Aunt Shuh-Shuh

C's new favorite hobby is looking at pictures of our family and friends. He has a few new words for family members. Of course, his cousin "Car-cos" is his favorite to find in pictures. Then, when he started recognizing Carcos's momma, she became Carcos, too. Aunt M has had a TON of nicknames in her life, and my kids just keep adding to them. A used to call her Aunt Money, which I loved.
Now C has graduated from calling her Carcos to calling her "Shuh-Shuh". This is one of my favorite words that he says. It's precious to hear him try so hard to say such a difficult word with a lot of L's in it. I love how much he loves our family.

Summer Pics

At the pool with Grandma

Pool toys! C is going to be a handful at the pool this summer. He was running everywhere, splashing, couldn't get enough of it. So much for a relaxing summer by the pool.

Nonno, A, C and P

At the zoo with some friend from my previous life as a teacher. It was fun to see old friends, meet their new kids and we got to go on the marry-go-round and train. If you can't tell from the monster-sized smile on his face... A had a blast :)

Giraffes... A favorite every time. This was one of the first trips I've taken with C since he could actually see the animals. He is an animal lover, so he was in his own little heaven. Too bad this wasn't a video because his squeals of excitement were pretty cute. The day ended a little earlier than planned when the skies opened up and downpoured on us. A kept asking why we didn't have an umbrella. He even pointed out that everyone else had umbrellas. Of course I had to explain that his slacker mom didn't check the weather closely enough and actually trusted the weathermen when they said it wasn't going to rain until 2. All the other moms planned ahead. Maybe I'll figure out this mom gig someday.

Garage Sale!!

I hope this ends up being coherent, but I have to admit that I'm exhausted. C must have known it was a big, important day because he decided to start it off bright and early at 5:30. Add in a whole day standing in the sun, moving items out to the yard and being in emotional overdrive, I'm spent. But I wanted to blog about today while it was still fresh in my mind.

Wow. The floodgates of Heaven have been opened. We started with a garage so full we couldn't walk in, and ended the day with half of a pick up truck of random items to take to Goodwill. We sold all of our big items, which I was really not wanting to have to move again! We have three items left in our garage that we are going to try to sell on Craigslist, but other than that we only had random odds and ends left. We ended up making DOUBLE what I had set as my far off, hard to reach goal. I feel like God was laughing at me when I set my goal and decided to blow my socks off with just how big he is.

My biggest prayer for today is that we would have the opportunity to share our story with people and bring awareness to the need to care for the 147 million orphans who so desperately want a forever family. This definitely happened, and I was able to share our heart and our story with many people. One lady I had never met before was purchasing some items for her bathroom and I ended up being able to tell her how our friends had pulled together to help us out so we could earn money towards our adoption. I just received an email from her saying she is having a garage sale next weekend and has decided to donate all of her earnings to our adoption fund!

That's all I have energy to type tonight. Thank you to all of you who helped donate items and time to help this happen. There's no way we could have done this without every single one of you. Also, thanks to Shelley who gave me the idea to take some pics. There's only a few, but I can't wait to share these with our kids some day so they can see just how many people were loving them before we even knew who they were. (Though none of them do justice to just how much stuff we had!)

Shaving like Daddy

A has become so much more independent lately. He can do the whole potty process by himself, so when he closed the door while he was going potty yesterday, i didn't think twice about it. Then he started calling for me and had blood everywhere! Apparently he found P's razor and tried to shave his face like daddy. It took awhile to figure out where the cuts were, but once the blood calmed down about 15 min. later, we found two small cuts on his upper lip and one on his bottom lip. That is such a fragile area, so it took forever to get the blood to stop. He wanted a bandaid so bad, and was sad that a bandaid wasn't going to fix this one. It also made eating dinner a little tricky. He had to sit and watch everyone else eat while holding ice on his lips until they stopped bleeding. I hope he learned a lesson about being so curious, but we'll see how long his memory lasts.

garage sale update

so our garage sale to help raise money for our adoption fund is coming up this saturday. we have been absolutely amazed to see how many people have stepped up to help us with this. we've had 13 families contribute items for us to sell, including a sectional couch, a wedding dress, a gps unit, a bike, baby items... it's been amazing. i just closed the garage door after the latest delivery arrived, and its officially full. i can't even step inside. it'll make it a little more difficult to price items ahead of time, but we'll have to make due. i just feel so blessed to have such a huge number of people partnering with us on the journey, and we've only just begun!

i'll keep you posted on how the sale goes. it's supposed to be sunny, which will help. we've got the items to sell, baked goods to sell... now all we need are people to buy our stuff!!

two highlights from the trip to the park today:

1- our newly potty-trained boy had to go and the bathrooms were locked! he had his first experience of going in the woods, and he thought it was the funniest thing ever. he kept saying, "i look like a dog!" of course as soon as he was done, C wanted his turn. monkey-see, monkey-do.

2-A came up to me and handed me a small rock. he said, "this is for you. it's a SPECIAL rock for being a good mommy." never thought i would get all choked up over a rock, but it was so sweet.

Missed the Boat

I feel like our family eats pretty healthy. We don't eat fast food, in years past we've grown our own veggies and herbs, we buy most of our fruits and veggies from the local farmers' market, and we even buy our meat and eggs from a local farm. We rarely have sugary treats in our house (honestly, it's because I would eat them all!). But somehow, our 3 year old has missed the healthy eating boat completely. He would live on PBJ if I would let him, I have to hide veggies in his food by pureeing them, and the only fruits he will eat are applesauce and bananas.

But our conversation today put it over the top. We were on the way home from the park, and A asked for a snack. I told him we could have one when we got home and suggested raisins after mentally searching through our cabinets. Here's the rest of the conversation

A- I don't want raisins. I want something else.
Me - What about yogurt?
A- No. I want butter.
Butter?
Yes, butter.
Baby, you can't just eat butter for a snack. You need to put it on something.
Oh... how about butter on cream cheese?

New Nephew!!

Welcome to my new nephew, Baby I !!! My sister, M, had her second boy today around 4:30 pm. He's precious and looks just like his older brother. Like our blog, she keeps her names annonymous, so I can't post it here. Sorry :) But, it's cute :)