One Year

Update: All of your comments are so wonderful. I wasn't writing for sympathy, but thank you so much for the words of encouragement. I try to be an optimist, but in the middle of the cold dark winter it gets hard. Thank you to all of my blogging buddies.

We hit our one year anniversary of being ICAB approved to adopt in the Philippines on Jan.24th. We know that the wait is quoted at being 18-24 months for a single child under 2 years old. However, I am starting to get a real complex of not being good enough. I read and hear about how more people request girls and boys are harder to place. I also read about how most people want 1 or 2 children and they want them to be 5 years at the oldest.
Now think about the children we are "asking" for and then tell me why we have to wait so long. We would like 2-3 boys under the age of 10 years old. Doesn't it seem they should have a huge pile of those children and they should be able to find one match to fit our family? Here is where I start getting the complex...what if there is a huge pile and we aren't a good enough fit for any of those children? Maybe it's just late. Or maybe winter is beginning to wear on me. Or maybe I'm getting tired of waiting and I want to know who my kids are.
I know I shouldn't complain because they are picking out the perfect kids for our family. I also know that the wait between knowing who your kids are and getting to bring them home is harder. I know I shouldn't complain, but it is hard to wait sometimes.

The beach

Liam with yucky hands, he loved it, don't let him fool you.
I've been busy this week which has killed me because I wanted to write this blog and relive the beach! We drove a while south to visit some friends of the family and go to a FL beach. We had the best day visiting (Thanks B. family) and loved the white sands of the beach. We thought the temps were perfect (maybe low 70's) but the locals felt it was cold. The boys didn't swim, but they got wet from building their sand castle.

Amusement Parks

We decided to buy a pass for Sea World and Busch Gardens for the week (it was a really good deal). The first day we were there we went to Sea World and looked at all of the animals, saw all of the shows and rode some rides. We had wonderful weather and there were very few people there. Our favorite thing there was the Manatee Rescue Habitat. They are really neat animals and we just watched them swim for a long time. The most hated thing there (by me only of course) was the Wild Arctic ride. I like rides, but my stomach doesn't always. It was a simulator kind of ride in a helicopter during a snowstorm in the arctic. Liam was totally being thrown around his seat and that bothered me also. They all loved it of course. There aren't many rides there, but we managed to go on all of them. Lance was bummed that the water ride he wanted to go on was closed for the month for maintenance. Even Ryan went on all the little kid rides.

The next day we went to Busch Gardens to do some serious rides. We promised Lance that we would do all the water rides first since he was bummed at Sea World. Again we had sunny skies and very few people. We went on the log ride, a more serious flume ride and then we hit the river rapids. We were the first people of the day to go on the river rapids. We were doing okay on the wet factor (we aren't wimps that wear ponchos on the rides:) Then at the end of the rapids ride a huge waterfall fell directly on us for a long time and it was cold. We were all soaked to the bone. There was one "boat" after us and they were soaked also. They then closed the ride to "fix it". We did return to that ride the next time we went to the park, there wasn't even a waterfall at that place the second time. We were caught in some kind of ride malfunction (at least for winter operation). We were still smiling and enjoying our day going on rides and seeing things, then it got colder and started to rain. We lasted over 5 hours in our soaking (I could wring my clothes) wet clothes with smiles on our faces.

We decided to go back to Busch Gardens because we didn't get to see and do everything since we were so wet. On that day Ryan made it his goal to ride all of the roller coasters. We took a picture in front of each roller coaster of the people that rode it.

You will notice that Liam is in a couple of the pictures. He rode on every ride that he was tall enough to go on. You will also notice that Lance is not in any roller coaster pictures, that is because he hates the things. At the last roller coaster ride gift shop we bought some trinkets. We bought Ryan a shot glass (bad picture I know) to celebrate all 5 roller coasters, Liam got a necklace with his name on it, and we bought Lance the most fitting t-shirt (modeled by Liam because Lance isn't home) called "why I don't ride".

Lance thought every excuse on here was a good one and said he has used many of them.

Our first full day in FL

The first day in sunny Florida we went swimming in Grandpa and Grandma's community pool, went for a walk around the community and just visited. (We were tired from waking up at 4am)

The next day we began to swing into action. We went mini golfing in the morning and ended the day out with some Downtown Disney shopping. (Let me tell you that the boys are not big shoppers even when it is in Disney World.

As you can see one boy takes golfing more serious than the other.

Some random Downtown Disney shots.

We're home

We are home, but I will have to post more later. We came home from 70 temps to cold, that's okay we live in MN. However, our furnace or thermostat are broken and it is verrrrry cold in our house. Around 40 degrees and my hands are freezing. I'll post pictures and stories later.

Okay, our hero and our brother in law just came over to help Ryan diagnose the problem and put in a thermostat. When the new one was put in, it was 44 degrees in our house officially.

We had fun in Florida and I did well on the plane. I didn't have any panic/anxiety attacks either way!!! I read about a new technique online, about how to talk yourself down, the night before we left. I tried it out on the flights out and it worked like a charm. On the way home I rarely had to even do it because I wasn't even going to panic mode. Ryan asked me if I'm ready for the Philippines trip now, ahh, not yet.

A new design

I changed my page design just for the new year, but I added something to it. I added a picture that we took 2 years ago when we visited Epcot. I hate this picture because I look as fat as I am in it. So I'm sorry I have to torture all of you, but I put this picture here because I probably go to my blog more times then anyone else a day to check to see if others have posted. Now every time I go to the page I will see myself and it will motivate me to lose weight. I don't know if it will work, but try to put up. Again, sorry to torture all of you. Focus on the boys, they look cute:)

New Year's Resolutions

I don't make resolutions, but we do make changes in our lifestyle and they always tend to happen after the new year. Two years ago I made the decision to not eat fast food anymore. I did it for health reasons, but it just happened to be in Jan. So now I can say I can count on 1 hand the times I've had drive thru meals. Then last year after looking at our tax statements we decided to do something about our spending and lack of savings. So we started to watch these videos and now we have a little less debt and a little more savings. We basically don't call anything resolutions because that seems too short term, like kicking a habit. We have been trying to make lifestyle changes and learning to think differently.
So, this year's attitude changing goal is again focused on our health. Ryan is going to start weight.watchers through work. With this we hope to add better eating habits and more activity to our daily routine. Wish us luck!