A Quintet

I can't belive how much Bryan's side of the family has grown this year! Within about 6 months we added 5 new members! 3 babies were added with 6 weeks of each other in Nov./Dec. and two new in-laws married in during the month of May. It's been an exciting year and we love each of our new additions!!!

We grabbed a quick family picture after Sam's blessing. It's amazing what a difference a few months and 5 people make!

This was us last summer:

Through this all I've been super impressed with Bryan's parents.  They've taken it all in stride and loved every minute. It takes some serious flexibility to make everything work, and they did! I'm betting we'll never add so many so quickly again, so I just had to mention it!

 I guess it could happen..... lol.

Keep Getting Better

Our best days keep getting better. You know how you say, "This is the best day of my life, nothing could ever be better than this!" Only to be proven wrong down the road when something does? I personally don't mind it. Our best days just keep getting better and better. We recently had one of those days. On September 3rd, we were (finally!!!) able to take our little Sammy to the Temple to be sealed for time and eternity as a family. It was the culmination of 5 yrs of waiting and searching for the next little member of our family. Words honestly cannot express what joy it brought our hearts. Because he is so big for his age, and because he was also older than most children in adoptive sealings (10 months), it was hard to find an outfit that would fit him and that was appropriate for the temple. We finally found one that I loved and that would work in the heat. It was a 24 months size! :o

The boys were little angels, you could tell they felt the spirit of the day. We were so happy to have so many family members there with us. It made it all the more special to share it with them. 

After the sealing we were able to take Sam to Bryan's parent's house to give him a name and a blessing. Even more family members and friends were able to join us which was wonderful!

Sam ate up the attention and did so well. He's really a people person. ;) He and his Uncle Erik are pals.

At the end of the day he just snuggled up in his Daddy's arms and crashed. I don't think he's ever slept so well!

  As we were leaving the Temple that day, Daniel said "Let's come back here, I want to do this again!" I just smiled, I was feeling the exact same way. The Temple Worker who had helped with the children said, "Yes, you need to bring these little boys back with a sister soon." Lol. I can't guarantee a sister, but I can promise we'll work on coming back as a family again sometime soon.

It was a perfect day and that brought finality to the adoption for us. He's ours. He's finally a part of our eternal family. He was so worth the wait and the anguish of the journey to find him.

FINALLY Final!

(Originally written August 12, 2010)

We got a call today telling us that our adoption was finalized today! I'm feeling both elated and like it's a bit anti-climatic. Normally when an adoption is finalized you go to court and at the end of the hearing the magistrate declares it final. Because of all of the hiccups and delays in our case (thanks to an incompetent case worker in Georgia, long story) we went to court on June 23rd, but it wasn't able to be finalized until today. We are so excited to officially be a family of 4!

June 23rd Court Hearing:
When we went to the court house for our finalization hearing we had to go to down town Columbus and up to the 22nd floor!
We waited in the court room for a bit while everything got squared away.

We had a tired baby on our hands. We hoped he would sleep through the proceedings, but he perked right up as soon as there were people in the room. (He's definitely a people person!)

While we waited, we enjoyed the view of Columbus from above through heavily tinted windows. It was a hot, sunny day. You don't get to see a bird's eye view out here very often. (No mountains to look down from :) So this was a treat for us.

Everything went great, but sadly halfway through the Magistrate let us know that we wouldn't be able to finalize that day. :( We were bummed as we'd planned to go to the Temple with Sam 2 weeks later. Regardless, it was still a great feeling to have the Interlocutory Decree in our hands. Our Lawyer asked us a bunch of questions about our family, how we felt about adoption and how we felt about Sam. Bryan was very eloquent and I wish I could have recorded it. I just tried not to cry through my answers.

When everything was said and done we were able to take pictures with the Magistrate. She had Daniel come right up and sit in her chair. He thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Everyone took turns holding Sam. Here he is with our Ohio caseworker, Spencer. We can't say enough good things about Spencer. We were so lucky to have him on our side and working for us.

I ADORE this picture of my two boys sitting in the Magistrate's seat. Precious.

So happy he's officially our boy: Samuel Owen John!

Keep Calm and Carry On

When things were getting tough with the whole fertility treatment/adoption trauma, I saw this print. Along with probably 1/3 of the US I had to have it. It helped me remember to take deep breaths and continue on with life. I got it and slapped it up on the wall. I needed it up asap, no matter how I did it. So there it sat for 2 1/2 years until I finally got around to making it cute.

I knew I needed to paint the mat or do something with it. I've had some linen sitting around waiting for me to use it, so I did! Here's the method to my madness.

I laid the mat out on the linen and cut the linen about 5/8" of an inch larger than the mat.

To adhere the fabric to the mat I used some photo matting paper that gets sticky on both sides when heated, but fusible interfacing/web or stitchwitch would work just as well. All I did was iron over the mat making sure to avoid ironing over the opening and holding the fabric taught while doing it as well. After it cooled I flipped it over and cut from the center of the opening to each corner.

Then I folded the fabric and adhesive to the back.

When I folded it back I checked to see if any of the flaps were too long and trimmed them.

I wanted them to be just short enough that they wouldn't over lap the side edges when they were pulled back.

I secured the flaps by working on the folded edge first, folding it and pulling it taught while I applied the heat. Once the edge was nice and neat, I worked on the  rest of the flap from the folded edge to the tip.

Before I secured the side edges, I snipped the corners to avoid excess bulk. I didn't snip all the way to the mat as I wanted to avoid fraying on the corners. I cut extra strips of the adhesive paper for the edges and secured them exactly how I did the flaps in the center.

And TADA! 10mins later I had a beautiful mat!

Meet the newest additions to the family!

 Daniel has been wanting a pet for the longest time. I've been thinking we'd get a dog someday (something so cute about a boy and his dog) and keep telling him that we need to wait until we have a house. Then something made me think of the birds I had when I was younger. I loved watching them hop around and listening to them chirp and sing all  day. They were small and didn't take up much space and were easy to take care of. So I thought, "what the heck?" I bought a cage and supplies off of Craigslist. It was next to impossible to find any of these birds locally, but I finally managed to find someone who breeds them (who happens to live a half mile away from me). So without further ado, meet the newest members of the family. Sorry for the bad pictures, the birds are very flighty (ha ha), and I'm shooting through the bars of their cage...First is Mr. Chirpy (nicknamed George...) I love how uniquely colored the male Zebra Finches are!

And here's his mate Mrs. Betsy. Yes, Daniel did name them... with a little help from me. He originally wanted to call them both Star. Yikes.

And here are the 5 (!) eggs they've laid since we got them. We're going to let them raise a clutch or two just so Daniel can learn all about it. Their eggs are tiny and so cute. (only about 1/2 inch long) By my calculations, they should be hatching next week! Can't wait to meet our little chicks!