Visiting the Zoo

One of the things that we did while everyone was here was visit the zoo. Granted, having grown up in Utah, I always thought the Hogle Zoo was small - boy was I wrong! It was still nice to see family and for what we have here - that's what we have! :) Love this picture of the siblings! Robert, Adam, Maria, David, John, and our David's oldest little girl, Ellie.
Loni and Maria hanging around.

How big is your wing span - Yes I do have hands - they're just covered in black gloves!

One thing that is really funny about Adam is for his height, he actually has a really long arm span.

Visiting with Adam's Family

Adam's family visited this week - we got to see his three brothers and also their families and girlfriends. It was a lot of fun to be visiting with everyone.

Here's a picture of Loni reading to our neice, Ellie. Not the greatest picture quality, but still cute.
This is Robert and Kara. It was so good to meet her since we've heard a lot about her.

This is John and Natasha. It was great to see everyone especially since four of them live across the country from us.

Three of the boys all had their birthdays this week - so we celebrated a lot. Here's Rob for his 23rd birthday blowing out candles on his giant brownie cookie.

John on his 26th birthday! Nice job with the trick candles.

Unfortunately, we didn't get one of David with his 29th birthday on our camera - so we'll have to add one later! :)

Accepted

We promised to keep everyone updated on the adoption process. When we picked up our mail after visiting Utah, we found our letter from LDS Family Services. So, it is official, we've been approved for adoption. We're really excited to have gotten this far and although we know that the process later can come with its own unique challenges, it feels wonderful to take this step to starting our family.

We appreciate all of the prayers and support over the last several years. It means so much to us to have such wonderful family and friends. We'll continue to keep you posted of any news and hopefully 2010 will be the year for our family. Please continue to think of us! :)

Emilee's Wedding

The reason for going to Utah this Christmas was because my little sister was married on December 29th at the Salt Lake Temple. Here she is along with her new husband, Trent.
My Dad & Martha after the wedding. (It was snowing the whole time outside while taking pictures).
Here the sisters are: Loni, Emilee, and Amy.
The four siblings: Craig, Emilee, Loni, and Amy.

I loved this picture. This is me lacing up Emilee's dress. (It really did take forever because it was all the way down her back and I had to do it twice that day!) But, she was beautiful so it was all worth it.

Gingerbread Village!!!

We had so much fun this year on Christmas Eve each taking turns making gingerbread houses. I baked them all day and made the frosting and then we all enjoyed the making of them. Here in this picture is: Adam, Amy (Loni's sister), Andrew (Amy's husband), Loni, Greg (Loni's half-brother), and Camille and Brittany (Loni's step-sisters).
I love this picture. This is our little village. We each made a house and eventually Emilee & Trent did also when the got home.

Temple Sqaure & Riding Trax

Here's Adam and I on the way downtown to look at the lights.
This was such a great night spending time with my family. Here's Loni, Craig, Emilee, and Amy. I loved being able to see everyone and spend so much time together this trip.

I love this picture that I took in front of the temple. Beautiful!

Another picture of the four kids: Amy, Craig, Loni, and Emilee.

Adam and I as it started snowing.

Emilee and I on the way home on Trax.

Koda's Santa & Winder Dairy

Thought this was funny.
One of the places we most love to go is to Winder Dairy at Christmas time. It is a family tradition that we go to the dairy, eat scones and hot chocolate and look at the lights.

Here's Adam and our brother-in-law, Andrew, waiting for our scones to be made.

Drive to Utah

On our drive to Utah, we made a special place for Koda in the back so he could get easily into his bed and also walk around for the long drive. (His eyes look a little funny because of the flash, but it's still a cute picture)
Thought it was so pretty as we were going through the Sierra Nevadas.

Early Christmas at Home

Since we were going to visit my family in Utah for the holidays, we celebrated early with Adam's family here. It was great to be able to spend some of the holiday season with them!
This is Adam's gingerbread house that he specially made for our friend's little boy because we knew that he would appreciate it most of anyone we knew! All little Noah kept saying for about 10 minutes was, "that's awesome", "wow, that's awesome". It was great to see him enjoy it so much.

This is our Christmas tree lit up this year. We only were able to enjoy it for a very short time, but it was nice to have it up for a little while.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we tried out a recipe from a good friend of ours. It was fantastic. 1 lb. of bacon on top and a butter herb rub along with onions, oranges, and celery stuffed inside! Yum!

Adoption!!!

As many of you know, we've decided to adopt through LDS Family Services. We're really excited about this new chapter in our lives and feel good that this is the right decision for us. Right now, we're in the middle of the approval process. We've completed most of the paperwork, and are just waiting to hear back from our Utah background checks and have our home visit. It's definitely been busy getting all of it done up to this point so far, but we're feeling good about how much we've been able to get completed in such a short amount of time.

We decided that since we've never gone in and had family pictures in a studio, this was the perfect excuse. After asking several people which of these and other pictures we had taken were the best, almost everyone chose this first one. So, we've decided to use this as our main profile picture for the adoption website.
We love the face on Koda in this one! (We also look pretty good ourselves!)

Adam' Surgery

Here's Adam before going into surgery. Nice Gown!!!
Adam had surgery this Wed morning. It was for his deviated septum and also to enlarge his sinuses so that he can breathe better. The surgery went really well. They had to do a lot more work than the doctor initially thought, but it was a success. Adam's starting to feel a lot better now. He's been a little out of it while on some of the medication. I think yesterday was the worst part because that was when they removed the bandages and took out the gauze. It wasn't gruesome to watch, but just made me feel bad because you could tell how much it had to have hurt from watching it all happening.

Happy Halloween!

Normally every year, I get really into Halloween - we even have our costumes all picked out usually in September, but for whatever reason - I just was not that into it. So, we opted to just be something we could do in a couple of minutes. :) We had fun though with Maria and her friends and also Adam's mom. For our trunk or treat, the YW and Loni painted faces.

Happy Birthday Loni!

Adam is so great and made me quilting stands for my birthday. He even made a different design for the legs so that they collapse.

Loni's ice cream cake

Happy 30th Birthday Adam!!!

Here's Adam blowing out his 30 candles!!!

Adam's birthday present was a Wii system. We also got a Wii fit, so here's Adam and Maria playing the hula hoop game.

Maria spent the night and we played games all Saturday as well. It was a lot of fun especially watching Adam and Maria try to outscore each other.

Lake Tahoe Trip

This last weekend, we went to Tahoe with Adam's parents and Maria. We camped out for two nights and we spent a lot of time at the lake. It was beautiful and peaceful there. We're already talking about taking a day trip and kayaking on the lake later this summer.

Maria playing with our kids' lacrosse set.

Loni going in for the save.

Adam and Maria playing badmitton.

Loni, Maria, Manny, and Kim at the campground.

Maria and Adam on the pedal boats on the lake.

Adam, Loni and Maria.

Ice cream time! This ice cream was great and super cheap - none of us were able to finish it!

This is the kids' size and it was even bigger!

The second night, it began to get really windy when we were swimming in the lake - so, we went back to the tent. It started to rain within 10 minutes of getting back to camp. Then, as we sat inside the tent, it started to hail. Here's a picture outside of our tent.

Maria and Adam making breakfast. Mmmm....french toast and bacon!

Ladder Game

Playing our new ladder game. Basically balls on strings that you need to wrap around the different poles. The middle bar is worth the most points.

Young Women's

With our Young Women, we went to the temple last week for a picnic. This is a few of the girls that are in our ward and some of the leaders. I just absolutely adore them so I had to include them!!!Here's a great group shot of everyone that worked up at camp from our ward! And of course all of the amazing girls that were able to come with us!!!

Another group shot with us showing off our shirts!!

Here's a fun one that I took with the girls. Here I am shooting rifle BBGuns. This was a lot of fun and once I noticed how the gun was shooting (too far left), then I started hitting the target right on. I definitely earned my charm for hitting the bulls-eye a few times!

July 4th Fireworks

Here's the big daddy of fireworks that we bought. I think we found the perfect recipe - buy lots of little cheaper fireworks, then spend a little more and get the big finale firework.

I think that Andrew enjoyed this a little too much. It's a smoke bomb that lasted over 2 1/2 minutes. The whole yard was just covered by the end and you could barely see anything.

Here's Loni and Andrew making S'mores.

Here is one of the fireworks that Andrew and Amy bought.

Martha, Dad, and Adam waiting for their turn with the sparklers!

Adam and Amy dancing with the sparklers.

Loni with her sparklers.

Here's the big baby after it was set off. Adam thought it looked like a rocket launcher. This firework alone lasted more than 5 minutes. It was fantastic!

July 4th Parade

Amy at the Murray Parade.

Adam and Loni

Dad with some beads that were thrown out...It's the 4th of July, not Mardi Gras! :)

Emilee and her friend, Trent.

This was probably the only cool part of the parade - the jeeps climbing on top of each other.