Updating the Blog...after 8 months...

Well, not much has changed in my blogging activity level since August. I'll blame it on the fact that it's easier to upload pictures on Facebook than it is on Blogger. Not sure why I have such a hard time formatting the pictures on this thing.

Most of you probably know that in September 2010, we added Mr. C and Little Man's older brother I-man to our family. So we now have a 10 year old, a 2 year old, and a 1 year old.

My sis-in-law Felicia told me a story a while back of a conversation we had after Paul and I got engaged or married - one of the two. I don't recall the conversation specifically, but can see me saying it. She said that I told her I was going to have 4 children in 4 years and just get it all over with at once. She said that she just smiled and said, "Okay", but in her mind she was thinking that she wasn't sure that would really happen due to nursing, recovering from pregnancy, etc. etc. But now looking at how our family has grown from no kids to 3 kids in less than 1 year, having 4 kids in 4 years doesn't seem that difficult! :)

We still don't know how long we will have these 3 brothers in our home. The court system has been haphazard in my opinion, and I have stopped hoping for common sense results. I'm just praying that God is working his will for these boys through whatever judge will hear their case. It looks like the case will be heard sometime in early summer, but even that is up in the air right now. So in the meantime we are taking it one day at a time and trying to be consistent as we parent.

Thanks for everyone who has loved on us, listened to me rant, supported us with advice and loved on the boys!

You can look for pictures of the boys on facebook/shutterfly.

As for a recap from August 2010 to April 2011, here's the nutshell version:

September - I-man joins us over Memorial Day weekend, and starts school the next Tuesday; we celebrated Paul's birthday on the 19th.

October - We survive the month as parents of 3 active boys, and celebrate I-man's 10th birthday

November - Paul and I go to Malaysia to visit Evelyn and Steve. What an adventure! It was so much fun to meet Evelyn's friends/students and see how much they love her, and also to see the land and culture of Malaysia. We celebrated Steve's birthday a month early (talk about a surprise), ran a half-marathon with Steve in Penang (our first international one), and enjoyed being kid-free for 2 whole weeks! My mom (Jane) came and stayed with the boys for most of the time, and then they went to Paul's brother's house, and our friends at camp for Thanksgiving.

December - Lights of Tejas consumes us at camp, and we enjoy all the activity. We also enjoyed our first Christmas with kids in the house. So much fun!

January - We celebrate my birthday by going to a trapeze lesson...and I'm hooked on it! (See Facebook for videos)

February - Paul and I get away to Mazatlan, Mexico! Mom and Dad Smith come watch the boys for us again. We celebrate Mr C's 2nd birthday right before they return home. Then Mr. C figures out how to crawl out of his crib, and we convert his bed to a toddler bed. Oh joy!

March - Paul and I-man go on a guy's road trip during spring break. The pool opens at camp, and now there is a permanent request to go to the pool every weekend...even though the water is still FREEZING by any sane person's standards.

April - we will celebrate Little Man's 1st birthday. He's almost walking - he's taken 2-3 steps on his own before falling, but isn't discouraged. He's a super fast crawler, and can now crawl up into Mr C's toddler bed. I fear that he will figure out how to crawl out of his own crib well before the age of 2. Yikes!!!

Hopefully I'll remember to update this more often so more pictures and our family history will make it on here. As I mentioned in the August post - this is really so I remember what happens each year since I'm not going to scrapbook. I do want to have something to help me remember all of it in my old age, though. :)

Does anyone blog anymore?

I told myself when I first started this blog that I wouldn't let facebook take over. But it has. It's easier to throw pictures up on that, or on shutterfly, instead of writing the story that goes along with each picture. But I feel like I miss out on the preserving my history part. Since I'm not going to scrapbook, the blog was a way of writing down our story and remembering the details so we can look back and see all that God has done for us along the way. So for anyone out there who still reads blogs, here's a quick update on our lives in 2010.

As most of you know already, we started the process of becoming foster parents in February 2010. It was a last minute decision for us to go to the training in San Antonio that weekend (Valentine's), but it was evident that God had planned it for us long before we did. By Tuesday March 16, we were licensed, and Friday, March 19, we received a call to foster a little girl who was born 10 weeks premature, but who was now 6 weeks old and needed to be discharged from the NICU of St. Joseph's Hospital. We brought her home on March 23, and we called her Anna. She was with us for 2 months before she was moved to the home where her older brother was just adopted. Talk about on-the-job training! We had to learn how to take care of infants in a weekend, but the nurses were great and gave us tips and let us stay at the hospital overnight to "practice" getting up in the middle of the night, and trying to feed a sleeping infant. When she moved, she had doubled her weight (we brought her home weighing 5 lbs 7 oz, and she left weighing almost 11 lbs).

At the time Anna moved, we were pretty devastated, even though we trusted in God's plan and knew that He was the one moving her. We just didn't understand why we had to give her up. It hurt so much!

Summer arrived like a tornado as it usually does around here, which probably helped us get on with life and adjust to not having Anna in our home anymore. And wouldn't you know it that on June 22 we got a call about 2 boys ages 2 months and 16 months that needed a home? So on June 24, "Mr. C" and "Little Man" came to live with us (I won't post real names here).

Looking back I can see how our time with Anna prepared us to be ready and willing to help these 2 little boys. Being new parents, there is no way we would have said yes to a 2 month old and a 16 month old right away. But after learning how to take care of an infant, we felt more confident about having the skills, or at least the resources to obtain the skills to love and care for 2 boys under the age of 2 a the same time. :)

So now these 2 active, lovable boys have been with us for 7 weeks, and we are completely in love. We know that they may not stay with us forever. God may choose to return them to their parents and heal that broken family. Or He may choose to blend a new family and allow them to stay with us forever. We won't know until it happens. But in the meantime, we are loving these boys and enjoying life as parents who get little sleep, have little "adult only" time where we're actually awake, and who love every minute of it.

What an adventure 2010 has turned out to be for us! And many of you (probably all of you reading this) had a huge part in making the adventure happen for us. When we brought Anna home, we had nothing for a baby. My cousin Stephanie in Houston rallied her friends along with my Aunt & Uncle and they loaded us up with bouncy seats, bottle warmers, baby clothes, diaper bags, blankets, baby bath tubs, an infant car seat, etc. So many people stepped up to help us acquire all the necessities that we would need to care for Anna. And our camp family here threw us a baby shower and loved on us and celebrated with us as we began our parenting journey. And again, when our 2 boys arrived, many of our friends offered boy clothes and let us borrow more baby/toddler paraphernalia (swing, double stroller, toys, etc). And the best gift of all was our friend Natalie offering to watch the boys for 2 nights while we got away to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. What a trooper!

I don't have pictures to post with this since I don't have it password protected. But you can check out the shutterfly site or facebook and find pictures if you're interested/haven't seen them yet.

Thanks for joining us on this journey and supporting us along the way, too. It has been such a blessing to watch God work, to lean on Him for wisdom and to have faith in the future He has planned out for us.

Much has happened since November...

Well, I did start an update to this blog after Christmas - my parents celebrated their 35th anniversary in 2009 and took us all on a Caribbean cruise over Christmas. I had great intentions of getting pictures up, but I really didn't take very many because I was so focused on enjoying everything, rather than capturing in photos. So maybe one day I'll get it posted just so I have a record of it when I want to look back. But for now, let's move on and focus on Spring Flowers!!!

Paul was super sweet today and took care of Anna for most of the afternoon while I went out and enjoyed God's beautiful creation. I even took the dogs for a swim in the lakes, and then came back and bathed them. So after our excursion to the meadows, then the dogs got baths, then I got a shower, then Anna got a bath - so we're all clean for Easter!!!

I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to think about what Jesus did for me and God's power in raising him from the dead! I'm so humbled that God would use that same power in my life! I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below of Texas in spring - it's the state's best season in my opinion, even if everything is covered in pollen. :)

A Colorado Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! (Okay, so I'm a little late)... So Merry Christmas!!! (there, I'm early for once). And my pictures below definitely get me in the Christmas spirit, so I don't feel bad about saying it early.

This year for Thanksgiving, we went to Colorado Springs to visit Evan & Heather, friends from our Indiana days. And what better way to remember those cold Indiana days than to go to a snowy destination?

Our first few days in CO, we went up to Steamboat Springs and spent 3 days at a time-share that Evan & Heather's friends couldn't use. Don't ya hate it when you have to go to beautiful resorts to help out some friends?

The second day we were there, we woke up to snow falling, which was really fun since it ended up being the only snow we saw fall while we were there. This is our view from our hotel window as it was snowing.

We all ventured into the town of Steamboat Springs and window shopped in the little shops and generally had fun being cold for a while.

We inquired about snowshoeing, but the locals said there wasn't enough on the ground to need it. So we stuck with our tennis shoes and endured cold toes, but it was fun.

I think this was on the third morning. The snow was still there, but the sun came out and was shining through some snow that was blowing off the mountains. So I caught this rainbow from our window.

I think this was a maintenance shop at the resort because they kept pulling out mini snow-dozers and shovels from it. But it had the best row of icicles I've seen in a long time!

While it was still snowing, Paul and I actually went out to the outdoor jacuzzi (we sprinted from the hotel door to the water) and had fun making snowballs from the snow surrounding the jacuzzi and seeing how long they would last underwater, etc. It was fun...but no pictures.

After we returned from Steamboat Springs, we went to the Garden of the Gods and drove around. We got out of the car for a few pictures, but didn't spend a lot of time outside hiking in the park. We saved that for geocaching later in the week.

Proof we were there...

Paul's such a funny guy. I love 'im!

Another day we hiked up to Pulpit Rock. It was crazy because there was snow all along the trail that we took up (on the non-sunny side), yet the temps reached at least 75 degrees that day, so I was actually regretting wearing all the layers I had on.

It was pretty slippery since the snow had been melting and then re-freezing. There were some close calls with slipping, especially since I had old tennis shoes on without much tread on them.

The view from the top - Evan & Heather looking out.

I was making a face at Paul because he jokingly threatened to push me off the edge.

Pike's Peak is in the background - it's the peak with the snow on it in the middle of the picture.

Evan had a small slide on the way down (we took the sunny trail down so there wasn't snow, but there was LOTS of mud! You can see the compassion on Heather's face as she analyzes the "injury". Just teasing Evan!

That's Pulpit Rock from the bottom of the trail looking back up.

A couple of different days we went geocaching in the area. This was along a trail of which I can't recall the name. Heather found the first cache, which was fun.

Paul hinted loudly enough that I "found" the next cache. It was pretty close to the drainage ditch, (I really doubt it was a named creek), so I had to be careful not to fall in.

The next day we went geocaching again, and the temperature was MUCH colder. So we all had lots of layers on and hats/gloves. Gotta love Colorado weather...it's a lot like Texas - just wait a while and it will change!

This was another one that I had help "finding". But it was fun.

Self-photo attempt.

Another find...I actually wasn't there for this one because I wimped out and sat down for a while. I learned the hard way that I should have brought water on this outing. While in CO I was constantly thirsty and felt like I never had enough water to drink. Darn elevation!

Other than those main activities, we played lots of games (Settlers of Catan, Carcasson, Fluxx, Sequence, etc), watched movies, and read books. It was great to be able to relax and just hang out without any appointments or meetings to go to!

Thanksgiving day we spent with the friends who had let us use the timeshare. They are Evan & Heather's ballroom dancing instructors, and their daughter is also Evan's co-worker at Focus on the Family. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone who was there and playing games (Evan & Heather introduced us to the game Fluxx there - a fun big group game). Evan and Heather are really blessed to have great friends there in Colorado Springs.

After our week with Evan & Heather, we spent Sunday-Wednesday at the CCCA national conference that was hosted at the Broadmoor Hotel. I'll post another blog with pictures of the hotel. It was the NICEST hotel I've ever stayed at! More details to come!