A New Family!!

Our wonderful friends D&D have become a family!!

They have met their daughter Daphne and we couldn't be more thrilled for them!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

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.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORIS!!

Happy Birthday DORIS!!!

I hope you have a fantastic day - you deserve it!!

So glad I was able to celebrate with you this weekend!!

Second note to self - still haven't learned how to do cool stuff with the pictures...

Fun Times!!

We are here in Kingston having a GREAT time!!

However - I don't have the time to blog at this moment.

K1 and Catherine have had a moment (not quite sure HOW the have had a moment...) to put a few words and pictures together - go there and check out what we have been up to!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY K1!

Please join me in wishing K1 the happiest birthday ever!!!

Enjoy your day!!

Can't wait to celebrate with you!!


Note to self - learn how to do fancy stuff with pictures and things for occasions just like this one!

Home...

We are home safe and sound! Although I am happy to be home - I could have stayed away a little longer.

You know when you are away and the thing you look most forward to is getting in your own bed - well that wasn't the case this time. The KING size bed in the hotel was incredibly comfortable.

I was getting VERY used to the sunshine and the warmth.


I was enjoying NOT wearing a coat.

I was enjoying the time spent with GREAT friends.


I was enjoying our GORGEOUS hotel room with the wonderful view.


I was enjoying our playing in the waves in the Atlantic Ocean. I LOVE this action shot - with the wave CRASHING on my back and K1's big smile and blowing hair!


I was enjoying the LACK of snow!

However - home is where we are and it is time to get back into the routine and dream about our next get away...Do I hear Mexico calling???

A First...

Today was an exciting day!! Why you ask???

Today was the day that K1 entered a T*arget for the VERY FIRST TIME!!!

Now you can all pick yourselves up off the floor...I too was shocked!!

Being the good friend that I am - I felt the NEED to rectify the situation - and we did!!

We went TWICE today!!

Part One

Step One - SUCCESS!!

We have successfully arrived in Buffalo with K1 & K2. The hotel leaves a bit to be desired.

They have run out of pillow cases - can you believe that - they have run out!!

However we are here for less then 12 hours and we will survive!

The alarm is set for 4:50am...sigh

BUT it will all be worth it when we arrive in FLORIDA tomorrow!!!!

15 Months down...AND VACATION!

Today is one of mixed emotions.

We have completed 15 months since we were LID - we are really not any closer to Pumpkin - perhaps another 24 months from now...IF I'm being optimistic.

We miss Dolores and Shawn who are also celebrating their 15 months today but they are so far away - but they will be home soon - I HOPE!

However - we have decided to NOT put our lives on hold and enjoy everything that the world has to offer - which is WHY - TODAY IS VACATION DAY!!!!

This afternoon we are out of here!

I can't wait!!!

TWO MORE SLEEPS!!

Two more sleeps until K1 & K2 and Mark and I go on VACATION!!

We are UBER excited to be getting away and having the opportunity to soak up some rays in sunny Florida!

We have certainly had enough of winter here in Canada and are ready to get some sand between our toes!

The plan is to bring the laptop - just don't know if we are going to have to time to blog while we are there!!

Did I mention that I was excited!!

Thanks to Tracey for house sitting while we are away!!

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...

Support A Friend!

I have a friend who has started her own business. She has taken the leap and become an entrepreneur.

I am impressed!

She has started a line of NATURAL bath and body products. She makes them all herself and I have tried the products and they are LOVELY!

She has lip balms, body scrubs, refresher spray, bath salts, bath fizzies, body oil, body salve, bubble bath, shower gel and soaps.

The prices are VERY reasonable!

Take a minute to drop by her site and check it out!

www.breathenatural.com

or click HERE

There is also a link on the side bar!

I know she'd appreciate it!

Catching up...

I am going to try and catch up on the past week and a half. In that time, I had company for a couple of days and I was out of town. There were only 2 days at home - lots of laundry done on those days!

I spent the weekend two weekends ago with my friend Ronni and her family at their cottage. What a great place that is and wonderful and gracious hosts her family is. Mark and I have been there before and always enjoy it. Ronni has two GREAT kids - they are 9 & 8.

I remember the first time I had spent time with Ronni and her kids and the first thing I noticed was how great she was with them. She parented the way I did in my head - if that makes sense. All the things that I said I wanted to do - she was doing, the way I would react was the way that she reacted, the way I think I would discipline the kids is the way that she disciplined her kids. All round, I think she - and her hubby - are fantastic parents and wonderful friends.

Here is Mark enjoying is H*arry Potter book and his Caesar by the water - life doesn't get much better then this!



Here are a couple of pictures that me and the kids took over the weekend. They asked if they could take some pictures for themselves and here are some samples of them.

No weekend away is complete without good friends, good food and good times and this weekend accomplished all three, plus some good weather and good swimming!




Apparently the kids enjoy landscape pictures!! They did take a couple of pictures of each other, but I don't want to post them here.


Part II

Mark and I were home and working for 2 days and then Dianne and her daughter Jordyn came into town. Dianne was one of the first friend I had in university. I was living away from home and NOT on campus but in a basement room with an odd lady. I was the only person from my high school to go to this university and I was feeling lonely and sorry for myself. I decided that this was NOT the university life that I wanted or envisioned. So one day while I was in line at the cafeteria, with my back to the 'eating' area, I said to myself "after you pay you are going to turn around and find a seat beside someone and sit there and introduce yourself" and I did!! Dianne and I became fast friends and she was my roommate (along with 3 other girls) the next year. We lived together for a couple of years and during our last year in university, her parents moved to Calgary. When we finished school, her and I packed up her car and hit the road and drove out to her parents new place in Calgary. Dianne was convinced that she was only going to stay for 6 months until she got organized and came back to Ontario...MANY years later and she is still there!

Two years ago, Dianne adopted a wonderful little girl who is almost 6. She is lovely and Dianne is a GREAT mom. When I picked them up from the airport and we were driving and Jordyn said MOM and I MELTED! It was so great to hear Dianne referred to as mom!

Dianne too is a FANTASTIC mom! She is SO great with Jordyn and they just compliment each other so well! Dianne too is the kind of mother that I want to be with my kids!

Here we are - Jordyn took the picture of Dianne and I - she might have a future as a photographer!




It was GREAT to meet Jordyn and to see Di again.

More to come on catch up...

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.

The Weekend...

Early Friday morning, Mark and I escaped the city for a long weekend at a friends cottage. Mark and I had a great time and were very relaxed! I wish the weather could have been warmer and the wind less, but just getting away to such a pretty place, was rejuvenating!

We had a great time with our friends. There was no swimming due to the weather, but there was LOTS of card playing, reading and gabbing!

Apparently on Sunday, 'something' decided to take a taste of my elbow. It must have left something behind because it is VERY swollen, hot, red and super tender. I can't actually move my left arm out of a 90 degree angle. Makes getting dressed, cooking, driving etc a little more difficult, but I survived. Luckily for me, one of the cottage guests was a doctor and after observing the 'spot' for a day, she called me in a prescription and I picked it up in town today. I am hoping that soon I will have mobility back in my arm and I am keeping an eye on the swelling as to ensure it doesn't get any larger. I tried to take a picture of it, but it just doesn't translate.

Thanks to L for having us and here are a few pictures of the wonderful view that we had all weekend.







Purse meme - coming up soon!!

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!

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!