Saturday, April 23, 2011

Summertime has Begun.....

Summer time has begun in Southwest Louisiana. The pool is sparkling and warming up - warm enough for a little pool time this eve of Easter. We celebrated our family Easter early this year as we leave tomorrow for vacation.

My family was all there. We had a great time.






As a side note - I aspire to be a gifted photographer and I get lots of practice throughout the year. Although gifted I am not, there are sometimes where I luck out and take a fantastic picture. This one just happens to be of Maddie. Just wanted to share it with you.



Happy Easter! May the blessings of the Lord be upon your family.

He is Risen!!!!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Easter Party


Maddie had her class Easter party complete with an appearance from the Easter Bunny.


Maddie and her classmates couldn't wait to get past the gate and find the hidden eggs!



She found more eggs than her basket could hold.


This is as close as she would get to the Easter Bunny.




She had a great time.

We are celebrating Easter with our family on Saturday. We set sail on a caribbean cruise on Easter Sunday. I am ready for some quality family time.

I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed Easter.



Monday, April 11, 2011

Update

Alot has been going on with our family and thought I would devote this post to updating everyone on what's been happening.

Christopher has been very busy. He recently starting working part time at Stine's, a local lumber yard in the garden department in order to earn money to pay back his grandfather for a little fender bender he had when he borrowed his truck to help the Basketball Coach move. It has been a great lesson for him in learning the value of a dollar and how hard it is to earn them. We are very proud of him for sticking with it and doing a good job at work. He also tried out for a local AAU Basketball team and made it. This team will begin playing soon and traveling to tournaments around the South. He was also recently appointed Team Captain for the upcoming 2011/2012 Varsity Basketball Season at St. Louis Catholic High School. What a great honor.

Lizzy has been just as busy. She gave up running track this year as her allergies were just too tough to bear. She recently tried out for a part in the upcoming school play and landed the role of Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother. Another more important tryout was held this past month - St. Louis High School Cheerleader. There was a lot of stress and tension before the tryouts but she did fantastic and landed herself a spot on the JV team next year. I can't believe she will be a Freshman. Cheer practice started this week and she practices 4 days a week.

Maddie has been busy as well. She is doing soooo good at Gymnastics which she attends once a week. She has mastered her cartwheel and front roll. I see improvement every week she attends. The saga of bedtime continues but is getting better. We stopped trying to get her to sleep in her own room and she started sleeping on a pallet in my room. She still needs to transition upstairs to her own room but we thought we would start slowly and work on it step by step. I recently bought her a princess toddler bed from Target and she loves it. Now the bed is still in my room but at least I got her off of the floor and into a bed. Baby steps.

Keith and I start our Hague training tomorrow and begin our Home Study process. I have put together all the required documents for our Dossier and am waiting on only on the Home Study and the I-800 (which requires the Home Study to be complete). I feel like a pro at Adoption Paperwork.

Summertime is almost here and we are beginning to think about summertime activities - camp, summer league basketball, cheer camp, vacation, swimming lessons. I am so enjoying my children - each individually and their activities.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Starting Over

After much thought and prayer, our Family has decided to pursue another adoption. We have talked with our older children about this decision of adding one more to our family of 5 and are both quite excited. The other night at dinner we were seated at a table for 6 and Lizzy commented that possibly next year we will need the spare chair to accommodate our family of 6. Maddie is excited too at the thought of a having a little sister to play with.

I have completed the initial application to Holt International (which is the adoption agency that we used for Maddie's) and we start the Hague Training on April 12th and the Homestudy shortly thereafter.


I have quickly forgotten how much paperwork is involved in the Adoption Process!! But here we go. Thank goodness I kept all of the paperwork from Maddie's adoption and can use it as a guide to complete this batch of paperwork.



Please pray for our family as we make this amazing journey again. And pray for our little girl - whose face and name we do not know yet but GOD does.