Adopting Again!

Remember this post?  I wrote it back in January, and went on about how we weren't quite ready for another baby, but that one day we would be.

Well, we are finally to the "one day".  It took us longer than we thought to get here, since our original plan was to start a second adoption after Kate turned one. BUT if there's one thing I've learned after having a kid, it's that plans change.

In all honesty, can you ever REALLY be ready for another kid?  I don't really think that you can.  Sometimes I'm not even sure that we're ready for ONE kid, much less another one!  When we adopted Kate, our world turned upside down.  Definitely in a good way, but TOTALLY different from when it was just me and Kevin.  We went from pretty much playing everything by ear, to having our lives scheduled 24 hours a day. Needless to say, becoming a family of 3 was an adjustment.  And becoming a family of 4... well, I can't even imagine it yet.

I think like every parent, you wonder how another little person will fit into your family.  Logistically, how is this going to work out?  Are there enough hours in the day?  I can already say that there aren't.  Are we going to love another one just as much?  Well, yeah.  Am I worried about making sure there's still enough "Kate-time"?  Yep.  But it will work out, just like it has for so many other families.  I mean it's not like we're talking about 19 kids and counting. We're talking about one more baby, 2 total kids.  So yeah, things will be crazy(ier), but that's life, and we'll figure out what our new normal is.

The funny thing about adoption is that you have to be ready for a baby RIGHT NOW, but you also have to be prepared to wait.  I think we are ready for either of those scenarios.  Most likely, we'll be waiting for some amount of time to be matched.  Our agency's average wait time is about a year.  But it might not be a year.  It might be much sooner than that, and we have to be ready if that happens to be the case.  With Kate, we waited just 3 months to be matched and then a month after that, she was born! So there is always the possibility that it will be quick, but there's also the possibility that it will be much longer.  And I think we're okay with waiting.  Life is good right now.

So where does that leave us?  As of now, we've submitted our initial paperwork to our adoption agency.  We have one more stack of paperwork that we need to complete, and we need to get our physicals and background checks before we start our homestudy.  So that's pretty much it.  We would love it if you would pray for us as we go through this second adoption journey. We're looking forward to our future family of 4, but really enjoying this stage as a family of 3.

 

Five on Friday

I'm linking up again with Darci, Natasha, April and Christina for Five on Friday (even though I'm posting a bit late). Join in! Link up! Here we go!

ONE
I finally picked a color for Kate's room.  After getting her bedding, the next step was to find the paint color.  I knew I wanted to go for a blue/teal color but had no idea what shade.  Luckily, you can buy tester size paint at Lowe's for about $2.50 each, so I got quite a few to try out.  Not sure if it made my decision harder or easier, but I did pick out a color. It's the middle one below and definitely is brighter and more blue/green than this picture shows.

TWO
Kate has her very first dance lesson tomorrow. This should be an adventure. You know, you secretly hope that your kid looks something like this...

But you know that the real-life picture is going to look more like this...

I'll definitely have pictures (and possibly a video) to share after tomorrow. This should be fun. 

THREE
This kid is a mess, but oh so fun and full of personality.  

And how she LOVES Mexican food.  Especially chips... and salsa... and guacamole. 

FOUR
We are just a few weeks out from Kate's party, and even though it's going to be a bit smaller than last year, birthday party stuff is in full swing around here.

FIVE
This was a year ago today.  I can't even believe it.

The Great Storm of 2013

So I definitely took a blogging break this past week.  Believe me- it was totally unintentional!  Before I get to what's been going on this past week, let me back up a little bit further...

A few weeks ago, we decided to pull up a large mulch bed in our front yard and cover it with sod.  In addition to putting sod on those areas, we decided to go ahead and place it in other "problem-areas" around our yard.  You know, the places where we could never get grass to grow.  It was a lot of work.  First we had to pull up the landscape timbers, till up the ground, level everything and then actually lay the sod.  While Kevin did the majority of the work, I ended up laying about 1 pallet of sod myself and of course helped with all of the prep work. I was sore for days.  Here are a couple of in-process pictures...

We got a good bit of rain and the sod was starting to grow well.  We were feeling pretty good about our yard.  Well... fast forward to last Wednesday (July 17th).  Remember this post?  Well, that basically happened again to a lesser extent.

My work rented out the zoo for the evening for a big family event.  Since it was a Wednesday, Kevin wasn't able to come, but Kate and I decided to go for the first part of the event and then meet Kevin over at the church.  Like every day for the past 6 weeks, they were calling for rain but the event was still on and Kate was so looking forward to seeing the "Lion King" so we went anyway. We stayed at the zoo for about an hour and the "Lion King" was a hit. She loved the real ones, but also had fun with the lion statues.

Well, around 6ish, Kate and I started heading to the car.  The skies were getting really dark so we knew it was about to start pouring.  About that time, my phone rings and it is Kevin.  Our conversation goes something like this:

Kevin: Are you somewhere safe?
Me: Um, I'm in the middle of a parking lot, walking to the car... so, I guess that's a no.
Kevin: Well, you need to get in your car, drive to a gas station and pull under a cover somewhere.
Me: Really? It's not even raining here yet.  What's going on?
Kevin: Well, our yard is destroyed. Luckily our house is okay, I think. It's hailing so hard your car would be really damaged if you tried to come home now.
Me: Was it a tornado? (It was getting REALLY windy where I was even as we were talking.)
Kevin: Maybe.

So, yeah. The storm was bad at our house. So bad, that 4 trees fell.  Two of them fell across our driveway and blocked Kevin in. Our power line snapped, along with the cable and internet line. We were without power for two days and without cable or internet for a week.  It got fixed today, which is why I can now share our story!

Tree #1...

Tree #2...

Trees #3 and #4 (both uprooted)...

We are SO thankful for 5 of the men from our church who spent all day Saturday with us removing the trees from our yard.  So, SO thankful!

We have had a few people tell us that they did see a funnel cloud near our house, and two of our neighbors say they saw a fireball go over our house.  Really.  The only thing that we can figure is that our power line snapped and caused some kind of spark as the wind (or funnel cloud) was coming over our house and it looked like there was a fireball.  We got pretty lucky that our yard was the only damage.  Our poor sod. :(

She Said Yes!

So we definitely had an exciting weekend... my sister, Kristi, got engaged!  Davis proposed to her on Friday evening at my parent's lake house, down on the dock. I don't think Kristi was expecting it at all, so she was totally surprised in a really good way.



Luckily, Davis's brother, Kaleb, did some great covert photography.  He hid in the trees and bushes and got the below pictures as the proposal was happening.  Although, I do have to say that I think the first one was a re-enactment.  The last two were real life reactions though!

We love Davis, and his whole family, and are so excited for Kristi and Davis. And in typical fashion for our family, we had to get a few group pictures. First, our family...

And then Davis's family...

And then Kate had to crash Davis and Kristi's picture.  I think she may be more heart-broken than excited because now Davis is officially off the market. He was her first crush. :)

Later that night, after first calling family and friends, Kristi and Davis made it "facebook official", because nothing is for real until it is on facebook, right?   So, they posted the engagement on their accounts, and so did Davis's mom, Kathy.  Then it was a race for the rest of us to get the first "likes" and "comments" on the statuses.  Yes, we are dorks.  But it was fun.

Definitely a fun and exciting weekend.  Now, let the wedding planning begin...

Home Improving

You know how sometimes you just get used to something, and you don't even realize it?  Well, that kind of happened with our porch.  We power washed the porch about 6 years ago when we moved in, but over time it's gotten pretty dirty and we didn't even realize it.  This is what it looked like a little over a week ago.  See?  It doesn't seem all that bad. 

But wait.  Just look at the comparison when Kevin pulled out our power washer.

It took a while, but what an improvement. Maybe we shouldn't wait another 6 years to do this.  :)

A Break in the Weather

We finally had enough of a break in the rain to enjoy some time outside on Saturday.  Of course we made good use of the water table again.  I ended up having to fill it up twice, so I'd say that means she was having fun.

One of her favorite things was filling up her little pink bucket and taking it out to the dogs to give them a "sip".  She loves to boss them around. 

After she loaded up her bucket with water and took off across the yard, she looked back at me to give me a wave and say "bye!".  When I asked her where she was going, she told me very matter-of-factly "Target" and then continued walking away. I guess you can tell where we do most of our shopping. :)

When she got to the dogs, she would sit the bucket down and tell them to "sip".  If they both tried to get to the water at once (which was every time), she'd yell at them to be careful. She is such a little Momma. 

And of course by mid-afternoon the rain started back up.  Not much of a break, but we were thankful for any little bit of sunshine we could get.  :) 

Today is the last day to enter the giveaway, so don't forget to get your entries in.  You have until 11:59 tonight.  I'll post the winner tomorrow! Good luck!

Big Girl Room

Well, it's just about time to move Kate into a big girl room. She's getting big enough for a real bed and has gotten out of her crib a few times, so we know it's only a matter of time before she is regularly getting out of her crib. I'm definitely NOT looking forward to it. She sleeps so well in her crib, so I really don't want to mess things up, but I know we can't put it off for forever.  But before we can move her into her big girl room, we've got to get the room itself ready.

We got new (used) furniture for this room earlier this year, but other than that we haven't done anything.  Honestly, we haven't done much of anything to this room since we moved in 6 years ago. So we started off with a pretty blank slate. 

I fell in love with some bedding from Pottery Barn Kids a while back, and was just waiting for it to go on sale.  It finally did, so I got it!  It came in a few days ago, and Kate helped me put it on her bed.

I think she likes it! She kept saying "Covers! Bed! Night-night!" and pretending to be asleep. Let's hope she's just as excited about it when we actually put her in there to go to sleep!

Now if I can just get the room painted and find some curtains. :)

Splish Splash

As I mentioned before, my mom, dad, Kristi, Davis and Nicole (Kristi's friend and roommate) came over this past Saturday for lunch. Kate is in LOVE with Kristi's boyfriend, Davis.  And by that I mean, she won't have anything to do with anybody else when Davis is around.  She flirts with him and wants ALL of his attention.  So because of this, my mom and dad brought Kate a bribe to show them some attention- a new toy.  Okay, so they didn't really bring it as a bribe for her attention, but I'm sure it was a nice side-benefit.  It worked well, until we had to go inside. :)

She is in love with this water table, and I have to say, I think Kevin and I are going to love it just as much.  It keeps her entertained and CONTAINED for long periods of time.  Now we can be outside and get things done, without chasing Kate all over the place. 

And I think Kate's Gigi had just as much fun playing with Kate and the water table. 

And because the table raises up to an even higher height, I'm anticipating years of fun with this thing.  At least, that's what I'm hoping for!

Now if the rain will just go away so we can go back outside!  I'm sick of rain!



PS: Don't forget to scroll down and check out my giveaway from Friday Market Beads. You have until Sunday night at 11:59pm to enter!