Missouri Nephews

I apologize: This post has many issues--underlined text, pictures & captions all jumbled up--but I'm too tired to deal with it, so I'm going to bed. I'll try to fix it later. :)

We left on Sunday afternoon to visit my family and stayed until Tuesday afternoon. Really enjoyed seeing everyone again and spending time with them. Our nephews grow and change so much in between visits. Zaden is in the midst of potty training and has what you might describe as an abundance of energy...but yet he can be very sweet and cuddly too. His vocabulary has exploded and includes some pretty amusing phrases. Kingston is still laid-back most of the time and really doesn't let much of anything bother him--he watches Zaden like a hawk and immitates a lot of his actions. He's saying several words now and when I was playing with him I KNOW he repeated "dinosaur" and then just "saur" as we were playing with one. :) Xander is a people person and loves attention--but don't put him down and walk out of the room! He has a huge smile that lights up the room and you can almost always get him to smile if you talk to him and act goofy (which I guess I'm good at). So--that's a summary of the boys; I could go on and on for hours and tell story after story that amused me but I'll refrain. These pictures are just a few of my favorites...feel free to visit our flickr page for more. :) You've probably already guessed, but the captions are numbered in order of the pictures...


#1.) No, of course we didn't get into anything. Really! That red mouth is just a figment of your imagination! Afterall, Xander is only 7 months old and I wouldn't feed him sugar or anything. ;)


2.) Bedtime stories with Zaden & Xander. After reading this Eric Carle book at least 6 times, Zaden told us a very lengthy story about a little boy who went potty a lot (can you tell what's going on in his life?) and was just "bee-diculous" sometimes. It's so fun to hear kids use big words like ridiculous--makes me smile just writing about it.


3.) Zaden looking into the living room from his favorite spot at grammy & grandpa's--the deck.

4.) Kingston--half smile. Unfortunately, I didn't get as many pictures of Kingston this time and found out when I downloaded them from the camera that I really didn't get any that captured his huge, contagious smile. Guess I was too busy playing with him and enjoying it to snap the pictures. :P

New Nephew!!!

Congratulations to Farron, Cheri, and big brother Elliot! Liam Anders was born on Monday, July 7th! I stole the picture from Cheri's blog--(thanks Cheri, I hope you don't mind). :) I didn't want to write about him without a picture to show how cute he is! We can't wait to meet him--hopefully in a couple of weeks we can stop for a bit on our way up to Wisconsin--or on the way back. We are now the proud aunt and uncle to 5 nephews--wow, can't hardly believe that's even possible. Are we old enough?!

Activation!

Just a quick update to say that we are now offically activated with American Adoptions' A New World Awaits program! :) Everything that we were waiting for kind of fell into place on Monday-and we met with our social worker yesterday to sign the activation agreement and pay our fee. So we've definitely made several steps of progress in the last few months, considering that we sent our first application to American Adoptions on April 15th. Of course, it could be months before we are matched with a birthmother or anything else happens. Only time will tell!

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Now we're waiting on news of nephew #5! :)

Pride & Joy

This hydrangea is currently the "pride & joy" of our yard. I bought it as a stick 3 years ago--it kind of grew the last 2 years but this year--it bloomed and it's beautiful (to me)! I think this may be my favorite flowering plant, but then again I kind of like them all. It was my Grandma Gray's favorite, as far as I know, so that makes it extra-special to me. :) I've debated taking out the shrubs in front of our porch and putting hydrangea bushes in...but I'd either have to pay more $ than I like for mature plants or wait 3 years before they even begin to look full...so maybe the shrubs will just have to stay.

Camping Trip

We just got back from our first camping trip of the season last night (hopefully the first of several, but we'll see)! Weleft Sunday afternoon and headed down to Lake Ouachita--stayed at the Joplin campground between Hot Springs and Mt. Ida, Arkansas. It was a beautiful area: beautiful clear lake, nice scenic ozark style mountains, good weather for the most part. Sunday night we got rained on around 1 am but it didn't last too long--then Monday night was awesome with a little cooler temps and wonderful breeze. Tuesday was hot and sunny, but we packed up and headed into Hot Springs for part of the day. Now we know exactly what we were missing in Hot Springs: nothing. Sorry, if you've been there and loved it I'm sure you found something worth being excited about--but we didn't. Maybe if you stayed in one of the resorts or something it would be enjoyable, I don't know. We toured Hot Springs State Park's refurbished bath house--it's been restored to original 1915 condition. That was a little bit interesting. We walked around the downtown shops area, but didn't find any that really intrigued us...except Vicki's Coffee Corner where Ryan enjoyed an iced caramel latte. Before getting back on the road, we ate at the Cracker Barrel, which always seems to be a good bet for good country cookin'. :)

These pictures are a few from our trip. If you'd like to see more, visit our Flickr page. Go to the "Our Trips" collection, then the "Lake Ouachita June 08" folder. :) http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdmagsam/

Have a Wonderful week, everyone! :)

Around the Yard

Some pictures from around our yard today...I'm loving it! Geraniums and Marigolds are summer classics in my mind. :)

I love the contrast of the blue and gold around the mailbox...

Does anyone know what this third plant is? It's beautiful, green, and gets bigger every year but I have no idea what it is and I don't remember planting it...

This is a case of "Where's the Elephant Ear?" I forgot that I had moved the elephant ear until I noticed it hidden between my HUGE hostas. The Elephant fit well between them last year, but I think it needs a new home now! Or maybe not--I want to thin the hostas out this fall and make a hosta bed on the east side of the house in the shade where nothing grows.

Babble

I guess it's time to post something new. SCHOOL IS OUT!!! That's the best news I have. I'm enjoying my summer vacation. So far I haven't accomplished anything huge, but I have been doing lots of cleaning and de-cluttering around the house. For those of you who know how much I hate to clean, that may be surprising but it feels great to get rid of things I haven't used or that are just taking up too much room. Freecycle.com and Craigslist have become our friends, as well as the local thrift store's drop-off bay. :)

No news on the adoption process--it's a process and we're just waiting right now for the homestudy report and profile to be completed. In the meantime, I'm having fun picking out furniture (or trying to--IKEA disappointed me today with their outrageous shipping costs so I am back to researching other options). Used furniture stores might be on the agenda for tomorrow, I think it might be fun to refinish an older dresser for a changing table/storage piece. I've also started thinking about what I want to do with our guest room to convert it to a nursery-and I think I've come up with some good ideas so far, with some help of course. :) I'm thinking brown and teal (or maybe lime green instead of the blue) for our "theme" but I'll probably wait until I have time to check out fabric before I decide for sure. My friend Jennifer is going to sew some things, just to clear that up. I haven't got even the slightest hint of craftiness in me. I figure we might as well use this waiting time for something good and what better time to think about exactly what we want as far as baby gear than before we're stressed out with the details of the adoption process?!

By the way, the book Baby Bargains is awesome--I needed a starting point for which brands are okay, what is useful and what is just a waste of $, etc. and it's been very helpful in narrowing down some choices. Thanks for the recommendation, Natalie!

Saturday will be a milestone day for us--our 5 year Anniversary! It's wierd to think that it's been that long; our wedding day seems like yesterday in some ways, but then again a lot has happened in 5 years also. We're hoping to head down south to Lake Ouachita on Sunday after meeting for a couple nights of camping. It's near Hot Springs, which we've never been to either, but we'll probably stay away from civilization as much as possible. :)

Ummmm...I think I'm out of things to say...