Haircut

I'll come back and edit this blog later. For now...just look at the before and after.

Vote for Me for President!!!

One of the girls I work with sent me this today as a goof. I love it! It made my day. :) You'll have to mute the music to hear it. :)

Miller's Grocery

So...a few weeks ago, we visted Miller's Grocery out in Christiana. We love going here and like to take others out there to experience it. When we took Tim's parents, FOX 17 came in and did a special. Tim's dad actually went over and talked to them and they got him on camera. You can see Tim too. Me...I was hiding. I actually made sure to keep my back to their camera at all times...thank goodness I'm not in it. At the very beginning, you'll see a quick shot of a cutie pie named Rosa!!! Check it out!

http://www.fox17.com/newsroom/travelin_tn/vid_20.shtml

School's In

Well...school's back in session. I've been busy, busy, busy for the last few weeks getting ready for my new kiddos. I met them all today and I love them already. I'm really looking forward to this year. Anyway...I wanted to give you an excuse about why I haven't been around for the last few weeks! I'll try to get some new pics up soon!

Happy Birthday Cavrin!

Today we got to celebrate a special day with an AWESOME kid! Our friend Cavrin turned 5 today! I can't believe it! I met this cutie pie just a few weeks after he was born! He is growing so fast and even starts Kindergarten this fall. Happy Birthday Cavrin!

Here's Cavrin's sweetie pie big sister, Casey and their cousin, Anna Claire. Casey is like a little momma. :) I'm so excited that Miss Casey will be in my class this year!!!!

The party was at a local park. It was HOT and Muggy! But it was a lot of fun! The kids all had a blast. Here's Rosa and her daddy practicing ball. Yes...Rosa hit quite a few!

This is one of Cavrin's presents. Don't get Tim started on the Green Machine. He wanted one when he was Cavrin's age. He never got one and his parents haven't heard the end of it!! I'm not joking. Tim is still whining about it! I think he was equally as excited as Cavrin over this present and followed it around the rest of the afternoon snapping pictures like a crazy person! You'd have thought it was an expensive Porshe or something.
Rosa playing kickball.

Cake...MMMM. Okay, I found out later that Rosa ate the icing off the top and asked for more. Not cake...more icing. And two dear sweet ladies...who I'll ring their necks later...plopped huge spoonfuls on top for her! Thanks girls!

Cavrin and his mommy and daddy. I've come to depend alot on my sweet friend Crystal. She's a blessing in my life in to many ways to count.

We bought Cavrin a remote controlled spider. See Casey's expression when he opened it! I didn't take any pics of the thing. It's is NASTY!!! YUCK YUCK YUCK! I hate spiders! Rosa wouldn't even let me put it anywhere near her in the buggy at spiders. It's very realistic.
Me and my baby. I was swimming in sweat at this point but I love hugs from my sweetie pie.

So serious. :)

It's a bird...a plane...it's SUPER ROSA!

This kid is GOOFY! She loves to jump more than anything else I think! We have got to get her a trampoline. Here she is with her baby IPOD (Okay...Fisher Price...it plays nursery rhymes). She was jamming.

She jumps SO HIGH! She picks her legs up and KABOOMS her bottom on the mattress.
Another KABOOM!
This one looks like there should be an imaginary chair! She is a little acrobat in training!
This one is wild. It looks like her arm is sort of behind the screen on the window...which is well away from the bed. My camera couldn't keep up with her jumping and the light behind her. I love her hair when she jumps. Click on this one so it blows up and really take a look at it.
She is such a happy baby.
Resting now with her tunes.
She loves to hide under the blankets when she gets tired. She usually falls asleep and then we have to drag her out so that she doesn't smother.
Her eyes are getting sleepy here.

Finally starting to doze off.

Nope...Faker! This kid is tough! No nap for us today!

Homecoming Week

It has been a happy week for our family. Last Wednesday, my mom and I drove to Mississippi to pick up my sister-in-law, Liz, and her three kids, Jeremiah, Cadance, and Dominique. They are home for an extended vacation from England. They'll be here for a couple of months. My brother is currently in Italy and will be home for a month when he is done. I don't have pics of them yet. My mom hasn't sent me any and I forgot my camera. Come on Grandma. Get with it! I hope to see them this week and then I'll get some pics. Rosa was super excited to have some cousins to play with!

I also got to pick up my sister Ashley at the airport this weekend. She is home from Iraq for two weeks. Rosa has been asking about her for months so we were glad to finally see her. Maybe Rosa will lay off for a little bit. :) I had a picture of me, Ashley, Rosa, and my other sister Nicole...but it didn't turn out so well. It was too dark when we took the pictures. I'll get some more soon. At least, here is one of Rosa and Ashley. BTW...ignore the upside down flag on Ashley's uniform. It is a patch. Rosa kept pulling them off and putting them on. She apparently didn't get that back on properly. :)

Sleepy Baby

I know I take way to many pictures. I'm telling you that it is a sickness! I've said that before and I stand my decision to not seek help for my madness. I just need a computer with enough "umph" to handle it all. ;) My favorite pics are of Rosa asleep. There is something so sweet that I can't resist it. I have a million sleeping pics...but I can always use a million and one.

Why transracial adoption?

So...you guys know we are on a new journey to our bringing home our next child. If you've been reading my other blog, you know this has been a much more frustrating journey than our first. But we know God's hands are all over this and our child will come home when God decides it is time.

So, we had our second and final homestudy visit today. The Agape social worker asked us why we chose to adopt an African American child the first time. The SW is AA herself so I wondered what she thought about our choice.

I explained that it wasn't a snap decision for us. I told her about mean people who say mean things and kept us from doing what our heart wanted in the beginning. I explained about this mean person saying we'd ruin an AA child's life by bringing him or her into a white home. This was supposed to be a friend!! I'm ashamed to admit that it bothered me and scared me. The SW was shocked! Who would say such a thing!! I quickly explained this person is no longer apart of my world.

I explained that after much prayer and discussion between Tim and I, we just felt God calling us to let Him have room to work in our life. We didn't necessarily choose to adopt an AA child out right. We believed what God wanted from us was faith. Faith that He knew what was best for us and faith that He knew the deepest desires of our heart. This was something that we couldn't control. God wanted to steer the car so to speak.

We were blessed a week later with the gift that we'd been chosen to parent Rosa. As I shared this with the SW, I could see the look in her eyes. I think it is hard for many AA people to accept the adoption of black children by white parents. There is such a cultural sense among the AA community that those children should go to family if you can't care for them for whatever reason.

Before the SW left, I think she really understood our feeling that we didn't choose this. God did. Tim and I don't like to stand out. We like to hang back and just...be. We keep to ourselves. It's not that we are snobby or anything. We are just quiet people. Being a transracial family puts us right out there in the public eye. People see us and wonder. They question. We are forced out of the shadows.

It's been a good thing for us because we've found a calling that only God can place on your heart. We love sharing our story because we know that it has encouraged others to step out of the shadows and do something spectacular...adopt a child. A child of any race, any color, any lanaguge. God doesn't see borders and boundaries. We are all his children. He created us to love and be loved. The color of skin shouldn't matter. In fact, I'm quite jealous of Rosa's skin. She is beautiful brown and I'm just pasty white. I have skin envy. :)

Adoption is the perfect picture of God's most loving nature. Our adoption brings us closer to God because we can get a teeny tiny glimpse of the love He has for us. I say teeny tiny because we can never fully understand that magnitude of God's grace in our lives. By opening our hearts to a child that is not biologically ours, we find a love that is so deep, it is breathtaking. I still look at Rosa and sometimes she takes my breath away! Literally! I have to gasp so that I don't pass out. It's not that I put her on a pedastool. She's a child. Imperfect and human like us all. But I can see the love of God when I look at her. I love her so completely that I know that God's love for me is a million times bigger. WOW!!! How can you not be awed by that. I'd do whatever it takes to keep her from harm and suffering. Yet God gave His only Son, Jesus, so that I can live eternally at His feet. That's how much I am loved. WOW.

Ballerina Bangs

I experimented with something new. Bangs. They were so cute and very 80's. They are kind of hard to see in these pictures but take my word for it! CUTE! We'll do it again. This was our first day going to dance class. Rosa stopped to do a little chalk drawing before we left.

Rosa's hair doesn't go down...it goes out or up because it is so curly. Even when it is wet...it retains those tight spiral curls. She like her bangs too. This picture makes me think of my sister Ashley. My family will understand why. I think there is probably a picture somewhere of my sister with this same look on her face. Ashley has hair just like Rosa's. In fact, that makes Ashley happy because no one else in our family had has hair like hers. I'll try to find a picture to show you side by side of the two and you will really see the similarities. Rosa is just a browner version. :)
Here she is all dolled up in her leotard. She LOVES her classes. It's really cute to see a bunch of two and three year olds prancing around in leotards and ballet slippers. We got to watch them try their hand at tap dance tonight. Hilarious!!!