Picture Time

For those of you who do not know, we are living with friends right now. We are building a house that seems like it will never get finished and our gracious friends have taken us in in the mean time.

Living with friends means living with the bare minimum which means no desktop computer. The only way for us to get our pictures off the camera is to put them on the desktop which is currently at my parents. All of this to say, I am hardly ever able to get the pictures off of our camera and on to the world wide web.

Lucky for you (Janet :)), I was able to get pictures off the camera last week and onto our blog for your viewing pleasure.

Zeke turned 8, then 9, and now 10 months. I still need to take the 10 month pictures, so maybe I will post them in 3 months when I upload pictures again :)

We had some fun dates with our kiddos. Me and Tay went to see Beauty and Beast at TPAC and Mark took Noah to see some race cars.

We had a camp out in the back yard with the family we are staying with. The kids had a blast and actually slept through the night!

Halloween happened. We thought we would be in the new house by then, but since we are obviously not, all of our costumes are somewhere in storage. Thankfully we have sweet friends who let us borrow costumes.

Til next time....

What's next?

There is not much to report, but I want to pass along what we do know. 

Right now, there is about a one year wait from referral until travel. If this holds true, we will travel to bring home our little girl sometime next fall. 

Our attorney will go to court on our behalf in about 6 months. After that, the US Embassy will conduct an investigation that is expected to take about 6 months. 

The Congo has implemented a new investigation process that has extended the time between when we pass court and when we travel to go and bring our little girl home. Because this process is new, we are fairly uncertain what to expect. 

I know this is extremely vague, but I wanted to share any details that we have. I will most definitely post updates as we get them. 

This will probably be the longest year of our lives. Knowing that our child is half way across the world where we cannot take care of her is a hard reality. But I do know that she is in God’s hands and he will protect her. 

Please join us as we pray that our sweet little girl stays healthy, is well taken care of, and that we get to bring her home before expected!

Our DAUGHTER!

She is beautiful, she is loved, and she is ours! Our little GIRL is 3 years old and we are over the moon with excitement!

Two weeks ago, we received the referral that we have waited so long for. We took these past 2 weeks to pray and listen for God’s direction. On Wednesday, we officially accepted our referral.

This is just as much our daughter’s adoption story as it is ours. We want to protect her and her privacy. For this reason we are choosing not to share much about her online. 

BUT, you better believe I will be carrying a picture of her sweet little face wherever I go and I would love to share with you.

I will post more details later! YAY!!

the yearly photos

Every year we have family photos. I spend way too much time picking out what we will wear, praying for good weather, and really hoping that our kids will cooperate.

Thankfully we have an amazing photographer who will get our kids to smile even when it means making silly noises, faces, and games. Trust me, she earns her money :)

photo slacker

Maybe it's this whole three kids thing. Maybe it's having one really "difficult" three year old. Maybe it's just plain ol' laziness. But I have not been taking pictures lately. I just forget. And when I do remember, I don't feel like going all the way upstairs to get the camera. Yep, that's just laziness.

But I do have a few pictures of my sweet, crazy kids.

Pater Pan and Tinkerbell (they are flying here in case you were wondering).

Playing in the rain and SUPER excited about it. There was also some serious signing going on. 

Zeke getting smothered loved on.

My beautiful baby girl loving the water.

Noah giving me his best smile. He's a keeper for sure. 

Brotherly love. 

Love her. 

Well, that is better than no pictures. But I do need to make a much better effort to take pictures. Let's see if that happens or not...

homemade summer favorites

Today is the day. My essential oils and glass bottles were all ordered and have made their way to my house. Our day is wide open and I have no excuses.

I have been wanting to make homemade sunscreen, insect repellent, and hand sanitizer for a while now. Given my extreme tendency to procrastinate, it has been on the "to do" list for quite some time. It's actually sort of sad considering that it took me a little less than 10 minutes to make all three.

 Note: all items are easier to tackle when a cute assistant is involved.

First on the list...sunblock. This one was super easy. There are 2 ingredients; coconut oil and Helichrysum.

To make sunblock:
Mix about 2 oz of coconut oil (other options are olive oil or sesame oil) with 12 drops of Helichrysum into a glass spray bottle. Apply every 2 hours and after getting wet.

Another recipe you may want to try is found here.


Next up, bug spray.

I had fun with this one. There are several great oils that can be used as an insect repellent. I used four that I knew would not only keep the bugs away, but would also smell yummy.

To make bug spray:
Mix about 2 oz coconut oil (or water) and 10 drops each of Lavender, Lemongrass, Peppermint, and TerraShield into a glass spray bottle. 
For a list of different oils and what insects they repel, click here.


And finally, hand sanitizer.

To make hand sanitizer:
Fill a 2oz glass spray bottle half way with water. Add 1t aloe vera gel, 4-5 drops of vitamin E oil, and 15 drops of OnGuard essential oil. Fill the remaining bottle with water and shake. Spray away! 
(recipe source)
  

A few notes:

• I use and recommend Doterra oils.  They are AMAZING! We have had wonderful success using them for everything from headaches to diaper rash and from sunburn to colds and flu.  
• Always use glass bottles. The essential oils cause plastics to break down...great for your body, not so great when put in plastic containers. 
• I used OnGuard for the hand sanitizer because it has anti-fungal, antiviral, and antibacterial properties. Click here to read other ways it can be used. OnGuard is one of my absolute favorite essential oils!

My sweet girl and me

My lovely and extremely talented friend, Tiffany Sharp took these sweet pictures of my little girl and me. I was so excited when she told me about this mother/daughter session. I will treasure these forever :)

poop in the tub

I am sure you already know what this post is about. I made is fairly clear by the title, but let me induldge you anyway.

At the beginning of every month, Mark has his busy time at work. One of these nights he has to work super late. Tonight is that night.

I was making dinner and thought it would be great to get a couple things done at once. So I brought Zeke's tub down to the sink, filled it up, and stuck him in. Multitasking, right?
One minute later, the tub was filled with poop. I wisk him out onto a towel (now also covered with poop) so that I can clean out the tub. I unplug the drain in his tub only to realize it was not all the way over the sink. Yay...poopy water all over the floor!

I finally finished cleaning the poop filled tub and the poopy floor. Wait, oh what's that warm stuff? Awesome, that's Zeke peeing everywhere. I guess I should have covered that up while I cleaned?

Good thing you are cute Z, good thing.

And to finish off my evening alone, I found Sophie's (our dog) throw up all over our room and the living room.

It's probably best that I go shower now.