Part 2: Party pictures...

I have finally had an opportunity to upload a few images here. These are just a few random pictures from the birthday party in no particular order. I will do a small part 3 on how we kind of planned for this party and began designing a little early. We held the party at a park where you can reserve parts of the park with with a picnic area and all. I needed to have it somewhere to accommodate the number of guests that we were expecting (Which was about 50-60). We had about 23 children plus parents. In many cases, as most of our functions, both parents came and I also had a few older siblings come with the parents. They were welcomed to come as well.

The day started off windy and ended up being a nice day. My only regret was not remembering to hire someone to come to take pictures for the first two hours. I was busy trying to speak to everyone and be a hostess and I did not get nearly as many pictures, quality pictures as I usually do at events. I did get some beautiful pictures of the children riding the train and I have shared those pictures on FB since there are so many little ones in the pictures.

The lunch boxes had pre-packed subway sandwiches for the children and chips. I also had a subway party platter out for the adults and we had hot pizza delivered as well, shortly after the party started. Therefore, the children and parents had two food items to select from and it was easy since we were outside. My parents were the best at helping us package the lunch boxes and put the labels on. The wind was blowing table cloths and decorations everywhere initially. That is one reason why we held off put three sets of the banner up in the picnic area.

The most important thing was the kids had a blast riding the train over and over and jumping in the bouncer until they were tired. Everyone enjoyed themselves and despite the previous 4 days being rather worrisome for my husband and I with a sick child who had high temperatures for 4 days until the antibiotics kicked in. He did not enjoy his party as much as his friends did the entire time, however, he enjoyed it to the best of his ability as he was not 100% that day. He loves looking at the party pictures and he definitely enjoyed the cake! His actual birthday was that following Monday and we took ice cream, cupcakes and punch to the school for a party after nap time and the teacher put up his birthday banner on the door in the classroom. He also wore his number 3 birthday shirt that day and we allowed him not to wear his uniform so that he could celebrate it with his birthday attire. I guess I need to post a picture of that later! This was a big deal for me to take the time to upload these.
Enjoy!

New bag to carry my gear...

I had been looking at bags over a year for something girly to carry my camera gear in. I kind of got tired of my basic camera bag sling that carried all of my things, however, it just did not have any personality. After Christmas I started looking seriously again and I found a bag that I really liked, however, the vendor is sold out and will not have that particular bag until April. I saw another bag that was cheaper and very cute after I realized that my first preference were on back order. My husband had even looked into getting the bag as another surprise birthday gift, however, he also found out that they were on backorder. So, I ordered this bright and sassy thing and I am loving it. Most people think it's a purse and its really a camera bag.

Here is my springy bag that I purchased prior to my birthday as a little gift for myself. I love the fact that it looks more like a chic purse when we go out to functions and I am not carrying a generic bag around that looks like a camera bag thrown across my shoulder. I am enjoying the cute disguise and it is actually a roomy bag. I am still going to order the other camera bag by the other vendor when it becomes available next month. I enjoy having options!

update on meeting last week

I truly have been busy and on a roll since last week. We had our family team meeting last week and I had an opportunity to see the baby and hold the baby in the meeting. One of my requests was that the baby be present at our meeting. To our surprise too, the birthmother showed up at the meeting, and we had an opportunity to meet her for the first time. It was a packed room full of all kind of caseworkers and administrators with different roles, however, it was comfortable for whatever reason. It kind of felt like a press conference with the number of folks in the conference room. My husband was present as well and left shortly before the meeting ended.

The bm asked how old I was at one point during the meeting and if I was married. I think she thought that I was younger just by looking at me, however, I am thankful to God for great genes from my parents! I told her I was married and pointed to my husband seated next to me. He had on a suit and she thought that he was an attorney or agency administrator in her mind. She liked the fact that we are married and that we have this family that loves him to death!

The bm showed up about 45 minutes late to the meeting and sat down and requested to hold the baby. I took her the baby and she held her and looked at her and cried some and she was so proud of this baby, however, she knew that she needed to make a plan for her as well.

Through all of this I am still thankful and amazed at this woman's strength and desire for her birth children to be in a better situation and home. Initially, I do not think the plan from the agency was to let her know that we had adopted her second child. However, it slipped out of the interim care parent's mouth by accident, not knowing she was not supposed to reveal our identity, however, it did not bother us at all. We were using our first names and I truly wanted to thank the birth mom for allowing him to go home from the hospital after birth and move forward with a new life. That alone takes enormous strength to know that you are unable to care for children and allow them to be taken care of by others despite the bm's circumstances.

I brought my ipad and big camera with me so that I could share pictures of my son with her if it did come out that we adopted her second child. I am glad it did happen like it did because I wanted her to see what a blessing he has been in our life and how great he is doing. She didn't recognize him at all and literally asked me was that the child that she birthed because he does not look like he could be her child.
Genetics are something and God works in mysterious ways because he blends perfectly with us and our family. It is really scary. She was so tickled to see holiday pictures on my iphone, ipad and all different pictures. She kept asking to see the pictures again. I was honored to show her the pictures. I was also able to minister to her some as I heard her mention God in different aspects. I wanted to be a positive light to her and let her know how thankful we were of her decisions.

I was able to tell her that God is a forgiving God and she has the opportunity to have a second chance at life by really getting herself together because the children that she birthed are doing great (in reference to my son). My son has an older half brother that is adopted as well. However, we do not have any contact with that family yet. I am hoping my workers will take care of that so that we will be able to contact one another in some fashion. She said in the meeting that she would like for us to adopt the baby girl so that she and my son can be raised together and celebrate holidays and birthdays etc together. She smiled when she said it with some tears in her eyes and I felt a little warm and fuzzy inside.

She asked if we were going to adopt the baby since she could not care for her like she knew that she should and she asked to have her adopted through the agency. It was a good meeting, and some emotional aspects at some point on her end, however, overall it was a good meeting a and a plan was put into place and a second meeting was schedule to move forward with the next course of action. That was discussed in the meeting as well.

We decided to transition the baby into our home by getting her on weekends over the next 6 to 8 weeks, to get through that 30 day period of "legal risk" and prepare for her arrival. She is a healthy baby girl who came a few weeks early, however, she was released from the hospital at a normal release date. My concern was taking a maternity leave, and by some weird chance there would be an issue with her not being able to be adopted. However, there seems to be no issues that would arise with that. We were able to get first choice because we adopted that last sibling. So, thats how that works.
While it would be wonderful to have her here everyday with us, we also need the time to transition my son for her arrival and prepare our home for a newborn infant. She will still be a tiny thing and plus we will be having her at our desire on the weekends or other days that we would like. We have plenty of baby girl stuff. It is just a few things that we need to get before her arrival like another crib, swing and one more infant car seat.

I was able to get great newborn shots of the baby after the meeting was over, because at that time she was only 9 days old. I wanted to have early shots of her since we would have her from the beginning. All of the staff were very supporting during the meeting and it was a straight forward meeting. We only went by first names in the meeting and the documents that we signed only had our first names as not to reveal our true identity as well. The agency handled our privacy well.

Moreso, I was a little more relaxed because I realized that it didn't matter to the bm as to who we were and she was clueless, she was just judging by what she saw in me there at the meeting and how I treated her. I left with my worker and I heard her tell some of the agency workers that were still in the room packing up that "she is sooo nice." It made me feel good and I was later told that it got back to our worker that she said that about me. We just try to really live our life right and treat others as they should be treated despite their situation. I was truly honored to meet her and I knew that we may never see her again and I needed to plant a seed in her head so that she would know how well my son is doing and how thankful my husband and I are.

When I say that God has purpose and plan for our lives, he really does. It takes a lot of faith and prayer and walking blindly at times, however, when he comes through, he really comes through when you least expect it. One realization that all must understand is that we have to go through Valleys in order to get to the mountain tops. We cannot always be at the mountaintops. I have heard that often from my pastor and it is so true.

We have no anxiety about this and we were not expecting this at all. As a shared in my initial post, 2 days before we had the call my husband was with me at my specialist getting my new full blood work labs to begin to move forward for family planning on our own and to make sure that all was good. It seems a little overwhelming when you think about a newborn and possibly having kids back to back, however, God will provide the strength that we need if that is the case.

My initial desires were to have a total of three kids, one by adoption, and possibly 4. Recently, I was very content with my son and then having one more!
However, God shows us excessive planners what his desires are and since I have learned that a few years ago, I have taken a back seat with hardcore planning and just let things fall into place and remain strong in the will and word of God for the plans that he has for me through my obedience. Lord knows it is not easy, however, I know that when I trust and let go, it all works out. Thank God I have a praying family as well! The power of prayer is something that can't be beat.

More updates to come soon on our "little sunshine" coming our way.... Expect the unexpected.....

Thanks for still checking in on us here. We are enjoying life to the fullest!

***Edit note: Sorry for the re-cap kind of being all over the place and out of order, however, I wanted to make sure that I posted the information so that it would not be old information. ***

Part 1: Party preparation pics

birthday poster we designed to go with this theme. We had it printed to hang on the fireplace wall at the party.



Lunch boxes and paper favor bags that we ordered.



birthday pendant that I ordered to match the items that we designed for this theme




Cupcake toppers and lolly pop stickers for table



raw wooden items that we painted the night before the party and the engineer hats as favors for all of the guests as well



straws that were apart of the theme



train crayon favors that we gave in the favor bag. We ordered these as well. I actually ordered some other colors as extras.


custom paper banners that we designed to go with the theme and to match the cloth birthday pendant flags that we ordered (Unfortunately, the wind became strong on the day of the party and we opted not to hang the 3 different sets that we printed)



Thank you tags that we designed for the favor bags



water bottle labels



I just wanted to give you guys a few quick pictures of some of the things that we used for my son's birthday theme for this year. I still need to post pictures from last year's party which was adorable.


Part 2, will be actual pictures from the party. Invitations were actually a large train ticket that we custom designed to go with his whole theme. It was definitely a cute keepsake item for his friends and our family members. I have not displayed everything, however, I will show the complete birthday party pics with the items actually used on tomorrow.
If anyone has any questions about where I ordered something from, just ask me in the comment section. I promise to get back to you and post it.

We ordered the train crayons, hats, straws and a few other items. We designed all of the theme items such as the invitation, poster, labels etc. I purchased fabric for the runners for the party.

Birthday party pictures from this weekend are coming...and some news

I just wanted to update everyone that I have not fallen off the face of the earth! We are still here enjoying life and just busy. We had a fabulous birthday party weekend and I will be sharing pictures in 2 days. I am finishing up some other things that are taking up my time right now. In addition, I will have some good news to share...

To make it short and sweet and to not make you go crazy wondering. It is a possible new addition to our family if we say yes!
So far everything we were told all last week leans towards a yes from us. We have been in prayer and my family is praying and we will see how things go on tomorrow.

While we were preparing and family planning on our own now since our sweet little one has been in our home over a year, we were getting ready to move forward with our own family planning.
We received a call last week about a newborn sibling of my son and we are first priority of course. The baby was born a few days before my son's birthday.
The agency wanted to know if we were interested adopting the baby and we said yes, but we wanted to review everything and go over the paperwork.
We are meeting on tomorrow to see the baby and have a family team meeting.

I will up date you all on tomorrow night. All I can say is Wow!