Fun at aunt Shelly's house!!

My kids always have fun at their aunts house. She always does a great job at entertaining the little guys. Below is a picture of my boys, Shelly's stepdaughter Kendra and her stepson Micah. They obviously are goofy when they all get together.

christmas morning!!!

We had a great christmas with lots of spoilage!!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!

I just wanted to wish everyone who visits my blog a very Happy Holidays!! Even to those lurkers out there who never leave comments(shame on you) I know your out there!!! On a serious note I hope everyone has a safe and fun holidays and you all get what you want from Santa :)

He's a teenager already!!!!!

I woke up to find this on Adam's door. For some reason this totally cracked me up. He was mad at me for making him go to bed the night before. I seriously am not looking forward to those teengage years around the corner.

I've got pictures!!!!!!!

Okay I have some pictures to share. Some of them are from my family christmas party. There are also a couple of random pictures I threw in there. Then there is a couple of pictures of deshawns christmas program that was today.





Here is Adam and santa. I think Adam is starting to question the big man!!!!





Here is Deshawn and santa. Deshawn absolutely loves Santa. He loves to hug santa too.




Here is a picture of parker and santa. You would of never guessed he was hiding from santa minutes before this picture was taken.



And here is a picture of deshawns head. He decided he was going to play barber shop with Rick's beard clippers. Really funny now, Not so funny when it happened.






I thought this would be a funny picture. I love my dog she cracks me up. She honestly thinks she is going to freeze to death. She likes to sit on the heater vents when they are blowing.





And why is there a matchbox car in my fridge??????????????





Dee is in the green. This is him singing at his christmas program today!!! The pic isn't that great because I had to zoom in to get them.

Deshawn's IEP

Okay his IEP went really well. He has improved in so many ways. The speech therapist says she is a little frustrated because she has tried every way in the book to get his speech skills better but none have worked well enough for him to retain what she has taught. So she said she is trying something new to see if it might help. Also we might start putting together an image book. It will have alot of pictures in it and he can point to them and express what he wants us to understand. Even though he can express his needs through sign not everyone can understand him because they don't know sign. So the book should help with that. They all say he is very eager to learn and participated well.

His physical therapist says that she has seen HUGE improvements in him. He is getting more confident in his actions. He still has coordination issues and things like throwing and catching a ball he is still not doing it age appropriately. But he has come a long way. So she is going to keep working with him on those things and some galloping with right and left leads. She is going to try and get it so he can start off smoothly and rotate leads smoothly which is quite hard for him now.

As far as the overall preschool his teacher says that she can tell he understands things age appropriately and she is going to be working with him on sorting exercises and beginning to end scenarios(which is basically she has three cards with pictures on them and she has him put them in order beginning to last).

All in all everyone is proud of how far he has come in the last couple of years. Our main concern is of course his speech and hopefully that will come sooner than later. I have a feeling though that it will be the later.

This week is draggin!!!!

Does anyone else think this week is draggin?? I can't seem to get anything done nor do I want to. I still have to go and get presents for my boys for the santa bag for our family christmas party and I can't get motivated to go and get them. Maybe it's just me but this cold weather makes me just want to hibernate.

I am sending out a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother in law even though I know he doesn't read my blog but ya know maybe the vibes from my blog will get him. He is turning the big 3-0. I went and bought him an old man kit from the party store here and Rick is taking it to him today. Hopefully it will put a smile on his face at least for a minute. We will be going to a bed and breakfast in park city this weekend to celebrate his finally turning 30. We won't get up their until late because we have my family christmas party. But their hot tub and pool are open 24 hrs so I am sure we will make the best of our time there. I think most people are going to go skiing on sunday but since Rick isn't much for skiing we will probably head home.

Oh yeah Deshawn has his yearly IEP tommorrow so I will post tommorrow and let ya all know what happens. Ta Ta for now!!!!!!!!!!

Highlighting Deshawn

WARNING: This is the longest blog I have ever written. Stop now if you don't have an eternity to read it.


I just wanted to highlight my little guy!!!






Isn't he the cutest thing in the whole world!!!!!!!!!!!!!1


Okay I thought I would blog about my adoption story since some of you might not know.


So me and Rick had been trying to get prego and of course once again we were having no success so we started talking about adopting. But we never really could make up our mind for sure and then one day in November I got a call from one of my cousins and she said she knew of a girl that was in foster care that was wanting to place her baby up for adoption and she wasn't feeling good about using an agency so my cousin mentioned that she knew her cousin (me) was looking into adopting and she said she wanted to meet us.

So we set up a time to meet her and I was sooooooo scared and nervous. Who knew a 16year old could be so intimidating huh. Anyway I was really impressed with how she handled the "interview". She asked us alot of questions and she even had a list written of everything she wanted to ask. I knew right away that she really loved this baby. She later told me that she had a list of requirements like that we had to have at least one other child and that we had goals set for our future and a whole bunch of other things and we passed everything she wanted in adoptive parents for her baby. It was sad because I know she wanted to keep him but she already had a one year old and she was a foster kid and I know the foster care people were pressuring her to give him up or they were going to place him. The whole thing was really sad but I know that she felt much better that she could be the one to place him where she felt was best.

So we waited for a week to hear from her and it was not the news we wanted. She had told us that a couple that were her previous foster parents were going to be adopting him. Well I was pretty sad but I knew there would be ups and downs with the process. So I put on a brave face and we decided to start the homestudy process and see what we could do to start the adoption process with an agency. Mind you Rick was enrolled in school and technically not working so we really didn't have money to adopt but we just kept feeling like we needed to move forward anyway.

Well on December 19th we got a phone call from Deshawns birthmother saying she had changed her mind that she felt that we needed to be Deshawns parents. She was going to be going in for a csection in the MORNING!!!! So we frantically tried to get our lawyer to handle all of the legal issues. Mind you this guy was EXPENSIVE but we didn't care we just figured that we would figure it out some how. So I call him and basically tells me because it is so close to christmas that they would never be able to pull off all the things he needs to get done to make it all legal. So once again I was crushed.

So I frantically try to figure out what to do and I called Rick's sister because she was dealing with the whole adoption thing and she told me about this estate attorney that practices in our area that does adoptions on the side. He has adopted and he has also helped open agencies in foreign countries so he has a passion for it.

So I called him and told him what the other attorney told me and I told him that I felt very strongly that this little boy was supposed to be my child. He laughed and told me that our attorney was just lazy. So he said it will be no problem and that he might have to pull a few strings with some judges but he would be able to do it.

Okay so now we are down to the 20th. This day was so stressful. She went in got her csection at 7:00am and we waited out in the hall where you could watch the babies being brought in for the baths and to be weighed and such. WOW what an experience that was. He literally took my breath away. But there was still a part of me that was scared that it wouldn't happen. So we went into the waiting room and found out that the state still wanted to take that baby into custody. My heart once again shattered. I told them that I would contact my attorney and see what he could do. And after awhile my miracle worker had convinced them that this was best and this is what the mother wanted.

So we were there at the hospital everyday and couldn't wait to bring him home. I could tell she was trying to stay at the hospital as long as she could because she didn't want to let him go. She was trying to take him home and finally her foster mom told her that they had no way to care for the baby. It is not that she didn't want to still place him up for adoption but it was christmas time and she just wanted to keep him until after christmas.

Finally, she was able to let him go. It was very hard to watch her breaking down as she handed him over to us. I was excited and devastated all at the same time. We took him home knowing that we did not have custody of him legally yet. That was scary because things could still not happen until she relinquishes her rights. But I "knew" that it would all work out.

Christmas Eve-- We met at our lawyers office and she relinquished her rights and were were awarded custody of him. Wow what a feeling. Amazing! What a beautiful little boy. He was our's. NOT!!! We still had to wait 6 months. Six more months of home studies before we could finalize our adoption. So six months later he was officially ours forever and ever.

To top it off our attorney did this adoption for cost. That means he only charged us what the actual costs were to him. He did it for FREE!!! We still had to pay for our home study but we were able to pay that per visit so it wasn't as hard. We also had to pay for court costs. But we were still under $2000 when all was said and done.

What an amazing journey it has been. He has had his struggles but I know he knows he is loved. Every decision I make for him I hope is the best. We did finally decide to give him medication for his PDD-NOS and I have seen huge improvements with his speech and his behaviors are changing alot. I am sure he will always have his issues but I really feel this is helping him right now.

Yesterday I was doing dished and the boys were watching cartoons and al of the sudden I hear Deshawn singing. Okay he doesn't ever just start singing on his own like that. No one prompted him to do it he just did it on his own. I was overcome with pride. I really hope all we do for him will help. You don't get a parenting handbook when you have children (I wish ya did) but I know we try our best and hopefully we don't let this little guy down.

Here is a picture from the finalization of Deshawns adoption.



What.... What's that you see????? It looks like I am prego!!!!! So you know when deshawn was about 5 weeks old I found out I was pregnant. Imagine That!!!

My little men!!

So we tried to make gingerbread cookies for the first time. I think it was a success, what do you think????





I love watching my little men so into our little projects we dream up. I love them so much. I think they had alot of fun making our gingerbread men. This is one of the reasons I love christmas time so much because it gives me an excuse to do extra fun stuff with my little guys.

Hope everyone is doing great!!!

This is fun!

You Are Mint Green

Balanced and calm, you have mastered the philosophy of living well. Your friends seek you out for support, and you are able to bring stability to chaotic situations. You're very open and cheerful - and you feel like you have a lot of freedom in life. Your future may hold any number of exciting things, and you're ready for all of them!

What Color Green Are You?

I am not sure how accurate this. This is FUN though!!