BLESSINGS

The Lord has blessed us in a special way. Brian's work has been really slow lately and his boss called and told him to go ahead and stay home tomorrow and he'd still pay him for 8 hours. We expect to get "The Call" tomorrow and Brian was going to have to work to make up hours, but now we have been blessed in the best way and we will be together tomorrow when the call comes in.

Thank you everyone for your support. We'll keep you posted.

THE STORK IS IN THE AIR!!!

It's official:

REFERRALS HAVE BEEN MAILED!!!!!

They should be here anyday. We will be anxiously waiting.

Thanksgiving Weekend 2006

This year we spent Thanksgiving with Brian's family in Moab Utah. We had such a great time. How can you not have fun when your with people you love and we all love to stuff our faces.

We left the Valley at 5:30pm and arrived in Moab (driving) at 1:30am. I walked into the house and it was dead quiet with sleeping bodies all over breathing evenly. The only sound I heard was my father in law snoring loudly behind a closed door. We had Max with us and we didn't know where we were to sleep, so we set up camp in the Tucson (car). I slept great, I had the pad and the most sleeping room. Brian couldn't say the same, he was a little cramped. But poor Max, he had no idea what was going on or where he was, he ended up spending the night in the front seat inbetween the steering wheel and the seatback.

Thanksgiving Day was really fun. Our host Kim made the BEST pancakes I've ever tasted, with the best Buttermilk syrup. Once you've tasted this, you can never go back.







A little history: This family, with Kim's visionary talent and my father in law's architecture talent, took the old Moab theatre and renevated it. Those around them actually told them they were crazy. They had to clear out this old theatre that had been vandelized many times. They took out the old theatres seats and ceiling to floor drapery material (large spider webs and all) and cleared out the whole theatre. Then they lived in this theatre while they renovated it. They now have the last laugh after countless hours of sweat and work. Their house is something out of a magazine. It is beautiful, and very open and warm. I wish the pictures could show you the granduer of this house.


Left: From the back of the house looking to the front.


Right: Looking from the front of the house to the back.

It is tradition in the family after thanksgiving dinner to lay our very full bodies all over the place:-)

I have a great picture of a room full of bodies just laying all over, but for the 3rd day in a row, blogger won't upload the picture. So please use your imagination;-).

Friday this old horseman came by the house on his beautiful black horse (bareback) and gave a bunch of the little kids rides. He said he had a partnership with his horse and deminstrated this by scooting off the horse at the rump and then crawling between the horses legs. It was pretty cool.

Just outside of town there is a tall sand hill maybe 200 or 300 feet high where the kids would run up it and roll, scoot, sled, summersault, you name it down it. It was hilarious to watch these kids get so full of sand and loving it. Max (dog) had a great time dragging Brian up and down the hill. We couldn't let him off of his leash because it was too close to the main highway.

After we left the sand hill we went to this stream not too far from their house. Max had the time of his life running all over, up and down the rocks and into the stream which was more like a river with rapids. He scared his dad half to death.

We had a great time and are glad we went. On the way home it was light and we got to see all the beautiful senery in Monument Valley and even got a great picture of the road/mountains where Forest Gump did his running and stopped and said "I'm pretty tired, guess I'll go home now."

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and were able to spend it with family or friends.

We are anxiously waiting for referrals to arrive, so we can see the face of our beautiful girl.

TWO WEEKS

I can hardly believe that we will see our precious baby girls face in two weeks time. After such a long wait, and wanting to be a mom for soooo long, it is finally here. I have this nervous excited anxiety about me. I am mostly excited though. I find myself thinking a lot about:
What will she look like?
What age is she?
What her name is?
I am excited to know these answers and more. I am really thankful that Thanks Giving falls in the middle of these two weeks so that it will go faster!
Happy Thanks Giving Everyone!!!

Please click here to see our friends who are in China right now and will be joined with their twin girls tomorrow.

FUN WEEKEND

This weekend was a fun and productive weekend.

It started with the Mom's night out on Friday night. Some of the moms from the FCC group got together and had a wine and cheese tasting. I had such a great time listening to these moms tell funny stories about their kids and husbands and learning so much more about how to be prepared.

On Saturday I went to lunch and shopping for scrapbook supplies with Donna and Julie. I had such a nice time with these ladies. Julie is waiting to travel to her daughter Tess who resides in Guangdong PR China. Donna and I are waiting to be matched. It has been such a blessing in my life to have found such wonderful friends through this whole adoption community. Julie it was really nice to have met you, I hope to get Tess and Lily together someday.

Now the productive part: On Sunday I cleaned out my filing cabinet and moved them to new files in a new cabinet with labels from my labeller (love that thing). It looks so clean and fresh and organized. The whole time I was thinking to myself "I am sure glad I'm doing this now, because there is no way I could sit all day going through files with Lily running around."

Have a great and wonderful week!

SEE PREVIOUS POST

Since blogger is allowing me to upload pictures, I thought I'd show the rest. The first is the example of the squares and rows sewn together.
Next is what it looks like out of the washer and dryer.

This is the finished product.

Left: Front

Right: Back

Please see the next post for complete instructions.

IS ANYONE UP FOR A CHALLENGE?

My friend Donna has inspired me. See her blog for instructions on a tie quilt. Yesterday I got out all the colored jeans I have been saving to make a jean quilt. I thought I'd share:

Supplies: Jeans, quilt batting (flat), heavy duty sewing machine needle (size 16 does fine), heavy duty thread.

First you collect old jeans. I wanted to make a colorful quilt so I visited my local Goodwill store and picked some out. You'll need to cut out a lot of squares. I make mine 7.5"x7.5". You could make them smaller if prefered. The butt pockets are the cutest. Figure out how many pockets you have to work with and then sit down and fiqure out your design. It also helps to know the size of quilt you want. (divide measurements by 7" to know how many squares you'll need).
I had 14 pockets to use, so I made my design from there. Hint: You'll need squares to cover the back also.
This blanket is a crib size. I used 35 squares for the back and for the front I used 14 pockets and 21 squares.







After you have cut your squares, cut smaller squares of quilt batting. Next you'll sew your squares together.

Hint: If you decide to make a colorful quilt instead of straight jeans, I highly suggest laying out your design and write it down so you won't have a bunch of the same color together.
Sew a front piece to a back piece with batting in the middle, WRONG SIDES TOGETHER.
Plain squares get an x. Pockets get sewn around inside of pocket, leaving opening for functional pocket.






After your squares are sewn together, the next step is to sew square to square with back pieces together. This leaves the seam in the front. Do this step to create rows following your pattern. After the rows are sewn across, it is time to sew them together. (This is where you need to kiss your machine and tell it you love it and what a fine machine it is, because it may end up hating you :)

Hint: It is important to always sew back pieces facing each other so all the seams are in the front.

I am having a problem posting anymore pictures, so I will continue with the instructions and try to post the pics in another post.

After you have sewn your squares into rows and your rows into a blanket, your last step is to sew a border around the perimeter of the blanket to hold it all together. Your front should have all of your seam allowances in squares sticking out, with the back neatly sewn in.

Now throw it in the washing machine and dryer, twice. It will come out all fread. Trim the fread thread off and you are finished!

I finally put her name on the wall!

WE'RE NEXT!!!

This morning I woke up to a very tired body. As I dragged myself out of bed and to the kitchen to start my coffee, I thought to myself "Even though there won't be any change, I have to check." As I have don't every morning and every night for the last two weeks, driving myself crazy, I have checked the internet for any sign of the cut off day for referrals. To my bitter sweet surprise it was there. Referrals are done. It's official. Cut off Aug 25th. We had missed the cut off by one day. So many emotions hit me at once. I cried for a minute, because I had such hope. I smiled and felt pure joy, because now I can relax and know that we are next. We will see her precious face in four weeks! Then I smiled more for my friends who are behind us, because getting though the 24th (being a very large day) and going beyond means a slight speed up! If nothing else...I'm really glad it's out so that I can finally relax and breathe. Congratulations to Julie, and Heidi and Zach. We are very excited for you to be able to see your babies face!

"Miss Manners" has good advice.