Happy Halloween!

Summer 2009

We had a great summer!  Here's some highlights.

Mother's Day

We started off Mother's Day weekend with breakfast at my Dad's and Mom's house. Dad made everyone sourdough hot cakes, eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, the works! It was great! It was a fun way to start the day. He also gave each of the girls a dozen roses and Mom gave us each a really cute watch. We are spoiled!

It was a great morning, the boys had lots of fun with their cousins! They sure do play hard!

After breakfast, Jade and the boys took me out to the hardware store and bought me some hanging baskets. They are so pretty! They are purple and white petunias. I love them! We also looked for some flower bed borders, but didn't end up getting anything because they were more expensive than we thought. Jade did a lot of yard work for me and the house looks great!

We decided we are going to put a sidewalk around the house to the back yard and then do cement borders around the flower bed. It's gonna look great! I can't wait! Jade spoiled me too with the all the work he did and the flowers! He also took me to dinner up north and did a little shopping. It was nice.

Sunday afternoon we had a BBQ with Jade's family. It was really nice. Lots of good food and fun! DeeAnn and TJ made it up from St. George and Rob and his family came too. We had a really nice time!

Basically, I guess I'm a really spoiled "Mom!" I love being a Mom and am so grateful for the chance to have these beautiful boys call me "MOM!" I am grateful everyday for their wonderful birthmothers who cared so much about them to make the choice of adoption. They are forever in my heart! I love being a Mom! I know I am not perfect, but I pray every day for patience and all that I need to be the best Mom to my kids. I love them very much! Thanks Xander and Max for loving me no matter what!!!

Easter Pictures

We had a great Easter! I just wanted to post a few pic's of the boys. They were so fun!

Max is eating blue candy.....he is a junk gut! Xander too!

I guess that means the Easter Bunny did well.....lots of candy!

It seems like you take a million pictures to get the right one. Today we only got one, so , good enough I guess. LOL

My handsome little guys! Love you boys!

I have the cutest boys!

I have the cutest boys! They have been so stinkin' cute lately. They are getting to be best friends. Lately they play together a lot and actually enjoy themselves, not just teasing one another. The other day Jade and I were in the front room and all of a sudden we heard laughter break out in the family room. Xander and Max were in there wrestling. They were laughing so hard, it was contagious. We were all laughing watching them play. We went back in the front room and a little while later it got really quiet. We went in to check on them and they were sitting on the couch, side by side, watching TV. They both looked at us, smiled, and went back to their movie. It was so funny! Every since that night, they play and laugh a lot. They have a jeep tent and that was the spot of the next laugh attack. It is so fun to watch them!

Max loves Xander so much. He is constantly doing exactly the same thing as Xander. We were teasing him the other day and kept telling Xander to do something, just so Max would. And he did! If Xander touched his face, so did Max. If Xander jumped up and down, so did Max. It was so cute! He watches everything Xander does.... that's why he such a climber. I have monkey boys! There's nothing they can't climb.

Xander loves Max too! He is alway looking after him and making sure he's not doing something he shouldn't. He doesn't want him to get hurt. He loves that Max copies him and looks up to him. He is the best big brother!

Friday night we all just hung out at home. We had so much fun! The kids climbed all over Jade and I. They ran and chased each other acrossed the room. We took silly pictures.....obviously. It really made me realize how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family and handsome, silly boys. They are the joy of my life! I am so thankful for their beautiful birthmoms who brought them into our lives. I am so thankful for adoption and the blessings it brings. It has made my life complete!

It's about time!

It's been longer than I had planned between now and my last post. I can't believe how fast February has gone. It's been a month of colds and flu, but a month of fun too!

The first few weeks of February I had the worst cold. It was horrible. Even worse, I spread it to Max, my Dad and my friend Kris. It was totally focused in my sinuses and I couldn't even sleep without Nyquil. Thank goodness for Nyquil and blessings!! Without them, we'd have had an even worse week. Anyway, we're finally over it...hooray!

Our family spent a few days at Disneyland this month too. We had so much fun! We went with my brother, T.J., his wife, Elin and their 2 cute little kids. My friend, Tina, also came with us. Tina's pretty much my sister. We have been friends forever and we both totally LOVE Disneyland. It was so fun to finally go together. We've wanted to go forever and we finally did. We headed out on Thursday the 12th. Elin and I left around 11 am with our kids so we could stop in St. George and give them a break from the drive. The kids did really good with the drive. Max cried a bit, he was so tired, but he hates to sleep in the car. Jade, T.J. and Tina headed out about 1 pm or so. They hit a terrible snow storm on the way down and it took them an extra hour to get to St. George. From there, we had pizza and headed out for the fun 6 hour drive we had left to Annaheim. We got to our hotel about 1:30 am. All in all, it wasn't that bad of drive. We were all exhausted and went to bed.

We're at Disneyland! Hooray! Everyone was excited for the fun day at Disneyland. We spent two and a half days there. I loved it and the kids loved it too! I love the whole feeling of Disneyland. It really is a happy place! I love seeing all the characters and walking down Main Street. I love watching the kids check everything out and take it all in. I love the rides! I love the awesome effects they have that make things look like you are in a cartoon or storybook. We really did have a lot of fun. Xander's favorite rides were Splash Mountain and Space Mountain. He went on Splash Mtn 3 times. Lucky for us the lines weren't very long. Max loved all the characters. He gave them "five" and kept touching their noses. It was fun to watch him. We had a lot of fun with T.J. and Elin. It was fun to spend time with their family and get to know them better. Their kids were so fun to be with . Little Madison was such a pretty, little princess. She kept singing..."I know you, I danced with you once upon a dream...." And Jace was just so cute with his sweet smile and dimples. On Saturday, Jade's brother, Nick, and his family came and spent the day with us. It was fun to see them and spend time with them too. Our nephew, James, and Xander are such good friends. Everywhere we went they would hold hands. It made it nice for keeping track of them. Sunday afternoon we headed back to Utah. It was a long drive, but it went well. We didn't get home til about 1-1:30 am. It was hard for Jade because he had to get up for work in just a couple hours. But we all survived and life is back to normal.......whatever normal is......lol. It's been a fairly relaxing week and that's a good thing, because we've needed it.

I almost hate to do a post this week. It doesn't seem like anything interesting has happened. Just a normal week.....work, preschool, housecleaning, etc. My kids have been way fun though. They are getting so big! And smart! Max is starting to talk quite a bit, at home anyway. He is so shy that he won't say anything for anyone else. He says "belly, baby, puppy, papa, Xander" and what ever else he hears us say. He's a little copy cat. It's been really fun. Here's a picture of him Thursday morning. He had been a little stinker all morning, so I put him in the playroom while I finished doing my hair so we could go pick up Xander from preschool. It only took him a few minutes to get into his brother's paints. He was so proud of his painted face, that when I got the camera out, he said,"Cheese!" I couldn't get mad at him, it was too cute! He has his 18 month (even though he's 19 mo) doctor appointment tomorrow and I'm excited to see how big he's gotten. Xander is getting so smart! This week for homework we've been working on memorizing his phone number. It didn't take him long at all! Sometimes the hard part is getting him to practice. That has been one of my New Year's resolutions was to do better with his homework and teaching him those type of things. He's also doing a job chart and earning an allowance so he can learn to save and pay his tithing. He loves it! I don't have to try too hard to get him to do his chores. He gets 10 pennies a day if he does everything and has been a good boy. Well, I guess that's my jabbers for the week. I've really liked blogging. It makes me reflect on my week and remember how blessed I am to have such wonderful boys and husband. I am truly thankful for them and their birthmothers who love them so much! They are very special women!

This week went so fast! It's hard to believe it's already Sunday again! The highlight of the week was when Xander and I went to a Jazz basketball game on Tuesday. We went with my brother, Scott, and his little boy, Alex. Alex and Xander are close to the same age and just love to play together. We left around 3 o'clock and luckily the boys slept most of the way up there. When we got there, we let the boys pick out a hat. We decided they had expensive taste, but somehow we made it out of the store without spending too much. The boys had hot dogs for dinner and Scott and I had rice bowls. They were way good! I think they should sell them in Sanpete. Anyway, the whole experience was a blast! Xander loved watching the bear and the cheerleaders. They did a lot of entertaining things during time outs and stuff that it kept Xander's attention really well. He loved when they would play the fast beat music. He got up on his chair and danced. It was way cute. He and Alex also got some noise makers and had a lot of fun cheering with them. They didn't even have to go out until there was only 4 minutes left in the game, then they needed a potty break. We left a little early to get out of there a little easier. The next night, Jade asked Xander who won the game. Xander said, "nobody won yet, they are still playing cuz we left early." It was cute! Anyway, I could definately become a Jazz fan, if I went to every game.

This week was also my niece, Addelyn's, birthday. She had a family party last night. It was fun. We had dinner and the kids enjoyed playing together. We watched Scott's kids afterward and had a lot of fun. All of our kids just love playing together. Xander and Max have some awesome cousins! All of them!

Well, I finally created my blog. I've been going to forever, but we've been updating our adoption profile and that's what got me to finally do it. It suggested to do one so you have additional places for birthmothers to learn about and get to know you. We love our boys and are so grateful for the adoption process! Please spread the word that we are putting our papers in again. We'd love another addition to our family!