A Sneek Peek at the Birthday Cake! SHHHH!

It's top secret but I thought I would give you a peek at Gracie's birthday cake. It is my no means professional but I have made it a tradition to make the kid's birthday cakes. Gracie is having, you guessed it a Minnie Mouse theme! I always decorate their cakes after they go to bed the night before the party. I started doing this with Aden's 1st birthday. Besides this picture of my most recent cake I will show you some others I've made. I don't think I have them all on digital but I will post the ones I do have. I can't wait until Gracie and Aden wake up in the morning so I can show them the finished cake. They will be so excited!! By the way, they always taste better than they look!!!!!

Birthday Cake Round Up

O.K., I did have them all on digital! Here's how it goes: the red barn-Aden's 1st, #1 and butterfly-Gracie's 1st, the tiger and elephant-Aden's 2nd birthday, Hello Kitty-Gracie's 2nd birthday, Mr. Incredible-Aden's 3rd birthday and Thomas the Train-Aden's 4th birthday. I had to also post a picture from Aden's 1st birthday with the RED cake all over him. Oh my, was it ever a mess. That red stained his hands for a day or so! He had it everywhere too! It was great!!

Gracie's 3rd Birthday!!

I can't believe my baby girl is 3 already!! I'm not ready for my little angels to grow up!! We are having her actual birthday party on Sunday. Yesterday, on her actual birthday we took cupcakes to Mommy's morning out for her to celebrate there with all the kids. We picked her and Aden up and Daddy, Aden and I took her out to lunch. The kid's chose Mike's Pizza. Gracie wasn't much into eating though. She actually was pretty ornery all day. You're not suppose to me that way on your birthday, are you? Oh well, I just hope that she's in a good mood on Sunday when we have her birthday party. She's been in a great mood today. I think she may have just been tired yesterday. We gave her just a couple of small birthday presents for her to open on her actual birthday and she was thrilled. She got a Barbie and a Mermaid puzzle. It was a busy week. Wednesday, Grandma, Aunt Tonya and I took Aden and Gracie to Indy. We took Gracie to get her 3rd birthday picture at Picture People. She did great posing and all but she didn't hold still very long so it was a little tough to get really good pictures. Although they took so many we ended up with some good ones. She loved every bit of it! We shopped a little then headed to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch!! YUM!! It is soooooo good. Aden was such a big boy putting his napkin on his lap and being sooooo polite to the waitress!!! They both did really well the whole day. It was a fun day with Grandma and Aunt Tonya!!

Olivia's 4th Birthday

My niece, Olivia's 4th birthday was last week. We celebrated last Friday night but I'm just now getting to posting about it! The bummer is that I took most of the pictures with my sister's camera so I don't have too many but here are a couple of Olivia. I had the privilege of witnessing her birth. At the time she was born we were waiting on Aden to come home from Guatemala, he was 4 months old. It was a tough time for me. My sister ask if I wanted to be with her when Olivia was born because at the time I didn't know if I would ever be able to experience a child being born. She actually had a scheduled C-section but being that I worked at the hospital at that time they allowed be to be in surgery. It was such a wonderful experience, a very special experience that I will never forget. Thanks Sis for allowing me to be a part of it!! Believe me, I have one great sister but that's another story in itself.

Parent/Teacher Meetings

Monday we had Parent/Teacher meeting with Aden and Gracie's teachers. Gracie goes to preschool on Monday's and Aden on Tuesday's and Thursday's. All in all they had good reports. Aden has mastered pretty much everything except his listening type skills!! HMMM!! He is a ton better than last year but he still likes to do his own thing sometimes and he doesn't do well as sitting for very long. It's really go to hold his interest for him not to get bored. He's is super smart and the teacher's think sometimes he already knows some of the things they are teaching and so it doesn't hold his intrest. Aden does much better when they are busy and not having to sit in circle time type activites which luckily the preschool he is they move around a lot to different stations. He's not afraid of telling the teacher NO!! Yeh, not good!! Let me tell you though he is doing 90% better than last year!! We just continue working on this behavior issue, he's such a great kid just needs lots of reminders about who's in charge and that's what Shannon and I are here for to guide and teach our children!! Gracie on the other hand is the model student. She never gets in trouble at school and seems to be doing good in all areas. She has mastered many areas and emerging in the rest! She loves school and always looks forward to Monday's! It's amazing how to children being raised the same are so different as school. It's funny because Gracie can be so ornery at home but she knows when to turn it off and on on the other hand Aden is just who he is all the time. It seems the average child is better for other people, not Aden he's the same all the time. It makes life interesting doesn't it? You know just when you think you figure them out they change!! The pictures are of Aden before school, one on the first day and the other another day and the ones of Gracie were taken at school during Western Day's!

Fun at the Playground!

Oh my, it was a beautiful day!! Sunny and 77 degrees!! We had to get out and enjoy the weather so we headed to the playground this evening. Aden and Gracie really had fun. After we were done playing at the playground we went to Nana and Papa's house and they rode scooters!!

Flying Kites, Swinging and Working Together

It was Spring like on Sunday so we had to get out and enjoy the weather! Uncle Paul spent a good part of the day hanging out with us. We got the kites out and there was just barely enough wind to fly them but we kept them going as long as we could. Uncle Paul pushed the girls on the swings and they couldn't get enough, push higher, higher they yelled! Evan got home from his wrestling Sunday afternoon and we all had to check out his metal, he won 1st place, yippee!! They boy is so modest, we had to ask to see his metal, you would think he would have been showing it off! The kids were having fun, it was cute to see them all working together with the wagon!! Now I'm just ready for some green grass!!

Mother of 3!!!!!

Gotcha!!! No, really I'm finding out this weekend what it's like to be the mother of 3 little ones, 4 and under. Olivia, our niece is staying with us for a couple nights. My sister and brother-in-law are down in Indy with my nephew Evan this weekend. He's at a wrestling tournament. Last time a spoke with them he had won his second match of the day which meant he was in the finals. He will end up in 1st or 2nd place. He loves to wrestle, his Uncle Paul(my brother) got him into it. Paul was a good wrestler, good enough to make it to the State wrestling match in high school and he wrestled in college too! Paul is home this weekend from Washington D.C. It was great to see him last evening. He's on his way to Illinois for 6 weeks to run a campaign. He works for Dennis Hastert(previous Speaker of the House). I really miss having him around but for now he's enjoying the big city live and his job. I'm hoping some day that he moves back a little closer. I know he is always happy to come home to the small town life! I think sometimes he does miss the simple life that we live here but he's really had some unique opportunities working for the Speaker of the House. He's just such a great guy and the kids love seeing him. They are always so excited when he gets to come home! So back to being a mother of 3. Olivia does hang out with us for a few hours here and there but to have her for a couple days is a little different but really when you have two so close in age it really isn't that big of a deal having another one in the mix. She's a good girl and loves hanging out with Aden and Gracie. Shannon's been working today, it's the busy time of the year in the Crop Insurance business so he had to work this weekend. They have to have everyone signed up by the 15th of this month. He had a meeting today with a client so he needed the house so I decided it would be better if the kids and I left so we wouldn't bother them. I needed some things at the grocery anyhow. Shannon was like you are going by yourself with all three of them. Heck, why not! It really wasn't bad either, they did great! They are all taking naps now and then we're going to play outside this afternoon. It's so nice here today! The sun is shining and it's 5o some degrees! It makes me ready for spring!!!!

My little Mickey and Minnie again!

Aden can't get enough of Mickey and Minnie! If we're hanging out at home I can't keep Aden out of his red pants and Mickey hat! I know it's probably a little dorky but you know who cares they have so much fun! I keep thinking I need to invest in some real Mickey pants for Aden so he doesn't have to keep pulling those pajama pants up a billion times while he's in costume!! Look at those sweet faces! Man, I love these kids!

Gymnastic Pictures!

Gracie loves gymnastics! She's having a great time. This week when I told her it was time to go to gymnastics again, she said "again" with a huge smile on her face. I don't think she realized that it wasn't just a one time thing! She's like a pro, acts like she's been doing it forever!! The girl's are just too cute! I haven't been able to find her a leotard that fits, she is just too little. We have brought two home and ended up taking them both back because they are just too big so for now she's just wearing shorts and a tank top. I know it really doesn't matter what they wear but the little girl's look really sweet in their leotards!

Adoption!

Adoption, it's something I think of alot! It's an amazing way of building a family. Until you've done it it's really hard to understand what a miracle it is! It's unbelievable how the Lord perfectly matches children with families. My dream is to adopt again someday, I just don't feel our family is complete but we'll wait to see where the Lord leads us. As I learned during the adoption process, God has plans for us and he is in control, we just have to have faith! It took the adoption process for me to realize that I wasn't in control, He is! The Guatemala adoption process leaves you out of control,once you get to a certain place in the process there is nothing you can do but wait. I learned so much during those 7 months of waiting for Aden to come home. I'm going to try to follow where the Lord leads and if he has plans for our family to grow, it will somehow, someday. If not, then I will follow that path too remembering how blessed I am with the family I already have. There was a day just 5 years ago, I cried because I wanted to be a mother and have a family but didn't know if it would ever happen. Again, when I finally listened and followed the path of adoption that he lead us to we were blessed way beyond what we could have ever imagined. Now I have adoption in my heart, I feel there is another journey involving adoption for us. It's truly remarkable what adoption does to a person's heart. People say things like, you have the perfect family one boy and one girl why would you want more or why would you adopt when you can have children the old-fashioned way and I say why not!!! Again, unless you've been a part of an adoption it's really hard to explain, you just have to experience it for yourself to really get it!!!!!! These pictures are from 4 years ago while we were waiting on Aden, these were some of the monthly pictures we received during the month of March and April 2003. We lived each day waiting to see update pictures of our son. We were in love with him before we even held him in our arms that first time.

Gymnastics!!

Gracie started gymnastics on Tuesday! She loved it! You would have thought she had been there before! She marched right in and did exactly as told! The poor thing was so sad when it was over, she didn't want to leave and she can't wait to go back. Yes, I did take my camera but left it in the car in all the excitement so I'll try to remember next week. I was remembering last winter when we took Aden to try out gymnastic, he also liked it but the problem was that he didn't listen. He wanted to do his own thing. When it came to waiting his turn to do the next activity he would not sit still he was up checking out other stuff. Oops! We are thinking of trying out Karate with Aden. I think it would be a great thing for him, we are going to try and go observe a lesson to see what he thinks.

I NEED A NEW CAMERA!

I just wanted to justify some of the pictures I've been taking! I am in desperate need of a new digital camera. The one I have is starting to really act up, I keep getting red dots and lines in my pictures. Some of my best ones are ruined because of it!! I'm trying to hold out until I can afford the one I really want so please excuse some of my pictures until I purchase a new camera. Here's to my camera holding out until I can get the one I really, really want!

Mickey & Minnie

Aden and Gracie love Mickey and Minnie! They are so into it! I think it because of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cartoon on Disney channel. So here there are with their ears on! Later in the evening Aden made Gracie put on her Minnie mouse costume and wear the Minnie Mouse shoes. I think I may need to invest in a Mickey Mouse costume for Aden because as you can see this is the outfit he came up with for Mickey. He came to me asking for his red Mickey Mouse pajamas bottoms and then proceeded to put them on with his cowboy boots and Mickey ears and white gloves. Best of all he kept pulling the red pants up to his pecks every 2 minutes. They were so cute. By the way, you must call him Mickey Mouse and not Aden when he has the ears on! Aden kept telling me, "Mom, Gracie won't leave her ears on"! I think they hurt her head after a while but Aden really wanted her to wear them. We finally headed to the car to get out the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CD that we have so they could dance and sing to the movie. They were pretending to be going to the Mickey Show! It was great, this went on for most of the evening! It was great entertainment! You should see them when they are doing the "Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Hot Diggety Dog" song, it's great fun!