Let it Snow!!!!

It has been snowing here all morning, not really piling up, but enough to go out and have some fun. Isaac kept saying "no, NO!" really excitedly and pointing at it (no=snow):-) I showed him how to try and catch snowflakes on his tongue. He liked stiking his tongue out. Hopefully we will get some more on thursday so he can really play in it.

Holiday happenings

We had a great time at my sisters on Thanksgiving, and ate too much of course. Isaac has been in a really great, fun mood lately and spent most of the day running around her house laughing and playing with everyone. My niece Kayla and my mom make a gingerbread house every year, and of course Isaac wanted in on the fun. Playdough made a great substitute. He has been on a food strike this past week, not really wanting to eat anything, so he was not that impressed with the big meal put before him. He wanted to give great-grandma all his food. Maybe he thought she needed it more than him. :-)

I spent the next several days putting up our Christmas decorations. Isaac loves playing with the nativity set, though he keeps pretending to eat the baby Jesus. Very cute! (should we be worried) hehehe. Today it is snowing but not sticking. I took Isaac out on the deck to watch it come down. He keeps trying to catch it and calls it "no". I couldnt get him to eat breakfast because he was to busy watching the "no". (see picture of him turned around)

I am really enjoying this stage of his life as he is so curious about everything. I feel like I am reliving parts of my childhood again and finding joy in things that I had grown out of. We have an agreement this year concerning Christmas...Chris is not allowed to make any comments regarding how commercial Christmas has gotten. We are having a great time embracing the magic of the season and enjoying teaching Isaac all about the fun traditions associated with Christmas. (If you know me at all, everything has a tradition!)

Happy Thanksgiving

We have so much to be thankful for every year, and it seems like this year we are especially thankful. We have really been talking the past several months about how we realize how blessed we are and how grateful we are to God for the many blessings He has bestowed on us. We give Him all of the honor and glory for what we have in our lives. So I thought on this Thanksgiving day, I would make a list of the things that I am thankful for, not for you the reader, but for me, to reflect and thank God for. I hope that it will inspire you to take time today to stop and thank God for the many blessings in your life.

Things I am thankful for.
My relationship with God, whos's wisdom and strength get me through each day
Chris, my most loving great husband, I count myself lucky to have married my best friend
Isaac...what more can I say, but that he is the most special thing in my life and I am beyond thankful for the privelege of being his mom. I never knew I could love someone so deeply (sorry Chris) :-)
My parents....again, two of the best people I know. They have been a true example of a great marriage, and really make our family complete.
My Grandma Bowe...I am so blessed to be able to spend time with her and know her love.
My sister and brother, and Kayla...I am lucky to be a part of a family that likes getting together and though we may be different we love each other and can count on each other for support. We have a great family.
All my close friends( you know who you are)... Being a mom and dad is hard enough on your own. We are blessed to have a great group of friends to have fun with and commiserate with. Thanks for liking us.
Isaac's birthmom...We will always be thankful to her and the love she has for Isaac. We are so grateful that we are able to stay in touch with her and get to know her. She is our angel.
My In-Laws...I was blessed with In laws that I actually love and get along with. I wish we were closer and able to see them more often, but the times that we do get to see them are so wonderful. Chris and I really are lucky.
Cornerstone Church...God led us to this church 6 months ago, and we are so happy to be a part of it and to be able to worship Him with such a loving group of people.
The people at PLAN and AIM...without these people we would not be a family. They are so wonderful to us as we wait to be matched with our next baby. We thank them for all they do.

We have been through trials, and things I never wanted to go through, but we stood strong to our faith in Christ, and this year we finally feel like we have been able to sit back and relax for awhile. We know there will be trials again, but we also know that God will always give us the strength to endure them. Without those trials, we would not know how good we have it during the good times.

Turning into a big boy!!

One of the things that I have been most amazed at as a parent is just how quickly your children grow up. I knew this mentally, but did not realize just how true it was until I had my own child. I still feel like it was just yesterday that we were in Texas getting him, and yet here we are, almost 2 years later, doing it all over again.

Isaac seems to have taken off in the last few months. The amount of words that he says grows everyday, and he just acts more and more like a two year old. Two weeks ago we did the first of the "big boy" transitions. We moved him from his crib to a twin size bed. I had spent the last two months painting his room in a "transportation theme". (the banner behind the airplane now has wooden letters in it that spell ISAAC) We figured we might as well move him now before a baby came along, so there would be less upheavel in his life. He is a great sleeper. so I figured we would maybe only have a week of hard times. It ended up being a piece of cake. I think we only had one night where I had to put him back 3 or 4 times. He is content to sleep wherever. We have a railing on it so he cant fall out. He now gets up by himself and paddles through to our bed in the morning. I am so thankful for this easy transition. But it makes me kind of melencholy to see him asleep in his big bed. He looks so small in it.

We also got the potty chair out, just so he could try it out and get used to it. He is not anywhere close to potty training, but he sure has had fun sitting on his "throne" He will sit on it and then after about 2 minutes tell us "all done" (even though he hasnt done anything), stand up, flush it, and put the lid down and then go over to wash his hands! Now if I could just get him to actually do something in it!

I better run, I can hear him emptying my purse out as we speak (a daily occurance)

And so we wait....again

I thought I would give everyone an update as to where we are with our second adoption. We started the paperwork process back in August, and finished up with our social worker visits by the end of September. I had forgotten just how much paperwork was involved, it seems to be never ending at times.

As of October, we are in the official "Waiting to be chosen" stage. The average wait time in a Minority Infant Program is 2-6 months. We have chosen to only work with our agency in Texas, and only want to have a bi-racial placement this time (similar to Isaac) so our wait could be at the longer end of that time frame. We trust in God that His timing is perfect. At anytime the phone could ring and our SW would tell us that a birthmom has chosen us to be the parents for her child. She may not be due for several more weeks or months. Or, the phone could ring and it would be our SW telling us to get our rears to Texas as a baby has been born, and they need a family right away. With Isaac we got the call that we were chosen by his BM about 3 weeks before he was born (he was a month early as well).

So we sit and wait. It has been easier this time around as our days are filled with being Isaac's parents. There are days where I think, "If they called today, I might have to say no as I am so tired!" hehehe (like I would say no!) I do get a slight lilt in my stomach when I look at the caller ID to see who is calling. It is really hard to not have a "due date", to not be able to plan, or know that in 6 months we will have a new baby. It is the unknown that is the hardest. Chris is busy taking his Tax Preparers course, and will be taking the state test for that in early December, so we are hoping for sometime after that as he is pretty stressed out. Though with Isaacs birthday in February, I do not want to have two birthdays too close together, so I am hoping for late December, early January. But who knows, we obviously learned last time to not plan anything because you never know what will happen!! It could be summer for all we know (God, I hope not) :-)

In the meantime we are trying to prepare Isaac for having a little brother or sister in the house. He just moved to sleeping in a "big boy" bed. In the swing you will see a stuffed Tiger. We are using that as a "baby" for Isaac to learn how to treat a baby. He knows not to push on the swing and to be "gentle". He is very gentle, and I think will do really well with a baby around. We have good friends that have a 2 month old, and Isaac is very good with her.

So, if you call here and I sound disappointed, it is only because you do not have a baby for me. As we get further into the wait time, I am sure it will get harder, but for now we are so busy, I almost forget that we could have a baby tomorrow! Wow, what a thought.

Star Wars fun

This past weekend we had some friends come and visit from Vancouver B.C.. We had a really wonderful time. They have 2 boys, ages 6 and 8. Isaac had a blast playing with them. I don't think he stopped moving the entire weekend.

On Sunday we went to OMSI to see the "Star Wars" exhibit. It was really cool. It had the actual costumes, models and props used in the movies. OMSI also has a natural sciences area for kids Isaacs age, with a play forest, sand area and water area. He had a great time just running from one attraction to the other. I am really hoping that someone will give us an OMSI membership for Christmas as it is a great place to be able to take Isaac to play, especially on the rainy days we keep having around here.

The Saga Begins

Welcome to my Blog! I thought I would give a quick explenation of why I am doing this and what this blog will NOT be. I have resisted entering the world of blogging as I really don't feel I have a lot of new things to say that anyone really wants to hear, and for the most part I would rather talk with you in person. But, I have been thinking a lot about all of the people we know around the world (and close to home) that would like to know more about some of the fun things we are doing, and how Isaac and we are doing. I also have a plethera of pictures that just sit on our computer that no one sees. So I decided to set up this blog mainly for the family in Canada and Scotland, as well as other friends and relatives that might be interested. For the most part this is not going to be my personal journal, or my political/ religious soapbox. If I do delve into those topics it will only be because I just have to get my opinion out there. But really, I have not given this much thought, so who knows how it will progress.

My goal is to try and post on a fairly regular basis, so please check in often to see what we have been up to and the fun pictures we may have taken. We wish that everyone lived close enough to visit often, and we wish that we saw those who do live close more often. I hope that this will bring us a little closer together. Please respond as much as you like to my posts as I love to know that you have stopped by to look.

Heres to happy blogging!