Punta Gorda 2009

On Sunday, the girls & I drove down to Punta Gorda. My parents own a timeshare down there. It's nice to get away for a little bit. We swam, looked at the shops, watched movies, took a sunset cruise etc. I think the girls had fun. And they loved spending time with their grandparents.
Here are just a few photos from the trip. I have a new computer and do not have Picasa on here yet. Once I do, then I'll add the slide of photos from our weekend getaway.

I love this photo

Tiff is in a singing group at church called Daughters of Christ. They have put this group together on their own. They practice on their own. And they ask the church if they can perform, on their own. We are so proud.

This particular Sunday was Youth Sunday. The youth led the church service. Tiffani was part of the Praise Band. She sang (of course). Tiffs friend took this photo of her singing on stage. I love it. I think it's precious. So I just had to share.

Family Throwdown!

Bills Uncle Al was in town this week. So he thought it would be fun to have a "family throwdown" on the grill. Bill was in charge of steak, Rick was in charge of chicken and Al in charge of shrimp. It was fun. Bill tried to sabatoge Rick's reciepe but thankfully Rick caught on before it was too late. There was a lot of teasing going on. And a lot of laughing.

When it was all done, we left it up to the kids to decide who made the best dish. Abby, Jadyn, Marissa & Olivia were the judges (Tiff & Grace were not here). By a 3-1 vote, the SHRIMP won. Al was very happy. :-)

Fun with the Dogs

So, there have been days when we wondered why on earth we got 2 dogs. They can be big handfuls. I did put on Facebook one day how I wish someone would take them. Then regretted posting that. Well, they are getting better. We are giving them a little more freedom in the house. And they are loving on the girls.

The other day, Jadyn wanted to push them around in her shopping cart. The dogs LOVED it. Zack did not want to get out. It was so cute. Here are 2 photos.

Life is changing.....

Wow, what a week this past week was. In case you did not go over to our adoption blog, we have been referred A SON! His name will be Ethan William. He is almost 9 months old. He has an unrepaired cleft lip and cleft palate. He's the cutest little boy! We're so excited and also very surprised with his age. We were expecting a toddler. But very happy for a baby. Everything is going fast and smooth. We accepted his referral on July 7th. We have a LID of July 9th. We are currently waiting for our pre-approval from China. This could take a few weeks. We hope to travel by the end of this year.

In between the excitement of finding out we have a son waiting for us, the girls have been keeping us busy. Tiffani went bowling with her friend Ashley & 2 boys. Yes, there was an adult chaperone. And I was informed this was not a date. :-) They had a lot of fun and they are all good friends. Tiff has also had several sleep overs, one that the girls stayed up till 3:30 AM. I was not too thrilled about this. I'm really enjoying the friends Tiff has and so glad they come over to our house. Tiff has had a wonderful summer so far. She has also started going to band and is getting more comfortable with that. Band camp starts Aug 5th.

Abby & Jadyn have been busy too. Abby had a playdate the other day with her BFF from school. She had a blast. Jadyn & I spent some time together while Abby was gone. All of Jadyn's BFF's have been away for the summer. They should be home soon. Abby & Jadyn I think need a break from each other. They have started fighting a lot. Typical sister fighting. We will be ready for school to begin. :-)

The girls are very excited about having a baby brother. Abby has already told me how she plans to help me. Jadyn is telling everyone that his lip is broken, but it will get fixed. And that we need to get him a crib and that he does not have a foster mom. Tiff was texting all of her friends while Bill & I were still on the phone with our adoption agency. She is thrilled.

It's a new week. We don't know what God has planned for us yet. So far, so good.

Until next time......

A Disney Getaway!

This past week was rough on Bill. A lot of stress for him. So he wanted to get away. Our Disney passes will expire this week. We looked online and they had some good FL resident discounts on hotels. So we booked a room for the weekend. We were so thankful for our friends to look after the dogs. :-)

We left Friday afternoon. We checked in and then started exploring the hotel. Our room was a Pirate Theme. It was neat. We decided to walk to dinner. And did not realize how long the walk really was. We ate dinner (and the girls each got a sand pail with their dinner). Then A & J wanted to get their hair wrapped. Jadyn was super excited because some of her friends have done this before. So J picked out her colors and sat. Abby decided she did not want that, she wanted one already made with a clip. So J sat and sat, getting her hair wrapped. After about 5 min she was over it and wanted it to be done. She got to pick out some beads and loved it. Abby then picked out her clip wrap. The girls were very happy. :-)

After the hair wrap, it was off to the beach. They could not wait. We found a nice little beach by our hotel room and the girls had a blast. Tiff & Bill went back to the hotel. Tiff was hot and wanted to cool off. So the girls & I sat out and really enjoyed ourselves, until the sun found us. Then we got hot. We went back to the room, and around 7 PM got ready to go to the Magic Kingdom. They were doing 4th of July fireworks Friday & Sat nights, so we decided to try them Fri night. We got on the bus around 7:15. They crammed so many people on the bus. It was not fun. We got to the park around 7:50. We went to the tea cups, waited about 10-15 minutes. The girls love this ride. Then we went to Small World. By time we were done with that, we had about 10 min before the fireworks. We looked for a good spot and ended up back in Fantasyland. There were so many people there this night. But we still had a good view of the show. The show was good. The girls liked it. Then A, J & I decided to take the bus back to the room, while Tiff & Bill stayed and took advantage of the late hours of the park. It took the girls & I over 30 min just to get to the exit of the park. Then we walked to the bus, to get into another long line. Thankfully Disney was on top of the crowd situation because they had more buses running. We waited about 15 min or so for the bus. Again, cramming people on. THANKFULLY we got the last seat on the bus, so I could sit with 1 of the girls while the other was able to stand next to me. Then they took turns. It took over 30 min to get off the bus. It was 10:45 when we finally made it back to the hotel room. The girls changed & passed out. Bill & Tiff did not get back until about 1:45 AM. They had a great time. They went to the Monster's Inc Laugh Floor and They chose Bill to be "Thank Guy". Bill said it was great! Here are photos from Friday.




Since we stayed up so late Friday night, we decided to "try" to sleep in. Well Jadyn does not understand what "sleep in" means. 6:30 (her normal routine) she's up and making noise. We were not too thrilled. We all got up and ate donuts and then got our bathing suits on. We decided to check out the big pool. We chose to drive this time. :-) We did not realize that the water park and slides did not open till 10. It was about 9:15 when we got to the pool. So we just swam in the big pool. The girls had fun. Then the water park opened. They played in there for about 15 min and then they wanted to go back to the beach to build a sand castle with dad. So we got our things and drove back to the same little beach by our room. We found shade and chairs and we sat while the girls played in the sand. Dad did help them build a castle. They had fun. I think we were out there maybe an hour. It was such a nice morning. After the beach, Bill & Tiff went back to the room to shower and I took the girls to the little pool by our hotel room. There were 2 other kids there, so it was not crowded at all. We swam there for about 30 min. Abby made a new friend. It was fun. Here are photos.


After showers, we decided to go to Downtown Disney to see what time Ice Age 3 was playing. We ended up seeing the movie. The girls loved it. It was a cute movie. Then we went back to the hotel to rest. After some down time, we went to Riverside and ate dinner & got dessert to take back to our room. We could hear thunder in the distance, and we knew the crowds would be bad, so we chose not to do fireworks last night. We watched a movie we brought from home and we tried to go to sleep around 9:30. Unfortunately, we had loud neighbors, so Bill, Tiff & I were up till after 12:30. Finally they calmed down and we all went to sleep. I did not take any more photos.

We are home now. We had a nice getaway. Even though we went to the park once, we still had a lot of fun.

I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July.
Until next time.....

Summer Updates

Well, we are in the 4th week of Summer Vacation. The first 3 weeks were so busy. It's been nice not having anything to do this week. Unfortunately it has been raining all week. So we have cabin fever now. I'm so thankful for all the rain, because we need it badly. But we're ready to see a little sunshine now. :-)

Youth Camp was Great! Tiff had a blast. It showed, because she could not find the time to call home. I'm glad she had fun. She got closer to God, which is awesome. She got closer to some of the kids too. Friendships were formed, or they grew closer. She has a lot of memories from camp. I'm glad she went. Even though we missed her a lot. Here are some of the photos that she took during camp.


The week after camp was VBS. I taught the 4/5 yr olds with my good friend Billie. We had a good week. We had a good group of kids. Abby & Jadyn were with us, and at first I was concerned how they would act. They were very good, considering their mom was the teacher. The theme this year was Boomerang Express: It All Comes Back To Jesus. It was a lot of fun. And the songs are stuck in my head. Abby just loved the songs and really got into singing them during worship rally. Here are some photos from our week.


Last Saturday, my high school friend got married. I am so happy for her. It was a mini high school reunion at her wedding. I have not seen my friends in many years. It was good to catch up. Only Tiffani & I went. Bill stayed home with Abby & Jadyn. I'm so glad he did, because they would not have done well at the wedding. The wedding was beautiful and so was my friend. Here is a photo of the HS gang. :-)


It is now coming up on the 4th of July. We are taking a weekend getaway. We're going to Disney for the weekend. We were fortunate to find a hotel on property at the FL resident discount rate. This will be the last time we'll go using these annual passes.

As far as an adoption update, our dossier is in China. It was sent last Friday. Now we sit back and wait for a referral call. We don't know when we'll get the call. Could be this month, could be 6 months from now. We just do not know. We're okay with waiting. We know that God will bring us the perfect son for our family.

I hope you are enjoying your summer. We are having a lot of fun.

Until next time......