A Walking Baby!!!!!

Laney is walking.....I mean running!!!! We were at my mom's house tonight celebrating my little sister Caitlin's 22nd birthday. (Birthday Happy, Cait!!) Everyone was there and we were having such a good time. Laney was laughing her head off with Claire all night. The girls all wore matching outfits from Bobbis and Aunt Caitlin and there have never been three cuter girls!!!
Like I have said in recent posts, Laney LOVES walking lately. We spend most of our time walking around the house or the backyard with Laney holding on tightly to one of my fingers. Well, tonight she kicked the training wheels (a.k.a. mommy's finger) to the curb! Our girl is a full out walker. I am not talking like she took a few steps. She walked clear across the room more times than I could count. The only reason she stopped was because she ran out of floor! She was so excited and she couldn't wait to stand up and do it again!!! It was so perfect that my whole family got to be there and cheer for her. My mom said that she might have developed a little bit of a love for the limelight after all of tonight's cheering.



Here is a video of her in action!!! It is so dark, but you can see her cute face at the end of her fabulous performance!


Here are all our cutie pies cuddling with Bobbis

Grant loves to play the piano at Mom and Kevin's house. Laney was there to help him out!!

Claire reading to Laney. This is not the first picture of Claire Bear reading books to Laney. She is going to help me instill a love of reading in Laney!!!

Laney smiles so much lately, it is hard for me to not take her picture every second. We are so blessed by our sweet, happy, WALKING girl!!!!!

Happy Fourth of July!

I LOVE the Fourth of July!!!! And this was the most fun Fourth EVER!!!! Everything is more fun when there is a Laney to experience it with! We celebrated all week long with trips to the sprinkler park, walks to the lake for picnics, the parade, and parties with friends!!! Like I said, it was awesome! I read on another friend's blog that they were celebrating with their newest little citizen! I love thinking about Laney's first Fourth of July as an American!!!

Laney was in patriotic attire all week to take advantage of all her cutie pie outfits!! This one is courtesy of Aunt Hailey!!

Mom and I walked from her house to Lake Arlington for the Lights Over the Lake Celebration. Laney enjoyed feeding the ducks and walking on the docks. She did not enjoy meeting the big Chick Fil A cow!!! He might as well have had a mariachi band with him.


Here she is looking as cute as can be!



THE PARADE!!!! Okay, I can't say enough times how much I love Arlington's Fourth of July Parade! We go with Jess and Jack every year since before any of us had children. This year, Todd and Jack got up at 5:00 in the morning to park our trucks in the shade so that we could sit on the tailgates. What great dads!!!!

The Murrells met us at the parade this year, which was so fun!!! I hope that they plan on making it a tradition every year! Laney and Joshua were so cute in the bed of the truck!

Playing with Bobbis on Daddy's shoulders

Watching as some amazing float passed by....probably the Elvis's doing wheelies on their scooters! :)

Could Little Miss Claire Bear be any cuter!!!

We went to Brusters for ice cream after the parade and it was good stuff!! Definitely getting added to the tradition for Parade Day!!!

Every year for the past six years (except one when I was in Taiwan on the 4th of July) we have a party. It has become a very fun tradition. Is it becoming obvious that I am a fan of traditions. I do love them! We have a desserts and side dish contest and people enter dishes to win in categories like Most Patriotic and Most Original. I wish that I had taken ANY pictures of the food cause it was awesome. My brother in law won Most Creative for the 4th year in a row. His cake had an actual barbie doll baked into it and was decorated to look like Paris Hilton in her jail cell with her actual prison number! So funny!!! Hopefully I can get my hands on some pictures of the winners!!!
Aunt Caitlin feeding some of my mom's patriotic strawberries to Laners.

Lamar and Jill drove in from Austin with Tyler and surprised us. It was so good to see them. They stayed for a few days so we got to hang out with them and get some time with their sweet boy. He is growing so fast!

Jess and Jack brought their bounce house for the kids to play in. It was a hit, even for Laney who got to play in there with Aunt Cait.

One Year Ago Today!!!!

July 5th will always be an extremely special day for our family. It was this day last year that we saw our daughter's face for the very first time. The day that our agency called us with the news of our referral is so vividly etched in my memory. I still feel that rush of consuming joy and gratitude that flooded my mind when we found out that we were matched with little Jhang, Xiang Ting. I wrote about the details of that amazing day on our adoption journal last year. You can read that post and see all her referral pictures here: Meet Our Beautiful Baby Girl

Laney was just 11 weeks old when we got her referral. We picked her up at Chung Yi seven months later. I am sometimes still broken hearted that we missed those months with her. We didn't hold her when she was so tiny and new. Ours weren't the first hands that her tiny fingers wrapped themselves around. Other's voices were the first to lull her to sleep and greet her precious face as she woke. I don't think these thoughts often, but when I see a mother absolutley reveling in the beauty and wonder of her tiny infant, my heart aches a little for what we missed.
Are you ready for the BUT?!?!?! I often wonder if it is this very feeling of loss that makes every moment I share with my daughter one that is bursting with precious privilige. When her fingers grab a hold of mine with a white knuckled grip that challenges anyone to try and separate this child from her mother....when she lays her head on my shoulder at night as my voice lulls her to sleep and pats my back at the same rhythm that I am patting hers, when I get lost in my admiration of her beauty and her bravery. These are the times that I realize that the months that we missed with Laney are part of what makes our family so perfectly perfect.
This is the very first picture that we ever laid eyes on of our sweet daughter. I feel like dancing in the streets all over again in celebration of this day!!

One year ago today, at just after 5:00, Todd and I saw this very first picture of our daugther and fell in love. This is the one picture that I can't really look at without getting emotional. So much of the Lord's blessing and promise were held in this picture!