Category Archives: Everyday Life

Project 365- Day 4

January 5, 2012 Molly 5 Comments

We spent two hours outside walking today. I remember to bring my real camera and put it in my pocket. But, I forgot to take it out. OOPS.

I took this because they both picked out their clothes this morning, perhaps the first time I let them do whatever they wanted with no guidance. I love all the stripes. Lena wore the gloves all day today. He has an apple and she has a clementine. Very typical breakfast around here. Reed usually wants a banana, apple and a clementine.

P.S. Cast your vote, should L grow out her bangs or not?

Everyday Life, Project 365

Project 365- Day 3

January 3, 2012 Molly 11 Comments

I’m going to share a few photos from today, since there are some things I want to remember…

My mom gave Lena some adorable rainbow striped gloves when we were visiting. I got Lena some really cute rainbow striped socks at Target last week ($1 and they have no skid things on the bottom, go check them out!). This morning, I laid out all L’s clothes for her, helped her with her shirt and asked if she wanted me to help with the rest. Nope. I thought I had laid out a shirt, pants, and a pair of socks. Instead, she comes out like this…

(Those ARE the gloves, in case you can’t tell) .

Oops, so I gave her some socks, but she wanted to keep the gloves on anyways and wore them until about 3pm.

(Please ignore the real life that is my dining room in the background. I really need to frame these shots better.)

Again, ignore the “real life” that is my dining room. I am in the process of purging and the dining room is the area I’ve dumped everything in.

He drew this for me. Love that kid!

The other big thing of the day is that I finally cut my hair… YAY! I loved having long hair, being able to pull it back, etc. But, it was heavy and I just wasn’t doing anything with it everyday. So, off to the stylist I went.

Before:

After:

Everyday Life

Bad, Bad Blogger

December 29, 2011 Molly Leave a comment

I’ve been an awful blogger. Honestly, life has just been crazy, busy crazy, not bad crazy. We’re still recovering.

Things with our adoption are going well. Our dossier has been registered. There are still a few additional documents we’d like to submit to help with our case and those are almost ready to go. We hope to have a court day at the end of January, but we won’t know for a couple more weeks.

Christmas, was, um, okay. We chose not to do presents this year. We asked others not to give R&L presents as well. We wanted to take the opportunity to teach them about Christmas, and make it more than gifts. I had lots of great ideas of how to make Christmas special. Then, I got sick. So, we ended up having a big dinner and reading lots of books about Christmas and that was about it.

Well, and we skyped with my family. My family has a gag gift tradition. The idea is that you spend as little as you can (preferably nothing) and come up with a gift that will make the other person laugh. It all started because my dad is notorious for gifting people ridiculous things. One year, it was duck sauce, because my sister had said months before that she really wanted some duck sauce. Another time, it was a cabbage… not sure why. After we all laughed so hard over the cabbage, we decided this needed to be a regular tradition.

We *almost* didn’t do it this year. It can be work for those of in charge of coming up with the gifts. Normally, each person has one other person, kids included, and that means for those of us with kids, we have to come up with gifts from each person in our family. This year, we paired everyone up… so it was Aaron & I and Reed & Lena. Aaron and I had my sister & her husband and they had us. My kids had my sister’s younger three kids, and my other sister had R&L.

My sister made us a really cute “weimaraner rescue” poster with details about all of the “dogs” in need of homes… each of her kids. We made them a “People of Walmart” spoof, with their faces photoshopped on the photos. I’d show it to you, but I value my life too much.

This is what my sister gave R&L. She made a big print and framed it. They’re begging me to hang it up in their room.

This is what Reed and Lena made for their cousins. If you haven’t seen Kittens Inspired by Kittens, you should watch it first.

I felt like I should share some more Reed and Lena photos since I’ve been such an awful blogger, but I haven’t taken many recently! Ooops.

This is actually from before Thanksgiving, but how cute is she, shopping at Target?

I was so proud of this (feel free to laugh at me). Reed drew this on 12/19. I should find a photo of what he was drawing on 12/19 last year, but let’s just say, he has come SO FAR and I am really impressed with him. This kid loves to create and he has lots of creativity.

When Lena has her weekly speech therapy, we hang out in this office. Reed plays with cowboy(left) and Reed. That little character in the overalls is ALWAYS “cowboy” and it cracks me up every time. And, yes, Reed’s hair almost always looks like this, especially if he got his hair washed the day before. And I don’t care.

One last thing… you should all have your superman shirts by now. Can you send me a photo of yourself in it, if you are okay with that? I’d love to collect them for Helen. I’d love to post them on the blog too, if you are okay with that, but I’ll still take them even if that is not okay, to save just for her. Let me know!

Example:

I was very fortunate to find this photo of people wearing the same shirt, who look ridiculously like me. Thank you, Google.

Everyday Life

Happy 4th Birthday, Lena!

December 12, 2011 Molly 12 Comments

Sweet Little Lena celebrated her 4th birthday on Thursday. This is her 4th birthday, but only her second one since we’ve known her and her first at home with her family!

This is our sweet girl on her 3rd birthday, a year ago. We had passed court two days before, but the court decree was not yet in effect (10 day wait).

Here were my two 4 year olds in the morning! Lena was just not a happy camper– she hadn’t been feeling too great for days and while she was very excited to be a princess, it was just not a good morning.

For her birthday dinner, L requested french fries. I was going to make her some yummy oven fries, but the day got ahead of us and I didn’t have an hour left to make them in the evening. So, Wendy’s it was. We also heated up some potato soup for a couple of nights before. This was heaven for her. Here she is dipping her fries into her soup.

L didn’t want a cake (more on that below), but I knew she’d love blowing out candles. We sang happy birthday to her and she blew out some tealights.

L is not a big fan of sweets. Well, of cakes, cookies, donuts, ice cream, etc. She does like some good candy and she loves her fruit. I let her pick her sweet thing. She wanted chocolate. Since strawberries are out of season (ie. super expensive!), we haven’t had them in months, so I grabbed some strawberries and we melted some chocolate. Yum, she was so happy.

Lena, with her gift. And her chocolate covered face. (Thanks Lola, for taking care of the gift for us!)

The next day, playing with her gift… a ukulele. In her pajamas. At 3pm. That’s been our week.

To be honest, this week has been rough. Reed and Lena have both been sick and miserable. It’s hardly been the kind of week that I want to remember with them. But, here are some of my favorite Lena moments over the last year…

Dressed up like Jessie for Halloween.

Her first trike in September.

Cautiously enjoying our wedding cake in August… it was two years old, afterall!

Modeling for family photos in July.

Reunited with an old friend in June.

Her first trip to the pool in May.

Long enough for real pigtails in April!

Making a birthday surprise for Lola in March.

Modeling for her brother in February.

Seeing how big(or rather…little!) she is in January.

Dear Lena,

Happy Birthday! We are so happy to have you in our family. You have been through so much in your four years. I know you’ve said goodbye to far too many people– some forever and some just temporarily. I know that’s probably one of the hardest things you do, saying goodbye to someone you love. You fall in love fast and hard– just like others fall in love with you. It’s not hard to see why– you are funny, sweet and loving. I love how sometimes you simply MUST say goodnight to the doggies before you go to bed. I love how you always have to grab our necks when we tuck you in, and you tell us to go to sleep.

You’ve learned a lot this year. You learned English. You learned how to be a part of a family. You learned to love dogs. You learned your ABCs and what sound certain letters make. You are working really hard on your speech. You learned how to count to about 12. You know your colors. You also know most shapes, including octagon, which is really cute when you say it, “oc a ga”. You’ve learned how to ride a tricycle. You used to walk really slowly and now you can run quite a long way without stopping. You’ve grown about 3 inches and gained about 4lbs.

We love you, Lena!

Everyday Life