Ahhhhhhhhhh

We are in the middle of negotiations with a couple over our house.
Too. Much. Stress. Can't take much more. They are trying to get it for
way low. Mean low. We can only give so much. Praying they will be
reasonable...

Well, apparently reasonable is not what these people are. We were stuck with turning down their offer, out of principal because they are being so harsh, and them probably buying a house down the street from ours that is now on the market, OR just sucking it up and losing a TON of money, so that we don't end up in the exact same situation 6 months from now. Ugh Ugh Ugh. We want to be celebrating, but we're pretty deflated right now. I know in the next few weeks we'll be thankful that at least it's over, but right now we kinda want to cry. Promise I will be more upbeat in the near future. Sorry. Ugh.

Happy Bazzy Day

Tomorrow is the day that I held Bazzy in my arms~ knowing that this time I didn't have to give him back. He was mine and I was so happy I can't even express it. I had dreamed of the day for almost 8 months and it was finally a reality. When I watch the video of Baz being handed to me, and I see myself patting his little head, I remember thinking "finally finally" and being SO thankful that this was really THE moment. Finally.

We were re-living that day....thinking of that morning, when we thought we were going to have him around 9am, but then finding out that they were going to be with another Bethany family first and instead it would probably be around 11am. That 2 hours was brutal enough, but then they actually didn't call us to come down to the hotel lobby until a little after 11:30! That 1/2 hour seriously felt like a year. Time stood still. Kris paced around inside the hotel room. I paced back and forth on the balcony, listening to Dive by Steven Curtis Chapman and watching EVERY taxi that pulled into the hotel parking lot, thinking that one of them probably had my son inside. It was truly like the delivery room that morning. Waiting and waiting and waiting until our baby came to us. Unbelievable.

We are SO thankful for our Bazzy. God couldn't have chosen a better child for our family. We know he chose all five of our kids to be ours, and we're very blessed! We are going to do something special with Bazzy tomorrow to celebrate his day. Maybe the children's museum or something he chooses to do....but I know I'll be thinking ALL day about that moment when Ofelia handed him to me and I knew I didn't have to say good bye again. sniff sniff. The day I had dreamed about and hoped for had finally come.

Here's some pictures from our trip to Guatemala three years ago.
Happy Bazzy Day! :)

Just because it's funny

Sorting

My friend Tammie's family has been awesome enough to be saving bags of bottlecaps for me (THANK YOU!!!). I put the girls to work after school and had them start sorting them for me. It was surprisingly fun for all if us. Kinda therapeutic in a wierd way.

Motivation

I've been trying to get some stuff organized in our home and catch up on laundry the last 2 days. The stuff that just has to get done, and I have a VERY sad baby who is getting 4 teeth in at once, and has been rapid-cycling between super happy and super sad depending on the moment. I've been really wanting to get things going with Artists For Hope and I was trying to brainstorm while working on house stuff. I feel kind of stuck because we can't do much until we get our Non Profit Status. We can't get our Non Profit status until we have the money to pay for it (I had no idea it was so expensive until we started this adventure). So~we're stuck. This is another time I wish our house in Hastings has sold, so we could just put some extra money into getting this going, but for now there isn't extra money to go around. :( Praying and hoping that it won't be much longer!

Anyways, I had a crazy idea today as I was going through things and finding stuff that could be donated. I'm thinking about doing a garage sale. It would probably be Saturday, April 18 and it would be done as SIMPLY as possible (all clothes one price, etc). I'm wondering if anyone in our area has things they could donate to the sale. All the money will go towards getting our Non-profit so we can start selling artwork from our ebay site (ebay won't take money out of our profits if we're a non-profit store). So~let me know what you think. I'm hoping we can throw this together without too much craziness and if you want to come and volunteer for the day, that would be even better! :) My kids will be running around- so the more the merrier.

I was feeling "urgent" about moving things forward with Artists For Hope today and then I checked the Rescue Center Website tonight and I couldn't help but cry. It's so hard to imagine that this is going on RIGHT NOW in a country that is so close to ours. We have more than enough food to go around and kids there are starving literally to death because they don't have food to eat. It seems too crazy to be true. The urgency I was feeling went up about a million percent after reading this. These are the kids that were brought into the Rescue Center last week. You probably want to have tissues nearbye. :(

Our Trip to the Zoo

We had a great trip to the zoo last week when the girls were off school. The weather was perfect and I even took a few pictures for the photography contest just for fun. I had to make sure I didn't decide to be "photographer" that day, instead of just Mommy, so I only took my camera out a few times. It's easy for me to start taking pictures cuz I love it...but then I miss out on just BEING with my kids. It's good to just BE sometimes. :)

If you see one that you particularly like of the animals, let me know. I haven't decided which one to enter yet. And yes, I realize the spiders are about the scariest thing imaginable. Did you know those are just OUT in the bug part of the butterfly house??? Um.... yeah.

Top Chef Here we COME

We just got a letter in the mail that Katryna was chosen to represent her school in the FINALS for the cooking contest she entered. Remember her "Katryna's Super Duper Strawberry Dip"? She will be recreating it live in the finals in April. Camera crews and all! She's jumping up and down as we speak. Daddy (the true chef of our household) couldn't be prouder right now.

ART = BEER

Charlotte and I ran a bunch of errands today. One of them was a bit strange. Friends of ours told us about a store called Beertopia. I'm not a beer lover....BUT I ended up truly enjoying myself in this interesting store. I've been trying to finish my bottlecap Toucan so I can start on the next creation (a HUGE chinese dragon for our condo), but I am in desperate need of yellow and orange bottle caps. We were told that Beertopia had lots of unique choices and I had a blast searching for bottlecaps I wanted to add to the Toucan. Kris was pretty happy when I came home with new beer to try too.

It was funny explaining to the guy at the store why I was tipping every bottle towards me to see the color of the cap. He watched me politely for awhile and then I finally figured I better explain what I was up to. He actually kinda got into helping me find cool ones, like the Ram which had yellow AND orange on it. Score!

I came home with bottles from Japan, Belgium, Holland, Jamaica, and Texas.

I love the Ram and I LOVE the little orange owl (from Japan).
I couldn't pass up the "Holy Grail Ale" either.
(any Monty Python lovers?)

Bubbles- mb

I had to share the joy that is bubbles and peanut m&m's today. I'm not sure mom was thrilled with him blowing bubbles in the house though. ;)

Buddies- mb

Charlotte and ma kyi have become good friends. We visited our Karen friends today and they are doing great. Mom and dad are a little bored I think but hopefully they can find a job soon. Their son was home today and we watched wrestling on tv together. I used to watch wwf with my dad so I kinda enjoyed watching it again.

Habla Blah Blah

I'm having crazy flashbacks of 3 years ago when we were SOOOOOOO close to having our Bazzy-man home with us forever. This is right around the time we got THE call that we had recieved "PINK" and we could finally fly to Guatemala and bring Sebastian home.
Best phone call of my life!!!

We try to teach our kids a little Spanish here and there. We want to include as much of Bazzy's culture into our home as possible and I SO wish I spoke fluent Spanish (one of those things on my list of stuff I would LOVE to do!), but we only speak about 1 year of high school spanish class worth. We love singing Spanish songs though and I thought this was adorable.

March 28 is Gotcha Day and we are already looking forward to celebrating. Time to make the Tres Leches cake, Tamales, and Horchata!!! Y-U-M!!!

100 percent sweet- mb

20,000 HITS

Just wanted to have a little mini-celebration. I noticed that there has been over 20,000 hits to our blog and I thought that called for some fireworks. :)

Thanks to all of you who peek in to see what's going on day to day in our crazy household. It's been great to share a little of our chaos with you all and it's been a fun creative outlet for me as well.

We had an amazing day at the zoo on Monday and I realized that their photo contest is going on again through the month of March. I was quite happy I decided to bring my camera. Watch for a new poll coming soon...cuz I need to decide what pics to submit now. ;)

Baz

Beautiful day...

.... At the zoo!

Enthusiastic Birthday Wishes

I have heard this wonderful Hoops and YoYo song about as many times as years that I am old. (Did that make sense? 33 is what I mean.) My girls started singing it when I woke up and sang it ALL morning while we were getting ready and then finished with one more time as we were pulling up to school. Pretty funny. Gotta love all that enthusiasm for your birthday. :)

Here's a very bad taped version of the song I was blessed with this morning. I love Hoops and YoYo!

Katryna's Cooking Contest

Katryna decided to enter a cooking contest through her school. It's for 4th and 5th graders and they were supposed to submit a recipe for a healthy snack. Katryna wanted to come up with something that SHE created...so we had a little recipe creating/sampling night tonight. Kinda like Top Chep VZ-style. ;)

There is a dip that Katryna has made before that has strawberries in it, but she wanted to make her own version of it. Katryna and I had lots of fun coming up with 3 different types of her dip and then we had a taste testing with Kris, Sofia, Mia, and Bazzy being the Judges. Katryna was totally the chef and I was strictly the assistant. She enjoyed this very much.

I know this is hard to read, but this is the finished recipe that WON our little taste test. It was really yummy! This is the form she wrote out her recipe on and she will submit this tomorrow for the contest. Maybe it's good luck that it needed to be submitted on my Birthday!?!

She named her dip "KATRYNA'S SUPER DUPER STRAWBERRY DIP." :)

The dip has strawberry yogurt, fresh strawberries, cinnamon, ginger, and coconut in it.
She cut up Apples, Pears, and Grapes to dip into her tasty recipe.

I'm a big coconut lover, so this was definitely my favorite.
We have no idea if she has a chance at winning or not...but we sure had fun coming up with this recipe and it was fun to see her mind working and creating her own unique Super Duper Strawberry Dip.

10 Months Old

We took a few pictures this afternoon while Bazzy was napping. I can't believe my little Charlotte is 10 months old. Wow.

So what is this little munchkin up to these days? She is SO close to crawling. I mean, scary close! She is constantly up on her knees...trying desperately to get over to whatever it is she MUST have. She has also almost pulled herself up several times. I think the crawling-to-walking time will be minimal once she masters mobility. I have a lot of baby proofing to do. Besides that, she is a total lover of water and all things water related. She is happiest when in the bathtub or the shower and will literally stay in there until she is all pruned up and freezing. She never WANTS to get out. I have to always be the meanie who makes her exit the water. I'm a water-lover too, so I can't say that I mind this "obsession" at all. She enjoys waving, clapping, and making silly noises and faces. She's getting to be more and more fun to play with for all of us.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures of my 10 month old.
Wow. 10 months old!

Awww

Trini made me flowers today at school for my birthday. What a sweet
early birthday present. She totally made my day. It's grey and snowy
here and I needed a touch of spring!