my shelf...

I had this vision for a shelf that I wanted in my dining room area. And then all I had to do was tell my Dad and he whipped it up for me and it looks better than I even envisioned it. The sad thing is that my Dad had it done and in my garage for me to paint probably three months ago, and I just finally finished painting it this week. So when my parents were at my house my Dad got it hung up. I LOVE IT! While I was cleaning my garage today I found my Valentines Day decor and decided to get it up. Another thing is that this picture makes the shelf look very small on the wall and in real life it is the perfect size, promise!

Happenings...

It has been way too long since I have actually blogged about what is going on in out lives, so here is an update...

*On the first of January I stopped eating chocolate to see if it would help with my migraines at all. So far it has been 27 days and I haven't seen a difference at all.  I was going to try to go until my birthday in March, but honestly if I don't see a change in the next week or two then I am done with this little experiment. It has actually been fairly easy not to eat chocolate, but the cravings have been hard, very hard!

*Hubs's busy season has not officially started yet. It will soon though. Hubs really loves his job, and that makes for a happy home. Also the new niche he has been starting up there is really doing great and growing.

*The car Hubs drives broke down this last weekend. So it is in the shop being fixed and we are trying to work life out with one car.

*I am now teaching the CTR 5 class at church, oh man I so love that age. They love to answer questions and they love having a teacher. I have about 7 little munchkins and I already love each of their personalities.

*We got a piano for FREE right after Christmas. It is about a 100 years old upright and in pretty good condition. My Mother-in-law bought me some Old English to polish it up and hide the scratches. It actually makes it look really great. We will be waiting a while to tune it, but I am excited to finally have one in our home.

*We have been trying to get alot of our adoption paperwork done. We are getting there slowly. I am hoping that we will be approved in the spring (March or April). I think what is going to actually be the hold-back on getting approved is our back ground checks and finger prints. They always seem to take forever or get lost int he process with the state and we have two states that we have to do this with. But I actually not too worried about it. I know in the end it will all work out how it supposed to.

*I have been doing photo shoots of alot of newborns/babies lately. And I have been loving it. A friend asked me last week if it was hard because of our situation, and actually it hasn't been at all. I realized that I have never even thought about our situation when photographing these beautiful babies.

*In December some friends from church adopted a sweet baby boy. I was lucky enough to be invited to take pictures at Placement. I can't tell you how overwhelming that experience was. It brought back so many emotions and memories of our very special day two years ago. I cried all the way to the hospital and all the way through the paperwork being signed and all the way home and alot over the next couple of days. I thought alot about our sweet, and beautiful C and just how greatful I am for her. We are truly blessed!

*Mac is seriously talking up a storm. And at least once a day he adds a new phrase to his vocabulary that usually stops me in my tracks because it is just so strange to hear those such everyday phrases come out of such a little body.

*It is my goal this week to get our garage completely cleaned out. It needs to be done before we have our home inspection for adoption. So Mac is going to go stay with Grandma and Grandpa and I am going to spend every hour I can working on it. Wish me luck!!

*Hubs has been on a diet for the last couple of months and has been doing really well. People are actually really starting to notice that he has lost weight. And he gets really excited when he tries on old pants that haven't fit him in years and they are loose on him. I am very proud of him!

*Mac has been doing really well at listening and obeying. He will do things that I ask him to do the first time. But then we have days where he just flat our refuses to do anything and he doesn't care what the consequence is. The life of a toddler...

*I really can't think of much more, I am sure I bored you all to death!

No we are not potty training in our house...

First off, these pictures were from our little family fun that we had last night. I had boughten some glow sticks a couple of weeks ago and kept forgetting about them, and last night Mac was playing with his flashlight and I remembered these. So we turned off all the lights in the house and let Mac play with the glow stick for awhile and then Hubs and I decided to try to do some light writing with it.

So on to Mac's potty training, I have had alot of questions about it.

We are not really potty training right now, although that may be how it looks. I decided early on after watching friends do it and also after much accepted advice on it, that I was going to make it a point to not push the matter in my house, nor was I going to stress about it more than was needed.  Also, I don't feel the need for my child to be an over achiever in this area so that I can say "My child is so smart that he was potty trained way before your child or way before what is normal".So it has been my goal to just be at an "introducing" stage for Mac for awhile. I was going to wait until Mac turned two, but got the potty a few month before then and just let him sit on it here and there so he would learn kindof what it is all about. About a month and half before his birthday he suprised us by being able to go pee-pee on command when we would sit him on the potty. That happened for a couple of weeks without any force. Then all of sudden he didn't want to do it anymore, so we dropped it with just asking him here and there if he would like to go on the potty when we changed his diaper. He has just gotten back into wanting to this last month. So everytime we change his diaper we ask him if he wants to go on the potty  and then he can have some chocolate.

I am still no where near wanting to actually potty train Mac, nor do I think he needs to be. And he has yet to poop on the potty, so I don't think he is willing and ready yet either.

But we will just see how it goes...

Hubs's heart and Mac burning a fire under it I guess (it's his flashlight).

Our Saturday so far...

It was so beautiful when we got up this morning that we had to go on a hike. We headed to Mt. Pisgah because we were on a bit of a time crunch so we couldn't go too far. When we got there, there were a ton of people there with the same idea. We put Mac in the backpack and headed up the trail. Wow, it is a steep hike. I am just plain old out of shape and Hubs had already ran a couple of miles before the hike and he was also carrying a 30 lbs Mac on his back. So after saying all of that...we did not make it to the top. And once we got back to the bottom we let Mac walk around a little, he loved looking at the water.

On the way home we stopped at B's grave. I hadn't seen her headstone yet, it is so beautiful!

We miss our Brookie more than words can say!!

What Mac has been doing lately...

...alot of helping out around the house

...alot of "Jam" sandwiches eaten (sans crust)!

...and alot of time pee-peeing in the potty!

Mac in his new Sunday suit...

These little suits aren't totally my thing when dressing Mac, but it was too cute and on clearance so I couldn't resist!



Isn't he just so handsome!

my future missionary...

Mac LOVES the Elders. We had the chance to have them come to our house for dinner for the first time in probably a year. And Mac was in heaven with them here! I hope to have this be a constant in our family life, and have that great example to our children in our home.

The Elders were so great with Mac! There was alot of wrestling and rolling on the floor and all Mac could talk about was them. The next morning when I went to get him out of bed, the first thing he said to me was "Where Elders!"

While I was trying to finish up dinner, Mac decided to have a really bad diaper. Usually I catch these before it is a major mess because the smell is hard to ignore, but I was busy in the kitchen and was letting the Elders entertain Mac. All of a sudden I look over at him and the entire back side of his white shirt was brown. I was mortified! So while I scooped Mac up and got him in the bath and everything cleaned up, Hubs had to clean the couch off, because Mac had been rolling around on it. Poor missionaries had to see it all, parenthood in all it's glory!

Mac LOVED wearing the Elder's name tag!

December Randomly Cute!

And of course this is as close as he would get to Santa. This was at a family Christmas party that I was in charge of for my mom's side of the family. My uncle knows this guy from church and he came and played Santa and was totally hilarious and the best Santa ever. He even had a beard, but Hubs and I both noticed that when he walked in the church building he had a red beard, so he did something to turn his beard white.

I love this picture.

He was pretending to paint.


Mac is so infatuated with the blanket basket. He is always dumping out the blankets and taking the basket and using it as a stool to reach the counter or look over the couch.



He was very proud of himself as you can tell. He had been playing with a box of plastic spoons that he got out of the pantry. And he came up with this clever thing to do with them.

Love this picture of Mac jumping. He actually is a great jumper!

Helping daddy on the computer. I think they were watching videos off of the LDS web site.

Dragging around the penguin suit case that he got from Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday. One of Mac's nicknames from Hubs is "Penguino" because he used to casually walk around just like a penguin, sometimes he still does.

Hanging out in a box, why not!

Some little bad habits of his are shoving his whole fist in his mouth and also for some reason licking his entire arm. Not sure why, but I am trying to break him of the habit. Done good so far on the nail biting, I haven't seen him do that in awhile.

I asked him if he wanted to say prayer and he did this and said "Heavenly Fadder!"

I really love when we are blessing the food and he keeps his arms folded and sneaks food off of his plate!

He was probably eating a hair, which for some reason is one of his little bad habits...eating hair! Drives me nuts! But he is cuter than cute!

Just cute!

Playing in the box that our new book shelf came in! Who doesn't love that?!

Daddy feeding Mac whip cream!

We were all snuggling on the couch watching a movie and Mac was laying on me. Super cute! And then when Hubs was trying to take a picture he was doing his cheesy smile.

Mac Funnies ~ December 2009

Mac was looking at a magazine and he says to me “look-it B*****y!” I didn't realize he knew my name.

I gave Mac a juice box of apple juice (trying to get some vitamin C in him) and he took a couple of sips and then asked for some water, he took a couple of sips of waters then went back to drinking his apple juice. Not sure why! But the kid loves water a lot.

He was blowing out the candle on his birthday cake....”aaaah....aaaah...(blow)!” (like you would when you sneeze)

He was looking at the Christmas tree and said “cool lights!”

He was opening a present that was in a gift bag with dinosaurs all over it. He opened up to find lego blocks and kept asking “where's dinosaur?!” He was a bit disappointed that there was no dinosaur in the dinosaur bag.

Daddy made Mac's birthday cake. We put a Thomas the Train figurine on it. And all day Mac kept on asking “I want eat Thomas!”

We were on our way to a friends house for a Civil War party. We stopped at the store to get the lil smokies and bbq sauce to take and Daddy ran in to get the stuff for it. At one point I must have said that Daddy was going into the store to get some “chicken and sauce”. When waiting for daddy, Mac was getting antsy and wanted his daddy. So to distract him I was getting him to say a few different things like, “Daddy I miss you!” or “Daddy I love you!” then I told him to say “Daddy where did you go?” and Mac says very matter-of-factly “Daddy getting chicken and sauce”

Mac has been watching a video with song about animals and it has “The Purple People Eater” song on it which is his favorite. But he can't say it right and always calls it “pew-pew-pew”

I was loading the dishwasher and Mac was “watching/helping” me. He decided to tell me what everything is used for: fry pan - “hot”, pot - “noodles”, a bowl I always use to make french toast - “pancakes”, his little bowls - “oatmeal”.

We were looking at a book and there was a coo-coo clock in it. I asked Mac what it was and he thought about it for a second and so I told him it was a clock and he looked at me and said “no, it's a bird house!”

We obviously watch PBS kids a lot. I some how started singing the little jingle to PBS kids.org commercial. I sang “PBS kids...” and I hear Mac finish it out for me “dot org!”

After the doctor left the room at his well baby checkup, Mac said to me “Doctor K* said good job!” Yes Mac Dr. K* did say you did a good job. He reminded me of this one more time on our way home from the doctor.

On the way home from the doctor we stopped and got a Happy Meal, of which he ate none of, but he was falling asleep on the way home so I gave him his pop and after he took a drink he said “I love pop!” First off we hardly ever drink pop/soda and also he has never said that he “loves” anything particular except when we tell him that we love him and he says he loves us back.

His two favorite Christmas songs are Jingle Bells, and Drummer boy. In the car on our way to the doctor he was singing Drummer boy which he calls “gram-pum-pum-pum” to the tune of Jingle bells.

Mac loves playing on our bed. And sometimes he asks us to snuggle with him (his kind of snuggling not normal snuggling). So Hubs and I were laying on each side of him and Hubs asked him if Daddy could snuggle with him and pulled Mac close to snuggle, and Mac said no. So then I asked Mac if Mommy could snuggle with him and pulled him close to snuggle and then Mac said “NO! I snuggle Mac!” So basically...leave him alone!

When you ask him what we say about Ducks (UofO) he says “Boooo Ducks!”. When you ask him what we say about Beavers (OSU) he says “GooooOOOO BEAVERS!”
When you ask him what McQueen says he says “Kachow....ooooh yeah!”. When you ask him what Santa says, he says “Ho Ho Ho Merrrry Christmas!”

His favorite book...

Green Eggs and Ham

or as he calls it,

"the Sam book".

"Scary Monster!"

Mac drew this today and told me it was a "Scary Monster!" And then he growled like a monster would, so cute! Love my boy!

Family Pictures 2009

I am finally posting our family pictures that my friend took of us in October. I love them!

Our 2009...

This last year seemed to have gone by so quickly, way too quickly! But when I looked back at my posts from the beginning of 2009 it seemed like so long ago. This wasn't my favorite year, but we had some really big things happen that made it good and memorable for sure.

January

*Hubs turned THIRTY!

*We got a Four-Generation picture with Hubs's Dad and Grandma

*We were able to drive to Myrtle Point to see Hubs's Grandpa Curt and get another Four-Generation picture.

*Mac started to learn how to walk on his own although he did not master it yet.

*Hubs's brother became engaged.

February

*Found out Mac is allergic to milk.

*Mac and I got the flu pretty bad.

*I started my photography blog which in turn boosted my photography business. I have really enjoyed improving my skills and sharing them with so many.

*Our nephew Cash was born.

*Bryce was called as the 1st counselor in the Spanish Branch presidency of the branch we are serving in. It has been a huge amount of sacrifice and with a huge amount of blessings.

*Mac actually started walking completely on his own.

*Shared my testimony of adoption with someone at church. (And the results are amazing)

March

*Took engagement pictures for Hubs's brother.

*Mac got his first little hair cut.

*Mac came into full toddler hood.

*I turned 3o years old.

*And a few other little things.

April

*We had another sweet little nephew born.

*Some more of the things that we did this month.

My beautiful niece came to visit. We had so much fun with her.

*I took a quick trip to visit a friend in Spokane. Mac was awesome on the flight there and back and I had a wonderful time even though I ended up with a massive head cold right after I got there.

*Bryce and I celebrated our 8th anniversary and as soon as busy season was over we were able to get away to celebrate.

*I was able to take some pictures for my friends for their adoption profile.

May

*We went on a road trip to Utah to visit my brothers and their families.

*On the way to Utah we were able to make a stop to visit Mac's beautiful Birthmother.

*We took a day trip to the coast.

*We signed papers to build and buy our FIRST house.

*Hubs's brother took out his endowments at the Temple and my Mother-in-law was able to go through for Brooke (Bryce's little sister) who passed away a few years ago.

June

*Hubs's little sister Jessica graduated from highschool.

*Ma had his first Urgent Care visit when he fell and gashed his ear.

*Bryce's brother Spencer was married in the Temple to Lissa.

*Went to an extended family reunion for my mom's side of the family.

*Mac turned 18 months old and had his check-up and even though he was old enough for nursery would not go.


July

*We spent the 4th of July at our family lake house near the coast.

*Mac and I tagged along with Hubs to Las Vegas for a business trip. It was miserable trip (too hot to go outside, food was way too expensive so we almost starved) with some great highlights of seeing two friends, Rose that I had not seen in years (and who came to my rescue with some delicious food) and Emily who had her baby girl while we were there (and who was also so generous). Unfortunately I never posted the pics for this trip, maybe someday.

*It was a super hot month in Oregon reaching temps of 108 degrees.

*I chopped my hair!

*Mac fell out of his crib for the first time.

*We went to the Rodeo and Mac got very dirty.

*Mac went on his first horse ride.

August

*My photography business kept me very very very busy and because of this didn't take many pictures of our happenings.

*My friend Rose came to town and stayed with us.

*Mac went on his first bike ride and camping in a trailer.


September

*We took Mac to the Air and Space museum, AWESOME!

*We moved into our brand new house after alot of frustrations.

*We had some prayers answered after more than 5 years.


October

*I had alot more photo shoots.

*Just enjoyed being in our new house and getting unpacked.

*We started the application process again to adopt.

*We went to the pumpkin patch.

*We had our family pictures taken by a friend. I will need to post those soon.

*Mac was a train conductor for Halloween and loved trick-or-treating.


November

*National Adoption month. Tried to celebrate on my blog.

*I got really sick for about two weeks with a head cold and cough that seemed to last forever.

*We were finally able to bury our beautiful Brooke and have a small family service.


December

*We watched the Civil War~Beavers against Ducks at a friends house.

*We had Mac's 2nd birthday party with lots of family and friends.

*Went and cut down our Christmas tree.

*I took Mac's two year photos.

*Mac turns TWO YEARS OLD!

*And had the most wonderful Christmas with both of our families and in our new home!