Click, Clack, MOO!

Today we had a mommy and daughter morning. We headed out to Hope College's summer theater for a performance. They were putting on Click, Clack, Moo...Cows that Type. This is a picture book that has been turned into a play. It was amazing!!! We both absolutely LOVED it! I've always loved live theater and I was excited to take Abby with me. She was mesmerized all morning. When we were walking back to the car she kept asking if we could go back and watch it again. She was even repeating "click, clack, moo" after dinner tonight. We can't wait to go back again.
Here we are in the theater waiting for the play to begin and trying to take a picture of ourselves. Abby looks tired, but she really was all smiles!

After the play the kids all went on the stage to look over the props. Here's Abby feeling the bed that the cows sat on. She was so enthralled with it all.

Here she is again by the beds. I don't know if you can see it or not, but in her hand is a red feather that she picked up from the ground. It had fallen off the costume for the chicken and she begged to bring it home. But then she asked if she could climb up the ladder to the chicken's nest to put it back for her. She was convinced she would miss the feather.

We ended the afternoon in the pool. It was such a nice day so we filled it up and invited over the neighbors. We were outside for several hours. I got a little burnt, but they were all wearing sunscreen so they were covered.

Family Reunions

I realized that I haven't updated in a while, sorry about that! We've been sleeping at home, but playing at the campground ALL day. My dad's side of the family (aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, etc) are camping together for the week and we've been visiting each and every day. We've been swimming, climbing slides, playing cards, swinging on ropes, fishing, playing corn hole, riding bikes and oh yeah, we've been eating! What a week! Here are a few pictures of our time. Abby absolutely loved the pool. I think we were in it every single day. She is a water rat. At first she stuck close to the pool steps, but as the week progressed, she was able to swim all by herself (with her life jacket of course)

Here she is swimming by herself and loving it! She would be in the pool from 1-2 hours each afternoon. She also got a noodle to play with. That noodle got more playing time this week than any other toy.

Several of my cousins have girls right around Abby's age so there were always playmates. There was even another Abby who is also 3 years old so we had to get creative when calling them. One was Abby Rose and ours was Abby Elaine. Here is Abby Elaine with her second cousin Anna and of course, the two dolls. :)

We love camping!

Here's Abby's second cousin Jaeger. The boys spent most of the week fishing. Thank goodness it was catch and release because they would have cleared that pond of fish. They caught 14-17 fish a day!

Oh, and on Thursday morning we went to the library for a magic show with our awesome neighbors, Ryan and Kaylana. The magician was awesome and had some really cool tricks. It's definitely been a busy week.

defeated.

one year.

two months.

one week.

one day.

that's how long i've been waiting for my new daughter.

I'M STILL WAITING!

Tonight I'm feeling defeated. I was told it would take 12-14 months for the process of adopting from Ethiopia. Even if I took the longer time period, my daughter should have been home within 14 months (that would have been one year and two months)!!

I DON'T EVEN HAVE A REFERRAL! And I'm looking at SEVERAL more months.

WHY is this happening? Family and friends continue to ask on the progress and I have no new news to share. Still waiting. And they all have compassion and just the "right" words to say. But for some reason God has said not yet. WHY? WHY? WHY? I'm glad that I serve a God who allows me to question and listens to my crying each night. I do feel his arms around me, but it's still hard.

very hard.

So that's where I'm at tonight.

defeated.

Oh and the picture is from last Saturday afternoon. We were making carmel corn and puppy chow and Abby loves to lick the bowl. She is definitely my bright spot. :)

Popsicle fun

Sitting on the counter eating her popsicle, this is what Abby just said to me:

"When you adopted me when I was a little baby in Guatemala, I was hoping that you were a mom that would give me popsicles."

I guess dreams do come true!

We fought the apples

and it was a hard fight...but we won! Today was applesauce day! We started at 8:30 this morning and finished the final pot at 4:30. I am exhausted! With only a 10 minute break for lunch, we kept busy all day. We went through 64 pounds of apples, 15 pounds of sugar, and numerous containers.
Everyone came to lend a hand. My sister in law was there for a few hours this morning. My sister was there to help in the afternoon. My mom was there with me all day and my grandparents even came to lend a hand. It feels good to be done and the applesauce will taste great all through the winter! Lauren was so helpful with the apple cutting. She was in charge of chopping the apples into smaller pieces so they would cook faster.

Here's my 92 year old grandpa going to town on the cutting! Can you believe it!?! 92 years old and he's still got enough spunk to tackle applesauce making!

Here's my amazing mom. She started at 8:30 in the morning with a smile and still had the smile on her face at 4:30. She's amazing!!

Adoption Friendships

Sometimes it's hard to be a single adoptive mom.

Sometimes God gives great gifts to help you.

Last night was a gift.

Through various blogs, facebook, email, etc. I connected with four other single adoptive moms! We invited them over for pizza and a play-date last night. It was great! There were five moms and five kids. All adopted from Ethiopia or Guatemala. We had so much in common the conversation went on all night. After pizza, fruit salad and of course homemade cookies, we headed outside to watch the kids play. I felt so refreshed after talking with these moms. They had such great advise for my upcoming trip to Ethiopia, shared the same faith (love it!), and laughed with me at the antics of the kids. We had such a great time we decided to meet again and perhaps even once a month. Here are some great pictures of our fun. Here's one year old Maron trying out the little red car. What a cutie! Here's a close up of Maron with mom (Kristin). Rena was such a great helper all night! Here she is pushing Aliya on the Dora trike.

Abby loved helping Levi on the bike.

We tried to get all the kids together for a picture at the end of the night. Just click on the picture to enlarge it and see all of our CUTE kids!

This is Beth with her cute son Levi.

Here is Kristin with her beautiful daughters Rena and Maron.

Here's Amy with her adorable daughter Aliya.

I'm missing a picture of Kim. Next time we get together plan on me getting your picture Kim! :)

To all the girls who will read my blog to see the pictures, thank you! It was a great night.

We've been busy!

Whew! We've been having fun nonstop! My sister and her family were in town this week so we packed in as much fun as possible! Enjoy the pictures! We had a picnic dinner for my sister's birthday. My brother and his family were also there and took us to a great place to have the picnic. It was a gorgeous night. Here are the cousins being silly with some old glasses they found on the playground.
We headed over to Dutch Village on Thursday with all the cousins. Here we are watching the Dutch dancers.

The kids all loved playing on the pretend wagons and making the horses go. They play so well together!

Leah and Lauren were inseparable! Here they are waiting for the swings. We did the swings first and then ran over to the carousal, then the swings, then....

Sophie and Abby tried walk the goat. It was hilarious! They were much smaller and weaker than the goat, but that did not matter to them.

Giggles happened ALL week!

Here's my sister Beth! Love her!

Playing princesses and hugging cousins, can anything be better?

On Friday morning we went apple picking. I picked up the girls early and we had 64 pounds of apples in the car by 9:15! It went so quickly with four helpers. There was a competition between Julia and Lauren to find the biggest apple. They definitely found larger ones than me.

Look at that pile!

Applesauce-here we come!

Since we were done apple picking so early, we headed to the raspberry patch. Each girl picked their own basket of raspberries. I don't know if they picked more or ate more. Abby loved eating them right off the vine.

Let's put them in the car and go find some more fun!

Can you believe it?!?!

Today I realized I am definitely a "city girl" and not a country girl. I am also accident prone.... Here's what happened- I went outside bright and early this morning to edge my flowering area and to trim a few bushes that had gotten a little out of control. The edging went quite well and looks great! The trimming started out great, but then while I was on my last bush the trimmer just stopped. I panicked because I was borrowing this trimmer from my neighbor. I was so worried that I had broken it!

I plugged and unplugged it.

I checked the circuit breaker.

I let it "cool" down, maybe it was overheated.

Nothing worked.

It was B.R.O.K.E.N.

How was I going to tell my neighbor I had broken his trimmer? How was I going to afford to buy a new one? When the neighbors came home I immediately walked over. I figured it was better to get it over with right away. He didn't seem overly concerned. He came to look at it then went to plug it into his garage.

IT STARTED RIGHT AWAY!!

So what was the problem? With a little investigation (with my neighbor's help) it was discovered that while I was trimming the last bush I had nicked my electrical cord! Can you believe it! What an idiot! Now you must know that I live next to the BEST neighbors ever and he immediately sat down with some electrical tape to fix it. It works great now and I was able to finish the final bush.

Yeah...not planning on trimming any more bushes this summer.

On other news, my sister and her family came up today and will be here for a few more days. It's always so great to see her and Abby adores her cousins. The pictures are of the girls playing around the house after dinner. I didn't take any pictures of my awful electrical cord cutting escapade, so just enjoy the pictures of the girls.

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