Saturday Night Celebration

We spent Saturday night at a hotel and dinner at our favorite BBQ place, Shady Oaks...home of the most yummy salted bread you have ever tasted. Mmmmmm.

The kids wanted to show off the place, even the bathroom!

The kitchenette came in handy for our baby bottles and cake.

Jasmine was such a good baby.
She hung out in her playpen with her toys the whole time without fussing.
I don't do babies crawling on hotel carpets. ick!

Jayden helped to entertain Jasmine after dinner, while the rest of us got ready for the pool.

Baby's First Bathing Suit!!

We stayed at the pool for awhile, it wore the kids out!

Of course my girls did not get their hair wet.
One by her choice, the other by Mommy's choice!

The boys are true fish.
I swear they grow gills when in the water.
Jayden jumps off the side and swims all over with his life vest on.

After baths, we had Isaac's traditional cookie cake.
This thing is a cake wreck if I ever saw one!!
The colors do not match and my instruction of "Big block letters in the center"
did not exactly translate. Good grief!

Our pampered princess:

The free breakfast the next morning was great! Lots of variety.

The kids gobbled the cinnamon rolls of course!

And on Sunday was our super bowl parties. Pics later!

Friday Movie Night

We had a fun filled family weekend in celebration of the 6 year anniversary of Isaac coming home. Friday we made pizzas which are always a big hit with the kids.

Then we pulled out the popcorn machine and supplies that Billy's aunts gave us for Christmas.

This machine is so cool!

I have already decided (7 months in advance) that Isaac's 8th birthday
will have to be a Movie Theater Theme. I could do SO much with that!!

This vintage looking machine paired with
The Muppets Caper was a perfect night of entertainment!!
We all agreed it was our favorite family movie night yet.

I hope to check out more Muppet movies from the library very soon.
I will post about our Saturday and Sunday later!

Blah

**Sorry about the lack of Day 14**
My best friend was worried as she knows the blog and I spend few days apart from one another. HA! But I am currently struggling with a migraine which puts me in a BAD place.
Also, I left my camera at a friends house.
SO...this means I will have to blog later this week about all of our fun weekend activities.

Isaac's Homecoming

Day 13: I LOVE Adoption

I know that goes without saying...obviously. But you see, 6 years ago today Billy and I were at home and childless. We did not know who God would bring to us but we knew it would be through the foster care system. That afternoon, I got a phone call about a little brown skinned toddler who desperately needed adoptive parents.
It was our dream come true. We waited 3 days to meet him.
He came home on February 6th.
He was scared.
We were scared.
He had so many physical and emotional needs.
He had the worst diaper rash I have ever in my life seen. He was emaciated.

He needed a mother so very badly.
And he didn't know that I needed so very badly to be someone's mother.
I still can feel what that ache in my soul felt like.
But God knew. He knew us both.
He knit our hearts together that day when my son came home.

Once upon a time, my child had two names.
The one given to him at birth and the one we gave him when he came home.
But today, he is simply...Isaac.
The name he will be for the rest of his life.
This weekend we will celebrate him.
We will celebrate the day we became Mommy and Daddy.
We will celebrate the journey our Lord has brought us on...6 years and 4 kids later.

I end with a poem I once posted...I am not sure what the title is, but it has a lot of meaning to me:

A baby is placed in a well-woven basket

It moves with the current
carrying its little fruit
from one woman to another
who plucks the bundle from the stream,
whose arms are ready to tend,
whose body has remained empty
of what she is in need of carrying.
I stand at the river that brought my son,
and think of the woman upstream.
How she could-in the middle of hardship
and loss-trust a basket, water,
that a person would find her child,
lift him up, raise him for many years
the descendant of two mothers,
each who labored,
each who was faithful
to the river.
-Margaret Hasse

I Heart Printables

Day 12:

I am a BIG BIG fan of printables found online for gifts, parties, and home decor.
Every one of my kids birthday parties feature printable packs I purchase on Etsy.
But we all know that the BEST printables are free, of course.

So here is a listing of some I have found.
First up is this adorable subway art that I printed, framed, and put on my piano:

This is a party pack complete with my new favorite thing: food pennant/flags!
You can put them on cupcake pop sticks, toothpicks, straws....oh the possibilities!

I found a few gift ideas that come with printables:
First is the idea to get Crush soda bottles and put a tag on them, found here:

Then, if you are like me and do not like to spend a ton of money on Valentine's Day, here is an awesome free coupon book printable. I love how cute this is.
None of our husbands read these blogs, so if we ALL do this... that is OK!! :)

Finally, here is this really yummy recipe for Valentine confetti and a printable tag for your bags:

And to aide in your school party planning:
Here is a printable pack to host a Preschool Valentine's Day party with activity sheets!

And finally, this website has a ridiculous amount of Valentine free printables linked.
Including this adorable matching set:

And these guitar Valentine's which I LOVE!!!

I haven't decided what I will do yet for the kid's teachers.
But I imagine it will come from one of these ideas.

So head off to Staples for ink cartridges and get printing!

The Bus

Day 11: I LOVE the School Bus!!

Jayden goes to public school for children with disabilities (PPCD). He attends from 11:45-2:45 every day. He qualified at the age of 3 under speech impairment. He has now been in the program a full year and will go into the same class in the Fall under Public Pre-K as a child who was once in the foster care system.
We love his teachers so much and are thankful he will have spent so much time with them before moving on to kindergarten.Every day last semester, we would watch a school bus pull up in front of our house at 11:40 to pick up his classmate from across the street. We do not receive bus service in our neighborhood because we live right next to the school, so I didn't think about why this child received it, I just knew we didn't. It was frustrating because I would often have to wake Jasmine up from her morning nap or delay her going down for an afternoon nap because of Jayden's drop off time. I finally wised up and asked how we could get on the bus and they said your child just has to be in the "special needs" program at school and have an ARD/IEP. Well we do with Jayden!! So after much hassle contacting the bus barn, I was able to get him on everyday.
It has been awesome for us!

He loves watching for it out our window and then climbing aboard.
The driver and attendant are super nice and he seems to really enjoy it.
They buckle him into a car seat because of his weight, so I know he is arriving safely with 5 other classmates.

The bus goes to the end of our street and takes a left at the stop sign.
Then another left and a right into the school parking lot where his teachers open the door to the classroom to receive them.
It is that fast and easy.
The girls and I walk to pick the boys up on good weather days.
It has been such a huge blessing for us and we plan on putting him on the bus again in the fall.