Announcing......

We are finally adopting after years of having it on the table. We have chosen a 5-year-old little boy from Hunan, China. He is 5 months older than Breck, born on July 21, 2007. He has some special needs, right eye ptosis (lazy eye), and 3 fingers on each hand. We are very excited to finally be pursuing his adoption and look forward to sharing this journey with our family and friends.

I am unable to publicly share a blog about him at this time BUT I have set up a private blog where you can see pictures and find out more about our little guy. You do need a blogger account to sign in. If you don't have one they are easy to create. Please if you are interested give me your blogger email address so I can add you to the list. If you aren't comfortable leaving it in the comments you can email me at rachelshphrd@yahoo.com If you set up a blog account I'm pretty sure you can just use your regular email address as your blogger email address.

Don't forget to vote on the two polls I have set up on the side of the blog! You can find the blog by clicking here.

Christmas Part 1

This had to be one of the best Christmases we've had. Not because of what we got but just the feeling in our home. Ryan told me he wouldn't be home from Mongolia until December 26th but he surprised us all and came home on the 21st! We spent the 24th swimming at the public pool, watching Christmas movies, making and eating finger foods, and unwrapping Christmas jammies.

Homeschooling

Those that I stay in contact with regularly are already aware of this, but I thought I'd officially blog about it. We have decided to homeschool the kids for now, maybe forever. I set up a blog so that I can eventually print it, but also because I like looking up blogs that interest me and thought maybe someone else would benefit from it. You can find the homeschooling tab above or click here. I set up a FAQ page and some other pages that might interest blog stalkers or family members. This is Ryan and Gracie working on a Presidents of the US puzzle. Gracie is much better at puzzles than I am!

Golf Tee Pumpkins

I got an idea off Pinterest to get golf tees and a mallet and make designs (or just holes) in pumpkins instead of carving the typical Jack O' Lantern face. I don't know if I'm proud or ashamed of the fact that this was the first time Ryan and I have carved pumpkins together. Hoping it's our last. Painting pumpkins is much easier and they last much longer!!

 Gracie made a peace sign and a heart in hers.

 Jesse spent his time taking off dad's hat and putting it back on.

 Ryan and I got the brunt of pulling the guts out!

 We lit the pumpkins and told ghost stories. This is Ava telling her story.

Ava's Belated Bday Post

Our baby girl is seven! She has such a unique personality and a special place in our family! We love you dearly Ava!

 Typical Ava!! We bought her a baby boy doll that looks just like a newborn. She named him Ethan after her cousin that passed away.

Treasure hunt!

 Arghhh!

 Ava and her friend Chani playing pirate BINGO!

 Breck and his little friend Addy.

Ava's White Belt

Ava has begged me for a long time to put her in karate. After about 2 years I decided she must be serious and I signed her up for Tae Kwon Do. When we went to meet with the owner, Master Moon, he was very impressed with her kicking. He talked to her about respecting others and being grateful. One thing I like about karate is it is about self-confidence, self-control, and of course self-defense. Anyway so I got a babysitter (thank heavens cause it was 2.5 hours long) and went to Ava's first belt test. I'm proud of my darling baby!

Aunt Vicki

My lovely Aunt Vicki came down to visit from Washington this week. I made her a Christmas blanket and gave it to her instead of mailing it around Christmas time. She loved it! We had a great time visiting together with my mom, sister Annie, niece Jackie, and her cute kids! I even got to rock Alexa to sleep! I am really trying to catch up on blogging and journaling and even updated my FHE blog! One day at a time is my mantra.

Feeding The Goats

When I was a kid my dad would chop up squash and vegetables that weren't being used and feed them to our cows. The huge butcher knife he used scared me but I loved to watch the cows chow down on the squash long after my dad had moved onto another project. Sounds silly, but that is one of a long list of fond memories I have growing up on a small hobby farm. We have a few farms like that around  here too. The kids love to gather the veggies we aren't keeping up with (too many I hate to admit) and go feed the goats, 2 cows, and 1 horse. Not sure what's up with Ava's paint smock. I think she was trying to keep the cow and goat slobber at bay.

Happy 2nd Birthday Baby!

Jesse turned 2 on August 17th. We took the kids swimming a week or so later when Ryan was actually home, but the birthday day was pretty low key.

 JJ helping me make our morning smoothie, still showing signs of the black eye he got from the bathtub!

Ava eventually helped him blow out the candle.

 The kids along with our neighbor-friend Chelbie!

I sure do love this little blondie!

Summer 2012

I'm so behind. I never even blogged about the 4th of July or put up any pictures of our many, many, many, days out in the pool this summer. Thought I'd share a few to get caught up. The first 4 are on July 4th at my sister Dana's house. The kids loved going from the playhouse, to the pool, to the pink car, to the goodies and round and round again.

 Finally dark enough to enjoy fireworks. Then the dreaded 75 minute drive home in the dark.

We did lots of swimming this summer. I'm not one of these people that leaves pool water in overnight so it gets really old emptying and refilling the pool literally almost every day. Our friends have a swim spa and I am SO jealous! If anyone has 15,000 dollars to send my way for a swim spa I'd be much obliged! Being the nice mom that I am I got some pretty big muscles lugging buckets of hot water out to the pool too. Not every day but enough for it to become another reason that I really really really wish a swim spa would suddenly appear in my back yard by the first snow fall. I had a great time swimming in our friends spa with snow falling all around last December. Dream dream dream.............