christmas eve

this year we took a new approach to christmas.  we felt like we've way overdone christmas in years past and while we put a great deal of focus on what it's truly about, we felt our actions weren't necessarily following our beliefs.  so, we decided pretty early on that we were going to adopt a new tradition.  we take no credit for this, a sweet friend told me about it, i read about it from another blog and combined the two into our newest tradition.  we told the kids we were going to do five gifts this year:  something you want, something you need, something to play with, something to read, and something to give away.  on christmas eve when they opened the advent calendar, we had a note in there that told them they would be receiving their first gift for christmas and that it would be the gift they gave away.  we gave them each some money and they looked through the world vision catalog and the samaritan's purse catalog that we had received in october and began searching for the perfect gifts.  i should rewind and say that last year, we did this as a family and used some money the kids had saved to purchase gifts as a family.  but, we pretty much had the final say.  so this year, i think they enjoyed being able to spend the money the way they wanted.  it was so much fun watching them pick gifts that really represented their true personality.

luke was the first to pick his gifts.  he's a boy who knows what he wants and makes quick, confident decisions.  he chose to provide fruit trees and to feed a hungry baby for a week.  anna took a while longer to pick something.  and she had been pouring through the catalogs for several weeks.  she eventually landed on clothing and shoes for children in need and two rabbits.  two rabbits will multiply into 52 rabbits by the end of the year (i assume they work out the male/female aspect of all that.)  and sam decided on a share of a dairy trio that provides three families with a goat, a cow, and a sheep for milk and wool.   he had a little bit of extra money left and decided to provide a stuffed lamb that plays jesus loves me.  i normally am a "no more stuffed animals mom," but who can resist that.  plus it wasn't going to be added to our collection.  :)  and if any of you know sam, you know that the stuffed animal fits him perfectly.  that boy LOVES stuffed animals!

i know they loved giving and we hope that this will be a tradition they carry on in their families someday.  we ended the evening with the worship service at our church and dinner at our house with gram and pops.  here are a few pictures for us to  remember the wonderful day!

a family picture of us all dressed up for church

games with gram and pops

and snuggled all on one air mattress (another tradition) ~ note the stuffed animal bucket in the background all belonging to sam

christmas fun

we love celebrating the birth of our savior!  it's a really special time in our house!  the first couple of weeks of december always seem a bit crazy with school projects ending, piano recitals, and the list goes on.  but as soon as thanksgiving is over, we cherish the month ahead.  every year the kids look forward to our advent calendar.  this is a calendar i bought at target several years ago.  however, they've caught on to the tradition of a piece of candy for each day and sometimes a fun surprise activity.  this year was no different.  on december 1st, the kids opened these fun suckers for their first surprise.

we decorated cookies, made gingerbread houses, visited santa, opened christmas pj's, looked at christmas lights in new jammies, got hot chocolate at starbucks. and most importantly, ended each night reading from behold the lamb of god by russ ramsey.  it was a little over our kids' heads, but i know they will get a little more out of it each year.  here are some pictures to recap.

new christmas jammies

visiting santa in downtown fort worth

our gingerbread village

christmas cookie fun

the finished product

piano recital

luke and anna both had their piano recitals on the same day.  luke started taking piano lessons one year ago and this marked his second recital.  anna started this fall and had her first recital this month.  they both did great.  their teacher mrs. lamb is precious and is always bragging about their talent.  another thing they inherited from allan.  i married up, people.  :)  here are some pictures and a video of their performances.  this first picture melted my heart.  i love how they are holding hands.

right before the performance.

anna

 

luke

their sweet teacher mrs. lamb

wouldn't be complete without a picture of sweet sam who sits through lessons each week and a recital without complaint.

spelling bee

so right before thanksgiving, the kids' school has a class spelling bee.  each class receives a list of words to practice, and they have a class contest with a winner and runner up.  this year, luke and anna each won first place in their grade.  luke also won the second grade class spelling bee last year.  i hear spelling is hereditary and let me just let y'all know, it didn't come from my genes.  the reason i know this is because i just had to look up how to spell "hereditary," and i have no less than three spelling errors in each of my blog posts.  also, i have to look up the word restaurant each time i spell it.  :)  they did however inherit this from their amazing dad.  he won three spelling bees in his life, like really won his school spelling bee.  anyway, back to luke and anna, they would be competing in the school spelling bee for 1st through 8th graders.  we got the list of words less than one week before the school spelling bee.  here's a picture of the stage where their chairs were.

anna was so nervous, like i thought she might break into tears at any minute nervous.  luke was probably nervous, but it didn't show.  they each made it through several rounds and both ended up tying for third place with each other and a sixth grader.  they were in the top five until anna missed the word "chorus" and luke missed the next word "quarrel" right after anna.  then, the sixth grader missed the next word.  so basically, the three of them tied for third place.  we were so amazed!  they did fantastic and we were extremely proud of them.  the last two standing were a fourth and sixth grader. i think the sixth grader won.  here's a picture of them at the end, probably relieved it was over!

great job luke and anna! and for the record, i just did spell check and not a single misspelled word.  maybe i do get to take a little credit.  no, probably not.

thanksgiving

we hosted thanksgiving this year and always enjoy having the family all in one place.  this year it was my side of the family.  unfortunately, my brother todd and his sweet wife jennifer couldn't be here.  we missed y'all!  i am not sure i got many pictures of the day because i spent a good portion of it napping.  which also brings me to thank my sweet hubby for doing the dishes and carving the remainder of the turkey so we had some awesome leftovers.  here's a picture of the table.

and here's the  only other picture i have showing any food on the island.

whiskey glazed carrots, sweet potato souffle, green bean bundles, dressing, turkey, cranberry relish, mashed potatoes, green salad, and rolls.  all yummy!

the rest of the family played a game my dad created, but apparently "it wasn't fair."  all in all a fantastic thanksgiving!  

garage sale

this blogging thing is way tougher than i thought.  so, the garage sale was a HUGE success!  we had so much stuff and i'll let this picture below prove just that.

it was truly amazing how much stuff people donated.  we sold quite a bit and donated the rest to goodwill that afternoon.  my one rule for the garage sale was that it wouldn't be coming back into my garage at the end of the day.  :)  we were overwhelmed with the donations we received.  and so much of it was "big ticket items."  we had a leather couch, a sectional, a table and chairs, a super nice jogging stroller, and so much more.  thank you to those of you who donated.  and a  big thanks to allan's parent's and my great friend sarah lowry!  you guys were troopers!  we made $1250 which covered our home study that was on december 17.  crazy, right?  we've never made that much at a garage sale EVER!  this is how allan and i ended the day.  

again, a huge thank you to all of our family and friends!  we couldn't have done it without you!

one of those months....

it's been a long time since i posted.  it's just kind of been one of those months.  i'm not even sure where it all started, but i do know that our a/c had to be replaced, we need some foundation work on the house, we've had sinus infections, one kid down with strep, another down with strep, mom down with strep, dad with stomach bug, and first child down with strep again.  in the midst of all of that, we are planning a massive garage sale on saturday in hopes to raise some money to offset the cost of the adoption.  we have received so much from friends and family and are so grateful!  it's sorted, priced, and signs are made.  we are expecting more to come in tonight and tomorrow night.  saturday will be an exhausting day, but we cannot wait for it!

there are so many other things that i won't bore anyone with here, because the important thing is that during all of these "trials" we feel like we've been going through, it's nice to know we have a God to cling to.  this morning i opened my bible and read:

"The Lord your God is with you, 

he is mighty to save.  

He will take great delight in you, 

he will quiet you with his love, 

he will rejoice over you with singing."  

Zephaniah 3:17

we have absolutely no doubt that satan is trying to attack us for our obedience to God's call to adopt.  we will cling to the hope of our Savior.  we know HE will carry us through these trials.  this verse is all about being content in HIS love for us and how much HE loves us and desires to be with each one of us.

"port a"

we had the awesome privilege of going to port aransas with some dear friends.  allan and i had never been there, but it was perfect!  in fact, we decided it was going to be an annual trip.  we laughed so hard and cried a little (mostly from laughing).  in fact, luke declared, "i've never laughed so hard in my entire life."  pretty serious stuff coming from an eight year old.  we stayed in an awesome house, relaxed, and played with the kids.  i think sometimes trips like this are food for the soul.  since the kids don't technically go to school on fridays, we loaded up while they were at school on thursday and did fridays homework in the car.  we finished it up and played on the beach all day friday and saturday.  we didn't rush out on sunday morning either.  the kids worked on more school work on the way home sunday and didn't have much to do on monday at home.  great trip, great friends!  thankful that the lord blessed us with their friendship.  here are some (a bunch of) pics to recap.  i know my family will appreciate them, the rest of you, not so much.

silly jack smiling for the camera!

sam buried in the sand

drip castle (and let me add if you have boys, you realize this quickly turned into potty humor)

they could all pass as siblings, right!

ahh....

posing outside of the condo we stayed in

both families

a shot from the living area into the kitchen (see i wasn't exaggerating, pretty awesome!)

we're pregnant...

okay, okay, so probably not what y'all are thinking.  but we are paper pregnant!  this post has been on my heart for so many months, i am surprised it's finally time to actually try and type it out.  after months or maybe years of praying and having a heart for orphans, our prayers are coming to fruition.  we've decided to pursue an international adoption.  i can tell you that since i was in high school, my heart has been to "work with orphans."  i always assumed that meant working in an orphanage on a mission trip at some point in my life.  i knew it wasn't really a possibility to work with orphans here in texas.  i mean, i did try and follow that desire through my work with birthmom's at an adoption agency and through working with lower income children who were developmentally delayed.  however, life got busy.  college, marriage, work, kids, home school, etc.  but, after we had our third child, the doctor confirmed for us, that due to my history of premature labor and the fact that our second and third babies spent some time in the nicu that it was probably a good idea to not have any more children.  at the time we were told this it seemed natural and fine.  we had three perfectly healthy babies under the age of 3.  we were busy.  we were full.  we had 2 boys and a girl and life was good.  however, our hearts began to stir a little about 2 years ago.  we talked about how we wish we could just have one more.  or maybe we should have just taken some time off from having babies.  or maybe it was just too many babies too quickly.  lots of "what ifs" occurred.  i think we probably tossed the word "adoption" around here and there, but would ultimately decide "we can't afford that."  which is true, we can't.  we aren't rich, we don't have a ton of savings, all the typical responses that you hear and think.  but, i kept researching it.  we'd talk, allan would be on board with the discussions for sure, but then it would get put on the back burner for some reason.  i'm not quite sure when it actually happened, but i think it was on a date night.  they come around about every 3 months. :) i think allan said something along the lines of "so, are we gonna adopt or what?"  i was shocked, not because he hadn't acted interested, but mostly because he rarely brought the discussion up.  so, we started talking more about it.  domestic, international, foster?  the decision seemed overwhelming initially.  after much prayer, we began focusing our attention on international.  one is not better than the other.  you pray about it and decide what is right for your family.  and for our family, international felt right.  the country choices seemed overwhelming.  however, when you sit down and look at all the options on paper and what the requirements are for each country, it tends to pick itself out for you.  so, we chose ethiopia or rather ethiopia chose us.   so here we go, we can't wait to share the ups and downs along the way.  as of now, the next step will be the home study which is already scheduled for the middle of december.  we would appreciate any prayers along the way when you think about it.  

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

12 years

allan and i just celebrated 12 years of marriage.  it seems so long, but it's been so much fun!  if you would have told me 12 years ago, that we would have 3 kids, 2 dogs, and i'd be home schooling part time, i would have laughed out loud.

we celebrated with our annual trip to reata here in fort worth.  i don't know what it is about that place, but it's so yummy to me.  i was so glad this year that allan ordered the same thing as me.  it's kind of a joke when we go out to eat.  most of the time, i order the jumbo 12 oz + steak and potatoes type meal and allan orders a fish or something way healthier.  and the sweet guy or girl who brings the food out always tries to hand me the fish and allan the steak.  then they act surprised that i'm the one eating the big fat plate of deliciousness.  so, this year, allan was sweet and suffered through a 12 oz or maybe it was 14 oz rib eye and potatoes.  we didn't do much else that day.  he was actually sick (fever and all).  one of the millions of things i love about that man is he never ever complains.  i knew he felt bad the day before, so the entire day i kept asking him how he was feeling and he always said, "great."  little did i know he' d been popping advil the entire day.

allan, thank you for marrying me.  thank you for three beautiful babies and hopefully more some time soon.  thank you for playing with said babies when you get home from work each day.  thank you for encouraging me.  thank you for supporting me when i have crazy ideas.  thank you for sometimes bringing me flowers :).   thank you for always working so hard to provide for our family.  thank you for  always, always coming home on time.  thank you for never complaining.  thank you for being confident in yourself and in your decisions.  thank you for being you!  happy 12 years my love!

the best we got that night!

just the boys....

friday night anna had a slumber party which meant it was just me and the boys.  it's so amazing to me how different it feels when one kiddo's missing.  so doable, you know?  but, this life isn't about what's easy for us now is it?  we had a lot of fun.  we ate dinner at home and then went to braum's for dessert.  they were allowed to get a double dip which they thought was pretty awesome!

sam seems to be missing his cone?

ahhh, there it is.  looks yummy!

we came home and luke said his tooth felt loose enough to pull.  so, i took a look and sure enough it came right out.  it's hard to see in the picture and i don't know the names of the teeth, but if you are looking at him, it's to the right of his big tooth on top.  i think this puts him just one tooth behind anna now.  yes she's ahead of him and no, he's not happy about that.

love me some missing teeth pics!

 

 

 

we came home and watched the great muppet caper.  you remember from the 70's?  it was really strange i must say.  movies have definitely improved since we were kids.  they slept on the floor in sleeping bags which is always fun!  sorry i took this with my phone, in the dark, so the quality is horrible.

they wanted allan to sleep with them.  ;)

such a fun night with our boys!  hope we get to do this again soon!

first day for everyone

this marks the first year that all of our kids are going to go to school on the same day and at the same time.  they've all moved into the university model school.  it's part private and part home school.  they attend classes on tuesday's and thursday's.  then monday, wednesday, and friday, is spent at home with their homework and me acting as "co-teacher."  it's been a great choice for our family.  it also marks the first year that i have more than a two hour window by myself.  i never thought i'd hear myself say this, but i'm actually struggling with what to do with myself when they're gone.  the kids piano teacher called last thursday to set up lessons and asked if it was an okay time to chat.  i heard myself say, "ummm, yes, actually, i'm a little bored."  pretty crazy!  i know it's going to be a great year for all of us!  here are some pictures of the first and second day.  i couldn't choose a favorite, so i guess stop reading now if you aren't interested in looking at a ton of pictures of uniformed kids.  i am crazy about plaid and tucked in shirts!  oh and ignore the dead grass and plants, we are in a bit of a drought.

luke starting 3rd grade

anna starting 2nd grade

sam starting kindergarten

second day of school

six flags

i had not been to six flags since i was probably 13 or 14 and it didn't seem like it had changed one bit.  actually, that's not totally true.  allan and i went and rode one ride after we first got married because we had free tickets.  but, i hadn't been through the entire park since i was a teenager and i remembered almost everything about it.  the roller coasters are way more nauseating to me now though.  but the smell was the same.  hot tar!  yuck!  anyway, the kids earned free tickets to six flags for completing six hours of reading last spring.  of course, we waited until the last week to use our tickets before they expired and also the hottest week of the summer.  i think it was 110, the day we went.  it was a blast though!  and we ended the night at braum's for dessert for dinner!  definitely always a fave for me!  here are a few pictures to help us remember the day!

more luke's speed, thankful for a hubby who likes this too!

the tea cups (luke and i opted out) based on my near death experience at disney.

this was in looney tune's land which was definitely more anna and sam's speed.  we hung out here for quite a while, while luke and allan rode batman over and over.

the parachutes!  love these!

ranger game fun

every year a guy that works with allan sells "coupons" to ranger games.  this year allan bought two packs of coupons.  this year, we went to our first game on sunday.  was it a waste of money?  probably.  but, it was a fundraiser for his kid's little league team.  so, oh well. it was hot though, it was around 107 on sunday.  but, we had fun anyway.

this was before the game started when we weren't dripping sweat.

anna took this of us after we had been sweating.

sam played some wiffle ball.

luke did some pitching, he did really good.

anna got a home run playing some plinko.

even though we probably will only make it to one game this year and we are in the midst of a heat wave, the kids had a blast.  maybe next year we will just buy one pack of coupons though.  right allan?

well...

well, i'm entering the blog world.  i'm pretty sure i won't be any good at keeping up with this, but i'm gonna try.  mostly i think it will end up being a place where we keep pics of the kids and a funny story or two.  i'll hopefully print it at the end of the year and pretend i'm some organized mom who scrapbooks.  it's to make up for the fact that i've never done any of their baby books.  not even our oldest.  i'm surprised i'm even admitting it really, because it makes me feel like you're judging me.  anyways, i have all their stuff.  in a box.  in a closet.  they all three have matching baby books, but i've never written one thing in any of them.  so, that's what this blog is gonna be for.  memories.  oh yeah, i also don't capitalize.  i think it takes up too much time and it always makes me have to look down at the keyboard to find the shift key.  then my fingers lose their position on the keyboard and i mess up.  so, don't judge.  oh and one last thing, it's gonna hopefully help us keep a journal of this new journey we're embarking on.  but more about that later.