Celebration!!

It's been a busy and eventful past few weeks. We have had much to celebrate, all of which included the following....

Ella's birthday!

Ella turned 8 recently and we headed to her favorite restaurant to celebrate. We were joined by a good portion of the family to help us have a good time!

If you want to see Ella eat and ask for more, take her here!

Ella on the phone with Uncle Thom

Ice cream at Graeter's

We headed to Graeter's for some ice cream after Emily had finished a soccer tournament on hot and sunny Sunday afternoon. We weren't really celebrating anything in particular at the time but it appears as if Graeter's was! They had all types of things going on at the store including face painting. We were in no hurry and so allowed Ella and David to get their faces painted.

Monarch Butterflies

I planted some milkweed this past spring in the hopes of attracting Monarch butterflies to my garden. It appears my plan worked. In late July I was happily surprised to find several monarch butterfly caterpillars happily munching away on my milkweed. I was also able to find an egg but since then the caterpillars have disappeared and I have yet to find a cocoon. Hmmmmm.......

An adult monarch on the milkweed plant!

The tiny white spot in the middle is the egg!

Some of the caterpillars!

A weekend getaway

Jason and I were able to join 14 other friends this past weekend and go to Gatlinburg to celebrate our friend Shane turning 30. We rented a chalet for 3 nights and had a good time hanging out, shopping, hiking, and being kid free.

The first night we were there Jason and Shane were cleaning up at the end of the evening (3 am, guess that's technically the morning) and Jason happened to open the front door to the chalet to find a large black bear on the front porch! Jason quickly closed the door and told Shane about the bear and the two of them woke myself and Shane's wife up to show us the bear. It was exciting to see the bear (from the safety of the interior of the house). What was unfortunate was what attracted the bear to us, Jason's cornhole bags. We had brought down with us our cornhole set and the bags got left out with the set. Apparently the bear found the bags to be good eating because he ended up ripping into three of the eight of them that night. We did have three other bear sightings during our trip, each around the house and all involving the cornhole bags! Now we know the secret to attracting the bears!

The second night we were there we all got dressed up to "party like it was 1979"! In costume we headed down into Gatlinburg to the Hard Rock Cafe and had a good time hanging out front of the restaurant drawing stares and comments from those passing by. Once inside the staff at the restaurant played "YMCA" in our honor and we did a conga line to that song all through the restaurant. We had people up joining us from their tables and kids dancing on the floor, it was a blast!

Jason was wearing his father's wedding tux!

The hat was not a part of the original outfit.






The guys!




The girls!

The next day we took a hike. The majority of us went and did the Alum Cave Bluf trail. I found out exactly how out of shape I am and am still feeling the "burn" in my back end. It was a beautiful trail and was worth the effort.

My birthday!

Although no pictures were taken at my birthday party last night (ah-hem, Jason did not take them) I did have a good time with my family. I spent the majority of the day of household chores and discovered that this is just about as exciting as a birthday gets at this age. I did however get a Wii Fit (which I bought for myself) for my birthday and I have yet to touch it! Emily has been on it several times and I find myself thinking, "Hmmm, that looks like fun, I should try it." Ella and David like getting involved too, here's a cute photo of the kids all doing Wii Fit yoga together!

Emily made the JV soccer team!!!

We are celebrating today having just found out that after a "grueling" (according to Emily) summer of soccer conditioning and camps and try outs yesterday that Emily made the high school JV girls soccer team! Jason and I are very proud of her efforts and now look forward to a fall filled with soccer! Go Emily!!!!!

Paperwork, FINISHED!!!

On the adoption front we have something to celebrate too! We finished the mountain of paperwork we had to get done and put together. We will have our first homestudy interview this coming Sunday. After that point we have to send in our remaining paperwork (already done) into our agency and then wait for them to process it, translate it and send it to Ethiopia to be taken care of. This will take awhile and we're hoping the step after that includes a referral of a child to us! We are still very excited about adopting a child and can't wait to see what God has in store for us as a family! We appreciate all the support and prayers that we have received and would ask that you would continue to keep us and our future child in your prayers.

We are hoping that you look around and see that we have much to celebrate, the big and the small. May God be glorified in our celebrating!