MOVING!!!

We are almost all packed up and moving this weekend! God has blessed us with a very reasonably priced rental house to have while we make our transition over to Ethiopia! The best part for me is that it is so reasonable that we get to move in and then put our house on the market! Yep, no having to keep it spotless with my little ones running rampant! Please pray with us that our house sells quickly though! We are ready to be able to go wherever God calls us with no strings to hold us down! I may be without internet for a few days but I will be back soon with a tour of our new pad!

Happy Birthday Olivia!!!

Happy Birthday to our sweet, sweet angel. We are so blessed to have you in our family. We love you more than words can express. You make our days joyful and our hearts full.

The first time we saw your sweet face.

First time together

first time in a big girl bed

first kiss

The last 10 months of watching you grow into a little lady have been amazing. We pray that the Lord blesses us with many more birthdays to come. We love you!

Happy 2nd Birthday Olivia!

GRRRRRR........

Well it started last Friday night....Jackson woke up throwing up. Saturday he spent the morning throwing up every. twenty. minutes. That afternoon he and I decided to miss Daddy's graduation (he just got his masters! yay daddy!) and head to the ER for some much needed fluids by IV. After 5 long hours we were home and feeling better. Sunday, he had his energy back but instead of throwing up it was coming out the other end. I'll spare you the details of it but lets just say it happened 30-40 times that day. Then Monday and Tuesday it was like someone had sucked all the life out of him and he was back to throwing up. He had no energy and could not even stand up.....I am serious when I say he didn't take a step for 48 hours, not one. Wednesday morning he was all better, full of energy, happy, and very hungry. Finally it was over.

Then I served them their lunch and Olivia puked all over the plate. Fabulous.

Now she isn't quite as sick as Jackson was, I am still cleaning up puke and administering meds round the clock. And to make matters worse, I just had to cancel her very first birthday party home for tomorrow. The party she has very much been looking forward to since Jackson's birthday back in March. So we rescheduled. When you ask? Well of course next weekend, you know the weekend we MOVE! Yeah, it is going to be insane.

Now if you will excuse me I am off to make yet another lunch of Jello and saltines.

no tot school---please pray for J

No tot school in our house this week. Jackson has some nasty virus and has been throwing up for 4 days. Yes, you read that correctly. FOUR. LONG. DAYS. My washing machine and I are about to go on strike from this nasty virus. We want it out! Out and far away from my precious babies! Olivia, thankfully, has not caught it and is very stir crazy since we have to play quietly since brother is sleeping.

Oh and did I mention we are moving in 9 days? yeah....and I have only packed 2 closets. more on the move to come when we finally get our heads above the water.

counting

Free Mini Golf and Bowling!!

Last week there was a promotion for free mini golf for a year for the first 100 people! You bet we were up early on a Saturday morning to get in line! 8:30 AM we pulled into the parking lot and by 9:30 we were the proud owners of 4 passes! We were number 70-74 in line!







And did you know that you can sign your kids up to go bowling for free all summer long? 2 free games every day! Just go to http://www.kidsbowlfree.com/ to see if there is a bowling alley near you that is participating! They even sell a parents pass for up to 4 adults for 2 free games every day for the whole summer for only 24.95! Even though our kids are a little young for bowling, they love going and rolling the ball down with the bumpers! A great indoor activity for those hot Texas summer days!

Please don't buy me this shirt......

I'm just not there yet!

My friend Darci got this awesome shirt for Mother's Day.

I think she was a little freaked out by me taking a picture of her shirt with my phone and then saying I would post it to my blog!

Tot School

This week I am going to focus a little more on what Olivia gets to do during Tot School. Her time is significantly less since we normally do our school time during her nap but she is really getting the hang of playing with things the correct way so I am trying to find a good time to focus solely on her. Her is a video of her sorting things!

edited: I just watched this and for some reason it formatted weird and has cut off the top of her head in this video. I really can operate a camera better than this:)

The sorting is just pompoms, pieces of straws, pipe cleaner pieces, paper clips, beans, and rubber bands into little plastic cups. I store it in a gallon size zip lock bag and it is super easy prep work!

Livi got this Matching Middles cookie shape set in her Easter basket.



She worked on matching colors with this ice cream folder game that I made from File Folder Fun

We have a family pass to the Science Museum so we took our Tot School on the road!

exploring the water table

planting seeds in the farm

sorting our vegetables into the correct trucks



checking out some cockroaches......gross.

The turtle had babies!!


We ended our time digging for bones underneath a mighty large T-rex!

Ethiopian Reunion! and Olivia's first..........

Two weeks ago we were able to go down to Austin to meet some wonderful, and hopefully life long friends! Troy and Amber were down in the trenches with us when we were adopting Olivia and they were adopting her buddy Silas. In fact, I was in the middle of emailing Troy when we got "the call!" I don't remember exactly what I was emailing about but I remember in the middle of a sentence typing JULIE JUST CALLED! EMAIL YOU WITH DETAILS LATER! I think that was pretty funny. Actually I think Troy and Amber might of known before Paul! They traveled to get little Silas a couple of weeks before we went to get Liv and we were blessed to finally meet them in person when we drove through Tennessee on our way to Virginia for Thanksgiving. It was great to finally see them again as we emailed almost daily for a year!


We also got to finally meet another great family that traveled a little bit before us. Kim and her family adopted Finn and it was so awesome to finally see all our kids together and not just in pictures through blogland!

cutie finn


handsome silas

We headed to the Austin Children's Museum to have some fun!

seriously that little Finn was so delicious I just wanted to eat him up!!

After the museum we headed to the County Line for some yummy BBQ and amazing views of Austin.

Olivia was in heaven dancing with Kim's son Tucker


Then Silas got a bit jealous and had to show her who her man was.....



Then Daddy chased him clear out of the state! Or maybe he just got on a plane with his parents and went back to Tennessee......

We miss you Silas and Finn!!