Evans Fourth Gotcha Day

We celebrated our Fourth Family Day yesterday.  We reminisced about Evans Gotcha Day and there were several things he and Wendy remembered. Wendy remembered how Evan bit her and pulled her hair. I'm so glad that he outgrew these behaviors.  Evan remembered our Trick or Treating we did with him on our floor at the White Swan.  We brought eye masks and went down the hall and came back to our room door. Our door had a doorbell so we taught him to ring the doorbell and daddy would answer the door and give out candy.   We did this several times!  Since Evan was 3 when we got him he had a blast. I can't believe he is 7 years old now!!

I realize this blog doesn't get any comments anymore, but I know by the traffic feed I do have on lookers.

Evan is Seven!!!

Evan turned Seven last week!! We had a small family party on his big day.  Evan loves being celebrated so much!!!! I was so sick last week before his birthday on Friday. I didn't have his present bought or anything.  Evan had one request really and that was to have a new bike. Funny he actually got a new one the year before, but was too small for it; so Wendy took it over and poor little guy had her princess bike. :(. This year I decided to try once more.... He had no idea since they knew I hadn't been able to get out. Was an awesome surprise!!!
My mom and Mike's mother sent Evan birthday packages and he loved them both! Even Uncle Chuck and his family sent him a card with seven one dollar bills inside.
The only trouble we had was that Evan and Wendy came down with the virus I had and unfortunately we had to reschedule the birthday for his friends. So we are trying again this coming Friday for the Pumpkin Farm.

A Brand New Year

Well I'm doing it finally! Yes I'm finally making a post for 2013. lol Many things have happened since I last wrote. In August we helped our daughter Holly move to Chicago! What a drive that was! We got her things moved in and she and the pups settled in. That evening we met at our hotel and headed out for Chicago Pizza. We then went back to the hotel,Hilton,and slept like babies. The next morning Holly road the train back down to meet us. From there we went to Navy pier took the river tour then we went into downtown and shopped at American Girl Doll Co., Gap, Disney Store and then we met up with travel mates for Evans adoption. We ate at the Grand Lux with Nancy, Dave, and Sarah. It was so fun seeing how much Sara had grown! After our goodbyes we split off from Holly and continued to on our LONG walk back to the hotel. The next day we met travel mates for a day of fun at the Museum of History. Wendy and Jade haven't seen each other since we left China! That had been almost 8 years! They sure have grown! It took just a little bit for the kids to warm up to each other. Jades brother,Trace, and Evan came to our families later. The two boys even though they are 3 years apart,were so happy to have a guy to hang around. The four of them had a fantastic time and were begging for more time. After our goodbyes we met up with another travel family from Evans trip for dinner. We ate at a Thai restaurant down the way from the hotel. Easy to walk to. Lots of walking in the city. The food was good and the company was even better! It was good to meet Manny and Virginia's older boys, and my how Adelynn had grown. We visited and then had ice cream at the hotel. FUN! The only one missing was Manny... Wish you could have been there too. Saying our goodbyes to Holly,Gertie and Asta was the hardest part of all! You see this was the first time for her to move out of state and Sooo far away fro the family. Our baby bird had left the nest! I had my tears believe me! We made the most out of our return home? Iowa was so dang beautiful! I had never been there nor had Mike our the littles. We stopped in a tiny town off the interstate that had an Antique Church that they were selling antiques from. Right up my alley! We found a covered bridge that Wendy wondered if it was the one the headless horseman crossed. Funny, as we were stepping from the car guess what was on the ground... Pumpkin residue! On down the country road we went to visit John Wayne's birthplace. Let me just say if you are in Iowa go visit Winterset! We were in love with it all. We bought some beautiful tomatoes from a guy selling in his front yard. Made us yearn for this lifestyle. Evan turned 6 along with starting Kindergarten this year! He loves school! He had his birthday party at Chuck E Cheese this time. We got rained out of the pumpkin patch which would have been awesome! It seems like Fall is hard to judge for outdoor parties. Wendy turned 9 and is in 3rd grade. She says school is boring. Her math level is high; so we have to do challenging things for her. She had he friend party at home and the theme was Monster High. We had a fun time. The funny thing is both of our big girls usually help me with planning and corralling everyone. Instead it was just me Nd Mike doing it all. Luckily we borrowed one of her friends older sisters. whew😁 We had her party right before Halloween because we actually went to Disney World the day before her birthday. Not only did we celebrate her birthday there we also met Holly there the day we all first got there. We stayed at the Art of Animation Lion King Suites. What a wonderful place to stay! They finally got a place for families of 6!!! We usually meet up with two long time friends that traveled to China when we did for Wendy. Unfortunately we were unable to do that this time. We missed seeing you guys! This year we met up with the Milliken family. Once again Jade and Trace got to join up with Wendy and Evan. What a fun day we had!!!! Hopefully we can do this again! What a happy birthday Wendy had. We ended up staying longer this year and boy was that ever nice. We got to do everything we wanted to at a less rushed pace. Ate at different restaurants and got to have an enjoyable time all around! Thanksgiving was nice but Holly stayed in Chicago and shared it with her roommates. Once we finished with our meal we got busy getting ready for Christmas. I had not bought much at that time for Christmas so Lacy and I took advantage of some of the stores Black Thursday shopping the rest I bought via Internet. Mike flew up to get Holly and then they loaded up the car and drove back down. She hadn't driven on her own from Chicago to home so this was a good thing Mike did. She was able to bring the pups along and then on the return she drove it on her own. It was good seeing her again. I guess that is all for now. I may have to download photos later since my computer is dead and my phone has most of the photos of our Disney trip on it.

From Easter to Now....

Let's see..... Easter was so much fun. We had all 4 kids here! Evan has been really excited about holidays this go around. Christmas was proof of that. He has been so dang cute. I keep forgetting he is nearly 6 since he hasn't done near as many things as Wendy has in the 7 1/2 years we have had her versus the 2 1/2 years we have had him. It is like having a 2 1/2 year old who is in real life a 5 1/2 year old boy... Does any of that make since? All of his firsts have been delayed for 3 years. I can't even imagine beginning with a child who is even older.... Any way~ They had a blast hunting for eggs and seeing all that the bunny had left for them. Evan graduated from Pre-K two weeks ago and was so excited because he will be in Kindergarten at Wendy's school this fall!!! Bless his heart he really thought that he would go right into Kindergarten the day after graduating. I had to explain that Wendy's school would soon be out for the summer and then they both will begin in August together. He was down trodden a bit. :) Wendy was on the "A" honor roll again this year!! We are so proud of her! She ranked 3rd in her 2nd grade class in Math! I just can't believe she is now a 3rd grader!! Time is getting away from me. It stays so busy sometimes way too busy. :D She and Evan just finished dance recital last week. I just love being able to watch them! Wendy has become a beautiful little ballerina. Evan is just a charmer! He is the only little boy in dance classes here, but the girls just love him! One even gave him a lipstick print on the back of his shirt before going on stage. When I found this as he was changing into his play clothes I about died over the cuteness. It was so dang precious! First swim lessons were on Monday. The water was very cold, but Wendy pushed through it and had a great class. They put her in level 3 this summer instead of level 2. She learned how to float on her back and the jellyfish float (?) not sure what that was, and they even jumped off the diving board many times. I was very impressed!! Evan on the other hand was moved up to level 2 when he really needed to be in 1 still. He didn't want to put his face in the water or blow bubbles. Hopefully he will do this next class. As for me... I'm enjoying not having to get them up for school! Easter Lacy in Rumors ALT Rumors School Play Mothers Day Evan's Graduation Wendy's Awards Wendy's friends Casanova Evan

Oh nooooo.... Blogger has change it's format on me! Now to figure out their new system. Once I do I will add what has been happening over the past few months.

I was very fortunate to find Evan on some You Tube listings. Not sure how to add them to my blog if I even can, but here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LLt3PTj9BeaIU55i7zwDVmGA

If you can't click on it directly from here you can go and look at them on you tube.
I found it amazing that I could locate him at all. Luckily someone had posted on the New Hope group for another video they had added... that helped lead me there.

Did I Mention We had a White Christmas???

Well I wish I had posted this one before the last post, but since I didn't here this goes....

When I woke up on Christmas Morning I discovered on the way to make coffee that we had had snow. Not much at first, but as the day went we got more and more. This made Mike one happy man. He lives for snow. The kids enjoyed playing in it as I took photos. But this all happened after we opened up presents.



My morning was really pretty neat....
I stood in the dark thinking of making the coffee when all of the sudden I heard the back bedroom door open and shut. There were tippy toes coming into the family room where the fireplace is. I saw Wendy holding brothers hand and explaining to him in a whisper that Santa had eaten the cookies and left stuff in the stockings. She turned and tip toed toward our side of the house but before she could see me I ducked behind the counter. Very quietly she said lets go and wake momma and daddy up. We always try to see who can say "Christmas Gift" before the other (this is a long time family tradition on my families side). Along the way they kinda missed that Santa had left some pretty awesome presents out. I tried to trail behind but my boy has a keen since of presence so that didn't work out. hehehe

I beat them at saying "Christmas Gift" and then I told them to hurry and beat daddy. They did and you could hear the giggles.... so precious!

I proceeded to ring the jingle bells to get the big girls up and I beat them saying it. HAHA!! They in turn tried to beat dad and the little's. Fun morning!!!! Here are photos of our morning. It is a shame I didn't have the camcorder running for the little ones coming in on Christmas Morning.

The Holidays Come to an End

We actually have had one of the best Christmas' in a long while. Everyone got along and if something did arise it was solved very quickly. :) It really seemed to fly by this time! Mike was on call and it was just absolutely wonderful to not get any phone calls on Christmas morning. The New Year was just a great. With an extra week off we had time to put things away, but are still not quite finished.
Funny for as much as I love Halloween.... I just don't have as much to put out in the decoration way. Christmas is one of those I love, but not as much as Halloween. The stress always seems to be way more during the Christmas Holiday. I had wanted to have guests in unfortunately that didn't work out since our house even though well endowed with decorations was always kept a mess with the two little's and two big's home. Dad was off more than he has been before; so we all let our hair down and enjoyed lots of home cooking. With that brought lots of dirty dishes to wash.... that was my chore. YUCK!!!
We went to see my mom and brother along with his wife and baby the first weekend of Dec. It was great getting to see them and play with baby Chelsea. We managed to see the REAL Santa Claus at North Park Mall.

Tomorrow is the first day back to school and Wendy is ready for it! My kids love being at school and love being back around their friends. Lucky for me they both behave better there too. LOL!
Dance begins tomorrow for both of them and Evan will go back to his school on Tuesday. It will feel absolutely weird around here, but imagine all I can get done. ha

I forgot to mention the weekend we headed to my moms Wendy had her allergy testing done. It wasn't fun for her since everything they exposed (pricked) her back to she turned red and itchy from. At least we know now what all she is allergic to....
Cats are the BIGGIE!!! Dust, Dust Mites, Bed Bugs, Pollen, Roach droppings are some of the biggest ones. Thank goodness that she isn't allergic to foods!!! They put her on Allegra and Nose spray and so far for 4 weeks she has been doing really well. Believe it or not I have a photo of her back! Mind you this photo was taken 5 seconds after they did the test and then left it on for 10 min.


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Late Halloween Photos....