Ryan and I will be celebrating our 12 year anniversary on December 25. We love having had a Christmas wedding. This photo is of us on our honey moon in Sicily. We were so young. I was only 18 and Ryan was 21. We were very nervous (we had only dated a week before we got engaged and we were married a month later). So to travel to a foreign country for the first time with a person you are still trying to get to know is interesting. But that's just how we roll. We follow our hearts and jump head first into that next adventure and never look back. I think 12 years proves that. It has been an amazing and sometimes nutty journey, but if I knew my life was going to end soon I would have absolutely no regrets or feel that I missed out on anything. I love you Ryan and I am so proud to live this life and be your wife and friend.

Compulsions

I have become a blogaholic. There are so many amazing stories of families who have adopted from Ethiopia I can't stop reading them. This is no different from when I am pregnant and watch hours and hours of baby delivery shows. I am obsessed with the process and maybe a little curious to see what actually occurs during an adoption. I'm also consuming massive amounts of youtube videos about Ethiopian adoptions. I confess I get a little obsessive, but it fuels the energy needed to complete the tedious task of paperwork. I am a little shocked at how different every one's experience seems to be. I guess the best thing to do is just expect the unexpected.

Elijah, cozy by the fire.

"Frosty"...Frosty didn't live long.
I think he melted the next day...Thumpity, thump, thump!


Die hard snow people...not me.

I love winter! I never thought I would say that. I must have been very cold as a child. Possible because I refused to dress warmly, but I really hated winter. As a teen I even had a strange reaction to the cold. If I was too cold I would break out into hives!! Now I just love the cozy feel of our home. I love seeing my children playing in the snow. I love breaking out my boots and hats and scarves! I love Christmas! I'm so emotional during the Holiday season, from Halloween throughout Easter. I love being with family and eating and baking and singing and eating some more. I love when it's 10 below out side and you can't even run your dirty diapers out to the trash without freezing to death and then you come inside and it's toasty! I love that my kids don't run in and out of the house all day. I love that I don't have to do yard work. It's a good feeling to love anything about a season because usually I just whine, whine, whine about every temperature change. But, THIS YEAR, I have changed my attitude!!

Michael W. Smith and Compassion International!

About a week ago, my husband decided that his Christmas wouldn't be complete without seeing M.W.S in concert. He was, of course, performing music from his new Christmas CD, which we love. So we tried to get a babysitter and never heard back from the two that we usually use. Finally on Monday night we received a call from a babysitter, Ryan quickly bought tickets (a little pricey) and we went. The concert was very good, but perhaps not as grand as we were expecting. Micheal W. Smith (a little guy) seemed half interested and half awake. His back-up crew (incl. two singers from American Idol) were excellent. Sadly the audience didn't seem to really be in the worshipping mood, so the whole concert seemed a little subdued. Oh well, we clapped and sang and danced as best we could. During an intermission ,however we had a really cool thing happen. M.W.S is a huge supporter of Compassion International. During his concert he had a table waiting with hundreds of children available for people to help support. I ran into an old acquaintance and quickly discovered that not only was she also adopting (from Haiti) she was going to help us locate two six year old kids (boy and girl) from Ethiopia that we could "adopt". The very cool thing is that eventually you can visit these children. This is an excellent way to channel your extra adoption passions and also get your children involved. Aria and Elijah now have a new "brother" and "sister" in Ethiopia that they can get to know, write to and pray for. Then hopefully, on our travels to Ethiopia to take home our new baby we can visit these children. They are not orphans, but they are very poor and desperately need whatever we can give. Well, needless to say we feel that God really wanted us to get to that concert so we can continue to see his amazing hand in our journey towards adoption. We just get more and more excited with every passing day. Yesterday I started going through all of our paperwork. Just trying to sort through everything and try to make sense of it all. It is overwhelming, but then so is pregnancy. Thankfully because I am not pregnant I actually have the energy to tackle all of this stuff. It just feels so, so good!

We are big fans of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. I have been reading them since I was a kid. I never dreamed however, that I would someday literally be living with Calvin. Rowan is so energetic and so curious and smart and dangerous he keeps me on my toes all of the time. Folks often ask how I could of handled having twins, but believe me Rowan is twenty times harder. I would never trade him for a dachshund, but some days....maybe a turtle.

These are our kiddos. Aria and Elijah are our six year old twins and Rowan is our two year old terror. We have always known that we are meant to be a family of six and so another child was planned long ago. However, our plans are not God's plans and he has given us a chance to do something wonderful that we know will change us and our family forever!