Let Milo open the door... to your heart

Christmas has come and hurried past. It's amazing how it builds up and then just flies past so quickly. We had an awesome Christmas holiday with our extended families. We spent the Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa D's, then followed it up on Christmas day afternoon at Buttercup's parents. The gifts were great but as we get older it is the time together that we cherish most.

Soon to be a Christmas tradition, we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" Sunday night before bed... coming up the stairs & looking outside to find the BLIZZARD had arrived.

If this won't get you ready for Christmas... (Dec 23rd 10pm):

Some of the "goodies" at the family exchange:

Who the heck is Milo?

Something funny came up at the L's gathering as we dove into some delicious Sara Lee desserts. My sweet Buttercup chimed, "Nobody DOESN'T like Sara Lee" ... the sister-in-law & I chuckled at her faux pas & bantered back... boasting... "It's nobody does IT like Sara Lee" ~ "What?, no it's not,... oh my word!" ~back and forth~ you get the picture... In the moments that followed I touted, "I guarantee it's "Nobody does it like Sara Lee!" Well, let me tell you the box says it all... and I was wrong. So now my sweet Buttercup can roll her eyes at me once again... as you wish.

That brings me back to some of the funnier mis-statements we chuckled at from the past. ...like the Flashdance song "Take your pants down and make it happen" (wonder why Mom didn't allow that song in the house) or another favorite by Pete Townshend "Let Milo open the door, Let Milo open the door, Let Milo open the door ... to your heart.

Here are some more Christmas photos

Christmas at the L's:

Z-girl cranks out Rudolph for the D's:

Lazy Days ahead

We had a great walk today (Dec 28th). After having gone a solid 2 days doing close to nothing, we ventured off to the Blandford Nature Center north of Standale. If you have not had the chance to ever get there, it's a real treat. I knew we were in for a good hike when the snow started flying and we were the only car in the park.

Self-timed photo at the Blandford Nature Center:

The girls loving this day:

MERRY CHRISTMAS

First of all, I have been told we should use nicknames to protect our privacy, so here goes. We have a feeling our kids are going to have a lot of things they will want to blame us for in the future, so we hope to make our blog not be one of them (as they try to get a job, get into college, get a wife, join the CIA...) We are so on the relaxed end of the spectrum when it comes to being overly cautious, but, hey, nicknames are kind of fun.

So, introducing my beloved, handsome husband -- Farmboy. I wanted to name him Wesley, but he didn't think that sounded masculine enough. As you wish. Whatever. I, then, must be Buttercup. For those of you that are scratching your heads, rent The Princess Bride or borrow it from us.

Our oldest is CJ, short for Chad Johnson, or "ocho cinco", We got him a Chad Johnson Cincinnati Bengals jersey last Christmas and had no idea he would wear the darn thing virtually every day for the rest of 5th grade. This year, as a middle schooler, we attempted to spare him tortuous middle school ridicule and informed him he can only wear it once a week. In school, that is, at home, the jersey basically goes on every day again.

Our second is Z Girl, short for Zoe Girl, as she is all about music, singing, playing the piano, listening to our IPOD or her own new MP3 player, or dancing to Dance Dance Revolution. Great job on your recent performances, sweetie.

Our youngest is Action. He also was debating between Fettuccine Alfredo (who knows why -- he hates the stuff) and Einstein, since he loves math. But Action fits him well.

So, unless I screw up, these are our incognito names.

With that, hope you have/had a great birthday party for a King today!!!

Christmas fun

No adoption news, but today I feel pretty content as we wait.


We are basically ready for Christmas. Last week, our church was cancelled due to a snow storm, so the first thing Farmboy and I thought about was, "Hey, let's get our Christmas shopping done." So, we and thousands of others were not deterred by the snow and completed our shopping. This is actually earlier than normal for us, so it felt pretty good to be done this early (I know, that is not really early, but we have been known to be shopping right about now).


We have tried to intentionally focus more on the birth of Jesus this season. We have done some advent readings together at home, just talked a ton about His great gift and Z Girl and I had a chance to go caroling with women from our church at a nursing home. All in hopes to have us get away from being self-absorbed. I think they are getting it, as the other night when our oldest, CJ, was praying, he thanked Jesus for his upcoming birthday we get to celebrate.


My dear friend, Laura, had a suggestion I want to use with the kids. Since it is Jesus' birthday, what are we giving him? On Christmas Eve or Christmas, I hope to talk with the kids about what we can give him as gifts. We will help them with suggestions if they need them, but really, we just want to be thinking about "helping the least of these" as Jesus would, and see what that might look like for us.



We need to capture what this tree looked like before the needles started to shower down hourly. We were opting for a different kind of tree this year, but hope to remember for years to come to NEVER again get a Norway Spruce. Farmboy even suggested we take the tree down before Christmas because we are so sick of the needle showers.

This tree was decorated exclusively by the kids and these two got a little hyper (like usual). At least this fake tree doesn't shower us, to0.

A few years ago, I got a couple extra stocking holders and one extra stocking, just in case. Hopefully next year we will actually need them. Sorry, cats, after Christmas I hope to get a good deal on another stocking, so your bitty one will have to go.

Here we go...

Well, I think we are ready to join the bloggers out there and start a blog about our adoption journey. I have enjoyed reading other blogs so thought it might be fun to write one of our own.

As we get the hang of things, and as Farmboy uses his technical savvy to get this blog rolling, we will see what happens.

As a brief synopsis of our adoption journey so far, we are hoping to adopt a boy and girl sibling group from Ethiopia between the ages of 2-7. Our dossier is finished and we are currently in waiting mode for our referral. We have been waiting 11 weeks, but who's counting... Well, we are, of course!!!