Happy Birthday Daddy!!

We celebrated Todd's birthday on Tuesday last week.  Luckily, I teach a 5:30 a.m. class on Tuesdays, so I was home with plenty of time to set up our birthday spread!  I started cinnamon roll dough before I left, it rose while I was gone, and I rolled it out and up to bake once I got home!  Yum!!!

The kids were so excited to sing to him.  Sam had to make sure that both of his Lovey Bears  (he really has three, but only two were present for the party) had birthday hats!

 Blowing out an imaginary candle.  I know I had candles, I just could not find them!!!

 Off to school for Sister!!

Student of the Week!!!

Laney was chosen as the Student of the Week in her classroom!!!  I have seen these signs around our neighborhood ever since we moved into our house.  I still can't believe that I have a kindergartener old enough to bring one home!!!  We are so proud of her and she was so so excited!!!

Getting selected as the Student of the Week means getting to bring this box home and fill it up with five things that represent you and the things that interest you!

 Laney chose her one of her favorite dolls, Baby Mama,  her doctor kit, a pad of paper with a marker, her gymnastics leotard, and a Christmas book about Baby Jesus!    Pretty accurate depiction of what makes her heart sing!!!

 She also got to bring a poster with pictures of her and her family!  We spent forever deciding what pictures to select!  She wanted about a million, so we had to work on soem editing.  She chose a picture of her with the nannies at Chung Yi and one of us on her Gotcha Day!!!  I love that she wants to share her precious heritage with her friends at school!

 We planted the sign in the front yard and she has been so proud all week!!!!

After a successful planting of the sign, we had to enjoy the beautiful weather for the rest of the evening in the yard!!

 a little baseball....

 a little gymnastics....

 A lot of fun!!!

 We took Laney for ice cream after dinner to celebrate!  We convinced her that she really wanted McDonalds ice cream rather than her favorite, Pure Bliss.  Buy one get one free...thanks Mickey D's for helping us with the budget!!!

Going Boo-ing!!!

We got "Boo-ed" two times last year by our sweet friends Megan and Ashley.  It was so much fun to get their suprise gifts on our doorsteps.  A bag full of fun treats, Bubba teeth, stickers, bracelets.........tons of fun!  The kids loved it!  After Halloween last year, I picked up lots of things on major clearance and packed it away with our fall decorations.  I forgot all about it, and got so excited when I opened up the boxes and realized that we were going to get to go Boo-ing AND still stay in our new budget!!!
Laney had a blast sorting all of our treats into their bags.

We filled these little pumpkins buckets with mellowcreme ones, made some caramel popcorn to fill up our little Halloween cups and I even got out all the old lollipop making stuff and made some orange pumpkins and purple witches at Laney's request!

Sam helped me add a jack-o-lantern face to this bag because we were one short!

Luckily, we just got our kindergarten directory, so we add access to most of the addresses of the girls that live nearby us in Laney's class.  We loaded our bags in the back of the car and hit the road!  The kids were so excited and they had so so much fun.  Laney carried the bags to the door, but she wanted me to knock.  By the time I knocked each time, she had already hightailed it back to the car at breakneck speed with a little bit of panic.  All three kids have talked about "boo-ing" alot since our adventurous night.  They are all ready to do it again!!

More Pumpkin Marshmallows!!!

I came across these pictures of our pumpkin marshmallows in their finished state, green stems and all! 

 All of the kids enjoying their cute treats!

The Hills are our Heroes!!!!

Our good good friends, the Hills, are right in the middle of some incredible times right now!  They have been smack dab in the middle of the adoption process for about a year and just this week, they brought home their three year old son!  He is adorable.  They are amazing.  I can't wait to watch their story unfold!!! I am not being dramatic or exaggerating in the least when I say that we really feel honored and super lucky that we get to call them our friends! Shane and Holly are truly an inspiration in way more ways than even just this spectacular demonstration of love and answer to the Lord's call of us to, "be a father to the fatherless."  Just this past Sunday, I was moved while we were singing a song about following the Lord in just such a way as the Hills are, and I leaned over to give Holly a quick hug and tell her how amazed and excited I am for them.  She responded with a humble shrug and said something about how she was just as excited for me about how Todd and I are trying to tackle some financial/budgeting issues.  Right, like that is the same thing!!! That is just just like her and such an example of  her sweet sweet selfless spirit!  We are so thrilled that Laney gets to watch yet another family that we love and are close to travel this beautiful road of adoption.   It is a gift straight from our good God that we, alongside our sweet girl, get to witness these families that we love be made whole through the miracle of adoption!!

Virginia and Amy and I decided that we wanted to host a little party/shower type thing for them to help get them some of the essentials that you might need when bringing a cutie pie three year old home!!!  Holly said that she would love it, but she didn't really think that it was necessary to invite a lot of people and expect a lot of gifts........there's that selfless spirit again!!

So we had a little get together with just us!  Amy organized it and planned a superhero theme, because "The Hills are our Heroes!"  She had build your own hero sandwiches and we made capes and superhero masks for the kids!  It was so cute and so fun!   

These two could not be cuter!!!  They are both going to be SuperGirls for Halloween, so this was a fun preview of how adorable they are going to be come Oct. 31st!!!

Oh my goodness!!!!

He had to go check out how cool he looked in the mirror!

We got the Hills our absolute favorite adoption book, A Mother for Choco!  Sam was giving it a little test drive!

Holly giving Big Brother Tyce his Super Hero cape.  He is pretty super!!!

Jared and Jill!!!

We got to have dinner with our great friends Jarend and Jill last weekend.  So so so much fun.  We miss them so much!

Weekend in Cona!!

A couple of weeks ago, Rick and Renee got us tickets to go to the Dave Ramsey conference with Colt, Jenna and Hailey.  It was all day on Saturday, so they furthered their sweet generosity and thoughtfulness by picking our kids up and bringing them to Cona for a weekend of fun with them!  While we were walking home from school on Friday, Laney was acting pretty hesitant about going to Nocona without me and Todd, but the second that we turned on out street and she saw Pops in our front yard, she got super excited and lost all of her nervousness!!

From the looks of it, the kids had a great time!!