One Month Ago

I've added nearly as much to this blog today as I have all year so far, but we've just had such big, major, fun things going on I can't let it pass. Once I finish this I am going to clean the bathrooms and mop the floor or die trying. Everyone is sort of napping or playing or at school right now, so I better grab this chance while it lasts!

Today is the one month anniversary of Leah's Gotcha Day...so here's a look at that roller coaster of a day in pictures.

Jer was pacing by the door for hours while we waited and waited.

I was just about as nervous and anxious as I've ever been in my life at this point.  Every other family had their baby by now, and I had watched and photographed it all through a haze of tears and I thought I might burst if she didn't show up soon.

The first Leah sighting...Paul stood lookout for us at the end and took this picture as she came in from the parking lot.

Our first look and feel of Leah in the flesh.  After months of waiting all the while hoping, praying, and thinking about her incessantly...there she was!

Bring on the ugly cry face..it was emotional.  She looked so tiny and scared all bundled up in that gigantic snowsuit.

One of our first family photos.  At this point everybody in our group was taking our picture.  I'm sure it was totally overwhelming for Leah.

Our guide going over the few items that were sent from the orphanage with her.

Jer signing on the dotted line to take guardianship of Leah for the night.

Jer and his baby girl...he was hooked immediately.

Posing with the less than pleasant (especially the lady in red) orphanage workers who brought Leah before they walked out the door and never looked back.

Our first shot back at the hotel after we stripped down the layers to find a scared, sweaty, smelly little baby who had no clue where she was or what was happening to her.


One month later...Leah is beautiful and sweet, and we are so glad she's finally here.  What a blessing she is and what an amazing transformation she has begun.  Many people have commented that Leah is a lucky little girl.  I get what they mean because compared to where she's been her life is so much better but her beginnings certainly can't be described as lucky.  I think we're the lucky ones.  I have a daughter!  That still sounds weird.  Weird but good.

Yesterday I went back to volunteer at Luke's school for the first time.  He begged and pleaded for me to bring Leah.  Luke's teacher is amazing and has been so interested in Leah and the adoption, so she was very excited to see her.  All of the kids reacted so positively and just thought she was the cutest thing ever.  The best thing to see was Luke's face as he was literally beaming with pride and love for his little sister.  One month down, forever to go.

Spring and Easter Fun

Every year basically since college we have headed south to the desert for some sort of backpacking/camping trip over Spring Break. This continued during our married with no kids years and has since evolved to be mostly car camping with day hikes. It's something I look forward to each year. We missed the years right after Seth's and Ian's births but that's about it. This year we stayed home during Spring Break, but the kids still had lots of fun playing outside in the beautiful weather and spending time with friends and cousins. They celebrated Easter and hunted eggs with both sides of the family. We have enough candy and junk around here to last a lifetime. Those mini Cadbury eggs are of the devil...I can easily eat a bag myself but sadly I've eaten so many the last month I'm almost sick of them! That's saying something about the sheer volume I've ingested. We are going to wait and head south in May for our annual desert trip, and I can't wait. It will be Leah's first outdoor adventure. Here are pictures of another first...Leah's first holiday with her family...Easter. Adding a new baby to the family through the miracle of adoption certainly sets the tone for appreciating the Savior's life and resurrection.

Leah's Forever Day

Friday March 30th was a much anticipated day.  We were able to take Leah to the temple and have her sealed to our family forever.  It was awesome!  It was such a neat experience.  We had so many family and friends in attendance supporting us.  Our boys were able to come into the temple and witness the sealing.  It's an experience that I know Luke and probably Seth will always remember.  It's so comforting and amazing to know that a little girl born in China where there's not freedom to worship freely is now our forever daughter.  The blessings of the gospel and the temple are incredible.

Leah was very peaceful and happy throughout the entire event.  I think she knew it was a special day for her.  She was almost sleepy and out of it before the ceremony when we were trying to get pictures of her, but she was a little angel in the temple.  (Ian not so much.  For those of you who were there and know our spunky Ian let's just say it could have been worse!  For whatever reason he wouldn't nap and was just super grouchy from the get go that afternoon.  Then he wanted to stay in the playroom, then ride the elevator continuously, etc.  When he finally got to the sealing room he wanted to be part of the action and was not taking no for an answer!  Poor Cindy had to physically keep him from running to us.  I think it was about that point he shouted something along the lines of, "get your hands off of me!"  Yep.  That happened.  We all got a chuckle about it and the sealer picked up the pace quite a bit.  Oh Ian.)

I can't say much about the ceremony here, but it was great to have my mom in white helping with Leah and the spirit was very strong.  I couldn't really look around the room much at all our guests or the tears would flow.  Tears of gratitude and just pure happiness.  We are so blessed!

Our friend Candi took some beautiful pictures of our family, and I'm so grateful to her.  Leah was kind of out of it and not really performing at first but there are still lots of great shots of the family and my handsome little men.  Thanks Candi!

Welcome to our Forever Family Leah!

 I feel bad that some people had already left before we took this group picture.  We are missing some great friends who were there with us.  We had a fun dinner at our house afterwards in Leah's honor with about 65 or 70 people there to celebrate!

To my non LDS friends who may be wondering what this post is all about I'd love to tell you.   In case you don't know already, we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  You may know us as Mormons.  There are lots of misconceptions out there about our church so let me quickly clarify one thing--we are Christians!  If you'd like to learn more about LDS temples or our religion please contact me, or you can visit the church's great website www.lds.org.  If you do check it out, you should watch some of the "Mormon Messages."  The one called "Dayton's Legs" (click through to find it) is especially touching.  A website with answers to lots of commonly asked questions about Mormons and statistics and facts about our church is www.mormonnewsroom.org.  Thanks!

New Glasses

Luke just got some totally sweet new glasses.  He loves them.

He's come a long way since that first little pair...

(and at this point he'd already been wearing glasses for about 9 months)!

Fun Weekend

I am such a bad blogger lately and an even worse picture taker.  I used to snap shots of my kids continually and now I rarely break the camera out.  Part of it is that I hate taking pictures indoors with bad light and a flash but that's not the best excuse.  We didn't have big plans for the long weekend (it wasn't even long for Jer), but we did have lots of fun anyway and everyone got along so well.  It's always nice to remember when your kids are being sweet and thankful and having fun!

We watched a lot of basketball this weekend.  Luke loves it, Seth is in it for the treats, and Ian can now be managed in bleachers.  Last year we went to almost every home MC game to see Troy play but haven't gone to any this year.  Luke went to one with a friend.  We finally hit the last one Friday night, and they won!  We doubled our fun by using Mandy and Craig's tickets (thanks!) to take the whole fam to the Aggie game Saturday night.  They did not win...not by a long shot, but it was still fun.  Jer and Luke also mixed in a day of skiing on Saturday.

This weekend we finally got some snow and it kind of looks like winter out there.  It has been such a strange winter with freakishly warm temps and virtually no snow!  We have hardly had opportunities to even break the snow clothes out at home.  Well, this weekend's storm finally put some snow on the ground.  We don't have the feet we usually have but at least there are now inches out there!  The kids enjoyed their day off of school today.  Luke ended up going sledding with a friend, and the little boys (notice how I throw Seth into either category--sorry middle child) and I made a snowman.  We also made a trip to a massive book sale, and the kids made a haul for dirt cheap.  I'm so glad my kids all love books.  I can't even keep my bookworm Luke in books, but this should last a few weeks.  He's already educated me about the Titanic which was the topic of a book he chose and read on the way home.  He's been making us laugh (including himself) all night because for some reason he cannot say that word right--he keeps saying Titantic.

Ian seemed convinced our snow man would soon be talking and walking like in the Frosty movie.  I really put a lot of effort into composing these shots so that I could be sure to get both the rain gutter and some mud in the background.

Cute boys!

Just What the Doctor Ordered

My last post was a bit on the negative side, and I decided I needed to do something about my attitude.  Jer and I have been discussing the fact that we are adding to our family and our kids really need some individual attention from each of us.  We spend lots of time together as a family and have daily moments with each kid, but we are really trying to set aside time and adjust our schedules to have a monthly activity with the older boys one-on-one.  Jer took each boy skiing just with him and Luke lucked out with an Aggie game as well in January.  I took February and had such a fun time spending some individual time with my big boys.  These pictures are from my cell phone and terrible but here's what we did...

 Luke and I went roller blading.  He has never been on any kind of roller skates/blades before.  When we got there for some reason he wanted to do the old school roller skates.  Although it was totally taking me back I tried to convince him that the blades would be more fun.  He didn't listen.  After being a total zoo for about 10 minutes and doing several sweet rock star splits he decided to take my advice.  After we switched to the blades he got the hang of it and had tons of fun.  I have honestly never roller bladed before either, but I liked it too.  We ended the night with a game of air hockey.  He just kept telling me how fun it was, and it was so great to just hang out and have fun with him.  Whenever I spend time with him alone like that I'm always amazed at how mature and grown up he's getting.  We are both looking forward to our next one-on-one.

Seth's original idea was bowling but after Luke and I did roller blading he wanted to do that.  I held him off for this month but maybe we'll give it a try next time.  Seth and I had lunch and hit the lanes and had such a fun time.  I am an awful bowler and so is Seth.  Our scores were one point different.  In my defense, he used the gutters and I didn't!

These activities were a refueling for me and were such a good reminder of what great, fun boys I have.  They were both so grateful and excited to get to go and do something fun just with me.  Love you!

Mental Snapshots

I haven't exactly been a blogger extraordinaire so far this year, but I do need to document some things.  My kids have nearly driven me crazy with their arguing lately...with each other...in response to my requests for them to do their chores, homework, etc. but on the other hand there have been a lot of good moments too, and I need to remember those.  In fact, after a particularly trying evening with Luke several days ago I told Jer I needed to go in and lay with him for a minute...just observe him in his sweet, sleepy state and remind myself about all of his wonderful qualities.  I did and it helped my state of mind a lot.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that my kids are just that...kids!  They are not going to be sweet, compliant angels all of the time.  They have minds and wills of their own, and it's not my job to bend or even break them down to what I see fit but instead to recognize and emphasize their God given good qualities and strengths and implement fair consequences for bad behavior.  I am so a work in progress.  With all that said there isn't anything that crazy going on around here.  It's just family life.  Parenting is hard and sometimes I feel like a slow learner!

Before I went on that big tangent I actually meant to blog about a fun night our family spent at The Beav.  We headed up a few weeks ago for an evening of night skiing with our ward.  I hadn't really intended to get Ian on skis but once we got there it was either chase the wild man around the lodge all night or get him out.  We decided to let him ski, and it ended up being a really fun night for the whole family.

I had a kid by the ticket office take a really cute picture of our whole family (rarity) including Ian on the tiniest skis, but before I could load it onto the computer one of my children, who shall remain nameless, was messing around with the camera and deleted it.  I was sad and then I got over it.

So here are a few mental pictures of a fun family night:
**Jer and I setting a new record for time spent getting kids into ski gear.
**Ian telling me and anyone else who would listen how it was "so fun to skateboard" all night.
**Ian wearing skis that were about 12 inches long.  The smallest ones I've ever seen.
**Luke stopping to wait and helping Seth up crash after crash.
**Seth getting off track and piling it up before we even made it from the patrol building over to the lift due to his missing edgy wedgy.  This was followed by Luke attempting to pull Seth (who now weighs more than him) back onto his feet and get him back into his skis.  This was then followed by me carrying/skate skiing with Seth until we were back on track and finding myself out of breath before we even got started.
**Riding the "big chair" up the hill with my boys on a freezing cold night.
**Watching Luke go off the jumps on the side of Little Beav, followed by Seth's version, followed by Ian's request to go off some "yittle jumps too."
**The healthy quad workout I got out snowplowing with Ian "skiing" between my legs.

We all made some good memories of Ian's first time on the slopes, and I'm going to recall these mental images next time I'm about to blow!