Adoption Reunion

Our adoption agency had a reunion for all the families in our state who have already adopted or are at some stage within the process. It was fun to see all the beautiful children. Of course, here are some pictures of our favorite children...
We were so shocked by how our children played up on the stage in front of everyone. Granted nobody was necessarily watching them. It really was not a show. They were just up there playing. It is very uncharacteristic of them though. You would not catch me up there! (Wonder who they get it from?!)

They had many games to play...cornhole,

ping-pong,

air guitar (hee, hee), and much more.

After we left, we stopped to get ice cream before heading off to church. It was a fun family day!

Emerson's special day

My dear friend and college roommate, Jen, and her son Sami met us at our mall. They came to town for the weekend and her hubby was off doing his thing. This gave us an opportunity to get together, catch up on things and let our boys meet and play.

Our children receive a magazine called Animal Baby. In this magazine is a little skunk named Sammy and at the end you are to go back and find where Sammy is hiding throughout the pages. Over the years, the kids and I have come up with a catchy tune to sing while searching for him. "Sammy...Sammy...where are you?" (Not a money maker of a tune; but, we enjoy it.) We ended up at the mall first. While waiting (not long Jen...don't worry!), we started singing this song.

"Sami...Sami...where are you?"

The boys had a great time playing in the mall's play area. Here is Emerson posing in one of the tunnels. It cracked me up because when I looked in, he was actually leaning against one side and had his feet on the other. As soon as I went to take the picture, he struck this pose. Go figure.

After playing for some time, we decided to walk the mall. We did not shop much. Actually the only things we bought were lunch and an ice cream treat later. We just enjoyed walking and talking. The boys were so cute together and I so wish we lived closer together! After we separated, Emerson kept singing the "Sami song" until he did this...

It was such great fun to see Jen and Sami. I am so glad they were able to spend some time down here in our neck of the woods.

Missing Grandma/Great Grandma

The day after our critter adventure was my grandma's birthday. She passed away in December of 2001, but is still greatly missed. Janet was brave enough to hop in the car with the kiddos and me again. We headed to visit Grandma's burial site. We took flowers to put on all the family sites. Above is a picture of the four kiddos (Veronica is hard to see; but, she is there.) putting a flower against Grandma's headstone. I know Grandma is watching them from above and smiling at all their daily antics. She got to meet Max and hold him ; but, the others came along after she was already gone. I can still picture her loving on Max, holding him, playing with him, feeding him cheerios and calling him "Biggie Boy". Of course, he was too young to remember any of it as he was under a year old; but, those memories are so precious to me.

Sydney's middle name is actually Grandma's middle name too. Originally, Ron and I had agreed that we were not going to use family names when naming our children. That always gets so touchy and someone always ends up with hurt feelings. Well, when Sydney was due and was born around the second anniversary of Grandma's death (around Christmas), we just knew Grandma had asked for her to be sent to help make it a happy time of the year again for our family. So, thank God, I have a wonderful, understanding husband and we broke our own rule. We gave Sydney Grandma's middle name in remembrance and love. Now, poor Max is the only kiddo who does not have a family name. :( Granted his name means "the greatest"; so, he got a pretty good one too. :)

We miss you Grandma!!!!

Critters

During my sister's vacation, we took the four kiddos to see some critters. It is actually a really neat place where you ride around on a bus and see animals that you normally would not see at least not around our home. Some of them even come right up to the bus. It is a couple of hours away; but, it was worth the trip to spend some quality time with Aunt Janet. Granted after having spending over 4 hours in the car with my children without any form of electronics, I think my sister has resigned herself to never having children. Ha, ha! :) (That is a nervous laugh if you cannot tell. I really would like some nieces and nephews on my side...when the time is right of course.) I had taken our Ipad with us; but, I decided to show them that they could do a car trip without having to use electronics. Wow, how did our parents do it?! I should mention here, in all fairness, we were not in our van. We ended up driving Ron's car since the van was in the shop. So, the kids did not have all their magazines, books, etc. that they keep in the van. We just did not think about it. Poor Janet having to be there during my experiment! The funny thing was that the youngest two did much better than the older two. Max and Sydney were sooooooooo loud. I am not sure why it worked out that way. Anyways, here are some pictures of the wild animals...the ones we took with us and the ones we saw there. :)

Max and Emerson were excited to see the animals.

The girls are ready to spend a fun day with Aunt Janet and Mommy. Look how close those cool camels are!!!!
Sydney made a friend. This wild horse was actually trying to get in the door.

The kids enjoyed feeding these huge catfish (the black blobs) and the swans. The catfish grossed me out. I am not a water person and do not care for most things that are in the water. Then, there is my sister who wanted to take one home as a pet. Ick!

I LOVED seeing the giraffes. They are so strange looking yet so beautiful!

It was a great...yet exhausting...day. It was a nice little day trip. Thanks for the great idea Janet and thanks for putting up with us! :)

Off to the restroom...

Really, the title of this would have been "Off to the Races" had I not spent more time here...

than actually watching cars speed around the track. I guess that is what you get when you have one potty training 3 1/2 year old and two girls in the family. Oh, well. Either way, we had a great time. We got to relax. Oh, how I love that word..."relax". :) It was great to hang out with our friends whom we seldom see and watch our children hang out together too. Such fun!
This is rare; so, I had to capture a picture of Ron taking it easy.

I was probably the only person in the whole place who was freezing that morning. I am glad I took my sweatshirt! :)

Max had a great time setting up battle scenes with his army men.

Sydney started out like the above picture and ended up like the one below. Ha, ha!

Emerson had fun playing with trucks in the grass.

The track had lots of fun stuff to do when not watching the cars on track. Max's favorite thing was seeing all the military stuff on display. He really enjoyed climbing in this tank.

Look at this...Max, Emerson, and I ended up on stage. So not my thing!!!! How did we end up there you are wondering?! Our family jumped into a game along with many others. We decided to divide and conquer. We figured we would have a better chance of winning. Ron and the girls got weeded out which left the boys and myself. It got narrowed down to us and some other "lucky" folks who ended up on the stage at this point. We had to play a game of "Simon Says". I am an early childhood teacher by trade. I should have had this one in the bag! Unfortunately, we were the last ones to be eliminated. We almost won...bummer! We did get red sunglasses as consolation prizes. You can see Veronica modeling a pair below.

These remote control trucks were a blast! Although I am sure the guy in charge of removing them from their stuck positions were not as fond of them. :) The oldest three gave it a whirl; but, I ended up taking over Veronica's. They were super hard to control. I kept running mine and Veronica's into the wall and flipping it over. Max had the red one in the picture above. Sydney's is the one behind it. Veronica's was a dog one. It had ears and everything. That was the perfect one for our child that pretends to be a dog any chance she gets. :)

The day ended with several hours of waiting for the traffic to clear. Then, it started to sprinkle. We thought for sure we were going to get slammed with a storm. It looked like it and sounded like it; but, we lucked out for sure. When we finally escaped the infield and headed home, we stopped for ice cream. Well, some of us did. Emerson was out. He was so tired. Poor little man! It was a GREAT day...other than the gazillion trips to the track restroom. :)

Water, Ice Cream and Parks, Oh my!

Wow...summer is quickly...too quickly...coming to an end. The kiddos and I are really not ready for it to end so soon. Every year at the beginning of summer we talk about the things that we want to be sure to do during the summer. On their list, they had visit the splash pad. So, we did AND ate ice cream AND played at a park that we found right by where we got the ice cream.

Both Veronica and Emerson were hesitant on getting wet. In the above picture, "the bigs" were trying to convince Veronica to go through the water tunnel which is on the other side of the splash pad. Instead of walking around all the other spraying things, they took her through the center. Let's just say, she never did make it through the tunnel. She came running back my way before too long. :)
As you can see, Emerson finally did get a tad wet.

I love this picture of Max preparing to run through the water tunnel.

Veronica had mint chocolate chip.

Emerson had cotton candy ice cream. Sydney and I shared a banana split.

Max enjoyed his blue moon ice until he realized his entire mouth turned blue.

This little park was in walking distance of the ice cream shop. So, we sat at a picnic table in the shelter house and then went out to play. The picnic table was actually a children's size and I had to be careful every time someone moved. I thought for sure I was going to tip the thing over. Maybe I should have stopped eating the ice cream. Maybe it was a sign. I ignored it. :)

It was a great day! We will have to look back at these pictures when the ground is covered in snow and the temperature is below zero. Yikes!!!!

Mommy and Veronica Day

Veronica and I spent the day together on July 16. We started with brunch at Bob Evan's.

She and Ta-ta (her teddy) waited patiently for the food. I think Ta-ta even took a little nap.
She cracked me up as she flipped through each page of the dessert menu saying "Mmm, that looks good."

That is such a big meal for such a little girl. She was not quite able to finish it. Cannot blame her as she knew popcorn was next on the agenda. Off to the movies...

As a special treat, she got a frozen drink at the movie theater.

We had been waiting all summer for the Winnie the Pooh movie to come out. We knew that was the one we would go see together on our special day. I loved holding her during the movie! It was so cute because she had even wrapped her feet around the back of my legs. It was very sweet cuddling with her. She was soooooooo tired by the time the movie was finished! I was hoping to find one of those big cardboard displays that they sometimes have of the movies. All they had for Pooh was this poster. You should have seen me trying to convince sleepy head to get a picture in front of the poster. (In hindsight, I wish I had thought to have asked someone to take a picture of us together. I could have held her then.) I finally convinced her by telling her she could have her eyes closed. It worked. :)

I love the time that we got to spend together. I treasured every minute I had on each of the special days with the kiddos. Memories to be treasured always.