Our First Contact

 We were contacted by a potential birth mother this week.  Unfortunately she lives out of the country and we aren't certified for international adoptions.  But, at least we know that people are seeing our information.  Hopefully the right person will see it soon!  If you're out there, I hope that you know we are praying for you and long to meet you.

We had a really fun week this week.  It snowed on Monday!  Woohoo!  I already posted about that but still ... it was so AWESOME! After the snow melted the ground steamed.  That is something I don't think I've ever seen before and it was gorgeous.  It's a little hard to see in these pictures but if you look closely you can see the steam coming up from the ground.

 We had family night with a family that we met through Allan's work.  They have three really cute kids.  For every trip they do they make a collage and frame it, and that is what they were doing that night.  So we brought some pictures and made our own collage - they provided everything but the pics which was so nice of them!  I wish I could show you the collage but we aren't finished with it yet.  Maybe next week.

Tuesday Allan took me up to the mountain so we could play in the snow.  We had a blast!  We wanted to have a snowball fight but the snow was pretty crunchy - more like ice.  Then I noticed that if I dug around the footprints I could find some buried powder, and so I made a snowball and threw it at Allan before he was aware of what was going on.  I actually got him too!  Usually I have horrible aim, so we were both surprised!  And, I actually won the snowball fight! 

He missed the camera and got me right in the shoulder!  Impressive!

I tried to make a snow angel but the snow was too hard.

It was so much fun to be out in the cold air and spend some quality time with Allan.

On Friday we had dinner and played games with some friends.  They have three little girls and I had a blast playing the Strawberry Shortcake game with them.  They giggled through the entire thing, especially when I hit the spinner wrong and sent it flying into my character, which then flew across the room.  They were bummed when it was time to go to bed and the youngest was very intent on staying on the couch with her blankie.  Allan thought her resistance was pretty cute, so he gave her a big smile.  She stared at him for about 5 seconds, and then promptly got up and went to her room!  We always get a big kick out of little girls.

We had an impromptu barbeque with some friends that were in town on Saturday and had a lot of fun catching up with them.  Allan is getting really good at cooking meat on the barbeque.  Saturday was the first time we tried vegetables ... the ones that we let cook long enough were really good...

I didn't do anything spectacular for primary this week but that doesn't mean it wasn't entertaining.  There was a new family that moved into the ward.  One of their little boys is a sunbeam (the three year old class).  As we were reviewing Choose the Right I suddenly felt a tug on my arm.  I looked down and saw this sunbeam's older brother (who is 5).  He said "He's stuck!" and pointed at his little brother.  I looked over and sure enough he was stuck.  He had poked his head through the hole in the back of the chair and couldn't get it out!  Poor little guy!  The other teachers noticed him point to his brother and they helped him get out and all was well.  Primary never fails to entertain!

SNOW!

IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!  I just got back from a short walk in the snow and it was BLISS!  I can't even tell you how much I have missed the snow.  It makes me so HAPPY!  It is even starting to stick a little bit.  I'm sure that as soon as it stops it will all melt away quickly and that's okay because it's snowing RIGHT NOW!  Woohoo!

I love walking in the snow and feeling the cold flakes on my face and watching them get stuck in my eyelashes.  The cold makes my whole body feel better!  When it started snowing this morning I just stood and watched it for a long time in amazement.  Then I called my mom, because who better to share your joy with then your mom!  Right?  Then I realized my folly and hurried to get dressed so I could go play in it.  In my hurry I dumped all my shoes on the floor to try and get to my boots and threw my pj's on the floor (gasp!).  I got back to my walk and tracked muddy footprints on the tile and my wet coat is laying in the middle of the floor drying.  So, my house is no longer perfect! 

Thanks for the changes SNOW!  I needed them!

(It did actually get cold enough to kill the petals.  Sorry petals, I didn't really have it in for you but I am sure grateful for the relief from bad allergies!)

"I hope it freezes and all the petals die."

That's what I said this afternoon; and of course I don't really want the petals to die - they're pretty - I just want a break from allergies, and it sure would help if things stopped blooming around here for a couple of weeks.  They've had an unusually warm and dry year, so a lot of things never really died this winter, and are blooming in full force. 

I had a lot of fun with M and L this week.  Poor M broke a tooth and had a really bad toothache so it was a more quiet day than we usually have.  We played in their tent, did some hide and seek, and watched some Care Bears.  L was really wound up from having his cousins over (they left right after I got there on Monday morning) and refused to take a nap, so he was pretty tired when his mom got there.  While we were watching Care Bears L found M's stash of Smarties and snuck as many as he could get whenever she wasn't looking.  He would look at her for a long time, then longingly look at the smarties, look back at her and then when he was sure she wasn't looking he would quietly grab one and stick it in his mouth.  He did it the entire movie and (like the naughty babysitter I am) I quietly watched and laughed as M's Smartie stash slowly got smaller and smaller.  She was too distraught over her tooth to notice though.

On Wednesday I went and helped out at the food bank.  The 2nd Wednesday of every month they hand out food at a ball park close to my house.  I had a lot of fun handing out the food.  When it was over they sent me home with as much food as I could carry.  I added it up later, and I ended up carrying a 35 lb box of food for 1/2 a mile!  Eeesh.  It was really heavy and I counted that as my work out for the day. 

We went and had dinner and played games with some friends on Friday.  We brought brownies for dessert, and during dinner their 3 year old little girl kept saying she wanted one.  At one point she crawled up on her dad's lap, grabbed his face between her hands, put her face to his and said in her cookie monster voice "I want a brownie!"  Apparently the waiting was getting to her.  In between dinner and dessert me and their little girl played chase.  She raced around the living room chanting "I'm gonna get you!" while I shuffled along.  She got the biggest kick out of chasing me but didn't quite understand the "getting" me part. 

 On Saturday we went to the birthday party of the little girl that I babysat a while ago.  She turned 3.  At the party it was a bunch of little kids, moms, me, and Allan.  She was very insistent that Allan and I both come so we did.  She was so happy.  Her mom told me that she insisted they have a pink balloon at the party because that is my favorite color.  We had a lot of fun playing with the kids. 

Today I did singing time for both Jr. and Sr. primaries.  We played golf, and they got a kick out of it.  At one point during Jr. primary sharing time I looked over and M was standing upside down on her chair looking at everyone through her legs!  Last week she cried most of the time because of her tooth so I'm glad she's feeling better.  During Sr. primary sharing time I looked over and saw a little girl that was quietly snoring.  I thought she was pretending to be asleep until she almost fell completely out of her chair and then looked around in confusion to find that everyone else was standing up!  I love working with kids!  They are so entertaining!

We finished our profile for parentprofiles.com and it should be up Tuesday night.  Feel free to go and take a look.  It's pretty similar to our LDS Family Services profile, but there are more pictures.  We're hoping that this website will help to get our information out more.  Here's hoping.

I'm the Winner!

We had our first barbeque last night.  It was so much fun, and the food turned out really good.

We took Allan to a physical therapist for his pelvic and elbow pain and actually had some good success.  The Physical Therapist put some kinesi tape on Allan's elbow and his pain there significantly decreased almost immediately!  It's amazing what a little tape can do.  He also gave Allan some stretches for his elbow and pelvis that he has been doing faithfully.  It seems to be helping his elbow quite a bit, but we're holding out judgement on the pelvis still.  Hopefully it will work well.  We do have hope though because this is the first time in a long time that we've actually seen any results.

I did a lot of baking this week.  I love to bake!  I made brownies (for a Relief Society activity), two different kinds of biscuits, bread, and applesauce/banana squash muffins.  It was so much fun, and now we have some yummy food to enjoy.

I had a lot of fun with M and L this week.  Poor L had an accident and wasn't feeling so well on Monday.  Usually he gets pretty mad at me when I put him down for a nap, but when I asked him this week he smiled at me and walked right over to his crib.  I've never seen a child so happy to take a nap!  When their mom came home M told her to go back to school!  I'm glad they were having so much fun.

I went to a Relief Society activity this week.  It was an auction  and I won a baby blanket and some pacifier leashes.  Woohoo!  Now we have pretty much everything we'll need to bring the baby home when we get one.  The blanket is pretty girly so if we end up with a boy I'll have to gift it to someone but it sure is cute.  This is all of the baby stuff we have now:

 

We want to wait to buy anything else until we have a better idea of what to expect.  We are hoping for a little time to have a baby shower, which would be really helpful, but we'll see what happens.  We are putting our profile on parentprofiles.com too.  It should be up by the end of the month.  A lot of people have had a lot of success through that site.  Hopefully we will too.

Allan got to substitute for Nursery today and he had a blast!  One of our friends daughters is in nursery right now.  She's usually pretty shy but today she was just thrilled to have Allan in there.  As soon as he came in she ran right over to him and talked up a storm.  She told him that she is a princess, and then went around explaining that all of the other little girls are princesses too.  When she got to the little boy she stopped in surprise, looked very confused, and went completely silent.  Allan asked her what the little boy was and she said in complete dismay "I don't know!"  After a little contemplation she determined that he must be a prince and all was well in nursery again.

Today has been a really hard day for us.  Sometimes the waiting just gets to us and we have to have a good cry.  I'm glad it happened on a Sunday this time so that Allan was home and we could cry together!

Way Out West

Sorry about last week.  We were out of town and I wasn't able to get a post ready before we left.  There wasn't much to post about anyway.  Last week we had something planned every night, and we were really excited for a fun and busy week.  Then Allan caught the sickness that was going around his office and we had to cancel our plans until Thursday.  When we went to the concert that was supposed to be on Thursday we found that it had been cancelled.  We were able to go and spend a fun evening with some neighbors on Friday though.  Allan returned to Primary one last time as Captain CTR, and the kids performed their very best for him.  I am so pleased with how well they learned the song.  We did go and get a BBQ for Allan.  It's just a small one, but he is really excited to finally have one of his own.  We are really looking forward to using it this weekend.

 This week we went on a business trip.  Every now and then Allan gets to take classes on the software and electronics that the mine uses, and one was offered this Tuesday and Wednesday.  So, we took Monday off and made it a mini vacation.  We went to Old Tucson Studios (where Hollywood films a lot of their western movies) and then to see Julius Caesar.  Old Tucson was a lot of fun.  We watched a couple of shows - they were super cheesy but that's the way we like them ;), rode the train, went through their haunted mine, ate some fabulous ribs (Allan preferred the brisket), drove their antique cars, walked through all of the sets, took some old fashioned photos, went on a stage coach ride, and got some really yummy fudge.

Big Jake's BBQ.  I don't usually like ribs but these were wonderful.

Old-Fashioned Photo - Their computer wasn't working so we ended up getting a CD of all of the pictures they took for free.  I guess it pays to come when things aren't working.

Us in the stage coach.  We are very grateful for modern transportation.  The stage coach was very uncomfortable.

Allan got in trouble and was put in jail for a time out. ;)

Us driving an antique car.

Allan putting the semaphore down so the train would stop and pick us up.

 We had a really hard time finding the theatre that was showing Julius Caesar because Google maps sent us to the wrong place.  We stopped about 8 students and asked them if they knew where this theatre was and none of them had heard of it.  However, after a really nice girl stopped to help us we found it (about 4 blocks away from where Google sent us) and were able to see the last half of the show.  The last half was really good - I wish we could have seen the entire thing.  The set was really well done, and the lighting was great.  They showed the set go from prosperous to ruins with almost nothing but lighting, and it was really good.  The acting was well done too.  The only thing we didn't really like was how loud the microphones were.  For some reason every where we go here the sound is extremely loud.  You can plug your ears and still hear everything clearly.  Next time we might have to bring ear plugs just so Allan doesn't get a headache from it being so loud.

The company put us up in a Hilton Country Club.  It was really nice.  The rooms were large, and their amenities were amazing.  They had a large pool with water volleyball, hot tubs, a kiddie pool, a water slide, and a putting course just in the inner court yard.  I wish I had taken a picture, but I forgot to.  Then there was the golf course, several restaurants, a great gym and spa, and a running trail that ran through the surrounding desert (eesh).  I ate at one of their restaurants, and it was really good.  Allan was in class the whole time, and I went shopping, so we didn't really get to use any of their amenities, but they sure looked fun.  We did decide though that we really would rather stay at the Marriott next time because the Hilton's beds were not very comfortable - they did have great pillows though.

We went to Babies-R-Us while we were in Tucson and had a lot of fun looking at strollers and toys.  They were having a deal on bouncers and swings so we snatched up one of both.  We decided to go with a stroller that we found on amazon though - it was less expensive.  It was a good thing too because after the bouncer and swing we didn't really have any more room in our car.  Now we just need a baby to put in all of our new baby stuff. 

On Friday we went to the Children's Theatre here.  They did Robin Hood.  It was really cute.  Some of those kids really do a great job.  We thought the best acting went to the children that they brought up out of the audience as hostages, they really put on a good show and gave the sheriffs men a run for their money.

This week in primary they learned the song Stand for the Right.  I handed out little bees for them to raise in the air when they sing "Be True, Be True".  The rest of the class they all buzzed like bees.  Next week I'll have to come up with a way for them to get the buzz's out of their system so we can work on the song a little better!  I subbed for Sr. Primary again and had a lot of fun with the older kids.  I reviewed Choose the Right with them, and they got a big kick out of dressing up in Captain CTR's superhero costume.  I am so grateful that I get to work with such fun and wonderful kids every week!