I am very slowly going through our pictures from last weekend in Nauvoo. It really was incredible to be there and experience it all when I'm old enough to appreciate it. Our first night there we were staying across the river in Ft. Madison. (In a VERY scary hotel!) When we drove over the river towards Nauvoo we got stopped on a toll bridge that was letting a barge/ship through. Daniel of course thought this was the coolest thing. It was a gorgeous evening and it was a beautiful site. Everything was lush and green, I could totally see why they called it "Nauvoo the beautiful."

Spent the weekend here. Amazing!

Whooo hoooo! We just got an email from our case worker at LDSFS. We've been approved! We are so excited! Our profile is now up on the LDS adoption site, you can find us here:

http://www.providentliving.org/ses/birthmother/viewsingleprofile/0,12272,2133-1-9321-1-1,00.html

Or go to www.itsaboutlove.org and search adoptive couples using bryanandsuzanne . Seriously, we're so excited. We know it'll still be while, but we're just so excited to be one step closer to our baby.

Happy Mother's Day!

As I listen to the beautiful strains of tornado sirens calling through the air, I'm awfully glad that it's Sunday and we aren't out anywhere!

My poor husband always has double duty this time of year. My birthday is always right around Mother's Day. I'm sure it's got to be difficult, but he always manages to make it great. Today he woke me up with breakfast in bed. It was perfect, he made sure the bacon was crispy, the orange juice wasn't pulpy and he even got me strawberry syrup. That's one of the great things about being married, they know just how you like everything, even if it's exactly the opposite of how they usually do it. Daniel's idea of a Mother's Day present was to draw all over the walls in purple and green crayon. It was beautiful. All I have to say is that I'm SO glad I got washable crayons and that yesterday I happened to pick up some Magic Erasers, they made my life so much easier! (Bryan was doing the dishes from breakfast, or I'm sure he would have cleaned it up for me.)

This year I've gotten a unique perspective on different people's views of Mother's Day. I'm on a couple of forums for adoption and it's a touchy subject for a lot of women. It's made me much more sensitive to what many women around me may be feeling. I wish I could make it right for all of them.

All of our paperwork to adopt is in. Now we just have to wait to be approved. Sometimes this can take forever (a couple of months or longer) but our caseworker thinks he can have our home study written up much sooner. So we are cautiously optimistic that we should be approved in the next week or so.

While I'm thinking about it, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank so many of you for helping us spread the word that we're trying to adopt. People have sent our info to family and friends, their religious leaders and even their doctors. At our agency there are MANY more potential adoptive families than children placed for adoption. So it is basically up to us to find our child. (our agency is still most definitely working on our behalf, but they can only place as many babies as they have!) It means so much to us that our friends and family care enough about us to help us build our family. I know that it can sometimes be awkward, but you never know who might know someone in need. The outpouring of love and support we have felt has been very humbling and very encouraging. Adopting is never an easy thing, but having so much support helps more than you'll know.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes! It's weird to think that I am 28 already! I can't believe that 30 will come so soon! I had a nice day filled with phone calls and emails, it was so nice to be thought of. This is our first year away from family and I was worried that I would be sad to celebrate without everybody around, but it was a wonderful day made all the better by all of you!

We have been busy around here. We've gotten all of our paperwork for our home study in and are hoping to be approved to adopt within the next week or two! We're pretty excited about that. I'm just relieved to not have anymore paperwork looming over my head! (seriously, it's a stack of papers about 2 inches thick!) So we should be up on the church's site (http://www.itsaboutlove.org/) soon and then will be available for birthmothers to view.

We also took the opportunity last week to take in a baseball game. It was my first Yankee's game and Daniel's first professional baseball game ever! (which is kind of surprising because of how much Bryan loves the Yankees, he is undyingly loyal to them... in a cute way, he's not obsessed!) We had such a good time. (Daniel has started to make funny faces in pictures,

little punk!)The Yankee's were playing the Indians up in Cleveland so it was just a 2 hour drive for us. We arrived about 2 hours early to watch batting practice and attempt to get an autograph for Daniel. It was fun to watch the players warming up and practicing, you can get a lot closer than you'll most likely be sitting for the game, so you can see it all better. Unfortunately they weren't signing anything that day, I don't know why, I think they were just trying to stay focused on the game. (they had lost the last couple of games to this same team.) We brought a couple of baseballs, (in case we got to get an autograph) and I was soooo nervous that Daniel would throw one! He almost did a few times, but we took them away soon enough.

When we found our seats Daniel was enthralled by the picture of a swinging batter on the end of the row. (you can see one right above his head in the picture below) It served as entertainment throughout the game. I love his little imagination.

Daniel was pretty impressed with all of the players, his favorite was "A-Wad" (Alex Rodriguez) pretty dang cute if you ask me. We were close enough that we could actually see what was going on. This is Jeter at bat. It was a good game but the Yankees couldn't pull it out in the end. :( I keep telling Bryan that we should go to a game in NYC before they tear down their stadium next year. (luckily he's the more practical of the two of us! I would just hop in the car and go!) But instead we might shoot for next summer and see a game during their first season in their new stadium. (anyone we could stay with in NYC?)

We were sitting closest to Johnny Damon. He kept leaning over and picking the grass, at first I thought he was either bored or really particular about the cleanliness of his outfield. (!) But then I watched more closely and noticed he was picking a few blades of grass and throwing them in the air to see which way the wind was blowing, so smart. I never would have thought of that. Good thing I'm a mommy instead of a baseball player! I took tons of pictures of him and tried to convince Bryan that it was because he was the closest player to us and in the best light, not because I thought he was hot... I don't think he believed me.

While we were there Daniel kept up with his latest phrase of choice, "I'm hungry!" (I seriously cannot keep this boy fed, he's eating us out of house and home!) So we got him a hot dog. He refused the dog and just wanted to eat the bun. It's the most expensive bun he'll ever eat. We also got him some cotton candy to try. He wasn't too impressed so Bryan and I 'had' to finish it for him.

On our way out of the stadium Bryan asked a police officer the easiest way to the freeway through the traffic and Daniel yelled, "Thank you Mr. Police Officer!" Everyone around us laughed and the cop talked to him for a little bit which made Daniel's day. As we left the parking garage I looked back and Daniel was out. I guess being a baseball spectator is exhausting work for a little boy!