Yay!!! I just finished my fast.

We tend to eat fairly healthy, but every few months, I feel the need to detox. I have tried several different methods, but my favorite is the Daniel Fast. It is not a complete fast, meaning I do not eliminate all foods, just some. It is based on the fasting experience of Daniel found in the Bible in Daniel 1 and Daniel 10. Everyone does the fast differently. There are no “set” rules that I have found.

For my Daniel Fast I ate only fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, rice, and olive and coconut oil and drank only water for 10 days. This means NO meat, dairy, bread, sweets or basically any of my favorite things.
Here is a sample menu:
Breakfast: green smoothie (these are actually really good and a great way to get fruits and veggies in your kids, see my favorite recipe below)
Lunch: vegetable soup or salad
Dinner: stir fry or beans, rice, and veggies
Snack: apple with almond butter, nuts, or my personal favorite, homemade popcorn.



I know what you are thinking, “yummy”! But, it is not too bad, well at least for the first few days.
My thought process goes something like this:
Days 1 to 3 – “This isn’t too bad. I can definitely stick with this for 10 days.”
Days 3 to 7 – “This food is starting to taste pretty bland.”
Days 8 to 10 – “I am SO ready for this to be over!”

I am always excited to start a fast and I am always excited to finish a fast.They do make me feel better and are a great way to "jump start" healthy eating habits.

Green Smoothie Recipe:
I start by making orange juice
1 ½ cup water
1 orange
1 T flax seed (optional)
1 T agave (not during the fast, but normally I add this)
5 or 6 ice cubes
Blend for OJ
Add:
1 banana
1 cup mixed berries
2 cups spinach
2 scoops berry greens (optional, but highly recommended)
Blend for smoothie
Note: this makes enough for me and my kids for 2 days!

Sippy Cup Thief

We have a sippy cup thief on our hands. Noah knows which cup is NOT his, and that is always the one he wants. Well, Taylor does not like when he steals her sippy cup, so she puts up a fight. Noah is a smart little guy. He has started to take any sippy cup that he finds (and is not his) to the stairway. He hides out there while he drinks from the sippy cup. Sneaky little kid!


Taylor is going through a baby doll and binky phase. She needs to have a baby doll with her at all times and that baby doll must have a binky. This morning she rode with her baby doll and requested that I push the bunny around the house. Or as Taylor says "mommy do it".

What to do?

Noah used to LOVE bath time. The very mention of the word “bath” and he would get all giddy.
But now, he hates it! As soon as we get into the bathroom and the water starts running, he is MAD! And oh boy, once we put him in the tub, he is screaming at the top of his lungs. We cannot think of anything that made him go from loving bath time to hating it.

So, if you have any suggestions to get this kid to once again love bath time, they would be appreciated!

First set of paperwork – complete!

When the thought of adoption first crossed my mind, I had no idea how the process worked. I never realized the amount of time, effort, and energy it takes to adopt. It was rather simplistic in my mind; you decide to adopt, fill out a little paperwork, and then go a get your child.

As much as I would love for this process to be short and simple, I am thankful (for the most part) that the process is much more detailed. It is important that those who choose to adopt have detailed background checks, references, and training among other things. It is important to be sure that the children placed in orphanages are true orphans in the sense that they have no family who can care for them. Doing these things takes time and that time will be more than worth it.

A couple of posts back, I wrote about the huge amount of paperwork that we have to complete. Well folks, the first set is complete!! Praise the Lord! We were beyond excited when we received our Australian criminal checks this week. I never thought those things would get here. But just like I have been learning, everything is in God’s timing and not mine. He knows when each bit of this process needs to be completed to ensure that we bring our baby home in His perfect timing.

Our Weekend

We have been busy the past few days. Thursday night our neighbors had their 3rd annual St. Patty’s Day party. We are always looking for an excuse to get together and I am pretty sure that I have some Irish in me, so we have to celebrate :)


Mark took off on Friday and we went to the zoo for the first time this year. I forgot how much the kids and I love it! Tay was a little sleepy in the second picture. She was sweet up on Mark’s shoulders.


This weekend Mark’s parents came to town. On Saturday, we spent the morning at the park. Everyone was worn out after a morning of play and sun.


Mark’s parents brought down presents for the kids for Easter. Taylor really got into opening up her gifts. I have never seen her so excited about presents!Noah just wanted to put everything in his mouth (nothing new).


Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Bertha officially has a new friend, Corky (yes, he looks just like the crazy doll from Child’s Play). Doesn’t he look a little freaky in all of these pictures?


Saturday night we went to Arrington Vineyards. I love this place!! It is the perfect place for wine tasting, a picnic, music, and letting the kiddos run free. I even snapped a shot of Mark and Taylor with one of the owners (yep, that’s Kix Brooks)!





It is always wonderful to see Mark’s parents and never fun to say goodbye.

There is nothing much new on the adoption front. I feel like each day we get a little closer to our new sweet baby. Everyday we get a piece of our documentation complete, get an appointment scheduled, or receive a generous donation. We are astounded by the amount of people who have offered us their prayers and support! Oh my, we are we blessed!

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting…

When we first began the adoption process, we were told that we should get used to waiting. Adoption is a lengthy process, especially when you are adopting a younger child. Most of that process involves waiting. We took our time finding an adoption agency. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but there are so many to pick from and they all have different characteristics. We knew that the agency we went with was a huge decision. Each agency works with different orphanages and our child is in a specific orphanage. It was important for us to take time to listen to what God wanted for us.

We actually began the application process with a different adoption agency than the one we chose. After hearing some not so favorable things, we had to step back and reevaluate that agency. I think it was God’s way of making me give up control (something that I obviously struggle with).

After we decided on our agency, we began the paperwork. Oh my, the paperwork. It is ALOT. We have different sets of paperwork for our homestudy, dossier, and our adoption agency! We had to send off for birth certificates, a marriage certificate, police checks, TBI checks, and so on and so on. And then we wait to get those in the mail. Because we lived in Australia, we had to get a police check from there. Australia is not like America. They do not do everything online. So getting a police check is not so simple. We are still waiting for those to clear and be sent to us.

I contacted our social worker today to schedule our first home visit because we have most of that paperwork complete. Then I find out that our social worker is out of office until the beginning of April. Now we get to wait to start our homestudy.

I am guessing that God is using all of these initial “wait times” to try and build my patience for the massive amount of waiting I will be doing during this entire process.

Here are the binders we keep for each set of paperwork (yes we are both Type A personalities). Got to keep it organized somehow!

This next picture has nothing to do with our adoption, I just think it is funny. On Tuesday mornings we do a “preschool” with 2 friends. Their little ones are the same age as Taylor and Noah so it works perfectly. When we meet at my house, I put Sophie (our dog) upstairs. She is kind of crazy with company and not all of the kids love her as much as we do :) Sophie mainly stays by the baby gate and waits for someone to show her attention. This morning all 6 kids stood in the stairway to hang out with Sophie. I felt like she was a zoo attraction!

All boy

I am dedicating this post to my baby BOY, Noah. People will tell you that boys and girls are innately different. While I never disagreed with this, I had no idea exactly how different they are. Noah never sits still. He is into everything. He wants to be sure that he always has something in his hands, in his mouth, or is banging on something. Things that I never had to child proof with Taylor are now child proofed. Don't get me wrong, I love being a boy's mama. I was just not prepared for the amount of energy it takes.
I am using this post to show you all the "fun" things that Noah does during the day. I know this may be picture overload (unless you are a grandparent), but as a doting mama, I figured there could never be too many pictures of this sweet little boy.

I want you to notice the increase in the amount of toys on the floor. Noah wants to be sure that he pulls EVERY possible thing out of the toy box.


Splashing in the toilet is one of Noah's favorite things to do. I normally don't let him do this, but I thought "hey what can this hurt?". Here is where I tell you my not so good mama moment. When I took the first picture of Noah splashing, I realized that our wonderful little 2 year old had not flushed the toilet. We had to have a good wipe down after that.


Not that all of these need explaining, but I thought I would give details behind a few. Noah is not wearing a shirt because he drenches them when he drinks his milk. If you look really close at the picture of him and the sippy cup, you can see milk running down his chin. In the middle picture, Noah has his pointer finger out. Recently, he started to point to everything and say "that". So cute!


I know that was alot, but these are the little things that I want to always remember about my little guy.

Sleepy Noah

Noah is in the transition stage form two naps to one. If he takes a morning nap, he does not want to take an afternoon nap. But if he does not take a morning nap, he is cranky. However, I would rather deal with a cranky kid for a little while and have both kids nap at the same time in the afternoon. That way, I get some much needed "mama" time. When Noah gets tired in the morning he grabs his dino and lays down on the floor. It is so sweet. Of course after I took a picture of Noah laying down, Tay wanted to do the same thing :)

Why Ethiopia?

I found this video when we were researching countries to adopt from. The statistics given in this video are not the only reason we chose Ethiopia, but it is a powerful video. It is a reminder of how blessed we are to live in this country.

James 1:27 states: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
As Christians, we are ALL called to look after orphans. While this looks different for everyone, for our family, it means adoption.



(You can ignore the end about bringing our daughter home. We pulled this from youtube, and the end is specific to the family that created the video.)

Dancing

Today I took Tay to try out a dance class of tap, ballet, and gymnastics. The girl LOVED it. I did not get to be in the class, but I was able to sit outside and watch on a TV monitor. It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. Taylor was the youngest, so she did not always keep up, but she had fun in the process. I think dance classes might be in her future!
The only picture I took is below on the right. They has different props to dance with and one of those was a huge lolli-pop. After the class was over, I took one of her and Hailey.
Afterwords, we went to the park for lunch and play. Taylor is getting to be much more daring, so she is not afraid to climb almost anything. Noah tried to keep up with the big kids, but he mainly just sat on the slide and occasionally tried to climb up.

T-Shirt Time

There are some of you reading this right now who immediately thought of Jersey Shore. I have to admit, I once watched that show. To be honest, I might still watch it if we had cable. Probably best that we don’t.

Anyways, our t-shirts are here and are ready to be ordered. You can see them on the right sidebar. They are pretty awesome, huh? We are really excited about how they turned out! We got the super soft, ringspun (which means comfy) t-shirts. You are going to LOVE them!

Details: each shirt is $25. They are dark heather gray and come in sizes small, medium, large, and x-large. To order, find your size under the t-shirt on the sidebar (to your right) and click “add to cart” in the drop down menu . It is just that easy :)

And for those of you who missed my last post, here are the images of the front and back:

Sneak Peak

Adoption is awesome!!!! Adoption is also quite expensive. Therefore, we are planning on doing several fundraisers to bring our baby home. For our first fundraiser, we have designed a really cool t-shirt. Not only can you support our adoption, you can also get a stylin’ t-shirt.  Here is a sneak peak of our t-shirt design...


I will post again in a few days once we get the shirts and they are ready to be ordered. Until then, I have posted some family pictures for you to enjoy :)

Our good friend Evin (http://www.evinphotography.com/) took our family photos last week. We decided that we could "combine" a family shoot with Noah's one year shoot and Taylor's three year shoot (Tay does not turn 3 until May, but we figured it would just be easier this way). Evin always takes such great photos, so I wanted to share a few of my favorites!


The kids and I went to Let It Shine (a gymnastics place) on Friday with one of my friends. Taylor has been in the past and always has a blast. Noah got to join in on the fun this time as well. Although, Noah mainly cried because we went right in the middle of his nap time. So he was extra whiny and clingy, but he did manage to have fun on the swing.