Saturday, August 28, 2010

Tio Henry!!!!

My bachelor brother flew in from NYC for a quick weekend visit. Lucky for him, now he only needs to fly to one city in order to hang out will all his nieces and nephews.

For years, my sister and I have talked about getting our families together for a pic and we finally did! Last night we spent hours digging through closets and running to the mall - it's hard work coordinating outfits for ten people! These are the pics we took of just the kids with their Tio Henry.
Tio Henry is lots of fun, lives in NYC and never shows up empty handed... though some gifts are better than others! This trip they got candy, confetti poppers, super snaps, jump ropes, plastic bubble kits and a whoopi cushion. A whoopi cushion! See what I mean?
Tomorrow, he's promised to fill 300 balloons for a water balloon fight at the pool. The kids love to play with their Tio Henry - can you tell?

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Back to School

Yesterday was Isabella's first day at her new school. She is having to repeat Kindergarten since TX and LA have different birthday requirements. I'm still a lil aggravated by this but that's another story.

Sunday night, she started crying that she didn't like school once she realized that she was not going into first grade. I'm sure nervousness and a lil fear had something to do with her comments but it still made my heart break. Of course, the only thing I could to do was to stay up late and make her a new purple headband!Monday she woke up and acted as if it was Christmas morning - she was soooo excited!! Oh, how Isabella loves to keep us on our toes. On the way to school I thought that I'd gladly put up with back-to-school meltdowns if I can keep her little forever - she's becoming such a big girl!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Good-bye, Summer!

Isabella starts school tomorrow so today was the last official day of summer for us. We spent the day going to church, to my sister's house to swim and to have dinner. It was a nice way to end an even better summer!

On the way home, Isabella was starting to get a lil nervous about starting school, so I started naming all the fun things we did this summer and it really was a lot! Who knew we'd been so busy? These were some things we came up with in case Isabella was asked to share a few summer memories with her class.

• Moved to Dallas so Harold could start his Residency
• Slumber parties with our cousins - here in Dallas and in Houston
• Trip to Costa Rica - saw a volcano, took a river raft trip, waterfall hike, went to the beach, held a butterfly and more
• Snowballs, snowballs and more snowballs!
• Girls were flower girls in TWO weddings
• Swimming
• Exploring Dallas - movies, library, restaurants and splash parks
• Quick trip to New Orleans to visit family and friends

We came up with much more but these are the highlights. Hopefully, a few of these will get mentioned in class. Then again, Isabella may have everyone convinced that we are a boring family and just say that, "She watched tv." We did do a lot of that, too!

Good bye, summer!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Ethiopian Update: Fundraiser Time!!

We are officially starting one of two fundraisers to benefit our adoption. I've been thinking and praying about this for a while now and am excited to be taking one more step forward in our journey!

Our first fundraiser will be designing custom photo adoption announcements. I've always had a desire to do this, not just because it would be some money coming in but because it would be such a reminder of the forever families being formed. For you new readers, I've written about it in the past here and here.

For a donation of $25, you'll receive a custom adoption announcement saved as both a 4x6 and 5x7 for you to print and distribute as well as a low-res file that can be easily emailed to family and friends! My goal for this fundraiser is twelve families - yes, only twelve!! This would allow us to check off the next step in our process and start focusing on our homestudy.

If you know of an adoption family that is ready to show off their newest addition, please tell them about us! If you are interested in an adoption announcement but have exhausted all your available resources on the costly process, contact us anyway. I'd love to design an announcement for you as my small gift from one adoption family to another.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Two Weddings and New Orleans

We are back in New Orleans!!!

We made the long drive a few days ago so that we could be home in time for my cousin Heather's wedding. Isabella and Lucia were her flower girls. The wedding was held in Port Allen which made for a couple of long days - driving home, changing, driving to the rehearsal, back to New Orleans, back for the wedding and finally back to New Orleans. Phew!

My cousin made a beautiful bride and Mark, a handsome groom. They are both going to be spending a few years working as missionaries in Honduras - what an exciting way to start of your marriage, huh? Because Honduras is close to both of their hearts, the wedding was full of color and little Honduran touches. Isabella and Lucia even carried handmade Honduran bowls full of rose petals as they walked down the aisle instead of the usual baskets... so sweet!

Weren't we a colorful bunch? So much fun!

Now we are looking forward to spending some time in the Big Easy, playing tourists, eating some beignets and looking forward to this coming weekend. The girls have been asked to be flower girls yet again for some dear friends of ours from church.

I think I should make them little business cards they can hand out to their new friends in Dallas with "Professional Flower Girls" as their titles!!