Mike turns 51

Yesterday my sweet Mike turned 51. Wow, it is hard to believe that he is in his 50's.

We had a great evening. I made him a chocolate cake with chocolate and toasted walnut icing. Wendy and I sang to him and gave him our gifts and cards.
Lacy dropped by to wish her dad a happy birthday and Holly called. Our parents sang to him on the phone. Not a bad night.

Saturday we will be celebrating Mike's and my parents birthdays since they are all with in the month of January.

Happy Birthday to all three of you!

Lesa

19 Month Mark!

Sad but true....it has now been 19 months since we were logged in for Mylie. I should have written this the day before yesterday, since it was the nineteenth and the 19th month of waiting.

We have been keeping ourselves busy, and trying to keep calm still about the long wait.

Over the weekend we moved Lacy into her own place. She is now in an apartment and is making her little nest. I can't wait to see it once it is finished. Lots of things to put in such a small place, but I know she can figure out where everything should go.

Mean while we are enjoying Holly being home for the weekend. She must go home this evening luckily she will be flying so it won't take that long to get back. I will be sad to see her go.

Lacy comes back tomorrow to get a few things that were left behind. It will be good to see her and here how things are coming on the new place.

As for our wait.... Well, it has been a long one and I know that one day we will have our sweet baby Mylie. It is just taking longer than anyone would dream. I guess one way of looking at things is that we are 19 months and one day closer to our little one. I can't wait to see her little face, hold her and to shower her with all of this built up love we have gained for her.

I'm still hoping for a miracle though.

Lesa

Christmas Morning was succesful!!! Plus some added photos of our trip to see Santa.

The upper three are of all of us at North Park Center in Dallas on Saturday Dec. 22nd with our Santa that we have literally been going to since the two older girls were small! My kids swear he is the "Real Santa"! The story is long about our day to just get these photos.... We got out of our house to get to this Dallas Mall by opening. We managed to get there at 10:30 a.m. and Mike ran to get our ticket to see Santa. Turns out that he should have been there by 6:00 a.m. to have gotten a good ticket! Well needless to say our ticket was #174!!! They told Mike we should be seeing him around 6:30 p.m. At first it didn't seem too bad, because we wanted to shop and eat lunch at a favorite Italian Restaurant with in the mall. When we decided to go and see what # they had reached it was 5:30 p.m. and they were only on #90!! Mike, for the very first time said we were going to stay if it took to 11:00 p.m. that night!
They advised everyone to be there at 7:00 p.m. and they were going to start getting everyone in line by their # order and get everyone seen at a better pace. Why not do that in the first place???? Gee! We were so tired and I'm so surprised that we all looked good in the photo. Luckily Wendy had taken a nap in her stroller; which I'm grateful that we decided to take it (Wendy isn't much of a stroller kid anymore).

Mike got in line when our # was called. Only one person could be in line for their whole family; so we gave Mike a potty break and an extra breather. It was finally our turn to see the Jolly Man at 8:30 p.m. Hey, at least it wasn't 11:00 p.m.!!



The bottom photos are only a sampling of this mornings raid on the presents. Notice the change of P.J.'s.... thank you Leigh and Katey!! More photos later......



Merry Christmas to Everyone,

We managed to sleep in to 7:30! Wendy woke up and found her stocking was full and had the cutest kitty (stuffed)sitting on top of it. I allowed her to open her stocking first since the big girls were not awake yet.
Besides, Wendy didn't even give the tree a thought at that time. How lucky was that.

She did get the items she asked Santa for and then some..... What are kids for, but to spoil them!! Right?

The big girls cashed in, too!! This was a very giving Christmas..... Lacy and Holly made gifts of Soap. They may open their own line. Wendy went shopping for everyone in the family at the Dollar Tree. You know that is a wonderful store for little kids to be able to give each person on their list something while on a tight budget....hey, that even goes for grown ups on a budget. I tried my best to turn the give~mes into thinking of others.

Wendy was very grateful for everything she got. Since this is the last Christmas in this house it was a true success.

(Oh, Leigh....we waited till this morning to open the packages for Wendy and I. You have no idea how hard that was for Wendy. She would go in and hold the package and then put it back under the tree. This morning she opened it with great excitement and loves her book and the p.j.'s!! Check the photo of before and after.)

To Sue and Ed, thank you so much for the card of the girls. Man they have grown so much in a year!! Both are getting even more beautiful!! Miss you guys. I hope you read this.

Sally, if you read this blog thank you for your kind letter and excited welcome with our move. I can't wait to meet you in person as well. Wendy is so excited to meet Camry as well. I know that they will become vast friends.

Merry Christmas to all......

Lesa

Junebug Secret Pal Revealed.....

We received our final Secret Pal package yesterday. It was so hard to keep Wendy from opening her part of the package. My pal had left hints and an order of our presents.
She did it to Christmas Songs.
Mike had "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"
Lacy had "Frosty the Snowman"
Holly had "Winter Wonderland"
Wendy had "Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer"
Mylie had "Little Drummer Boy (Girl)"
And mine was "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree"

Well, Mike received lots of Chocolate with a nice Santa.
Lacy, snowman lotion,lip balm, and nail file.
Holly, penguin lotion, lip balm, and nail file.
Wendy, a Reindeer Apron, and Chef Hat.
Mylie, a wonderful drum with playing instruments inside. This will be waiting for Mylie and I know she will absolutely love it!!
I received a Beautiful Cut Crystal Ladybug!
Last of all we all received Maple Syrup from her area in Canada. YUM! We plan on using it on Christmas morning with breakfast.

Everything was so beautifully wrapped in Christmas Paper. Such a wonderful package for a final gift. My pal has been about the sweetest thing with all of the wonderfully thought out themes and packages.

Anik Nolet is my Secret Pal and she lives in Canada, and this is she and her husbands first child. They are LID May 18 2006....one month before ours. Some of the families in our Junebug 06' group weren't sure of their LID at the time they joined the June group and many got to know all of the June LID families so it was hard for them to not stay in ours and May or July however their DTC/LID's fell.

I'm happy that she is part of our group, and that I was able to get to know Anik!

Thank you so much Anik for all you have done for my family.

Lesa

Happy 18 Months......well not totally happy~

This is the time of year I had actually thought we would be in China for Mylie. There are many things going on at this time of year to keep us busy though.
I have been wrapping presents, addressing and mailing our Christmas Cards. Not to mention all of the packing going on. So, we have really been too busy to whine about it this time around.

Happy 18th month to my future travel mates!!! I am know hoping that this time next year we will hopefully be on our way to our new little ones.

Lesa

Oh my, don't look now.....

but it looks like Holly finally got elfed along with three other family members.

I couldn't resist!!!!

Go the link below....

Hey, I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking the link below.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1236494926

This elfin' greeting brought to you by OfficeMax®.

Lesa

Our family has been Elfed.....

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1206307017
You can go to this link to see. It looks like they don't want to let anyone put it on their blog unless you pay mega buck.
I'll see if I can get Miss Holly one up also. I didn't want to leave her out, but they didn't allow 5 family members. I had decided what I would do is send this to her last night of all of us here waiting for her to come home for the holidays. She has finals up until next Tuesday....

Lesa

Today is Wendy's 3rd Gotcha Year!!

Then......



Now......


Wendy,

Momma and Daddy are so proud that we are your parents. We have been so blessed by having you in our family.

I just can't believe that it has been 3 years ago since they placed our Wendy in my arms. I'll never forget that day!
We have made many life long friends through our trip and we are especially grateful to have found out who your nanny mate was. I can see why they paired you and Katey up!

To all who traveled with us I wish you and your daughters and son a Very Happy Gotcha Day! We were so blessed to have had such wonderful people to travel with. I'm so glad we are going to be life long friends.

Here's to our Daughters and our one Son....Wendy, Katey, Jade, Abigail, Elizabeth, Kaylee, Amelia, Lilu, and Hai Chong(Chong Chong). We miss all of you terribly!!!!!!!!!!

Trip to the Photographer.....

Last Tuesday Holly and I took Wendy to get her Birthday photo made at a new place about 20 minutes away from us. Being that it was before Thanksgiving we thought that maybe by getting there early enough we could get her photos done as a walk in.
Remember I said it was a New place! Dummy me, I should have gotten an appointment. They were booked solid up until 7:00 pm or they could get us in on Friday. I voted for Friday, but Holly wanted to just take care of it that day and so we made the 7:00 pm appointment. Now, being that we live a ways from there we decided to go to the mall to kill a little time before our movie started (The Bee Movie). Once the movie was over we were to meet Lacy and Daddy at our favorite Thai place to eat. Wendy calls the Owner/Cook "Grandma". Grandma just adores Miss Wendy!!
By the time we were done with dinner it was 6:15 pm. Holly, Wendy, and I took on off to get there in time for our appointment. I really should have called to see if they were running behind, but noooooo! We get there about 6 minutes before time and they had so many families waiting still! One family had 9 in it to have their X-mas photos taken.....needless to say they took forever. There were 3 other groups ahead of us. Once we were called Wendy was really tired(she had had no nap), and her little eyelids were very heavy looking, but she mustered up some smiles for us.
Here they are.

Yesterday I took her for her Christmas photos at BRS/Kiddie Kandids. Wendy did a wonderful job there as well, but this time the photographer made her smile unlike the other place where Holly and I were asked to make her smile? I didn't like that about them, but their quality was really good and the price was GREAT. BRS/KK's camera failed to flash and we had a really good smile/pose! Wendy was a trooper and came through it okay, but we had many camera problems in between each shot. The girl said it was a pain in the neck camera, and Wendy replied with this " No, it is a pain in the FLASH!" Isn't that too funny!?! I'll try to post some of these photos, but their disc is harder to load.

Lesa

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our family has many things to be Thankful for this year. I am very thankful for my Husband, Daughters, and I am thankful for one last chance at being a parent to another sweet baby girl sometime in our future.
I wish for you and your families a very Safe and Happy Thanksgiving.
May you get lots of Turkey and the fixings today!!

By the way, right before I made coffee this morning I let the puppies out to pee, and I saw on my wallpaper a lovely deep red ladybug sitting there. I just reached over and gave it a kiss. She started to fall; so I caught her and made my wish then I put her in the front entrance on our Ivy plant. Mainly because it was 34 degrees and later decided to sleet and snow. I'm so happy I didn't send her out side in that.