Wordless Wednesday

(Mickey was peeking out too!)

A Reminder

This morning in our inbox we received a little reminder as to why all of the waiting is so worth it.  These pictures are good for my soul, they have recharged me so I can make it through another month or two until the next update.  Sweet baby girl you are a breath of fresh air and we love you so much!

I have been sending 18 month clothes and I think I have been sending stuff that is WAY to big.  Look how long those pants that are laid out on her are.  She is still only 21 lbs 3 oz and 32 inches long so I am guessing that she is still wearing 12 month clothes.   I kept guessing that she would hit a growth spurt and grow into the 18 m clothes.  Now what size to send for spring clothes????

Sick of the Wait

There are quite a few thoughts swirling around my head this week.  I have been struck down by my first cold of the season and it is a nasty one.  Part of it is the cold, part of it is being stuck inside with a bored three year old who is not slow and sick, part of it is all of the unknowns that are still out there and are not being answered.... like at all.  Part of it is having to explain over and over and over again for the past year as to why we have to wait so long and then have to re-explain why my previous cheerful answer is now incorrect and try to remain positive while explaining that we really have no idea when Claire will come home for the millionth time that week.  Its hard because people genuinely care but they don't want the hard answer. They need to hear that it will all be alright and that we are ok and all is well with the world.  While we are in fact ok it still stinks have to wait and wait and wait.  I admit that I had my hope pinned on February for things to start moving again.  Things are not moving and I am trying so so so hard to readjust my expectations.  My expectation was waiting for up to 14 months and we were ok with that.  At this point we are looking at at least 16/17 months of waiting.  I know that we will survive the wait.  I know that I would wait even longer if I had to for our daughter.  I know that when I hold our sweet girl in my arms the pain of the wait will melt away.  Some days/weeks/months are just hard.  I was talking to a friend this week and she reminded me that even when you think that it is never going to happen that it will happen and all of the waiting is so worth it.  Because I am trying to go into this new week/month with zero expectations I am posting this picture of Henry and Claire's Christmas jammies.  I KNOW that Claire will be home for Christmas, I KNOW that she will be so cute in these jammies.  Up until Christmas I am planning on having no expectations.  Life will continue on and we need to keep enjoying the time that we have as a family of three. (I promise not to post again until I am healthy. Sorry for the rant!)

Three Birthdays.... One Day.

Three birthday party's all in one day.  That's right folks, we had cake three times on Saturday.  And if your thinking that a three year old eating cake three times in one day with only a 35 minute car nap sounds like his parents were crazy, you are correct.  We survived, we were only a little late once and only had a few minor meltdowns.  It was a day full of fun, friends and family... and cake. 

Bailey's 3!

Colonel Sanders??

Isaacs 1!

Jaspers 7!

Henry loved Jasper's new bunk bed. 

We got to meet my cousin's new little girl Bella.  She is so sweet and was baptized today. We can't wait to get back out to Montana to see her again. 

Gooey Fun!

Henry's buddy Alex was over this week so I decided to try out a little experiment that I have been wanting to do.  I made some oobleck which is just corn starch and water.  It is so cool!! It feels like a solid in the pan but when you touch it and play with it it liquifies but the faster you move it the firmer it becomes.  You can find more fun stuff on this site that you can do with it.  We just played with it and made a gooey mess!

Happy Valentines Day!

 Happy Valentines Day!

The Hand-me-down Fairy

Claire has a hand-me-down fairy.  It is a pretty awesome hand-me-down fairy too.  She has so many cute cute cute clothes to wear now courtesy of her fairy!  I seriously could not even start to show you all of the adorable clothes the we have received but it is so fun to go through the bags and see whats inside! I was looking at some of the shoes and thinking about some of the shoes that I had collected as well and decided to spread them all out so I would get a better idea of what we have.  Claire has more shoes than anyone else in our house.  In my defence there are three different sizes represented.  Size 5 is in the front, size 6 in the middle and size 7 in the back.  I can't remember what size shoes Henry wore at 18m/2 so I am not sure the 5's will fit but they sure are cute to look at! Luckily we know a couple of little girls that are younger than Claire who we can pass them down to if they end up not working.  Now that I know the status of Claire's shoe needs I can keep my eyes out for any missing styles that she needs, (insert Jason's eyes rolling) and also think about getting a shoe rack just for Claire.  Now just to get the little feet home to fill them.

Here are just a couple pieces of the cuteness!

New Friends

We had the opportunity to meet another waiting family last night for dinner. We have "known" each other though the blog world for about a year and it was so fun to finally meet in real life! They are about two months ahead of us in the process and their little boy is a month older than Claire. He is seriously the cutest little guy! We met at our favorite Korean restaurant for a yummy dinner. I think Henry impressed/flabbergasted them with the shear volume of mandoo and rice he was able to consume. He probably ate a entire order of mandoo himself. Henry LOVED Ali and Bret and whats not to love? He got their undivided attention, he test drove some of the kid apps on their iPhones and he was greeted with Lightning McQueen. Plus they are just generally awesome in Henry's book.  As I tucked Henry in last night way past his bedtime he whispered to me "Angry birds not working, Ali fix it." We are all looking forward to seeing them again!

Bowlarama

We went bowling for the first time with Henry. We found a place that has games for 99 cents on Saturday mornings so we thought we would give it a try. It was so fun and Henry loved it. We had been going a bit stir crazy at home this week so we needed the fun morning out of the house! 

Wait for his ball was probably his favorite part!

How cute are his little bowling shoes!

He took his game very serioulsy.

I can not even descibe to you how slow the ball went down the lane.  Jason and I were amazed everytime that it made it down.  It was a bit faster with the ramp but when he bowled threw it on is own it was FOREVER.

The Wild Rumpus Bookstore

Quite possibly the coolest children's bookstore ever.  The Wild Rumpus is an incredibly unique experience and has twists and turns at every corner.  I wish I could have brought home one of every book.  Every single one I looked at was begging to come home with us. 

Henry was not quite sure if he was supposed to go in the little door.

LOVE!

Henry could not believe that there were chickens in there.  Luckily there are plenty of places for the pair to hide out from their fan base.

This was so gross but Henry was fascinated.  There is a rat cage below the floor so you look down and you can see two little rats running around.  This is about as close as I would get.

Fast and Fancy

Because yes.... he really is that fast and fancy that he needs the goggles down.

(Henry's foster brother Max brought the hat home for Henry last spring.  Thanks Max! We love it!)



Henry's Bedroom

When we updated our homestudy last week I looked around our house and was amazed at how clean and picked up it was.  Not just one or two rooms it was the entire house! Wohoo!! Usually when I clean something I have a three year old tornado behind me making things looked lived in again.  I decided to take advantage of the picked up look and take some pictures of the house to send to Claire in her next care package.  She will probably never see it looking like this because I can only imagine how hard it will be to keep everything clean and picked up with two little tornado's behind me.

 Henry and Claire will share a bedroom when she comes home.  Henry's toddler bed will slide into the spot where the rocker is and we will set the crib up under the two shelves again.  There is a loft right outside their bedroom door where we will move the rocker to still have it handy for late night rocking.  One project that I have put off starting is painting the letters for Claire's name above the crib.  I have been thinking about what colors to use to make it girly but still tie in with the rest of the colors in the room.  My mom and I found the cute striped frame a couple weeks ago and I am going to use that as my color palate for her name.  Once we get submitted for EP we will do the rearranging and then more ideas will come into play.  For right now and for sanity's sake we are just hanging out with things they way they are.  Once we hear the EP's are rolling again I think I can let myself start to take on the little projects again.

 We used the dresser as a changing table and will convert that back too.  It is crazy to think about going back to changing diapers again.  I have to admit I am enjoying this little break!

Wordless Wednesday