Still catching up

Our little doggie Pippa is such a snuggler. Here she us snuggling on the couch with me.





This is her afternoon perch. She looks out the window for the kids every afternoon!





I've been doing a lot of catch up on my scrapbooking lately. I keep all my stuff in this armoire and it's easy to pull out when I want to work on them. Here's what it looks like when I'm working on my books. A mess! :)





Rolling pumpkins down the big hill at Uncle Guy and Aunt Cathy's house after Thanksgiving dinner.





I love the twinkling lights all over the living room!!





Oh, look! A soccer ball at his feet. What a surprise :) Yes, even in the house.





"no dogs were harmed in the making of this photo"





I came out of my baking hiatus temporarily to make these chocolate-caramel beauties for a party. I also made white cake with vanilla buttercream. 8 dozen in one night, whew! But they sure were yummy!

Tuesday Night Randomness

My laptop still isn't working and I still haven't been carving out time to update my blog. :(
Here's a few pics for another catch up attempt.

1. This was at Braden's Shakespeare performance. Poor Rhett, he had a hard time finding Shakespeare interesting enough to stay awake after the first 2 hours of performances.

2. Here he is taking a photo for his photography contest entry. He seriously rocked it out-- his picture was so awesome! And, yes, the cape does help the photographic quality :)

3. This was Gracie and Pippa after we picked her up from being boarded at the vet for the weekend. Gracie had missed her and wanted to hold her so bad, so I let her sit with her on the back seat. They are best pals!

16 Months

Today marks 16 months on the waitlist for our baby girl. 16 months is a LONG time to be waiting "in limbo" and not knowing when this part of the journey will come to an end. Two weeks ago, the average wait time for a referral had gone up from 16.5 months to 17 months, and the average time is expected to continue to grow due to the fact that they are not expecting referrals to begin to be ready any faster any time soon.
Just a couple weeks ago, I thought we were finally catching up to that average time and I was confident that we'd receive our referral before Christmas. Now, it appears that we will be waiting AT LEAST another month or two. Thank you for continuing to pray for our family...

Our family is enjoying this Christmas season very much. We are keeping busy, but we are also making memories and spending as much time together as we can. This month is filled with family and friend gatherings and, of course, remembering the reason we celebrate Christmas in the first place. CHRIST! Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. For in Him, we have abundant HOPE and JOY and PEACE!

I pray that all of us will focus less on the material aspect of this season and, instead, focus our hearts on Him... that we may realize and count EACH and EVERY ONE of the blessings that we have in our lives...from the big to the small... and that we may be ever thankful...and that we may REJOICE in God's goodness, mercy and grace in our lives.

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 2 Corinthians 9:15

We got a dog!

Yes, it's true! We got a dog! My kids have been begging for a long time, but I just wasn't ready. My plan was that after we got our little one home and settled, then we'd begin discussing the idea of getting a dog. Since the process of getting our little one home has been so LONG (and getting LONGER by the minute, I might add) I started re-thinking the idea. One day, a friend posted a picture of her on facebook saying that she needed a home and I fell in love. That was on a Friday and I went and picked her up that following Monday. Her name is Pippa Lucille and she's a sweetheart. We fell in love right away.

This is the first picture I took of her after I got her home that day.

The main reason I didn't want to get a dog was because I knew it would create a lot of work for me. I wasn't wrong in that assumption. She digs, makes messes and goes potty in my house. She's actually getting better, we are almost done with the house training!! But, for the first couple months, she pooped in the house almost every day :( Also, she sheds. That is the main thing I didn't want. We were told that she doesn't shed that much. That is a LIE. But, she's here now and we love her, so I have to deal with all the excessive sweeping, mopping and vaccuming. Yeah, like I have TIME for that?? Oh well! Good thing she's cute :)

Here's an example of her mess making...

She is really sweet. This was taken not long after we got her. I was baking in the kitchen and she had curled up and laid her head on the top of my foot.
She loves to snuggle! This is her snuggling with Rhett and I on the couch one night as we were doing Rhett's reading homework for the day.
Sometimes when I'm working in my office, she curls up on my good chairs where she can see me and she takes her little "cat naps" there.
She has 4 outfits. This is the first one I bought her. Yes, it has a pink tutu on it. She looks pretty ridiculous in it, but I got it on sale for $2 and couldn't resist :)

We think she was about 7 months old when we got her in September, so she's about 9 months old or so now. She was in the vet right away for a checkup and shots, and she was spayed about 3 weeks after we got her. We weren't taking any chances! So, she's all healthy and definitely a part of our family. Now the kids think they need another dog. And I promptly told them they'd lost their minds!!

Things I am thankful for

Rhett wrote this in class on 11/17. He just brought it home yesterday and since I still don't have my laptop/picture situation fixed (this has been a total nightmare), I thought I'd share this today.

"Thanksgiving, Turkey all makes me think of the thangs I am thankful for. First, I am thankful for my loveing parints, my loveing dog Pipa, and my brother and sister. Next, I'm also thankful for chrch. I pray evry day and night. Last, I am thankful for my hole famaly. Thay are so loveing. finaly, if you were me you would unrstand."

Coming from my boy who has improved his school work IMMENSELY this school year... this is just extra special. His handwriting on this paper was so neat I had no trouble reading it at all! It's a true miracle! Thank you Jesus! :)

Did you notice that he's thankful for his dog? Yeah, that was a post that was done but lost in oblivion, thanks to the kind person that hacked my computer with a nasty virus. Anyways, yes, we got a dog! I'll get a whole post on her up at some point :)

Love my sweet boy. We have so much to be thankful for.

Word to the wise...

1. Back up your pictures, videos and important docs on your computer onto an external hard drive or burn them to a disc regularly.

2. In addition, make sure you have an anti-virus program installed and that you update it when necessary.

If you do not do these things, don't blame me if you are up all night worrying about 2 YEARS of pictures and videos being GONE FOREVER.

Also, you will end up wasting HOURS of your life trying to retrieve your items, reconfiguring your computer, and FINALLY backing up all those thousands of pictures and videos.

How do I know all of these fabulous tidbits of information, you ask?

Because I have 1 computer (with all of my business stuff on it) that I am a good girl and keep everything backed up and virus program installed and functioning.

I have a laptop however, in which I use for internet, blogging and picture storage.... and because I am stubborn and lazy when it comes to stuff like this... as I was happily surfing the net last night on said laptop, it was infected with a virus.

After spending some time with the nicest Geed Squad guy on the planet this morning, I discovered that it was a rather tame virus, which didn't delete my hard-drive, but hid and locked everything so that I cannot find it or access it.

In lieu of giving them $350 to restore my computer I am spending hours of my precious and valuable time that, quite frankly I do not have to spare, trying to fix it myself.

Yikes.

This will be a once in a lifetime deal, people. I've learned my lesson. Amen.

In addtion, I had MANY blog posts already done and waiting to be posted on the laptop. They are gone. So, there may be another bout of blog silence until I can get this figured out.

Grrrrrr.

Happy Birthday MeMe!

Happy Birthday MeMe! Your KRAZY grandchildren wanted to send you this special birthday message :)