Happy Halloween

We finally had everyone healthy (mostly) so we braved the chilly temps tonight to do some trick or treating! Sammy was excited to get more and more candy at each house! Our cousins came over to trick or treat with us and that made it lots more fun..



my cheesy cowboy...



Sammy and his cousin...he got really tired of the cowboy hat so he switched to the much loved Mickey hat..

The big girls...as boys

We did our neighborhood, then Em and Sammy came back home with me and my sis in law and all the other kids went to the next neighborhood since they surely needed more candy...

We ended up with 2 HUGE bowls of candy and now although I wont need to buy snacks for several weeks, I will no doubt spend twice as much money paying their dental bills hahaha

Hope you all had a safe halloween!!

Blessings
Amy

Sick...

There is no running in my house today...no giggling or laughter. There has been an extremely silent little boy on my lap today who only has said..."more Mickey, juice and nightnight" all day. Sammy has run a very high fever (103.9) all day and has felt so miserable. Poor baby! I have had difficulty getting it to stay down lower than 100. He is just so stoic. I am sad to think of what hapened when he was ill in the SWI. Did they just keep him secluded in his bed all day? Did anyone cater to him? Doubtful. Did he lay there in silence? He has not been "programmed" like my other children that being sick earns you exclusive rights to the couch, the tv, any snacks or drinks you feel up to and unlimited snuggle time.

He seemed not to know what to do...even snuggling was uncomfortable for him..his little body was just so hot! I finally get his temperature down long enough for him to eat something and play just a bit and up up up it goes again.

Today has been miserable for him, but atleast he is with his family. No suffering alone in a bed. He has been hugged, cuddled and loved upon by everyone. We have been waiting on him hand and foot and barely is there a time when someone is not sitting with him, cuddling with him or trying to make him smile.

We will keep praying for healing for our little one...and will keep praying that one day he wont feel that he has to be so stoic when he is ill....Goodness knows noone else here is :-)

Busy Weekends

Well I survived....5 nine year old little boys...overnight....birthday party!
Yikes!! We had it all planned out....face painting, fort building, rubberband gun wars, tank constructing....ect...



I honestly think they had all that done in the first hour...

It was loud, it was crazy...they had a blast!! Tim and I only looked at eachother a few times and counted the hours until bedtime...but Zahc loved it and that was what counted!!

The next morning, the boys all left..worn out and sleepy eyed..but we were off to Turkey Run State park. Taylor had a band competition down in Indy and we decided to make a weekend trip out of it. I totally scored a room at the Inn on last minute notice and we spent the weekend out in nature.




It was a wonderful thing to have our family close together. It seems as if the second we came home, we had to hit the ground running with color guard, football and play practices....not to mention a busy 3 year old. We havent had time to connect as a family unit uninterrupted since we have been home!

















I have to say that honestly it didnt go as well as I had hoped. Taylor was upset over not making State, Sammy decided to throw multiple temper tantrums and finally had to be carried fast asleep for most of a hike (poor Tim) after being put in his carseat for a "time out". We had an incident where the kids went too far and scared the bejezzes out of Tim, Emily had even less stamina than ususal due to a cold and had to be carried for a large part of the trip....You get the idea.

However, that is our life...it is messy, chaotic and not perfect by any means. We still had a good time over all. We met up with great friends, we had beautiful weather, we learned some new things and saw some beautiful scenery. God blessed us with a family of 6 and life isnt always perfect, but it is our life and we are so grateful to have each other...perfect or not..

Pumpkins....again

We had a couple of unseasonally warm couple of days this week and a good friend asked if we would like to tag along at a pumpkin patch near by! The great family that owned the patch taught us about how pumpkins grew, the different type of pumkins and we got to go on a hay ride and pick one out! We had loads of fun...





Sammy and Clara


Then Sammy got to play in the leaves for the very first time...



He had quite a lot of fun playing with Em and Zach







We also went to our Halloween at the Zoo







Once Sammy figured out that he would get candy if he gave them his orange ticket he was all in!!

Tonight I am sitting here posting as I am waiting for 5 little 9 year old boys to finally drift off to sleep...We played hard and I am so proud of all the boys and their big hearts to include Sammy in everything they did tonight! He was thinking he was such a Big boy! We had 2 birthday parties this week. A princess party and a military party...he had a ball at both!

Blessings
Amy

Announcements

Right before we left for China I started looking around for adoption announcements to send out when we got home. Sadly there just arent alot that really interested me. Lots and lots of baby announcements, even some baby adoption announcements...but very very few older adoption announcements and I couldnt find any with the asian reference I was looking for. I kept coming back to This site that I liked her announcements that she had done and figured that it couldn't hurt to ask if she did any custom announcements... and see if I could afford it :-)

Sharon answered me very quickly and agreed to show me a couple of ideas that she had for an asian toddler boy announcement! I was SO excited and couldnt wait to see them! She had them ready for me to see the next day and I fell in love with this:





Of course they didnt have the pictures of us in them then, but they turned out better than I even had imagined! She blogged about it here

I am so thrilled with them, the design, the paper with linen finish, the quick turnaround both with the design and the shipping and the great great customer service!

She did an incredible job!! Thank you Sharon! If any of you PAP's are looking for great chinese adoption announcements..you now know where to go!!

Blessings
Amy

Darth.....Sammy????

This is what our son does for fun....
He found Zachs old Darth Vader Mask...and proceded to chase every one all around the house being "scary".... Ya know, we would have thought it would have scared him...Not so much!! Blessings Amy

Snuggle bugs

I just love this picture....the boys are becoming so attached to one another! For the last 2 nights, Zach has wanted to sleep with Sammy (in Sammys TWIN bed!!) I can hear them up there chatting away sometimes, but isnt that what brothers are supposed to do?? I mean besides, wrestling, jumping, and all that other boy stuff???

We are in the process of planning Zachs birthday party and he switched at the last minute from a party at the laser tag place to a slumber party military style ;-) So I was making out the invitations and Zach said "Mom, I am not gonna have 6 kids at my slumber party, I am gonna have 7" I am like...Uhhh...no, we decided on 5 friends so 6 total...party favors are bought ect..." So my little guy totally surprised me and said "No mom!!! I meant cause Sammy is gonna be at my party too!! Wow...what a sweet heart! Of course I shouldnt mention that he told me to PLEASE find a friend for Emily to go spend the night with hahahaha!!!

Blessings

Amy