Pictures

Look at the super cute shirts a fellow Gladney mom sent the girls! I love them…
I turned 35. Here is my cake picture. I think the boys were missing from the picture because there was a temper tantrum somewhere in the middle of it. We sang it again later for the temper tantrum son… It was kind of a crazy birthday. Wednesdays are one of Jason’s two 12 hour days of the week (the other one being Sunday of course)  So we kinda celebrated in between on his late lunch break! But I did get to go do some much needed birthday shopping this past weekend…
Jason’s sister came to visit, and I did not get ONE good picture of all of the cousins or with her or with Jason’s mom who was also there. I’m sure hoping Jenna got some good ones. I DID remember to get her to take a picture of our family – we don’t have many of all of us together! I did NOT remember to do it before the girls were in their pajamas.
My sis in law Jenna… what a special picture. I’m sure she will treasure this for a lifetime… (MENTAL NOTE: USE YOUR CAMERA SARAH!!!) Sosie is showing off her walking skills – she can now walk the width of the living room and partly into the kitchen. On the other hand, every once in a while, Lyla will show us she can stand independently before she turns on the jello legs…
Silly pictures with my big babes…First week to church for the girls!
I let the girls practice using spoons… once. Lyla did pretty good once I got the food on the spoon for her. Sosie did well too – she brought the spoon halfway, and then she used her hand to get the food off of the spoon to put into her mouth! Sweet girls NEVER got the opportunity to even try to feed themselves at the foster home. If I had a slew of kids to feed (well, I kind of do), I wouldn’t be letting them all feed themselves either!
Everett got to bring home Corduroy this weekend! His class “mascot” is Corduroy, and each weekend someone from the class gets to bring him home. It’s big stuff. Corduroy has a whole overnight bag with a sleeping bag, Vanderbilt t-shirt (thank goodness – Corduroy needed it to cheer our Dores on to our third win of the season on Saturday! 3-0 baby!! Ok… let us celebrate now, okay???), pajamas, books for bedtime, blanket, etc. We took pictures and journaled over the weekend. Well, I did it tonight – it’s due tomorrow. Hey, when Katie Beth did it, I think I got it turned in like the last week of school so we’re improving!
We had the most relaxing day Saturday. We didn’t do much of a darn thing. We got up and made our usual chocolate chip pancakes, did a few little things around the house, watched football, more football, and then some more football. Then we ate some yummy tortilla soup for dinner! We had a few visitors – the first was my sweet cousin Emily!!! She lives in Chattanooga and is the daughter of my Aunt Nancy. Poor thing couldn’t find anything to wear but a UT shirt to come over, but thankfully my kids were all dressed out in their Vanderbilt gear (gotta get on that for the girls!) so when they sat around her in the picture they covered up most of the orange – ha! I’m kidding. Well, kind of. She dishes it out too, and the kids get a big kick out of it. (Actually UT is less fun to hate with Dooley as a coach. I HATE ABHOR his orange pants, but he seems like a good guy. I wasn’t a big fan of Phil… Also Florida isn’t as much fun to hate dislike without Steve Spurrier there. Somehow I find myself rooting against South Carolina now all the time!)

Anyway, it was so wonderfully lovely to see Emily! Her roomie Mallory was with her and we hung out watching football, painting nails, and I got to catch up on their fun single girls lives! Love my sweet Em – isn’t she pretty?!?! We also had my dad and Peggi come by later that night, and my sweet small group friend Amy and her daughter came by as well. It was a blissfully wonderful day!!! Everyone just played, and I told Jason I think my love language is to stay home on fall Saturdays, watching football, kids playing, and cooking something yummy.
Random shot trying to get them both looking at me and smiling… Close… They do look more alike in this picture to me.
And today, we had a breakthrough. The girls PLAYED in the bath. PLAYED IN THE BATHTUB people. It took us five weeks, but we are PLAYING in the TUB!!! (In case I didn’t mention it before or if you missed it, in Ethiopia they were always bathed in buckets. So a huge bathtub was really really scary to them. First baths in Ethiopia were filled with TERRIFIED SCREAMING… and so many afterwards!) So this is a big moment where I took lots of pictures. And sweet Nolan loved being in there with them! I think they enjoyed him too! There was a LOT of splashing… and for once, I did not say one word. If those girls will sit in that tub and play with a smile then (for now) they can splash away! There were smiles in pictures too – a really cute one of Lyla, but Nolan’s arm was not as strategically placed for good coverage in that one so I left it off the blog. You’re welcome son! And nobody pooped – at least not that I noticed! (I love Sosie’s “smiling” face here!)
So that’s our last couple of weeks in pictures. Again, some good days and bad. I’m heading to an adoption conference this weekend. At first I didn’t want to go because honestly on lots of days I’m sick of talking about adoption. I don’t want to talk about Africa or orphans or adoption or ANYTHING. Not that I talk about it a lot, but I’m living it for sure. I think I’m seriously still in shock about just the plane trip home – which I still cannot bring myself to blog about yet. It was horrible. Horrible. Imagine horrible, and it was worse. Horrible. It’s all still new, and I think I’m still in a little bit of shock! So the last thing I want to do is go sit in a room and hear what I’m doing wrong or get a looonnnggg list of things I should be doing or hear other people whining about how hard their lives are. I just think I can’t take anymore “hard” with adoption. It is HARD. BUT I know I really need the weekend. Lest you worry, I’m not turning down two nights in a hotel with one of my good friends either! We agreed if we get overwhelmed we’ll head out to window shop or get coffee or something.

And of course sweet Jason will get a couple days of being all Daddy! Which will be good for him! I envision him kissing my feet when I get home in thankfulness – as if – he’ll do fine because he won’t worry about (or notice) a fraction of the things I worry about (or notice). Which is why we complement each other and why it’s good sometimes to get Mommy out of the house – good for everyone!

Well, enough for now. I have a post that I keep meaning to put up about the weirdest question I’ve gotten while being out and about with the girls. You’ll die. Well, I did. Putting it up in a few!

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