Corn Night

I officially LOVE our new neighborhood now! Not only have all of our neighbors been very friendly and welcoming... but one of them stopped by tonight with their son to ask us if we wanted some sweet corn. Now I LOVE sweet corn. I could eat sweet corn until I'm sick! So having someone stop by and offer us sweet corn is like Christmas.

I guess "Corn Night" is kind of a tradition on our new street. The guy that came to the door must have family that farms and every year they pick corn and bring some to the neighbors. He had the whole back of his pick up filled with corn. It was beautiful. He offered us 2 dozen and we said YES! Thank you!!!

I am now a big fan of Corn Night! :)

The Birthday Boy

We had Queen Cake last night for Bazzy's birthday.
Baz enjoyed the singing and blowing out the candle.

We asked him what part of the cake he wanted and he wanted the "fin" part that makes Lighting McQueen look like a sports car in the back. It was a BIG piece and he was very happy about that.

Here's the Birthday boy digging into that yummy goodness.

I kinda think he likes it. ;)

Hey Baz...you got a LITTLE something on your teeth. LOL!

He was thrilled to get cards from family and he
even got to open a few more little presents from his sisters.

He was a happy little man and loved all the attention
and partying to celebrate him being THREE!
How in the world can he be three already???

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAZZY

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY BAZZY!
I truly can't believe my baby boy is 3. WOW!

This is a completely random picture of the wrapping paper we got for Bazzy's gift. It cracked me up and I knew Baz would think it was funny. Dancing Chimps. Hee hee...

So now that Kris has become the fondant-master...we had to make Sebastian a cake. And of COURSE it had to be a Lightning McQueen cake. The boy is a Cars-aholic after all.
We were up very late making this car last night. Kris did all the colors, etc. and I got to paint the "details" onto him. I thought he turned out pretty cute.

We had also promised Katryna that we would make her a cake and she chose a Dachshund cake.
We used Hobbes as our model. :)

We thought Baz was old enough for our silly door decorating tradition that we do for Birthday mornings now...so we decided to to hang Cars bouncy balls from his door for when he woke up.

He was excited to see them
and even MORE excited to pull them down. :)

He was also SO excited when he saw his Cars cake.
He just smiled HUGE when he saw it.

Trini was also excited about her belated wiener dog cake.

We let Bazzy open up his "big" present...which was one of those Fisher Price car ramps.
He loves playing cars and we thought this might be fun.
We have a few little things from the girls he can open later
when we have our little party and eat those yummy cakes.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY sweet little Bazzy!!!
We love you!!!

The Ratties

I couldn't find a card reader that worked to upload pictures for the past several days...
but we finally found one in a box today.
Here are Cheese and Cake arriving at their new home. Trini and I drove about a half hour away to pick them up from the rescue place and I have to admit that they are much bigger critters than I thought they would be. They are super friendly though and we've already enjoyed playing with them.

I know they had been trained for a year to do tricks, etc. ~ but it is a little freaky to see how smart and curious they are with everything. Makes me a little sad for the ones used for research or stuck in a little cage at the pet store. I'm definitely a bit of a "softie" though. ;)

I think they will be a great pet for all the kids and Kris and I both have agreed that they are pretty cute.
Hopefully noone else is too creeped out. :)

The Names

Cheese and Cake

The rats have officially been named by Trini.
We pick them up tonight.
We're spending the day going to the Amazon Exhibit at the Durham Heritage Museum.
The girls are excited to see Pirahnas. ;)

Happy Birthday KATRYNA

Our Trini is NINE today! UN-believable!!!
I can't believe I have a 9 year old!

Kris had to go back to the country to work today and tomorrow, so we gave Trini her present last night before he left. I know some will think this is crazy...but we thrive on crazy around here. :)

First of all...check out the cute shirt/dress she is wearing. She sewed this on her NEW junior sewing machine she got for her b-day from her Grandma and she is SO proud. Very cute!

Here she is anxiously opening her present
and wondering what is might be.

We decided she is finally old enough to have her own little pet. I know many, many people are grossed out by these...but we decided she could get a rat. I know, I know. Everyone thinks they are smelly and icky and blah blah blah. I've had rats when I was a teacher and they are smart, friendly, and they don't actually smell. They love to play and it just seemed like the perfect pet for our Katryna.

The funny thing is~ we're not just getting ANY rats. We're getting "famous" rats. Well, Katryna thinks they are famous anyways. Nebraska Wesleyan College has this thing called The Xtreme Rat Challenge. Psych students and other majors train rats throughout the year and then they have a competition at the end of the year where the rats compete in things like tight rope walking, long jump, and weight lifting (isn't it funny to imagine rats weight lifting?). This Rat Rescue place in NE has some of these rats that competed this year and these rats were featured on The History Channels show called Modern Marvels in April. I've tried like crazy to find the episode online or catch it on TV, but no luck so far. Either way, Katryna thinks it's awesome that her rats will have been on TV. I guess this competition has been "spoofed" on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Kinda funny.

These are the little guys that will be joining our clan soon. Well 2 of them anyways. Apparently rats need to have a "buddy" or they get lonely. Again, I realize some of you might think it's crazy to have rats as pets...but I'm OK with that. Katryna is VERY excited and Wednesday night we will be driving to pick up her "famous" birthday present. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATRYNA!!!

We're HERE

Just wanted to say we are back in Home-aha and everyone is happy.

We're living amongst many boxes and I'm sure it's going to take awhile to settle in and have it feel like home...but I have to say that when I drove 6 minutes to get to Target this afternoon,
I was a VERY happy girl! :)

Hmmmmmm...

Does anybody think the movers would think it's wierd if I asked them to pack up our barn swallows too? It's just a question...

Probably not. But I wish I could take them with us.

This will probably be the last post from the country (which I've been calling our current home for safety purposes, in case ya'll didn't know.) The people are here packing up everything we own and wow are they quick! The girls are having a hard time saying goodbye here...so I'm going over to a neighbors soon with them and then I will be trying to distract them until we leave. I think the movers might be able to move us in a day early too, so that will be good!

Until I have a computer again, "so long" everyone.
If your in Omaha and want to stop by...
give me a call and come on over! :)

New Beginnings

It's wigging me out a bit that our year here is over and we are returning to where we started from. This whole year has been confusing to me. Why did we come here to begin with? Why were things not how we imagined they would be? Why did I get pregnant when we weren't planning to? So many "why's" this year...

I'm not really sure why we made this journey. Do we regret it? No. I think it helped us to see where HOME was. I think it also taught us that it's good to slow down a bit with life. This lifestyle here is probably a little bit TOO slow for us...but we have enjoyed having a more laid back life this year with lots of family time.

We also had many opportunities to share our adoption experience with people since we were here. I have hopes that maybe this will bring some families together in the future.

The one thing I'm extrememly thankful for as a result of this year is our sweet little Charlotte.
I'm sure God would have found another way to bring her into this world...but had I not changed medications because our new insurance MADE me when we got here, I don't think I would have gotten pregnant. I can't imagine life without Lulu-beans (as Bazzy likes to call her now) and if that was the only reason we spent this year in the country...then it was WELL worth it. :)

There are actually a few things I will really miss about here. Our big field behind our house~the gazillion bunnies,birds,toads,hawks,ground squirrels (but NOT the snakes!) in our yard~the waterpark~ not having to freak out if the kids are riding their bikes in the road because there are barely any cars ~the trains constantly going by~all the horses and cows~the cranes~some of the nice people we have met. I'm thankful that I have these things I will miss, because about 6 months ago I didn't think I was going to miss anything about here. I will actually be a little bit sad on Thursday...but I know that feeling will fade as I drive closer and closer to HOME.

Friday will be the big day that all of our "stuff" will arrive in Omaha.
I leave you with these pictures of the possible reason we spent our year away.
Taken on the floor of our new house.
Pretty good reason, aye? ;)

Walk Through

First of all~a house showing update. We were told the showing went really well, but the people live out of town and want to sell their current house before making an offer on anything. SO...I guess that's not terrible news, but we of course would have loved for them to say "we'll take it!" :) We know it will happen at the right time...so thanks for the prayers and they definitely gave us a peace about everything. Maybe these will still be THE people once their house sells.

Who knows?

We did our FINAL walk through of our new house on Thursday. I went up with the kids and they had fun exploring the house, playing in the yard, and coming up with creative things to do in an empty house. I had fun imagining all the things I want to do to make the house feel like "ours." We won't be able to do anything until we actually sell our current house and we're not renting anymore...but someday. :)

The kids had tons of fun playing in the empty kitchen cupboards.

They seriously spent almost an hour going in and out of the cabinets and pushing the drawers open while they were inside and thinking it was HILARIOUS! Whatever keeps 'em happy.

Lulu hung out on the counter top...watching all the craziness.

Silly kiddos.

My favorite part about this house is still the big open park area right behind us. Mia even said "look, we can watch baseball right from our house!" (can you see the big baseball diamond in the back right?)

It's hard to believe that in one week we will be back.
It's been an interesting year out in the country.
I know it was for a reason and God obviously had a plan.
Now I'm interested to see what the future holds...

Would you please...

Say a prayer for our house to sell after reading this post?

I guess more specifically would you please say a prayer that the house showing TODAY at 1:15 would go well and this would be the right house for the people looking?

We lowered our price again and this couple from out of town is interested. We are SO excited, because it has been over a month since the last showing and the real estate here has been SLOW.

We would be so happy if we could sell this place and we wouldn't have to rent for long when we get back to HOME-aha!

THANKS GUYS!!!

Thanks a TON for the prayers everyone. We've been frantically cleaning and now I'm trying to keep things clean with 5 kids in the house. Almost impossible! :) Once everything is ready, we will be exiting the property so it stays that way!

Everyone else who is also trying to sell a house...you will be in my prayers too! It's NOT fun! All in God's time though, right?

The next American Idol?

Maybe not, but she certainly is an ADORABLE Idol. :)
My friend Amy from Iowa sent me this shirt. Isn't it cute? Amy and I both love watching American Idol! Charlotte looked so cute when I put it on her that I just had to do a mini photo shoot.

She has grown SO much (especially her cheeks!) and she's smiling a lot now...but she was NOT going to smile for the camera, no matter what I did to try to make her.

Mia is still always nearby when her Lulu is awake, so she had to sneak into a few pictures too. ;)

Pollywog Video

Here's a little something for the kids.
Remember the Pollywog song our family loves? By BNL?
Yahoo's front page had the video for this song on it this morning.
Needless to say, our kids were pretty excited to see it!
Maybe your kids will enjoy it too. :)

Hopefully this means a DVD is coming soon...

Firetruck Fun on the 4th

I headed out to our friend's Pat and Amy's house for the 4th. Poor Kris was on call, so it was just me and the kids. They were all exhausted from a very late night the night before, but they had a blast! Especially when the fire truck came to open the hydrant! All their neighbors got together to have a party and we were excited to be a part of it.

I thought the firemen would just open the hydrant part way and the kids would get to run through...but they sprayed the water from this hose thing on the top of the truck and the girls said it was very cold and the spray was so strong that it kind of hurt. Good thing if you have a fire, right? They LOVED every second and I'm so glad we were able to go.

Thanks Pat and Amy for the fun day! :)