know she's only 3 (almost), and I don't expect her to always obey (obviously), I just pray for her heart as she gets older that she wouldn't have a rebellious heart. I know she has a stubborn will (I believe I'm getting my payback) and I don't want to break that will, I just pray that it will be moldable! On a lighter note, we did have a really nice visit with my in laws. They had come down in April to see Amelia for the first time so it has been 6 months since we've seen them (and actually that's pretty good, it seems like we only see them once a year) And no, I'm not just saying we had a good time because they will be reading this, because they won't - they don't have a computer. It really was a very nice visit! Isabella had so much fun with her grandparents and even Amelia warmed up to them fine. As soon as they got here, Grandpa tried to hold Amelia and she pooched her lip and cried, but then after a little while she was fine sitting on his lap. Isabella was very sad to wake up yesterday morning and Grandma and Grandpa not be there. So now, I am off to do the laundry that has been piling up and get some cleaning done around here, but hopefully I can get back to my normal blogging (or posting pictures) soon.

I also wanted to post a link for Adoption Month. Alot of you have probably seen this video on other blogs, I saw it on Faith's a while back and then just recently it was posted here for Adoption Month. Its Mark Schultz and a song that he wrote because he was adopted.
This is what he says about it on his website: Cindy and Mark discussed the love and courage it must take for a woman to give up a child, knowing she could never give her child the things he needed. "I've had such a good life. I have the best parents in the world so I wanted it to be a song to thank my birth mom for giving me the opportunity to live, " he says. "It's almost like taking her hand and walking her through my life when I was little and playing baseball with my dad, the prayers at night with my folks, and my mom reading 'Goodnight Moon.' Then back to what would it be like if we met on the street. Would you know it was me? Would you just kind of know?" HERE's the link again - I figured I would just post the link rather than try and get it for myself. :)

I WANT A PONY

How many of you asked your parents for a pony for Christmas? I did, I remember telling my parents if they bought me a pony/horse that I would never ask for anything else ever again! I think this was probably shortly after I went horseback riding for a field trip (I think I was 7?) Well, I guess this year Isabella will probably be asking us for one. And I doubt she'll be happy with a My Little Pony toy! Today, we went to our church bazaar for some barbecue and right down the road from our church a farm was having "Farm Day" (I told you our church was in the country) Just about everytime we go to church we see horses and Isabella is constantly saying "I want to ride a horse" (Of course, she also informed me a few weeks ago that she was a COWBOY!) When we passed by the farm we noticed that they were giving rides, so we decided to stop and see if they would let her ride. They did and boy was she excited. We just happened to have her wear her cowgirl hat today too. And she did amazingly well. I thought she would be afraid when the horse started moving, but she grabbed on to the saddle and just smiled! The lady there said "Uh-oh Daddy you're going to have to buy a horse now!" But Isabella is just going to have to be happy with her little pink rocking horse for now, then maybe some day she can take lessons --- who knows. Enjoy the slide show, I think you can either watch it or click on the pictures below it to see them individually. I wish I had her wear little boots today it would have been cuter in the pictures. (I still can't copy and paste the slide show into the post, has anyone else figured this out?!)

Get Your Own! View Slideshow

Song

A couple of you asked about the song -- It came from a CD I bought called "Do You Have a Little Love to Share" from the Lundberg Company. You can go here or here if you wanted to get more information or buy the CD. It has alot of pretty songs on there all about adoption. You can go to the About Us section and read about the people that wrote the songs. They were really kind to us, I called in to ask about ordering it and if there was some way to get the sheet music and I ended up talking to one of the ladies that helped writing the songs. Then she took my e-mail and had someone send me the sheet music - free of charge - so we could have it sung. (Actually go here and you can read about the CD itself)

ADOPTION MONTH

To start off November as National Adoption Month - here's a little photo montage I put together of my 2 girls. Click on it to play. Listen to the song, its the one that my sister in law sang at Amelia's dedication -- its a beautiful song and fitting for any adoption!!!

Make an online slideshow at onetruemedia.com