Our most recent pic. Taken by us in our backyard! We used this pic in part of our profile book.

Officially Approved!

Okay updating this just for my Bethany board friends!!! LOL Anyways, as most of you know we have been going through the adoption process to adopt a baby domestically. As of December 12, 2008 we were officially approved for adoption. We are now waiting to hand in our profile books, DVDs and letters to the birthparents. We are waiting to be chosen and bring our baby home. Please keep us in your prayers. I will try to keep this updated now since we are officially approved.

It's been a long time....

It has been a long time since I last posted on here. We have been busy with a lot of things. I just wanted to let everyone know that we submitted our formal application for adoption on Thursday, September 11th. We received an email on this past Wednesday that said our formal application has been approved. We are now waiting to get a packet of paperwork from our office and then after that is the home study. We are really excited to get things going on this, as we are both ready to add a baby to this house. I was so excited when I opened up the email that said our application was approved. Yeah! Anyways, I hope to keep this updated more often now. I just need to make it a habit to get on here again!

When will Mother Nature give up?

This is in Marion, just down Alburnett road from our house. This is supposed to be a city park.

Quaker Oats in downtown Cedar Rapids.

May's Island in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Cedar River flooded in downtown Cedar Rapids.

These are some pictures that I took from the car on Thursday night of the Indian Creek in Marion. I also took some pictures of the Cedar River from the car in downtown Cedar Rapids on our way through town. These are so sad. I can't imagine losing everything that you have and not having insurance that covers it. This is the case with a lot of these houses because they didn't qualify for flood insurance. And yet it is still raining. When will it stop? We have had enough rain and just need some dry weather for awhile.

The Flood of 2008

Let's just say "Thank goodness I live where I do!" My parents and Grandma are not so lucky. Vinton, Iowa is without power for awhile now. Thank goodness that they have a camper that they can use to do some things in. It is amazing to watch the news and see all of the pictures of the towns that are flooding. First it is a tornado ripping through Iowa and now it is flooding. When will Mother Nature give up and say that is enough. I feel sorry for all of the people that have had to evacuate their homes because of the water. Thank you to all of the volunteers that have been helping people out in these towns. If I lived closer to home I would definitely be there helping. I would go there but I'd be afraid that I would get stuck and not be able to get back since there are a ton of roads closed. It has been one crazy year. All of the ice, and snow this winter and now the rain, tornado and flooding. It has to get better around here one of these days. We all have to stay strong and just pray that it will end soon.

Saturday

Well, today was finally nice enough to go outside and try to get some sun. I decided that before lunch I was going to go outside and read the rest of my book. Out I went with a t-shirt and shorts on. It didn't take long to realize that a t-shirt was too much, so I went and put on a tank top and also put on some tanning lotion (in hopes for that great looking tan that we all want!). Anyways, I did end up getting a little bit of sun on the front of my arms, chest, and the front of my legs. I did get the rest of my book read and it was just as great as the first 9 in the series by Janet Evanovich. Thanks to mom and Connie who got me hooked on these books. I also went back inside and started number eleven. They are really hard to put down.
Tonight I had a graduation party to go to for my MOC student that we had in our room to help out this past year. That was fun and I got the walking taco that I had been wanting last night.
That's it for now.

Long time...

Well, okay, it has been a really long time since I last posted on here. We really haven't been up to much around here.
We've finally got the garden all in and all of my flowers planted in the planters. My perennial garden looks really good and is starting to fill out like I want it to. We've had a couple of ducks visit our pond lately. The dogs like to chase them out of the yard so we try not to let them outside when we see the ducks.

I found another tick on Marli the other night and got it off. Thank goodness it wasn't all blown up like the last one. I put it in a baggie also and then I went to find the other ticks in the baggies and noticed that the first one we found on him had laid its eggs in the bag. YUCK! The dogs went in for their second Lyme Disease booster today and they said to burn the gross things. Will do.

We are still looking into places for domestic adoption. We haven't really found the place that we want to go through yet and so we are still collecting information from many different agencies.

Work has been keeping me busy as we just had our graduation program for our Pre-K children that are going to Kindergarten next year. Unfortunately it rained and so we had to do it inside at the Rec center. It wasn't as much fun as it would have been if we did it at the park. It went well anyways and the parents really enjoyed it.

Anyways, it has been a long day and so we are off to bed.

Mother's Day

Well, it has been quite the day. We went to my Aunt's for brunch and then took off for his parents' house. We went out for supper at the local pizza place with his whole side of the family (minus a couple of people). It was great. I got my baby fix in for awhile as I was able to hold our niece and, my cousin's baby boy, and our twin nephews. I can always count on them for some lovin'. Can't wait for the days when I get some lovin' from my own kids. I guess I'll just have to settle on nieces and nephews for that for now. Days like these just make me so tired. Traveling all day from family to family wears me out. It is to bed early for me tonight. Then back to work tomorrow. I just wish I had one more day to just sit around and do nothing. Wouldn't that be nice? Anyways, have a great night and a good Monday.

Busy Weekend

It's finally the weekend again! Well, last week was teacher appreciation week. The directors filled us up with a bunch of food that wasn't the greatest for us but boy was it good!
Today mom came up and we spent the day shopping for baby shower gifts, material for a purse for mom, and other misc. things. It's always fun to go shopping with mom. We have a good time together. Dad decided later in the day that he should come up and help with cleaning up branches in the yard. So S and Dad cleaned up the yard and chopped down bushes and trees. Now the yard looks much better. Thanks a lot you guys. Now if only we could get those trees up front to disappear! Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Off to my aunt's house for brunch and his parents for supper. Gonna be a busy day. Poor puppies have to be inside, home alone all day. :( Goodnight for tonight.

Ticks

Where did the weekend go? It seems like it was just Friday. Now it is back to work tomorrow. :( Not really ready to go back for another week. There is too much I want to do around here that didn't get done this weekend. Guess it will have to wait until next weekend.
Watch out dog owners... I was petting one of our dogs last night and happen to feel something that was stuck to him on his chest behind one of his legs. I flipped him over only to find a bug stuck to him. After further looking and a little research it was a tick that was blown up. I have never seen a tick look like that before. I'm still having a little scare because of all the things going around about Lyme disease. He just had his first lyme disease booster on Friday. We looked up the tick on the internet and from what we can see it looks like a dog tick which aren't known to carry the Lyme disease. Going to call the vet tomorrow just in case. Don't want or really need him to get sick. Needless to say we got the tick and flea stuff on them right away. We had thought about it before but just never did it.
To update you on his condition of limping around too, the vet said that he might just be working too hard. She felt all of his leg joints and said that everything feels fine to her. She recommended that we put them on a joint supplement. So we started that this weekend too.
Anyways, it is off to bed for me. Have a great night.

It's Finally Thursday!

Not much new today. The puppies seem to be doing better today. We played a little bit of frisbee outside tonight. They did pretty well but they didn't catch one. We couldn't throw the frisbee very well. I said that it was because of the cheap frisbee. He said it wasn't...I think I'm right. :) Anyways, the woman is always right, right?!?!
While I was outside I checked out all of my flowers. Most of them are coming back but there are a few that didn't make it back this year. The one that I was most excited about was my Bleeding Heart. It actually had flowers hanging from it. I was very happy to see that. This is the third one I have planted and the only one that has grown back. I guess I finally found the perfect spot to plant one. It is about time!
Anyways, today is Thursday, which means tomorrow is Friday and my day off. I don't have many plans for tomorrow except sleep in, take the dogs to the vet, and let one of my friends' dog outside. I look forward to my day off especially after a week like this one. It has been one interested week, to say the least. That is enough for tonight. Have a great night.

Wow, what a start to the day! Sometime this morning in between my alarms going off I accidentally shut the alarm clock off. Oops! I gave myself about 13 minutes to get ready before I had to be heading out the door. Thank goodness it doesn't take me that long to get to work. Not much else went on today except that after our walk last night our dogs were limping around. One of them was even having a hard time getting up after laying down. Not sure what is going on with him. Either we are giving them too much exercise in one day or something else is going on. We go to the vet on Friday anyways so we might just have to ask her about it. He seems to be a little better today but is still having some difficulties. It is like his legs are too tired to get up and walk that when he gets up he just has to sit down. He is not that old so we are not sure what is going on. Hopefully we figure it out soon. That's all for tonight. Have a great night.

Okay, tonight is going much better than last night. I didn't even get on here to post last night because I had a horrible migraine that was making my stomache upset. Not fun! Needless to say I slept on the couch until I heard my husband in the shower and then I went to bed.
It was finally nicer today and so we took the dogs for a walk on the trail in town. It was a nice way to just let out the frustrations of work. The puppies love to go on walks but we are working with them on walking nicely and next to us. They also think that they have to bark at everyone that walks, runs, or rides by us. I think they just want the attention because they love people and love to be petted and loved by everyone. They have to make sure that everybody knows that they are there. We said "hello" to another dog who was just as hyper and excited to see and smell another dog as ours were. It is nice to know that we aren't the only ones that have hyper dogs!
Well I suppose it is time to watch American Idol that we have recorded. Love that show but I am not really stuck with one particular singer this year. Anyways, have a great night.

Sunday...

Today we did our grocery shopping and laundry. I also was able to download a lot of things for my new found hobby: digital scrapbooking. There are a lot of cool looking things out there. Then, once again, we were looking into places for adoption. We have been researching this topic a lot lately as we have not been able to get pregnant in 2.5 years and after two surgeries. It is very frustrating especially when you want something really bad. We will figure things out I'm sure. It will take a lot of saving money and a lot of research on our part. Well anyways, I've got laundry to fold and then it is off to bed. I'm going to be tired tomorrow. Have a great night and a wonderful Monday! :)

Learning Digital Scrapbooking

Yesterday I got together with my mom and one of her friends to try our first hand at digital scrapbooking. Needless to say it took us awhile to figure out how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements and all that it can do. After we finally figured out at least the easier tools we all were able to accomplish at least one page. It seems to be really fun so far. Here is the page that I created yesterday. Not too bad for a first page.

I'm sure that we will be able to figure out more of the tools just by playing around with the program. In fact last night I played around with editing some pictures and was able to create two very cool looking photos.

Aren't they cool? Then after playing with the programs a little bit more today I was able to create a page with pictures of my dogs. I think that it turned out really well. I am very pleased. Now I have to say that I am addicted to digital scrapbooking.