Gender Roles

I think it's very important for parents to prevent gender role stereotyping from occurring. For instance, I like Elyse wanting to work with Nate's tools or play sports. I will encourage my son to be interested in cooking and playing house/dolls with Elyse. Well so far so good as you can tell in the video. Our neighbor boy, Cole is one of Elyse's favorite people to be around. A few days ago she got one of his laser weapons and LOVES it. She carries it around and constantly says, "Bam". I don't know where she got the "bam" thing, but as long as she doesn't hit people with it, then I think it's great.

Just Under a Year Later

What does just under one year mean?
-Toddlers replace babies
-Hair replaces baldness (or lack of hair)
-English words replace words like, "Baba"
-Sippy cups replace bottles
-Friendships are even closer!
The kiddos in birth order: Aiden, Willow, Mariana, Elyse and Mason


I don't know who gets more excited, Elyse or me when it comes to hanging out with our friends. Well today, we were invited to Ms. Willow's house to play and we had a wonderful time. It was great seeing the kids interact and I look forward to many more play dates this summer. Love ya ladies!

Overcame Her Phobia

Another 90 degree day, so I thought nothing better than to play with water. I know Elyse is not a fan of sprinklers, and I didn't want to fill up her big swimming pool. So I found a bucket and thought we could give her babies a bath. I got us in our swimsuits, just in case she went overboard with splashing. Put some toys in the bucket for her babies, and realized I forgot the babies. I went in the house to grab them, ran back out, and came to find Elyse in the bucket. She had a blast! She was playing in and out of the bucket tub for over thirty minutes. Guess she's healed of her water phobia :)

Hydrophobia

Today hit 89 with tons of humidity. Therefore, Nate and I thought Elyse would enjoy playing in the cool sprinklers. She loved watching Nate go through. While her attempt to walk through them to get to Nate started strong, it ended in tears. She tends to cry a lot when in the tub and now sprinklers, guess Elyse may have a hydrophobia (fear of water), only time will tell. By the way, there was no child neglect or harm in the making of these videos. She was completely tear free as soon as the camera was turned off.

New Hobby

I know I have said it before, but I LOVE this weather! Elyse and I have been outside everyday, and not only does she nap better, but she's so much more happy throughout the day when she's outside. Well we spend much of our days at parks, walks or doing the following activity below. As you can see, Elyse has become a mini soccer player. She really enjoys kicking a ball all over the place. I do have to apologize that I was only able to capture the end of her soccer practice, so sorry it's so short.

Chilling...

...barefoot in my SUMMER capris and loving it!!!

Mother-Daughter Weekend

This past Friday and Saturday, Elyse and I headed to my mom's to have a mother-daughter weekend. It was so relaxing and something I will remember always. Us girls have never had 30 straight hours just us together, in fact, Elyse and I have never slept away from Nate until Friday. Since the weather was perfect we were outside almost the entire time. We spent much of our time going to garage sales, talking, going on walks, going to the pond to feed the ducks,
going to the park,
and playing in water.
I had a wonderful time and look forward to doing it again real soon.

Now you may ask, why were we down there? Well that's because my wonderful husband and some of his really great friends (Kris, Seth and not pictured, Matt) came to help Nate install our wood floors. It looks beautiful, they did a GREAT job. You can see from the picture below just a small glimpse of the final result, but I'm not posting the entire thing until the carpet, furniture and railings are finished, sorry ;)

T-shirt Says It All :)

That's right, Elyse is going to have a baby BROTHER coming late July to early August! We are super excited!!!

Please continue to pray for the birthmother, Lily as well as us three. We are daily asking God for prayer with patience, trust and contentment with this adoption. There is a lot more fragile issues involving this adoption than Elyse's, but I really believe it's what's making us pray for this little boy daily. Otherwise, I feel as if I specifically would sit back and just take it lightly since I have already been through one adoption process. However, just like a pregnancy, nothing is the same, and God is in control.

Sum it up, God is so gracious, amazing and loving; and I praise Him so much for our soon to be here son!

Mother's Day Weekend

This past weekend, Nate, Elyse and I headed south to Iowa to visit Nate's family. His brother, sister-in-law and thier kids were in town visiting from New Mexico. We had a wonderful time and it was nice to see everyone at one time. We spent most of the weekend watching the kids play, playing cards, eating great food and talking. Only down sides were that it just went by too fast and we only got a handful of pictures.

Since we were in Iowa or in the car, I never got to wish all you mom's a Happy Mother's Day. Therefore, Happy Belated Mother's Day!

Belated Birthday Gift

Last night Nate finally received his birthday gift (December birthday) from Elyse and I. Since we have moved into this house that has only two garages, Nate has always wanted a shed for storage and getting things out of the garage that are dangerous for Elyse. Well it finally arrived and the joy, smiles and the look in Nate's eyes were worth every penny.

Demolition Weekend

This past weekend, turned out to be demolition weekend for Nate and I. Friday night we spent the night ripping out our wood railings which we will be replacing with iron. We then spent most of Saturday reaping out our wood and linoleum floors to soon be replaced with solid wood in two weeks. Why do it so soon? That's because we are heading to Iowa this weekend and so it was the only free day we had.


I will post a before and after when it's all done; but until then, we will be walking on our runways (random carpet pieces) through the kitchen and entry way.