Our dog Daisy

Daisy is now 8 years old and she is starting to show it a bit. She is a very active, some say hyper, dog and loves running and playing. We knew something was wrong with her on Friday night when she just didn't even greet us at the door when we came home. She was sluggish and shaking most of the evening, we thought maybe she had a seizure while we were out. (She has epilepsy). She always sleeps in Liam's room, but that night she couldn't even make it up the 6 stairs to his room. Ryan carried her up to his room because she wanted to be there so much. We decided to take her to the vet in the morning if she didn't look better.

When morning came, she was worse. She could hardly walk and we feared that she may have ruptured a disc in her back. Ryan called the vet as soon as they opened and took her in. They looked at her and did some x-rays. The bad news was that she hurt her back, the good news was that it was only a pinched nerve not a ruptured disc. They gave us some anti-inflammatory medicine and put her on bed rest for a week.

The first day went okay, although she wanted to get every time she heard someone, she physically couldn't do it. Day two has been a little more difficult to keep her down. We have to put her on a leash when she goes out to pee and we are letting her go on the deck (otherwise she has to do stairs). Don't worry Ryan will clean it up in the spring!! We have her bed, water and food all in a little area of our living room with a box blocking her in the corner. If we aren't by her we can definitely hear her when she makes it to the kitchen. Her back legs kind of just drag on the tile when she comes in the room.

Hopefully the week will go by quickly and she will recover well. I know that she is really bored and hates not being able to run and play, but it is for her own good. I thought keeping Liam down after his surgery when he was one was difficult, I think this is going to be more difficult every day that passes.

What a difference a day makes!

Remember how I hate winter? Well, now we are at war!

On Wednesday morning Ryan had to go back to work, he was not excited about that. His mom is in town, so we loaned her his car since he takes the bus. At 6:15 he woke me and the kids up to drive him to the bus stop, not a big deal. When we got outside we found out it had snowed 6 inches and it made everything a big deal. I drove him slowly and safely to the bus stop, a lot of the streets were already plowed. Then I dropped him off and turned around in a parking lot and started up the hill to the main road. The road we were on was not plowed and my little minivan got experience snow first hand. My wheels just spun and there was a truck behind me wanting to go forward with his life. He had given me some room, so I backed up and tried it again and again. Then his patience ended and he went around me. I kept trying while Ryan watched me from his bus window. Next a truck with a plow thing on the front was behind me, but he had no patience or compassion (I thought maybe he could drop his little plow thing for me). I guess Liam counted the tries up the hill and got to 11 (he counted them silently, otherwise he wouldn't be alive right now;) So, we made it up the hill and drove home safely.

Next problem was the 6 inches of snow on our driveway. The three of got dressed and went to shovel the driveway. Our brand new snow blower is currently broken, so we had a lot of shoveling. We shoveled off and on for 3 hours, the good thing is that it was warm out at least. Then they finally plowed our street and made a mess at the end of our driveway. At that point I gave up! My sister was coming over, but she has a truck so she can drive over it! Ryan was a great guy and went out to shovel it after his mom left last night at 8:30pm. I may have to go touch it up today in the heat of the day, but he got the majority done.

Well, today is going to be a new day. We woke up at 6:15 and took Ryan to the bus without any problems. We have no snow to move today either. I am going to take the boys to the zoo that I had promised for yesterday and we are going to have a fun relaxing day.

For the record I am so sore today, my head won't even stay up on my neck. That must mean that I worked out! Yay me!

Wordless Wednesday- Christmas is over :(

Adoption Update

We finally completed our dossier (application to Philippines) and our agency has sent it off to ICAB (the government agency in the Philippines that decides who gets to adopt). Now we are going to start the waiting game. At this point we first wait for approval. This is when the Philippines accepts our application and puts us in the pile of people that want to adopt. After our approval we wait for our referral, this is when we find out which kids will actually be part of our forever family. The time between the approval and the referral can be as short as 3 months or as long as 3 years or anywhere in between. We will travel to the Philippines 1-3 months after our referral. We stay in the Philippines for one week and bring the children home with us.

So now we wait. We have a lot to do to get prepared for our new children. We have things to physically rearrange in our house and have to prepare mentally also. Thank you everyone for your support.

Wordless Wednesday- What's left of it

Decorating a different kind of Tree

Aunt Trudy and Uncle Todd sent us a cool gift this year. (Thank you for the cool gift!) They sent us a pre-baked gingerbread tree. All we had to do was decorate and eat it. We had our nieces over because they just had a new baby brother and he was in the hospital still and they helped us decorate.We started out stacking the tree using frosting glue in between the layers. Lance of course just wanted to eat without decorating.Then they each got a chance to put some frosting on the tree. We had green and white for the snow. Then they put candies on it (and some in their mouths).

The finished product. It looks just a little different than the picture on the box:)

Everyone posing and getting ready to dig in. The pieces at the top were pretty small, but you got a lot of candy with those pieces. In the end it evened out.

Chowing down on the tree. They each got to eat one cookie from the tree. Yum, yum, worth the effort!!! I bought us a Gingerbread house to make before I knew about the tree, I guess we'll do that next week!

Finally decorated the tree

Today we finally got around to decorating the Christmas tree. My dad took me to buy the tree on Thurs. (it was supposed to be the only warm day of the week, but the 34 degrees were chilled by the wind and it was really cold!) Ryan and the boys set the tree up on Thurs. night and we finally got around to decorating today. We had to push it in a corner this year because I didn't want to rearrange my entire living room for one week just to see all sides of a tree.

Liam loves looking at each ornament while he puts them on the tree. We have a tradition of buying 3 ornaments each year. The boys get to choose one they each want and then we buy a Star Wars family one. The Star Wars ornaments now out number the others and that is a sore spot with me now. We no longer have a Christmas tree, we have a Star Wars tree. I even left about 10 Star Wars ornaments off this year (due to space restraints of course).

Lance playing violin

Grandpa just sent us this and it is great. Lance gave the concert for them last August when they were here visiting. Lance started playing violin Aug. 2006 and has really taken to it.

Wordless Wednesday

I am going to copy my friend Amy's blog and start a wordless Wednesday post. Every week she puts up a picture from the week without caption to show a little about what happened in their world that week. There is just a short title to help you understand the picture. I love the idea because I always mean to blog, but often run out of time. I will introduce my first picture...(I have a hard time not talking, we'll see if I can do wordless Wednesday) Liam wanted to be a photographer this past week and tried out our camera.

I hate winter!!

Last Saturday (Dec.1st) it snowed, a lot. I didn't blog about it because I wanted to take a picture of the boys playing in the snow for the blog. Then it snowed again on Tuesday, a lot. I still have no pictures of the boys playing in it. A week and a half has gone by with a lot of snow on the ground and we still have no pictures because....it is sooooo cold here! I don't know what I hate more the snow or the cold. The high yesterday was 11 above, I don't know what the windchill was, but it was lower than 11 degrees. Lance has been dying to play in the snow, so he went out with his friend for a whole half hour before they were frozen popsicles. I know for you true Minnesotans this is nothing, but I hate it. I would move to CA if Ryan would let me:) The only picture I have is of Ryan snow blowing (by himself). I know it 's not that bad, I could just do without it.

Christmas Party

Today we had a great time, we went to a Filipino Christmas party. We were welcomed by two families when we got there. One family I met on line from my Yahoo Group of people adopting from the Philippines and the other family we know from the boys' school. There was constant action the entire time and we had fun. They started the program with a children's choir singing songs in English. Liam was invited up and ran up there without a second thought, wish we had pictures to share, but we didn't bring our camera.
After that they had an adult choir caroling songs in Tagalog. Next, there was a little play about how Christmas is celebrated in the Philippines, the boys' friends from school were both in the little play. In between all of the action they gave away raffle drawing prizes and door prizes. Ryan bought a raffle ticket and signed us both up for the door prizes. At one point they called Ryan's name for the raffle and Liam picked the winning envelope. They had different money amounts in the envelopes, mostly $5 bills. Liam picked a lucky one with a check for $50, that is money towards the adoption! It is so meant to be. Later when they served this huge lunch we were in line and my name was called I won a door prize of "desert plates". We were feeling lucky, that was for sure. We had a great time meeting so many new people and we are looking forward to attending again next year.

Adoption Update

I just got a call from our adoption agency and they have received all of our paperwork for our dossier and it looks complete. All we are missing is our psych eval report. We have our appointment with our psychologist this Sat. then he will take a week to write the report. We should be ready to mail in our dossier to the Philippines right before Christmas. Then it will sit at ICAB (Philippines Inter Country Adoption Board) for a few weeks. Hopefully we will have an approval from ICAB around Feb.1st. After our approval, we sit in a pile waiting to be matched with our children.

What this all means to me is that I am no longer responsible for filling our paperwork, gathering documents or requesting letters from others. In other words, I'm free for a bit.

Computers are fun!

Our friend Pea just sent us the cutest e-mail of her family, so of course I had to go create my own link of my family. So here it is http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1113260432

Yay me!

I sent out our Christmas cards the other day!! Way to go before Dec. 1st, I know I am very excited that I was able to do that so fast. Anyway the reason I'm bragging about it is that if you didn't not get yours...Please leave a comment and I'll get you a new one, I don't trust the post office when it comes to mass quanities.

Don't worry I'm behind on about a million other things in life.

I am a Cheater

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Yesterday we hosted Thanksgiving with a few friends and I took the easy way out. Last week I wasn't feeling well, just a cold, but I didn't know if I would be feeling better quickly.


So, I bought our Thanksgiving meal from Target.com.

On Wed. night Ryan went to pick it up.

On Thursday I heated it up. It was easy and tasted good.

I would do it again in a second.

Psych Eval

Update: We found a new LP and we have an appointment with him on Dec. 8th. He is meeting us for one session and will write the report. The entire ordeal is going to cost us $150. We are happy.

As part of our dossier (application to the Philippines) we have to include a psychological evaluation from a licensed psychologist (lp). Our agency said it is just one trip to a lp and then they write up a simple two page report. They even gave a name of person they have sent families to before and he charges $150. I decided to find someone that took our insurance and was closer to us. I found someone 5 miles from our house and she was even available on nights and Saturdays and our insurance accepted her, great right? We were very excited because she had just finished a psych eval for another couple adopting from the Philippines, great again right? Then at the end of the session she had us book our next 3 visits, hum is this right? Well we thought, that is okay she just wants to get to know us and insurance pays for it. Then we had to take a pencil/paper test (I'll address this later) at another appointment time. When Ryan went to take the test, she mentioned to him that it would cost several hundreds of dollars for our report to be written...WHAT?? When he came home and told me that I called our agency and tried to find more information. I also belong to a Yahoo group of other people adopting from the Philippines and I asked them. Everything came back with no, it's only two pages and shouldn't cost hundreds of dollars. One nice woman even sent me a sample of what it was supposed to look like, something she got from her agency.

So today we went for our next appointment and asked her how much money, she couldn't give us an answer. She told us that it is very labor intensive and it would take a while to write and the last one she did was accepted with no problems. Yes, if you give someone too much information they will say you did a good job, we just don't want to waste the money on something we don't need. We showed her our papers and she showed us hers and we came to the conclusion that we could not agree. We told her nice to meet you, but we need to go somewhere else.

She also gave our test results today, should I post those on the World Wide Web? Oh well, I'm not afraid of who sees them. They came back invalid because we were trying too hard on the test. Let me tell you about the test. It was over 500 statements and you get to choose true or false. Some were easy...I like to kill small animals or something like that. Of course false. Others were very gray, how do I interpret that statement. Anyway we over analyzed it and failed. Sorry, English teacher here, I look at every word and think about it and all of the ways it could be interpreted. So we don't know what we are going to do now. I am going to call the other person on Monday and see if he can fix the whole mess.

What a Week!!

This week has flown by, you don't want to even know what our daily schedule looks like because it is crazy. We started seeing a psychologist for our psych evaluation for the adoption this week, I will blog separately about that because it was interesting. We also had other adoption things, pictures, and just life to squeeze in this past week. However, the biggest addition to our week was Birthdays!

We celebrated Ryan's Thursday night between work and activities. I made him Stromboli (his favorite meal) and the boys accosted him with presents when he walked in the door from work. That was end of the excitement of his birthday.

Liam's birthday is a little more involved. On Friday night we ate dinner in the living room while watching a movie! We had appetizers and pie for dessert. He got to open any presents he got in the mail that night also and the present from us. Then it was off to bed. Saturday we cleaned and prepared for his friend party. At 2:00, 12 kindergarten age children dropped in and we tried to entertain them for 2 hours. It wasn't raining out and the temp was above 32 F, so we sent them out in the backyard for the last half hour of fun. Ryan said the limit on friends next year is 4. After everyone was gone, we drove up to my brother and sister in law's house for another party. Luckily I have the greatest sister in law in the whole world and she prepared everything for this party. It was much more relaxed at the family party and I didn't even drink the wine that was offered. On that side of our family we have 6 birthdays in Nov. and one late Oct. that we celebrate. It is a lot of fun because all of the cousins get together. On Sunday Liam has another birthday party to go to and we get to just sit back and relax.

Thanks to all that sent birthday wishes. We have been busy and haven't responded as quickly as we would have liked. Back to Monday tomorrow!

Kid quotes

Today Lance and Liam were invited by friends to go to the Science Museum. We don't go there often and Lance has really been wanting to go. Of course I said yes to the offer without even asking the boys. When told of the offer Lance was excited, Liam did not want to go.

Lance asked Liam why he didn't want to go and Liam said he didn't know why, he just didn't. Lance told him that was not good enough and he explained it this way.

"You don't have to have a reason why you want to go to the museum, but you have to have a reason why you don't want to go. It is like smiling, you don't have to have a reason to have a smile, but you have to have a reason why you have a frown on your face."

I liked the way that he explained this to Liam.

Liam decided that he didn't have a reason not to go and he went to the museum. They had a great time and we thank our friends for taking them.

Halloween!!

I am not the best person to write the recap of Halloween because I worked that night, however this is what I gathered from the evening.

Liam was Elmo and Lance was a pirate that would not wear the head scarf (he didn't like the way dad put it on him, he looked like a girl) nor the earring that I set out (it hurt). So Lance basically had on a shirt and a pair of pants with a sword. They set out around 6:30 and hit the neighborhood houses.

Our friends Rodrigo and Mariela came over and went trick or treating with them to see what it was all about. They just moved here a few months ago from Buenos Aries and had never seen Halloween. After the boys had a good stash of treats they came home and manned our door for about an hour. During that time they also examined the candy and traded accordingly. For some reason Liam thought Dots were the hot candy this year and he traded really good candies for a small box of Dots from Lance. Liam thought they were medicine or something, don't quite understand that yet and I'm done asking about it. The last group before they turned off the light was a large group that came out of two minivans Lance said. They said one of them held the door open, the other just shoved candy into everyone's bags. I asked Lance if he wants to go trick or treating in the minivan next year, he said no, he has more fun walking. That's cool.

Thanks to Rodrigo and Mariela for going with our family this year and for taking pictures and video!

Homestudy finished!

Today we met with our adoption counselor and we got to read our home study report. It was very interesting to read a 9 page story about ourselves. We had to fill in a few blanks on things we had left out of our 20 page paper we wrote to her. It also included a few quotes from our confidential reference letters written by friends and family. Thanks for doing those everyone, they were great. We are going to have to be billed for the $2100 and she wasn't excited about that, but they have us because we can't go on until they get their money.

We did get the instructions for our dossier though, we just can't turn it in until we have the last payment paid. Plus the dossier includes another $800 payment. In this step we need more reference letters, a letter from Lance, answer more questions, police reports and psych evaluations. Plus some other stuff that I can't remember now. We were told it should take us about a month to complete. Then we mail it to our agency, they finish it and mail it to the Philippines. After that we wait for notice that the Philippines got it, it takes about a month for that.

So, we are moving along. We are just taking each step as it comes. It will all work out at some point, just not as fast as we had hoped. We'll keep you updated.

Creative Financing

I admit that I lack creativity, so I am asking for help. On Tuesday, Oct.30th, we have our final meeting for our homestudy. However, to actually make our homestudy complete we need to pay our next fee of $2100. Ryan works on the side for his friend and this is how we save the money for adoption fees. However, business has been slow for his friend and Ryan is lacking time since he started his new job. Needless to say, we don't have the money for this payment. Now,you could say, well, just wait the money will come. And yes, we will have the money someday, but I want it now.

I've checked into different grants and loans already and the paradox is...they require you to complete your homestudy before you can even apply. I'm not begging for money, I just need some serious advice of how to do creative financing. This is already such a long process and to drag it out more is hard on the spirit. Plus, there is always a chance that a country could close their adoptions (case in point Guatamala in January). Or that adoption laws can change.

So, just think about it please and post comments. Even if you don't have a real idea, a funny joke will be accepted because humor helps.

10/29 Update: Tomorrow we have our meeting with the adoption agency and we won't be giving them a check, however we are at $900 right now. They don't mind billing us, it just delays the process. Ryan has been working a little for his friend and we hope to pay the money soon. Thanks for all of the great ideas!!

Our Liam makes news

Yesterday my dad called me to tell me that he saw Liam's picture in the newspaper. There was a picture of Liam at school in Friday's paper next to an article about their school. He was in the south metro section of the Star Tribune, which is the largest paper in the 7 county metro area, and one we don't subscribe to. It was pajama day for his class the day that they took the pictures, luckily we bought new pj's for the celebration at school.

Ryan's traveling

We love Ryan's new job. He likes the people and he likes the actual work. I like having benefits and the security of a large company. However, we may differ in opinion on one thing. His job involves traveling, which I was not aware of. His first trip is next week for three days to Richmond, VA. The timing is good because the boys and I are on break for the week, so I don't have to get babysitters while I work. The bad news isn't even that I will be alone for 3 days, which is bad. The part I don't like is that he gets to travel and see new things without me. I'm sure it will be all business and he won't get to sight see, but I have never been to VA and I would love to go new places. I am happy for him and that he gets to go and I keep it in the back of my mind that someday we could be transferred somewhere and I would love that. Say a prayer for safe travels for Ryan and sanity for me. I'll be alone with the boys for 3 full days, can you say pizza!?

Mom's Conference

I went to a mom's conference this past weekend and it was fun. This was my fourth year going to it and I learned a lot. Although it is a one day conference, it's far enough away to stay at a hotel for the weekend. I went with my sister and a friend. They had great information for moms with kids of all ages. You can look at the topics and the books they sell at their website. I have seen most of the speakers and every year I think I don't need to buy anymore books and I always buy more. This year I bought a devotional for the boys and a Bible to go with it. I also bought a new recipe book on how to cook for one day, eat for 30. We'll see how that goes. I like it when they tell me new things that I didn't even think about and when they tell me to do things I already do. (I really like that because then I think I'm an okay mom). Last year I went to some sex ed presentations and found out that I am way behind the power curve for talking to my boys about that. The best part of the conference are the large group sessions. Over 2000 women singing and laughing and they always have a great guest speaker.

Liam's Birthday

Today I am compiling a wish list for Liam's birthday. I know it is over a month away, but I also know that much of our family shops early because of shipping ect. These ideas also carry over into the Christmas season. I gave links so that everyone can see pictures of exactly what we are talking about. However, the only things that have to come from a specific place are Land's End red polo shirts. For uniform purposes there are so many reds in the world they have to from Land's End for consistency. Liam knows about the list, so I'm sure he will have me update it regularly as he thinks of things. I hope this helps with shopping. Feel free to leave a comment if you have questions or e-mail us.

Adoption Update

We have turned in our huge paper about ourselves and it was only 15 pages long! I guess we don't have much to say about ourselves. Our next step is meeting with our adoption counselor to complete our home study and to start our dossier. We are going to meet her on Oct. 30, pay a lot of money and we're off to the next phase. We currently don't have any homework, so that is a nice break. I have been in contact with someone that works at the orphanage we want to adopt from. We have been discussing by e-mail some possible matches. We are so busy these days that the waiting hasn't really hit anyone, but I'm sure after we have been matched it will be hard.

Mom's Brag

Friday is the end of the first quarter for the boys, so I thought I would post their grades for everyone. Both boys went to school everyday and have zero tardies. Liam beat Lance in behavior by having no bad marks all quarter. Lance got in trouble 4 times during the quarter (usually for talking). Liam doesn't get letter grades of course, but he did well in every area and learned everything he was supposed to. His reading is really improving and he loves to learn. Lance is getting letter grades for the first time now in 5th grade, his grades are as follow.

Language Arts 95% A
Science 97% A+
Social studies 100% A+
Math 91% A-
Physical Education 100% A+
Spanish 96% A
Latin 106% A+
Visual Arts B- (don't ask me how you get a B- in art)
Orchestra 100% A+

I would guess that P.E., Art, and Orchestra is just comprised of coming prepared and participating. He did extra credit work in Latin and he is joining Latin club next quarter after school once a week. Both boys are in chess club after school, but they say Liam is a better player.

Little Artists

The boys and some of their art work. I took a picture of each of them with their favorite art piece of fall quarter. Lance's piece was created last school year and then the teacher saved it and put it in a local art show this fall. He has an award for participation. Liam made hats this fall in kindergarten art class, the one he is modeling is a fish. They also made chicken hats (which was my favorite hat). They have a wonderful art teacher at their school and all of the children love him. We like him also because he has great ideas for projects. We love our school!

The List Reviewed - And My Week Off!

Well, let's just say, it's not all fun and games, but it sure as heck beats working!

Guess I better be productive now... I hear Julie's got a list... I did get a birdie this morning, though.

It was totally worth it!

The list

Ryan is officially unemployed right now, for a week. Since he has a week off and I still have to work and the boys will be in school, I made him a list. It includes finishing our adoption paper (his part, I already did the rest), get his driver's license renewed, oil change, things like that. These are all things that I think would be a wise use of his time this next week. Ryan looked at the list and added a few things, working on his book, working on his side computer job and golfing. He decided that he should be able to get at least two rounds of golf in this week. I guess we have different priorities for his week off.

I'm a hostage to my clothing

I'm killing time right now because we are going to a casino night for the boys' school and Ryan is dropping off the kids while I get ready. However, I can not finish getting ready because I tried on a new dress I bought last week on sale ($5 steal!) and it looked bad on me and now I really can't get the dress off my fat body. I really am hostage to this dress, maybe not such a good deal. It was a little tricky getting it on, but it is impossible to get over my head. I have tried everything short of taking a scissors to it. I would take the scissors, but it is brand new and I'll donate it to a thrift store for some other fool or skinny person to buy. Yes, I know I should try things on in the store, but I never have the time or patience for that. The tag really said large, but maybe they meant large skinny person. Does this mean that I will go on a diet...absolutely not, I will just buy bigger clothes next time. Well if Ryan doesn't get home soon, I'll be cutting it off because I think I am loosing circulation in my arms from it. Don't you wish I took a picture:)

Adoption Update

Just a quick update on our adoption process for those of you that have asked. Currently it is going very slowly and that is our fault. We have homework to do right now and have not found the time to do it. We have to answer 7 pages of single spaced questions about ourselves and we are not talking yes/no questions. I don't even know the answers to some of them, so I have to search within myself to think about what to answer. I have to give a plug to the Passport people! I mailed mine in for renewal expecting 3 months of waiting and it was sent to me a week later.

Pictures Finally

Okay I'm back, sorry it has taken me so long to take pictures. This is our new minivan and we love it. It is a 2007 Honda Odyssey with a few bells and whistles. Lance's favorite thing about is that the doors open automatically, Liam's favorite thing is that the kids control their own air conditioning. Mom's favorite thing is that it seats 8 people and is easy to use. Ryan has nothing as a favorite because he rarely gets to drive it.

We did it!

Well today we went and bought the minivan. I am very excited although a little nervous of driving a brand new vehicle around town, what if someone hits me? So far we love everything about it and the boys are very excited also. It is going to take us some time to figure out all of the little buttons on it, but it is fun figuring it out.

New Job for Ryan

Such a busy day for everyone, but I won't even go there. The news of the day is that Ryan put in his two week notice today!! He accepted an offer last week from here! He even has a big fancy title and he will start on Oct. 1st. No raise, but better benefits. Also, he will take the bus from the park and ride to downtown St. Paul. However part of our busy day today was that our car died on us and we are sick of putting money into it. So, he has no car to drive to the last two weeks of work and nothing to park at the park and ride. We are going car shopping tomorrow I guess.

Hellos and Goodbyes

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity, but most of it revolved around saying hello and goodbye to friends and family. It started with saying goodbye to Grandpa J.C. and Karma. They went home to Central Oregon on Friday morning, after two weeks of visiting.

Then my friend Lafayette came to visit for the weekend. He lives in Reno, NV and I haven't seen him in over 15 years. Ryan met him for the first time, even though they have e-mailed one another. We had to say goodbye to him on Saturday night because he flew out early Sunday morning.

The biggest goodbye is to our friends Ala and Marina, they are going home to Belarus at the end of the week. We have spent a lot of time with them over the summer and their move back home was unexpected. If I thought about this weekend and all of the people that we said goodbye to and how much we will miss their company, I would get really sad. So, I have to just think about the next time we meet. Goodbye everyone, we'll miss you.

Mom, we want a new pet!!

We went to the Renaissance last Saturday and out of all of the fun things to do and see, Liam loved the snakes on display. He had to pet each snake, and then when they had a shift change, he had to pet all of the new snakes. In total, he touched about 25 snakes that day. He wanted to pet the alligators and the turtles also, but that was not allowed (thank goodness). After that experience Liam decided that he wants a pet turtle. I can deal with that.

Then Lance got into the act and wanted to pet the snakes also! And he decided that he would love to have a snake for a pet. Ryan reminded them that they have trouble remembering to feed the dog and he is guessing there is no way mom is going to take a frozen mouse out of the freezer, thaw it and feed it to your snake. Very good point.

Welcome

Welcome to our family blog. I'm going to try to keep all of our friends and family up to date on our lives in MN. Lance and Liam get bigger every day and we are in an adoption process to bring more children into our family. Ryan has informed me that he will not be helping me with our blog, he sees enough of computers at work.