No Ordinary Family

Ok Moxee is about the size of a dime, a don't blink you'll miss it kind of a town and it is not very often that any one really knows where we live. My parents showed this video of Toby Bradley , he is a local and he is almost to the finals of the CMT Music City Madness competition . Pretty cool huh? So please listen to his song and give him a vote if you don't mind. It would be really neat if he won.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards Ok I had too much fun with this! Thanks Kim Update: Incase you can't see it use this link for some reason it is not coming up all the time.

Ok I have joined the masses. I hate to admit being a follower but I thought I would give the book a try after seeing it at Costco for only $6.something. I am a fan of young adult fiction just because it is usually a good quick read but I have resisted up until this weekend. With my work stuff in the past and a long weekend it was a great opportunity for a book to take me away from reality. I devoured it in a matter of a couple of days, I am a convert. It was the great blend of the supernatural and a romance, ala young adult fiction. So I finished it about 8 pm tonight and it was a brief debate of whether I should wait until morning to get the second installment of the Saga or if I wanted to head out to the bookstore tonight? So after thinking about it for oh 30 seconds or so we decided to head out tonight. Hey, that is a luxury we need to take advantage of while we are still childless as is reading late into the night and early in the morning and in the middle of the day and pretty muc...

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone is enjoying thier day and thinking about all of the wonderful things that we have to be thankful for. Don't eat too much turkey, leave some for the sandwich after shopping tomorrow!!

Thank you for the endorsement of the US foster care system. Let me first say that I do not feel that we were bamboozled by our agency at all. Our agency has always supported us and any decision that we have made during our journey. I find it interesting that it is often assumed, and not just by the commenter, that we have no experience or information about domestic adoption and foster care. I am happy if this has worked for you and I am sorry to hear about your bad experience with international adoption agencies. As I said in my post, I believe that the international option is just as complicated, not necessarily more complicated than domestic adoption; the complications are just different. In the very personal and heartbreaking experience that we have had with domestic adoption, I felt much less in control then our international adoptions. I do know that it works much of the time, but it has not for us. I have also personally witnessed occasions where the foster care system f...

(check back for my 19 month page my photo program was giving me fits) 19 months since our LID. What can I say, when we started this journey the people that were 19 months from their LID were getting referrals and we may now be half way there. I often wonder if we will ever be in China, I find it hard to even dream about it anymore. And although I’m excited about the prospect of parenting I find it slipping out of my fingers more and more and I begin to wonder if there is not some cosmic power that is trying to tell me something. I am not particularly down, I am just thoughtful, there has been some talk about being positive (glasses half full and empty stuff) and I know I am not always positive but personally I think that it is Ok, it is me I have never been the cheerleader, I have always been cautious and calculating and not a very big risk taker. I am not a risk taker and maybe that is why I am having trouble just blindly believing that this will happen. I honestly thought that the in...

OK this is a little late but hey at least it is here! This weeks theme is "what are you thankful for" well possibly the reason is that is so late is that I am thankful for so many things and so many people. So among the many things that I am thankful for are these gorgeous kids. Our Munchkins. My Niece and Nephews, they are awesome kids, we got to see them at the park this weekend and I ran through the jungle gym a bit with Emma and Eli. Next year I am sure David will be running around like a little Monkey too. We of course forgot the camera in the car but her are some older photos of the munchkins in our lives. PS. I had a hard time choosing a picture of Emma because we seem to always find her in front of our camera and then immediately she says "Let me see" and we turn the camera around to show her. How did we ever live waiting for the film to be developed? I am also thankful for digital photography :0)

Look what I got in the mail today! I won these a little while back in a raffle on Ni Hao Y'all . It took me forever to decide what to put on them but as you can see I finally made up my mind and for many reasons it fits perfectly. They were made by Marty at MySilverPie and they turned out gorgeous. I love them they are so shiny that you can see the reflection of my fingers and Camera in the photo. I can't wait for the day when my daughter and I can wear them as a mother/daughter set. We also went on a little treasure hunt today set up my Scott and Carrie. It was a lot of fun. We ended up at the playground by the school several times the first time we were there Jim asked me hey do you recognize that red head over there and sure enough it was Eli. He and Emma were running around the playground as kids tend to do. We were surprised to find them there but that was before we discovered that they has us coming back to that playground a few times so they were sure to catch us...

If you think this is an over kill for a Tuesday you have not had the couple of days that I have. I am having an audit at work, a very important only every 2 years kind of an audit, make or break my job kind of an audit. I have given myself shingles over-thinking this and then I got the auditor from, well, the super dullest parts of the history channel boring, (if you like the history channel too bad, you’re a nerd, sorry Jim) bet you thought I was going to say hell. But, hey, hell would probably be a lot more exciting than this, all that fire and brimstone and crap, yeah sounds pretty animated, not this guy. He is about 127 years old (not really him in the picture sorry)and is retiring next week. He tells stories for half of the day that have absolutely nothing to do with the audit or anything that I find remotely interesting. He spoke for a solid 15 minutes today on his personal genealogy. What lead to this conversation might you ask? Well, that would have been the mention of St. Pat...

Last night we went to dinner and a show with Emily and Ryan. Jim loves the comedian Jeff Dunham and back in June I learned that he was coming to the tri-cities. I called Jim and told him I had his anniversary present early and late. Since we were going to have to stay with my sister I thought it would be rude not to have them go with us. I got the tickets and then I lost them when we were going though all the stress in early July. I was panicked that we would be out all the money I spent and my gift to Jim was ruined. After a good panicked cry I emailed the ticket place and they canceled the tickets I lost and said ours would be at will call, I have been worried ever since that something would go wrong and they would not be there, but they were. Before the show Emily and Ryan took us to a great dinner at the Bonefish Grill. We had never been there and we both loved it. Even Jim who is very picky about his fish loved it all. I think we many have a new competitor with our favorite restau...

Diana is hosting a Foto Friday, and I thought it would be fun to participate. She will post a theme each week to post about. This week it is Veterans. At first I thought how am I going to do that one, I don't have many close relatives that were in the military, my grandfathers were, but I have no pictures from that. Then I remembered I had pictures from my trip to Washington DC, in March of 2005. We had just moved back from CA and I had a conference in DC the week after our move. I went by myself and it was the most liberating trip of my life. One day I will tell you about the time I ended up in a alley in the middle of the night in my pjs but I that will be another post. I had never been to DC before and I was busy at the conference all week long but there was one day where I did not have a class that I was interested in and I had already been to the show floor so I decided to play hookie and I caught a cab. I told the Cab Driver I had one afternoon and I wanted to at least see th...

I want a monster, not for LM or BB but for me (OK I might let them play with it once in a while). Yes I am crazy but I can't help it. Check out these cuties at curlyqcuties.com ! I need one for Christmas (Jim, I am talking to you) they are too huggable. You can win one over at The Mom Buzz. I hope I win one!! Thanks Diana for the link I think I am addicted too web giveaways. On that subject (addiction)I have a Diet Pepsi problem. I have seriously upped my intake since the whole stress at work thing began. I can down a couple of cans after lunch easily. The receptionist at work says it is going to kill me. I said "great that will be more interesting than alot of other deaths" I mean what do you say to that, she smoked for years I think that is alot worse that a few DP's when your stressed. Plus when she dies a ordinary death of lung cancer I am going to be laughing from the afterlife "I died of Diet Pepsi." No offence to anyone who has lung cancer, that is t...

I have been trying to cut back on buying things for LM and BB. It is extremely difficult because I like to pass the time shopping although not knowing if BB is going to be a boy or a girl it makes shopping harder. However my weakness is books. These are some that I have accumulated in the few weeks. There is a Gentleman that comes in to my office once in a while with Books are Fun and he leaves a wonderful assortment for us to look over and purchase. I almost always find a children’s book or 2 or 3. This time in addition to 2 great books I found this lullaby set. It has 4 CD’s and a lyrics book. I know I will be singing in my horribly off key lovely sing voice to our little ones. It will be nice to be able to look up the words instead of just singing “Lullaby and goodnight da da daaa da da da daaaaaa, huuuum huuum hum”, etc. Although I am an awesome hummer I think the words will be a great addition to bedtime. I also needed a new cord for my Zune so when I went to Amazon to place the ...

I went to a Pampered Chef party yesterday that my mom put on. It was a lot of fun. Both Emily and Molly were able to come and we had a great time. I still have to place my order since I am terrible about making decisions but I will sit down tonight and write out my final order. For those of you unfamiliar with Pampered Chef, their stoneware is amazing. We have the large bar pan and use it for everything that goes in the oven. I made cookies on it Friday night the recipe said 10-12 minutes so I set the timer for 10 minutes and I checked them but they weren’t done yet. I set the timer for another 2 minutes but I made a mistake and I set it for 20 minutes instead. The next time I looked at the timer it was 7 minutes later. I thought for sure they were goners but they were fine not burnt at all, I was so excited. While I was at the party Jim headed south to set up a treasure hunt for his Sister and family. We hope they enjoy it. Head over to Jim’s blog to read all about the fun. Kung Fu P...

Too much happening. and not enough relaxing. I need Thanksgiving NOW!

Diana inspired me to bake last night. It was a cold and rainy day and a warm treat was sounding better and better and then I learned of Diana's pumpkin cookies . I love pumpkin cookies, I have a recipe of my own that I love, but I would like to try hers as well, they looked delicious. I was not "pumpkin cookie ambitious," but a warm sweet treat was exactly what this house needed. We had some apples from our Leavenworth trip, so apple crisp it was. Here is the recipe sort of: apples cut and peeled about 1/2 cup of rolled oats 1/2 cup of brown sugar more or less 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger 1/4 cup of flour 1/4 cup of butter Fill your pan with apples ( I have no idea how many, I usually use what I have) in a bowl mix the oats, brown sugar, spices and flour. add the butter (I soften it it makes it easier) mix until crumbly Cover the apples with the mixture and bake at 375 for 30 minutes or so. Now, if you are like me, you forget to set the timer so when you c...

Guess what we are doing tonight. We are voting! I bet you are thrilled. Ok I am not that into voting like other people (civic duty, exercise your right, yadda, yadda) I get it but I don’t have to be super enthusiastic about it, that is also my right. I will be glad when this election is over. I am so tired of negative ads. I just wish that the candidates would talk about what they are planning to do not what their opponent is going to do or not do. I think it should be a requirement that their opponent approves the ads and that would keep everything on the up and up they would be forced to keep a positive spin on things instead of negative ones. Another thing, I hate the media coverage, basically what they are saying is that if you live in any other state than Pennsylvania or Ohio, you don’t matter. Sorry Washingtonians we have already decided that you are Democrat, so it makes you doubt that your vote even counts. I vote anyway despite the media and I fight my urge to vote against the...

Diana at Custom Blog Designs awarded me this blog award. (oh you have to check out Dori's new blog it is too cute) I am thrilled, I have never been given a blog award before and I am happy that someone likes my blog enough to come back again and again. when I started blogging I thought just my husband and maybe my sisters would look at it. I know I don't have a huge readership but that is OK the people that I know read my blog are all great. I would have never thought I would be talking to people all around the country through my blog. So I am supposed to award seven other people with this award. I hate this part because I love all of my readers. They stick with me in my melancholy days and my chipper moments. Although there are many blogs that I love to read on a daily basis I am choosing not to award this to at this time but I reserve the right to comeback and award this when ever I feel it is necessary, after all I have 7 to use I want to get my mileage out of it. We have be...