Saturday

Saturday night party!!!

As promised, o.k. a little late, a picture of our gathering from Saturday night.

We had a great time. Having Dolores and Shawn here was FANTASTIC!!

Having Doris and Dan here to surprise everyone was GREAT!

It was great to see everyone else that was here.

There just never seems to be enough time.

Is it wrong...

Is it wrong that I am still in my pj's at 6:30pm???

We have had a GREAT weekend and now we are winding down!!

Waiting for someone to send me pictures from last night...misplaced the camera...

I will post them when I get them.

Dolores and Shawn - you will be missed and we will be waiting for you to come back home again.

1 and 3

One more sleep until Dolores and Shawn arrive at our house to spend a few nights!!

Three more sleeps until the gathering where some of our adoption friends gather here for a night of socialization (and lots of food and drink)!!!

We are sooooo excited!

There is much to do and to organize and prepare - but WOW is it ever going to be worth it!!

Can't wait until tomorrow!!

Montreal

As promised here are some pictures of our weekend in Montreal. Actually it is a video that was produced by 3D Productions and I pinched it off her site. There is no way that I could do a better job in presenting the weekend in pictures then she did.

That said - pictures are pictures and can't totally captivate the wonderfulness of the weekend and the FANTASTIC hosts that D&D are. We are so lucky to have them in our lives and as friends.

Sit back and enjoy the show.



I can't hear the music - I hope you can...if you can't view properly, you can visit The Creators and see AND hear from their site...

Happy Birthday Dolores!!

Today is Dolores' birthday!! Pop over to her blog and wish her a great one.

Mark and I are very lucky to have met and become friends with Dolores and Shawn. They are wonderful people and and we are so happy that we will share such a special part of our lives with them in China.

Enjoy your day - YOU DESERVE IT!!!

Catching up!

On Saturday Mark and I attended a family BBQ. What a beautiful day and an excellent time! It is always a good time when we all have the opportunity to spend time together. We played horseshoes as a family and had a riot! What made it even better was that Brad - my partner - and I WON THE TOURNAMENT!!! How exciting was that!! Last year we were the runners up, but this year we took home the trophy!

WE ROCK!!

The troublemakers!

Measuring out the point

My Mom!

Watching the match

Family shot!

Action shot by Mom!

Sunday was a beautiful day spent in Niagara on the Lake. Every time I go there, I forget how pretty it is! Mark and I participated in a potluck picnic lunch with Dolores & Shawn, Nic & Tim, and our organizers Rhonda and Josh.

We were a bit worried at the start of the day. Mark and I found everyone and went to park our car. We unloaded and we walking towards the picnic site. Well there was an ADULT and his kid (say about 18) horsing around - perfectly acceptable in a park. However, they were not paying attention and as Mark and I were walking one of us on each side of the cooler and a bag in our other hand, they basically ran into Mark. I should say that we were also on a 'hill' at the time. Well down went Mark, over went the cooler and mud was a pile we made.

What a MESS! All our ice and the water from the melted ice went everywhere. Since he went down in the dirt, we had INSTANT MUD!! EVERYTHING was covered in mud. Our potato salad container broke and I was ready to scream and turn around and go home. I was so pissed at these guys.

HOWEVER - the day only went up from there! After a GREAT picnic, we took a wander around the town and then down to the lake. The weather could not have been more perfect!

To top off the already wonderful day - there were presents. I was shocked. I was not expecting this! Do you all remember when Rhonda was talking on her blog about how she ordered something from New Zealand but she wasn't revealing what she had purchased...Well she had purchased something for PUMPKIN! Check out this picture. It is ADORABLE!! This wonderful little 'pumpkin' toque - I LOVE IT!!! Thank you so much Rhonda for this EXCELLENT gift!

And then as if that wasn't enough, Nicole MADE us this wonderful print. It is stunning! The picture doesn't do it justice. It is a representation of our blog with the pumpkin in the lap of the lady. I just don't have the words...
Thank you so much Nicole. You have a wonderful talent and I thank you for sharing it with us. I can't wait to put it up on the wall.

You will have to check out Dolores' and Rhonda's blogs too as they were also lucky enough to receive this great gift!

Another EXCELLENT weekend!

Friday & Sunday

The above photo is: Back Row: Tammy, Karen, Suzanne, Kelly, Chris, Andrea and Paula.
Middle Row: Nicole, Cari, Tracey, Leslie, Karen, Dolores and Julia.
Front Row: Catherine, Liz & Ava and Me.

Friday night I attended our 5th Waiting Mommies Dinner!! Can you believe it? We have been doing the dinners since last November, every other month, and this was our 5th. It was great to see everyone again and to meet some new people! It is a wonderful way to get together with others who are also adopting. There are mommies there who already have their kids home all the way to paperchasing.

Sunday afternoon Dolores invited some adoptive mom's to her house for 'Scrapfest'. I am NOT a scrap booker. I have NEVER done it. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have any 'tools'. I didn't even know there were 'tools'. I had only MINIMAL supplies (what we bought the other day at Michael's).

Well boy did I ever learn a lot. First off, I can't believe how FAST the time passed. It just FLEW by!! Nicole and Cari are seasoned scrappers and I certainly learned from both of them. Nicole is incredibly creative and can organize a page in her head and produce it on paper in about 15 minutes. Quite amazing to watch. Nicole and Cari also had lots of 'tools' which make scrapping MUCH easier. They both also brought some books that they had already completed. It was amazing to look at them all!

I managed to create a couple of pages and I am quite proud of my first attempts so I thought I would share. I had to take a picture of the pages as I didn't know another way to get them on the computer.

Here they are:





More pages to come as I am trying to complete some pages of our wedding/honeymoon in Cuba.

Thank you's all around!!

It started out as any other day. The alarm going off, me getting out of bed and getting ready for work. Mark getting ready for work too.

Like some days, Mark leaves water on the bathroom floor after his shower. Many times I walk in the bathroom in my sock feet - getting ready to leave for work and step in this water...

Today was no exception. Today I hadn't put on my socks yet and was in bare feet (can you be IN bare feet???). I walked up to the sink to brush my teeth and was quietly cursing Mark under my breath. AGAIN he left water on the floor and I stepped in it.

I quickly grabbed the shower floor towel (??) and placed in on the water on the floor so that it would be absorbed and didn't think about it again until...I started feeling water dripping on my foot. Hmmm - water dripping on my foot can't be a good thing.

I finished brushing my teeth and opened the cupboard under the sink and there was DEFINITELY more then a drip that came out on me!!

This is what I discovered:




The drain pipe in the bathroom sink had come disconnected! How the heck does that happen?? In the picture on the right, you can see my pen that I put down the drain to confirm it all! Very scientific of me!!

So this has all happened before 6:30am!!

I waited until the appropriate time had passed and I called Phil - He is just amazing!!

I came home from work today and this is what I discovered:



A brand new - WORKING - drain pipe!!!

THANK YOU PHIL!!!!

Also today when I got home from work, there was a package for me. Inside was this and a CD:



HOW CUTE IS THAT!!!! Thank you so much Nicole for the wonderful gift!! We are going to have one rockin' kid!! I LOVE IT!!!

Music on CD to be reported on later!!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

What a great day today is/was!!

New Friends

I was just looking at my blog - admiring what a GREAT job Kathy did in giving me a bloggy make over. I am so happy with it.

What struck me most though was on the right side under the tab that says: BLOGGERS WE'VE MET! Check out that list! How great it that?

I NEVER imagined that this little blog would morph into a life line, new friends and so much more information then I could have gathered anywhere else.

The people that I have met in person have been PHENOMENAL and AMAZING Women (and their spouses in some cases).

As much as we all bitch about the wait - and it does suck - if there was no wait, there would be no (fewer) new friends. And many of these women and families will be friends Forever Friends!

The weekend...

FRIDAY

This past weekend, Mark and I along with Rhonda and Josh had the pleasure of visiting Nic & Tim. We (Mark and I) arrived Friday night after about a 45 minute wait at the boarder to cross. We were not too late for our 6:00 meeting! We had a quick tour of the house, met the animals and out we were again for a yummy dinner! We had wonderful food and even better company. We were at the restaurant for about 3 hours or so. It certainly didn't seem that long and we just kept talking and talking and talking.

We had to get a good night's sleep as we had a VERY busy day the next day.

SATURDAY
To sum up our day...Rhonda and I were watching it wiggle while Mark and Josh were sitting in the backseat with sticky hands.

Get your mind out of the gutter!!!!! We were simply enjoying POP ROCKS!!! What a blast from the past they were. We got the POP ROCKS (the sticky hands part) in the afternoon when we visited the JELL-O Museum (the wiggle part). And that was just a snippet of our day.

The day started out about 8:30 when we met in the hotel lobby. Nic said that we should bring sweaters as we wouldn't have time to come back to the hotel before our evening activities. So after a little bit of scrambling - we were off and heading the the "Pancake House". I had only heard about this place from Rhonda and Nic and they RAVED about it. This was our chance to find our for ourselves. It certainly lived up to it's reputation! The meal was wonderful! However, there was no time to sit around and lollygag - there was shopping to be done!

From breakfast we went to do some shopping at various locations, grabbed a quick bite for lunch and then off the the JELL-O Museum. What a lovely experience it was. Laugh if you must, but it was fun! Our "guide" through the museum was a lovely lady named Ruth. Ruth started working at the museum on the day it opened. She had some wonderful stories to tell about the JELL-O. One interesting tidbit we learned was that if you take a bowl of lime JELL-O and attach it to an EKG machine - the JELL-O will show similar 'brain waves' to that of an adult! You can look here for some other interesting JELL-O facts!

After JELL-O we were off to our dinner cruise on the Erie Canal. There were 14 people on the cruise and we were 6 of them! Remember how I said that Nic suggested that we go and get a sweater? Well it was about 90 degrees that day and the humidity was KILLING us! But we prevailed! The cruise was lovely and so relaxing. There was a nice breeze when the boat was moving. We went through locks and had a nice dinner.

On the ride home in the car, we were laughing SOOOO hard at the POP ROCKS that Rhonda was eating and the noises that they made and then laughing more because our hands were so sticky from eating the POP ROCKS off them. It was a GREAT day!

Sunday Mark and I were up and out by 7:00am as we had commitments at home.

Thank you so much to Nic and Tim for showing us around and taking care of us and putting up with our shopping and you didn't even buy anything!

Happy Birthday Catherine!

Happy Birthday to Catherine!

Mark and I hope you have a FANTASTIC birthday!!

Enjoy your day!

Waiting Mommies Dinner # 4

I feel so behind...I am certainly playing catch up! The above picture is of the WONDERFUL Waiting Mommies Dinner that we had on Saturday night!! Can you believe how many of us there were? 20 Waiting Moms, 3 Moms & 3 kids!! How great is that? We once again had a fantastic night. Many of the women I had met previously, but there were a few new faces to me.

In the picture above we have - back row left to right:
Kathy, Jill, Leslie, Paula, Deb, Rebekah, Julia, Bev, Beth & Julie.

Middle row: Dayna, Laurie, Andrea, Me, Karen with her precious Samara, Nicole, Suzanne.

Front row: Catherine, Cari, , Liz & Ava (who only returned from China 2 weeks ago!, Debbie and beautiful Olivia.

We can't forget Rhonda who was also in attendance and she was the official photographer!

Pumpkin also received an adorable ladybug sandwich carrier from Liz & Ava - there is no picture because it ended up at Dolores' house when I drove her home. Also we received an cute 'tea tin' with a fortune cookie from Jill. Thank you both!

I would also like to thank Catherine for organizing this!! It is truly appreciated!

Mark - the thoughtful one

My husband is such a cutie. He is so giving and thoughtful...

Yesterday I was cleaning up my e-mail and I discovered an 'e-receipt' for a donation I had made to the Heart & Stroke Ride for Heart in support of Dolores' riding.

Well we are currently out of ink in the home printer and I had not gotten around to buying a new cartridge. I didn't want to forget about the receipt again so I forwarded the receipt to Mark at work for him to print it out and to get him to add it to our ongoing tally of donations that we have made.

I didn't think about it again.

Then today I was at work and Mark sends me - what I thought - was the receipt that I sent him. It was not. It was the receipt for the donation that he had made towards Dolores' Heart & Stroke Ride for Heart. He is so thoughtful that his first thought when he saw that I had made a donation was that I wanted him to also make a donation and he did!

How sweet and thoughtful is he!!

Fairy Tale Detour...

We interrupt the regularly scheduled fairy tale as The fairy tale has just taken a detour - with a gift from our fairy godmother!!

Today I arrived home from work to find a package in the mail addressed to us and FROM us...Very odd indeed! I am not one to dwell on the fact that I don't remember mailing myself a package so I ripped it open. How exciting - there was a gift inside. I have seen a few of these popping up in the 'bloggy' world and then BOOM there in one in my front hall!! There was no explanation but there was a WONDERFUL photo tree with beautiful saying. Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone. ~William Albert Allard~

Thank you SO much MYSTERY GIFT GIVER!! It was so thoughtful of you and such a wonderful surprise for me!
Mark and I had one of these photo trees already (I am thinking we are going to need a LOT more photo albums and holders in the future) with 'Pumpkins' first picture in it! Now we can both take one to work with our "pumpkin" picture in it!!

I must say that Pumpkin is VERY lucky to have such a FANTASTIC couple/person in her life!! Thank you mystery gift giver. You are incredibly thoughtful!

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time there was a gal – for ease sake, lets just call her Michelle. She started blogging. Very close to the beginning of her blogging (addiction) adventure, she stumbled across another blog. Again for ease sake, let just say this blog belonged to Kathy.

Kathy and Michelle started conversing. Kathy mentioned that there was another gal whom she conversed with and this gal is close to Michelle in time lines. Again for ease sake, we will call this girl Dolores. Michelle finds Dolores’ blog – with the help of Kathy. As it turns out, Michelle and Dolores and VERY close in time lines.

So Dolores and Michelle start conversing also. When Michelle and Dolores become DTC, they discover that they are actually in the same travel group!! How cool is that!?!?! So all three are conversing with each other. Michelle and Dolores also discover that they actually only live 5 minutes from each other – Even cooler!!

Michelle and Kathy meet in person at a Waiting Mommies Dinner. Michelle sees what a WONDERFUL person Kathy is! Dolores was unable to make the dinner that day.

Michelle and Dolores decide that they are going to meet each other in person. They meet for dinner and have a GRAND time! Michelle is so pleased to see that Dolores too is a WONDERFUL person!

Then there was a "Bloggy Summit lunch" Michelle and her husband Mark attended and got to meet Kathy's husband Joel (and some other FANTASTIC people). Again Dolores and Shawn were unable to attend. Kathy and Dolores started to wonder if they would ever meet in person.

Michelle was now on a mission to get Kathy and Dolores to meet. Michelle had met both of them and discovered how lucky she was to have these PHENOMENAL women (and their hubby's) in her (their) life.

There was a planned dinner for Kathy, Dolores and Crystal (Dolores and Crystal are BOTH going to make the next waiting mommies dinner) and Michelle to FINALLY meet. This time, Dolores was the only one that was able to attend!!! Michelle, Kathy and Crystal were ALL ill!! What are the odds!

Then there was the next Waiting Mommies Dinner – This time Dolores’ husband was having his birthday and she was unable to attend. Michelle thought – this is getting crazy – she must step in and DO SOMETHING!

Kathy and Joel were due to attend a seminar in Michelle and Dolores’ city. Michelle took quick action and invited Kathy and Joel & Dolores and Shawn to dinner at her home in the hopes that these FABULOUS couples could finally meet in person!!! SUCCESS!! IT HAPPENED!!! At long last, Kathy and Dolores (and their spouses) were able meet in person!!!

NOT the end...

Busy Saturday

Mark and I, once again, had a busy weekend...well really just a busy Saturday.

We started out by going to Mom and Phil's to celebrate Tracey's birthday. Mom and Phil have been away and this is the first weekend that we could all get together for her birthday lunch. We had a great afternoon with lots of laughs! Here are some shots of the day!

Madison
Josh








We came home for a quick change and then we were out the door again to meet up with Rhonda and Josh, Dolores and Shawn and Heather and John! Heather and John were in town all the way from New Jersey! It was so wonderful to meet them and spend time with everyone.

Rhonda made the reservations and asked for a round table - as it is easier to talk to everyone and there was going to be 8 of us. The lady on the phone asked if we were having a meeting and Rhonda said - 'Something like that'...well we ended up with a PRIVATE dining room!!! HOW COOL IS THAT!!! It was wonderful! We had doors at the end of the room that were closed and it was private and we could be loud and not disturb everyone else.

And we talked, and we talked and we talked! We arrived at the restaurant at 7:00 and didn't leave until 12:15!!! We closed the place! We were the last table in there. I am sure the staff were hoping that we would leave so they could go home!


There were also presents! Heather and John brought the ladies a present. The first is a key chain with a little shovel so that we can 'dig our own hole to China' and the second it is a mug with our blog header on it! How cool are BOTH of those gifts!! We were all stunned when we opened them! Thank you so much Heather and John for the VERY thoughtful gift!


Then there was a gift from Dolores - We had already received a gift from Dolores before and she was giving us another one. We are very lucky to have these wonderful people in our lives. From Dolores we received a beautiful bracelet and necklace in a very pretty bag! Thank you Dolores and Shawn for the VERY pretty gifts - you MUST stop giving them though...

I had a gift for Heather however it was left at our front door...It will be in the mail next week Heather!

Happy Birthday Doris!!

Happy Birthday to DORIS!! Doris is a wonderful person and I have had the pleasure of meeting her in real life too!

Enjoy your day!

Stuff...

Well today I was wondering what I should post about...it has been a while since I posted however, there didn't seem anything "postworthy" to post about...

Things can change quickly...I had some catching up to do. I am SO far behind on my blog reading. While whipping through Bloglines, I discover that it is Kathy's birthday!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATHY!!! Kathy is a friend and the wonderful person responsible for the blog make over!


Then I realized that I hadn't checked the mail. We received a wonderful Easter card and two little boxes of Smarties from Doris, Dan & Daisy. I am embarrassed to say that the Smarties are already gone! The card however remains and it proudly positioned in our living room. Thank you so much 3D for thinking of us!

Also in today's mail was more quilt squares. I have updated Pumpkin's Quilt site. Guess what? We are up to 50 squares!!! WHOO HOOO!!! We are half way there!

So for a day when I didn't think I had anything to blog about, I think we did o.k.!

TA-DA!!!!

Kathy is amazing!!! I am SO IMPRESSED with my new blog look!

Thank you SO MUCH Kathy for all your hard work and the beautiful results!

I don't have a clue...

I guess I am opening myself up to..."something" with a title post like that.

I wanted to update you on number 6000! I don't have a clue! I have no idea who it was. There are many people I can figure out who visit my blog, but there are so many more in which I haven't a clue of who they are...

Oh well, maybe next time when I hit a big number I will send Janet a potato peeler and an prize to Kathy for the most comments to one post!!

Thanks to everyone for the support and thanks for reading!