Simple Joys

[I started composing this last Thursday afternoon, but then had to stop and really focus on what needed to be done, so I'm leaving it as if I did post it last week.]

Things have slowed down a bit this week, so I was able to grab the camera and be spontaneous and capture a few moments.  (Actually when I say slowed down, I do have something big I should be doing, but I'm procrastinating.  Decluttering the house and cleaning like mad to prepare for bookclub tomorrow night is not my first choice right now.  Sometimes the adrenaline at the last minute is just what I need to get in gear!)

Just a few random pics of simple joys from the past month...

Pure joy on the swing!

Posing on the swing...

Being a monkey...

Smelling the beautiful pink azaleas in the yard...

Another eye in the window shot...

Singing to "Barbie & The Diamond Castle" in the car...

Playing kitchen in the toy room...

(Jeff says her kitchen looks like ours... sadly at times it does:(

Reading and playing school...

(one of these days I will get my coffee table back!)

It is so cute how she spreads out everything from school on the coffee table, tapes the calendar to my lantern, rings her little bell, and pretends she is Mrs. Collins with all her stuffed animals and dolls.

The joy of new sparkly polish!!... 

Posing for a few shots so mom can experiment, and take advantage of the light -- not quite as joyous, but a willing participant with the promise of a fun trip to Target!  (Now that brings anyone joy!)

I'm okay with Track, but Hurdles??

Tyler is doing track again this year, although he's added something new!

Ohh, I'm starting to cringe...

I just can't watch!

It makes me so nervous!

The first time I saw him do the hurdles, I started videotaping it, and then had to just stop and watch it for real, not through the viewfinder -- it was too nerve wracking! He made it through and didn't trip or fall, thank goodness.  My heart went out to one of the other boys who did fall, multiple times, and ended the race with blood  trickling down both knees, but he did it!  Boy I sure hand it to them, I couldn't do it!

Tyler's other events are shotput... (love that determination on his face, while throwing a 10 lb. ball!)

and discus.

Nice form there buddy!

He's been working real hard and really seems to enjoy it, except for the hurdles.  He just found out this week that he is in 4th place for shotput and will be going to the preliminaries for the region. 

(this is a scan of his individual team photo)

I'm so glad he's enjoying it!  Great job Tyler!

Mother's Day

It was a great mother's day!

We had just gotten home, (just!), from Disneyland the night before at 9:00 p.m. so I didn't think Jeff would feel up to much, but this is what I woke up to!

Very thoughtful :)

Since we just got home there wasn't time for him to pick up flowers, and I told him I didn't expect much, but this is what he came up with...

Some rhodedendrons from our yard beautifully arranged in one of my pitchers.  Boy was I impressed!

I was showered with lots of hugs and kisses (mostly from Madeline) and fun homemade cards.  Tyler made me a nice card with Powerpoint which read,

Mom,

Happy Mother's Day.  I love you and hope you have a great day

(nice, simple and sweet from a 13 yr. old :)

Madeline made me a sweet card in Kindergarten with her picture on it:

Isn't that sweetest thing ever!  I love it!  It's so cute how she signs her name too.  We've been working all year on writing her entire name, and she's still working on getting the 'e' in there.

They also had to fill in the blanks a little bit of information about their moms.  This is just too funny! 

It reads,

My mother is "12" years old.
She is "10" feet tall. (Wow!)
She weighs "21" pounds. (Wow, even if you just added a 100 to that, it would be great!!)
She has "brown" eyes
and "brown yellow"  hair.  (That's so funny, probably referring to the highlights).
She is really good at "driving".  (Hmmm)
She loves me because "I love her" (I think?)

It's so cute what she wrote and funny the perspective they have of you at that age! 

Jeff and Tyler made a turkey roast and baked potatoes for dinner, yum, followed by cake, which was equally delicious with lots of frosting!

After dinner and during Family Home Evening, I was supposed to wear the special "birthday" hat (the one she got at school on her birthday).  It was so nice to be showered with lots of attention and hugs from her.

I appreciate Jeff for all he did to make Mother's Day special for me, even though he, and all of us were SO tired.  Tyler and Madeline are such great kids and even though I make tons of mistakes and am not perfect as a mom, I am so grateful for them!

The Journey, the Process, the Blessing of Adoption

I've spent some time this morning composing a note to one of my sisters about discouragement and prayers being answered.  I've felt frequently the importance of writing down our adoption journey, but haven't done it because it's long, and hard to write about.  Well I decided that since I took the time to write about some of it to my sister, I should include it here as well on our blog, since it is our story.  It's real and personal and hard for me to put into words and sometimes a bit gritty. 

There is so much to say and I hope over time, I can share more about the process, but it's been hard for me to actually get on paper.  I don't usually get personal on our blog, but this is our story and it is important to share it.  Especially in the perspective of wondering if your righteous desires are being realized and  prayers are being answered.  So amongst all these posts about family outings, Disneyland, birthdays, anniversaries and Mother's day, I'm including a small bit about our journey toward the blessing of adoption.

 What I'm including here is an excerpt in letter format to my sister about our experience and how our prayers were answered.  Just a little bit though, there's not a lot of detail, but I hope to be able to write more and share more pictures of the beautiful day we received Madeline.  I must first preface, that everyone's trials come in different packages.  For us, (one of our trials) was just getting our children here, for others it's not actually having the children, but having the patience to be able to handle them after they come -- (actually we all have that trial, but that's a topic for another time:)  For some the trial may be health challenges with the children, or as a parent, discouragement, depression, loss of job, home or a loved one.  Everyone has different trials and in our experience some of our trial was seeing blessings that others recieved.  In sharing this excerpt,  I hope no one is made to feel bad about their blessings, because all our of trials are different. So here is a small bit our experience:

 "I DO understand the kind of trials where you really don't think your prayers are being answered."

 "Just briefly, we/I went through that before we were blessed to receive Madeline. We prayed, and prayed and struggled making decisions for almost 5 years. First it was desperately trying all the fertility stuff, which we felt good about. Trying numerous doctors to see if one would have something different to say and find the magic bullet to make it all work.

I'll never forget how we felt one time while discussing the option of in vitro fertilization with our last doctor and she said our chances looked really good since I had already experienced a pregnancy with Tyler.  For some reason Jeff and I both felt that wasn't the path we needed to take and that we needed to pursue adoption. We'd thought about it already before then, but hadn't felt so strongly about it together until then. So we said no thank you, and walked out. We then crammed hard to get all the paperwork and application process done for adoption, feeling really good about it.

With that kind of experience, feeling so strongly that it was the right path for us, we also had the expectation that it was going to happen quickly for us. Little did we know how much we would go through down that path, having one so close to working out and then changing her mind after the baby was born, and that we would wait 3 years during the whole process! 

But here's the clincher-- we got Madeline in a December, and the November of that year, we heard the news of one more beautiful blessing of pregnancy of someone close, and that was it! I was done -- with it all, and almost my faith as well. I told Jeff that I give up, that others seemed to be blessed and have their prayers answered but not us for some reason. I was broken and soooo discouraged, and planned on calling LDS Family Services to take our profile out so we wouldn't be riding the rollercoaster anymore. Seriously, (I hadn't made that call yet, luckily), no more than 2 weeks later, I got a call from our case worker at LDS saying there was a birthmom that was interested in us. I remember hearing the message and didn't even pick it up. I prayed that it wasn't another deadend, or disappointment. I told Heavenly Father that I couldn't do it if this wasn't it. So, believe it or not, I waited awhile before I called back. Well, that was it, and the ball started rolling, and within 2 1/2 weeks we had Madeline in our arms."


"I only share all that because I really do know what it's like when you're feeling like you're doing everything right, and your desire really is a righteous desire, but you still don't see your prayers being answered. But I know, now, that they were being answered for us, we just didn't know it. They were being answered in all the feelings and promptings that Madeline's birthmom was feeling during her pregnancy. When I felt like I was at the end of my rope, literally giving up, amazingly the blessing we'd been praying for was so close. I know now, that we just don't realize how much we really can handle. My end of the rope was a lot sooner than that, but the Lord carried me and us through all that year of heartache.  The blessing did come, just not in our time frame, but in the Lord's. 

Love, Heidi

Seeing this picture of the first time we held her, brings back all the tender memories.

For more on Tyler's feelings with this experience, see this post here.

This is a story/analogy that I read a lot when we were going through the whole adoption process.  I think it sums it all up perfectly:

"Deciding to have a baby is like planning a trip to Australia. You've heard it's a wonderful place. You've read many guidebooks and feel certain you're ready to go. Everyone you know has traveled there by plane. They say it can be a turbulent flight with occasional rough landings, but you can look forward to being pampered on the trip.

So you go to the airport and ask the ticket agent for a ticket to Australia. All around you, excited people are boarding planes for Australia. It seems there is no seat for you: You'll have to wait for the next flight. Impatient, but anticipating a wonderful trip, you wait - and wait - and wait.

Flights to Australia continue to come and go. People say silly things like, "Relax, you'll get on a flight soon." Other people actually get on a plane and then cancel their trip, to which you cry, "It's not fair!"


After a long time the ticket agent tells you, "I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to get you on a plane to Australia. Perhaps you should think about going by boat."


"By boat!" you say, "going by boat will take a very long time and it costs a great deal of money, I really had my heart set on going by plane." So you go home and think about not going to Australia at all. You wonder if Australia will be as beautiful if you approach it by sea rather than air. But you have long dreamed of this wonderful place, and finally you decide to travel by boat.

It's a long trip, many months over many rough seas. No one pampers you. You wonder if you will ever see Australia. Meanwhile, your friends have flown back and forth to Australia two or three more times, marveling about each trip.

Then one glorious day, the boat docks in Australia. It is more exquisite than you ever imagined, and the beauty is magnified by your long days at sea. You have made many friends during your voyage, and you find yourself comparing stories with others who also traveled by sea rather than air.

People continue to fly to Australia as often as they like, but you are able to travel only once, perhaps twice. Some say things like, "Oh, be glad you didn't fly. My flight was horrible: traveling by sea is so easy."

You will always wonder what it would have been like to fly to Australia. Still, you know God blessed you with a special appreciation of Australia, and the beauty of Australia is not in the way you got there, but in the place itself."
credits: Adoption.com

Happy Mother's Day!

I don't know why I haven't seen this before, but it is so sweet and makes me cry -- especially since I have a daughter (who also happens to enjoy Taylor Swift's music, even though she's too young for that)!

It makes me want to be a better mother everyday, so hopefully my kids can look back on their time growing up and be able to say that about me.

Best Disneyland Moments

We just got back from a fabulous trip!! 

Here's just a few shots of some of our favorite moments...

Pure Disney joy!

California Adventure!

Classic Maddie!

"Goofing" off with Tyler!

Waiting to see the princesses at Ariel's Grotto.

(We just had to get that darling hair extension!)

She's just enchanted!

The eyes say it all...

Even little princesses need to take a break...

Watching CA Screamin rollercoaster from the patio at Ariel's Grotto.

Enjoying every moment!

Screaming on Mickey's Fun Wheel.

Hanging onto Dad for dear life!

Hollywood Backlot

Screamin' with white knuckles

(well at least me!)

Two little sassy characters!

So much fun, we wanna go back!!

These are just a tiny "few" of the 735 photos I took!! (Can't believe that!)  I hope to have some more details to share soon!

Disneyland ... Here We Come!

Bags are packed ... We're on our way!!

(all images: flickr)