Lately...

...We've been battling sickness. I was actually out of school and in quarantine for two days. Nathan and Lylah then got whatever I had, just now as bad.

...We've been organizing the house a little at a time. We will eventually pick up the futon and cabinet Beth :)

...We've been filling out more adoption paper work and finishing our home study meetings! We love you Meredith.

...We've been taking up orders for Scentsy and seeing God provide again and again.

...We've been teaching Lylah some counting.

...We've been reading "Adopted for Life" and loving it.

...We've been enjoying Blue Bell banana pudding ice cream. A. LOT.

...We've been cracking up at our lil lady when she say "ewwww, diaper!".

...We've been cutting pancakes breakfast tickets, magnets, charms, and other crafts (to be revealed this week).

...We've been blessed.

Benefit pancake breakfast April 16th!!!!!

On April 16th there will be another great way to help out with our adoption!!! From 7:30-9:30 Applebee's will be hosting a pancake breakfast to benefit our adoption!!!!! I'm sure you are planning on eating that morning so why not come on out to Applebee's and fill your belly!!! Tickets will cost $6 per person with $5 of that going straight to bringing our baby home!!!!! Just let me know in the comments section or on facebook how many tickets you need!!!

That same afternoon there will be a craft bazaar at TC Cherry Elementary school. Me and one of my good friends will be selling hairbows and other crafts to also benefit our adoption!!!! I will be blogging more about that soon!! Until then, make plans to order your tickets quick!!! Let's fill that place up!!!!!!

Keep Congo close to your heart

I originally made this little pretty for myself.....

.....well now I would love to make one for you!! We will be selling these to benefit our adoption so you can keep Congo and our sweet baby close to your heart too! The cost of a charm is $10. If you need the whole necklace the cost is $25. I could even put a ribbon on a charm to make a bookmark!!! ($10).

So there you have it-another way to partner with us in our journey to bring our baby home. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

What a glorious day!!

You may remember last year I wrote about my favorite thing about spring. Well the tradition continued yesterday. Lylah and I had our flower field date. We had so much fun. Lylah immediately started smelling the flowers and then had to let her friend Rhino smell them too. She kept telling me to pick "more flowers yellow", which of course I was glad to do :). We would talk about the flowers and then she would talk about the sky and look for planes. I did have a slight Meme moment when I had to fight back tears thinking about how much our lil lady has grown since last year and even the hope that by this time next year I'll be sitting in my favorite field with two little sweeties....Sigh....
We ended with some play tine at the park (Lylah could see it from the field) so needless to say it was a precious time and though I didn't have my camera, I did manage to get some cute shots with my phone. I'm sure we'll go back many times. We've got to go with our neighbors you know.

Our next fundraiser makes a lot of scentsy!!!

First of all, thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement concerning our first home study! It was a very long day at school yesterday, but God gave me strength to make it through the meeting. We love our social worker and felt right at home talking with her. She and her husband have adopted two children so she has a wealth of knowledge to offer, not to mention that she was the home study coordinator for the first DR Congo adoption in KY!!!

Anyway the meeting went well and gave us a second wind so to speak on fundraising and paper organizing!!! Are you ready to hear about our next fundraiser??

A friend of my has started selling Scentsy. Have you heard of it before?? Well it is a wonderful flameless candle. You pick your scent (all of which are wonderful) and put on the tray, plug it in and enjoy the wonderful smells!! Anyway, my friend has offered to let me have a party and take orders and she is in turn donating HER profits to our adoption journey!!! Isn't that awesome?! What is even more awesome is how practical this fundraiser is. Everyone loves a nice smelling house right? :)
Maybe you need to get a jump start on Christmas shopping?? They also have these sweet little scentsy buddies, which are stuffed animals with scent packs that make them smell sweet for your little sweetie!! Are you excited?? Are you ready to shop!?? There are a few different ways how:
1. Order online through my party https://amandalt30.scentsy.us/Home
Just go to the buy tab and then choose Lara's fundraiser.
2. See me and I'll show you a catalog.
3. Or (this is the most fun option) come to my house for the party on March 31st and smell lots of scents and hang out and have fun shopping!!

And of course I would so appreciate anyone who wants to spread the word!! You could tell your friends, blog about it, or spread the word via facebook. Spreading the word was an important part of the magnet fundraisers success. So of course words cannot express how thankful we are for those of your who have chosen to partner with us in that way!!!

So as you can see this is going to be a fun fundraiser and is helping our sweet little one (who we are getting more excited about by the minute) get one step closer to home!!! It really just makes "scents"!

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a big day for our family. Tomorrow at 4:30 we have our first home study meeting. I haven't blogged or really even talked much about our adoption journey lately for a number of reasons. It's not that we aren't seeing God's mighty hand of provision daily because we are. It's not that we don't already love the precious one we are waiting to bring home because we sure do! It's just that sometimes this whole thing seems bigger than me. Tonight while I was signing and initialing papers for the agency I was reminded about how overwhelming and even scary this process can be, but I was also reminded of something else. This whole thing IS bigger than me, but it ISN'T bigger than God. It might overwhelm or scare me at times, but it doesn't God. What peace that brings. He knew from the beginning of time that we would make this journey and He is not going to leave us alone in it, and for that I am thankful.

So please continue to pray for us- especially in the next few weeks as we complete our home study. We are also still selling magnets ($10) as we will be for as long as people want them :). I am also planning a little crafting project to raffle off soon. We have some other things planned too including a pancake breakfast, craft bazar, yard sale, swing raffle, and a cookout/carnival. This blog is a great way to keep up with our journey (you'll even get some fun Lylah posts too), so consider bookmarking it and checking back regularly. Thanks so much again for your love and support as we follow God's call to love and care for the fatherless.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish

My plan of lots of Dr. Seuss fun this weekend hit a bit of a halt with the lil lady not feeling well. We did manage a little bit of fishy fun on Saturday though.

Sadly, Lylah didn't eat much of her lunch :(. She did talk to it quite a bit though :)

For a craft we made a stuffed blue fish. I just used a baggie and we found all of our blue "stuffing" in my craft room! And no my craft room isn't cold, Lylah just loves to wear hats :)

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.-Dr. Seuss

Funny things like this lil lady with baby bloomers on her head!!

Dr. Seuss fun continues

Tonight was "Green Eggs and Ham" night. So we of course....made green eggs!!!

We talked a lot about colors while we were doing this. Lylah does really well with pointing to a color you tell her to point to, but she is so funny when you ask her "what color is it?". For example this was our conversation:

Me: Lylah, what color are the eggs now??

Lylah: "purple.....noooooooooo". "blue......noooooooooo".

Me: Are the eggs green??

Lylah: *signs "green"

Very funny and super cute. Almost makes me want her to never learn her colors :). Anyway, the good news is that Lylah really liked the taste of her green eggs! She even had a second helping!!

And yes we did go shirtless most of the night...classy huh?:). Next we read the story. Lylah wasn't really interested the first time when daddy tried to read it to her, so we did our craft first.

The craft was really easy. I just cut out an egg, green yolk, and slice of ham from construction paper and let Lylah glue (which she loves)! Notice her 'cat in the hat' toy's hand sticking out, she loves him!!! After that we tried the book again, skipping some pages, and she sat still for most of it :)

We ended the night playing with green playdough.

I wanted to give her a green bath (bath tablets) as well, but that just didn't happen....mommy was too tired, but I do have an old green bath picture that I'll insert here so that we can pretend that we got to do that too :)

"You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say!". -Dr. Seuss

Let the Dr. Seuss posts begin :)

It's been a crazy week! This is actually the first night I've been home to celebrate one of my favorite children's book authors (Dr. Seuss) with one of my favorite children. I have several ideas up my sleeves, but we started today with a book I hadn't read before-THE SHAPE OF ME AND OTHER STUFF.

This book seemed appropriate because the idea I had for our activity was an outdoor one, and it just so happened to be a beautiful afternoon, and I just so happened to NOT have a meeting after school. The book is all about shadows of different "stuff" so I traced our lil lady's shadow.

Then I guided her in drawing different parts on her shadow. Now,I realize that shadows do not have parts, but it made the activity more fun for Lylah.

Finally, Lylah sat in her very special rocking chair and we read the book!! This is the board book version and like I said, it's a really cute book. Lylah had fun pointing to the shadows of the different objects in the book and it of course had the wonderful rhythmic pattern that we love from Seuss!

Notice the super adorable thing one and thing two clip that my awesome friend made!!

"of all of the shapes we MIGHT have been...I say HOORAY for the shapes we're in!" -Dr. Seuss