Giddy Up!

This past Saturday was the Annual Father-Daughter Dance at Isabella's school. This year's dance was a cowgirl/cowboy theme. I'm not sure when the first notice was sent home, all I know is that the day before is when I realized that Isabella did not have a proper cowgirl outfit to wear.

I really did not want to spend a lot of money on her outfit since (1) we don't have much money and (2) it probably would only be worn once or twice. I found everything she wore at a local thrift store and cost me less than $10! Yay! And she has worn her "cowboy" boots all weekend long.

Harold was supposed to also bring Lucia with him but since we will be moving, decided to enjoy a lil one-on-one time with Isabella and her fellow school friends and their dad's. She was in heaven!

For Sale

We have listed our house for sale and starting looking for a new place in Dallas.

One of the perks of selling our house was that it would fund our adoption. Yay! I was so excited to not have to worry about applying for grants, loans and starting a great fundraiser.... not! The "bottom-line" I envisioned in my head is not even where we are starting! Ughh. If this not a buyer's market, I don't know what is!

On the positive side, we finally got our bathroom floors re-tiled (after 4 years), my house has never been cleaner and that cleaning lady I've been dreaming of hiring? She's coming on Saturday to get the house ready for our Open House on Sunday!

We Matched!

Today was the day that we have been anticipating probably since the first week of med school.... Harold's Match Day! I won't bore you guys with the full explanation but basically it's the day we find out where Harold will start his residency and confirmation that there is a paycheck coming soon. ;)

We matched in Dallas!!!

I shed a few tears of joy and sadness... mostly sadness and not a few! :) I know Dallas will be a great place and I'm already excited to meet some of my blog friends and families. And because my husband is such a sweetie, we are implementing "Crawfish Friday's" til we leave. We also have already started the list of things we need to do, see and eat before we leave. Yum!!

The next 8-9 weeks will be a mad rush of finding a new school for the fall, a place to live, selling our house and packing. Ughh, packing! Thank God my best friend and my sister and her family live in Dallas so we'll have a group of friends welcoming us to area. Yay!!

Like I was constantly reminding Isabella the past few days, "As long as we stay together, anywhere we go will be great!" So, off we go and I know it will be a great experience for all of us.

Adoption Update

I have decided that on the 14th of every month, I will be writing a lil update on our adoption journey. As you all know, we filled out our initial application on Feb. 14th. Yay! I received a call from our assigned caseworker shortly after.

The good news? Our application has been received and our first check already cashed.

The bad news? Gladney would like to put our application on hold for two months. The reason being that if our process moves quickly, Immigration will need income verification. Unfortunately, our many loan bills will not count. :) We figured as much which is why we did not apply last year but still kinda sucked to hear.

On a positive note, our caseworker sounds kind and told me to please keep in touch with any questions or concerns until then. That was very sweet of her. In the meantime, I am still following and falling in love with so many cute kiddos out there. The Andrew's family has inspired me so much! Lindsey is one of the first people I reached out to and to say that her children are fortunate to have her and Le as parents, is an understatement. They are in Ethiopia right now picking up their kids - with another trip already planned. They are amazing!

(Jewelry by Junk Posse, an Etsy artist, and called "Ethiopian Angel Wing" - a wing in shape of Ethiopia. Too sweet. You can see her work here. )

Happy Birthday, Aunt Celeste!

Today would have been my Aunt Celeste's 74th birthday... but sadly she passed away in 2006 from cancer. My cousin wrote a sweet tribute to her mom on her blog and it made me smile to think of all the fun memories we have of her.

I wouldn't say that my aunt and I had a very close relationship, before my parents passed away, but she was the first person I thought of when I was asked if there was anyone I needed to call. I knew she'd know exactly what to do and say. She helped us move out of our home and I am still mortified to this day, that as we drove away and stopped at the first red light, I promptly ran into the back of her car! So embarrassing!!

My aunt used to have Sunday supper (which was really lunch - still don't get that!) every week and would have one of her girls and their families over. Since I was not married or had any children, I was invited every Sunday to have lunch at her house. Man, I miss those Sunday lunches of pot roast, peas and rice! One day instead of the usual butter she put out a mini-tub of Smart Balance. She said that her cholesterol was getting high and the doctor told her she needed to start watching her diet. I quickly realized that what was really bothering her was not that her cholesterol was high, but that it wasn't high enough to require medication - just a change in her diet. That still cracks me up!

From what I understand her father wasn't the best around and somewhat of a racist. One of my uncle's told me that she once told her father that she was going to adopt a cute lil black baby just to shut him up. Oh, to have been there that day! I had forgotten all about that story til Harold and I chose Ethiopia to adopt our next child(ren) from. I know my aunt would have been cheering us on and telling us lil stories of how they first adopted Angelle, her first-born daughter.

I chose this picture of my aunt because although you can't see her beautiful face, you can see her beautiful spirit. I love how her grandchildren (one an honorary one) are so comfortable around her. This pic was taken the morning of my wedding while we were waiting in the hotel lobby. All my lil nieces/flower girls were hanging all over her, just how she loved them to be.

Happy Birthday, Aunt Celeste!

Not Quite the Originality I Envisioned

A few of days ago, one of my new favorite blogger's posted pics of her messy house. I, of course, quickly commented and told her that as soon as my husband walked through the door I would be showing him her post! ;)

I also sent her the link to my post that I wrote a couple of months back so that she could check out this great pic.

On Friday, as I checked out another blog I follow, she had written about the same thing! The reality of how we all live in a messy house. If you, too, are avoiding the laundry that's screaming your name, you can check it out here. I quickly decided that I was going to post a pic of the inside of my car, so that I could keep with the theme of posting messy pics of one's house and surroundings. But I didn't. Honestly, I was a lil too embarrassed to do so. Yeah, it really is looking that bad.

Then I started thinking about the many blogs I follow and how I always fail miserably to write about something that hasn't been written about before, when I suddenly realized that just between these few blogs, I was the first to write about my horrible housekeeping skills! Yay! Uh, not so "Yay!" Especially since the mess that is our home is slowly killing my husband.

Sigh.... posting about my messy house was not quite the originality I envisioned for myself!

A New Smile to Love

My first child has lost her first tooth. How exciting!

I had seen lil tooth pillows that you could purchase from Etsy and, of course, never got around to ordering one. Saturday night, Harold wiggled her tooth and said that he thought it would fall out that very night... great! I did a lil searching on-line and decided that I had to just make one and call it a day. This is what happens when you procrastinate - you end up pulling apart your office closet looking for embroidery thread, felt and anything else you can find!

This is what I came up with...

What do you think? Not too bad if I say so myself! Isabella loved it... and in her favorite color of blue. I went ahead and made one for Lucia because let's face it, it's either now or never. I made her's a lil different - part of the ladybug wing is her tooth "pocket" instead of an attached pocket like Isabella's.

So all that running around and Isabella's tooth fell out tonight, Tuesday - not Saturday. Grrr... do you know what I could have done with my Saturday night instead of sewing tooth pillows? ;)