No Ordinary Family

I got a second package from Jody today for the bow swap (she had told me they were coming separately). I love getting packages I just hope that the ones I ordered come soon so I can send them out next week. Jody found some really cute little clips, thanks so much, the Zebra is too cute and the ice cream one will always remind me of her. Check out her blog to see why. I should be packing right now. We are leaving for the weekend tomorrow after work. Jim is dragging me to the Decommissioning of the USS Kitty Hawk, I am sure it will be most boring but I should survive. Plus Jim has promised me a stop at the Gymboree outlet and stop at Krispy Kremes, so I do have something to live for!! I am not sure if I will be able to post until I get but I am sure Jim will take a million photos. So there will be plenty of blogging fun next week! Have a great weekend everyone,

Kim sponsored a Bow swap a couple weeks ago and I can not resist a good swap so I signed up. I am still waiting for my bows and clips to come in so I can sent to my partners. I got a great package from Diana yesterday. She even remembered Jim and he will wear his clippies proudly, he he he. They are all so cute, the penguin will go great with the outfit I got a couple weeks ago. I can't wait to get all the ones I ordered in and send them off. Most of the fun of these exchanges is finding something special for the people I am matched with. I really hope they like what I found. To night I got home and I got a great package from Jody my other match. So so cute, I love the wild zebra print and the other is in some of my favorite colors. Oh and sorry for the bad photos, I was having issues and decided it was not worth fighting. Thank you to both Diana and Jody, the bows and clips are great!

We are not doing anything special except maybe having some Chinese food for Dinner. Kiki's if we can swing it otherwise it will be Panda Express or Mongolian BBQ or better yet we might cook. I hope that the year of the Ox brings us so much closer to our Little Miss. I got a couple Year of the Ox Stamp sheets to put away for Little Miss and a few to use last week, but other than that there is not much different here. Oh yeah I am not cleaning my house today I hear it is bad luck do you think they could make that a rule everyday?! Have a great day, I wish everyone a wonderful and properous new year. PS I posted a few of my latest projects to my Little Miss Blankets blog if you are interested. *image from USPS website

We have now been waiting 21 months since our LID in China. The wait continues to get longer but on the bright side the last 3 batches of referrals have come closer together, that is probably because of Chinese New Year but hey I will take any positive spin I can. As for Burundi, there has been a little action although I would not call it movement. I don't think we will hear any more news for another 3-4 weeks, but you never know. I still think that this will be our year, the Year of the Ox is bound to be good luck for us.

Ok, I have been listening too much to Evanesance and I need to wake back up. I have had a rough week and in the famous words of Forest Gump, "that's all I am gonna to say about that." I have lots to post about: 21 months LID tomorrow, blog awards, and Chinese new year on Monday. Although, it does look to be an uneventful weekend and I am thankful for that. Ok, so what has happened in the past week? Too much to even talk about and more than I want to talk about, but I am back in cyber land. One thing that happened is that the CCAA has referred babies again! Only 2 days, but after almost 21 months of waiting I am fine with 2 days; at least it is progress in a forward direction, plus I have no energy to expend on something I can't change. They will speed up when they can and I will be here waiting. For those counting, 419 LID before us!!! My neice called me yesterday. It was the sweetest call I got all week. I answered the phone and I heard the tiniest "Thank you.&

Emma's Birthday was Saturday and we went to her party but I have been too lazy and I am just getting around to posting. So without much further ado Emma turns 5 in pictures. me and the boys, well one boy and one ferocious lion Party Girl Balloon drop!!! Wow, my sister's new toys sure look fun. The new dress passes the twirl test What was in the closet?! A New Bike! Ready to Ride Here Emma I will show you how it is done. And last but not least party games and Jim looking Oh So Fine, he he.

How about a video for FotoFriday of last April when it was still snowing here. The ground is bare now and unless the theme is fog, he he. Ok It was all I could find on the short notice. Or you could go to this post or this post .

Welcome to the Northwest. Where it is cold, foggy and down right gloomy. I love the winter, I love snow and ice and even the cold but I hate the fog. I have been consciously trying to appreciate every day including the weather. I truly think that each day is a gift and we need to see the opportunities in each day but the fog is putting a damper on my attempted brightness. It just hangs around like an unwanted guest sucking the life out of my day. You can't see anything it is just gray everywhere. So I am in a funk and I hope that it either snows or the sun comes out soon I can't stand this in between land. Ok you have all heard this before so stop reading if you don't want to read the following pity party. It is kind of ironic that the weather seems to be mimicking my feelings about the adoption right now. I am in a fog and a gloom about our Burundi adoption. I get this way sometimes and tomorrow I will probably be all hopeful and optimistic again and I probab

Ok I caved and bought some clothes at the latest cocobonbon sale . I know, I don't know if BB will be a boy or not but my Sister in Law might be crossing her fingers for a girl because if BB is a girl guess what David is getting for Christmas next year. So that kind of evens out the Kim Karma of hoping for a boy, Ha Kim I got ya there. Either way I know both will be gushing when we finally see that little ones face. Ok I need to learn a bit about making collages and not making them tiny.

I have been tagged by Jody at Jody's Cottage Here are the rules: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open to page 56. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next 2 to 5 sentences, along with these rules. 5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual book. Pick the CLOSEST! 6. Tag five other people to do the same OK I must confess here I noticed this tag at work but there is absolutely nothing nearby except chemical catalogs and I really don't count those as books so I waited until I got home. What I found is not much better but here it goes. "This is great... until he reaches adulthood (some even balk at the nicknames in high school ). Is that how he is going to establish himself in the world with a child's name? Plus, it is unlikely that anyone he knew when he was younger will ever call him anything other than Johnny. All of this begs the question: if you are going to refer to you son as anything other than his first name, why then

Well this weekend we did not get much done but it seems like we were busy all weekend. Let’s see it started with laundry. I am ashamed to say I have been terrible in keeping up with our laundry. We desperately need a new washer and dryer. It takes 2 dryer cycles most of the time to dry our clothes and as much as Jim has tried to balance our washer is still shakes the whole house and sounds like a helicopter is landing in the laundry room. It scares the dogs (and me sometimes). Plus our washer is really small (WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I BOUGHT IT), so it takes extra long to do laundry so I have been just doing what I need to get by and the rest has been piling up in our room. So I pulled all of it out into the living room and sorted it into loads, see if it is in the middle of the room I can’t ignore it. So I began my weekend with a light colored load. Are you still reading or did I put you to sleep yet with laundry talk? Don’t you worry I have more so if you have insomnia come back to

Ok this weeks FFFF (Family Fun Foto Friday for you mom) is all about me. So some about random things about me. I grew up in a small town and I never thought I would live there as an adult but guess what I live about 5 blocks from my family. I graduated from High School and Community College with in 5 days of each other. I meet Jim when I was 17 and that was one of the first things I told him because I knew he thought I was older and I did not want it to be awkward when he finally found out. I have a degree in micro Biology I have worked at the same place for almost 10 years I moved to California for work and lived there almost 3 years, I am so happy to be back home. I could not survive with out DVR. I have a secret Twilight Gossip Friend. You know who you are! My first car is the same age as me and I still have it although I need to sell it, no good reason to have more than 2 cars :0( I hope that is enough about me to keep ya going for a bit. Enjoy the photos in no particular order. Ji

Like many of you I like to buy handmade items. I find them unique and more special than mass produced items that are everywhere. I even have a small Etsy shop where I sell flannel blankets and pillow cases that I have made. I had hoped to do a few more craft items this year to sell so that we can earn some money to help with the adoptions however, while surfing the net today I found that this might be in danger of become illegal on February 10th. This is when a new law goes into effect that states roughly that all items sold for children under 12 or 13 must be tested for lead and have proof of such a test. That means that I would have to have test each print of blanket that I make and there is no way that I could afford to do that so that makes my blankets illegal. All the hand made clippies that we love so much for our little girls will be out of the question. No more hand crocheted and knitted sweaters and baby blankets. Things like the the monster that Jim gave me for Christmas and

Oh my, I just ordered a bunch of cocobonbons clothes last night and I can't wait to get them. I could not resist getting the lion collection and even if BB is a girl it was too cute to pass up. I also got some of the penguin collection for LM. Everything in the winter collection is 70% off. Super deals. I learned about these lines from Diana who did a givaway a while back. Dori looks super cute in the penguin coat, that is what sold Jim.

Well, I decided to start the year off right, by getting sick. I have had some sort of stomach bug the last few days and I stayed home in bed yesterday. We missed David’s Birthday party but I did not think that he would appreciate the stomach flu as a gift. I was really bummed because I made him something and I can’t wait to blog about it give it to him. My goal was to make each of the munchkins something for Christmas and I barely got David’s done for his Birthday and then I got sick. Maybe I should start now for next Christmas (only 353 shopping days left). On the adoption front: China referred another batch of referrals the end of December which puts us at 421 LID days to go. We are still very far away but I hope that this is the year that they speed up. We have been reassured by our agency that now that the New Year has arrived progress in Burundi should start moving forward. As always we are cautiously optimistic about reports like that, as things don’t always move at the

Although my last post qualified for the FFFF this week I thought I would post the other picture that I took last night. Toby loves new toy, sometimes he loves them to death almost immediately and others he love a bit more gently. I found this little deer on sale after Christmas and he was being so cute with his head laying gently on it but then I went to get the camera and I could have got the shot but there was no memory card in it. Lesson to Jim I am not going to be as forgiving when you don't put the memory card back in the camera if I miss a perfect shot of our kids. But I did get one picture before he got up and started throw it around.

We started the new year off kind of slow but that was great! After we got going we headed to town, I wanted new Christmas boxes in the spirit of consolidating and reorganizing. I am not sure how much of that was accomplished but they are now all red and green which should make them easier to find in our disaster of a shed. Shopping was great today no one was out. It was a nice change from the over crowded stores of last year (he he, last year like it was so long ago.) We ended up at Borders, I know they don't carry totes but we went to avoid going home and organize just look around. But how could I pass up such great bargains. I found these children's books for only $3.99, no I am not kidding $3.99. I even left the price tag on one so you would know that I was not starting out the new year with a big fib. I love all these titles I was so excited to get such a deal. I also needed a daily calendar since I did not get one for Christmas and they were 50% off so I got a Kirigami on

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that 2008 was not too bad to you but I hope that 2009 will be better. I am not making any resolutions. It is not my thing. I do have hopes and dreams for the new year but I am just going to continue living my life as best as can and not make any unrealistic promises. I hope to be healthier in 2009 although 2008 was much better than 2007. I hope to travel to a far away place in 2009. I hope to make new friends in 2009 and I have a feeling they will be online friends since I don't get out of my circle too much but that is fine. I have met some great people that way. So I have many hopes and a few dreams for 2009 but no unrealistic goals. Have a fun and safe new year everyone!