Saved

   I know that I have not talked a lot about Isaac's adoption, because for some reason I have not felt like I should write about it for our blog.  I am not quite sure why.  I am willing to talk about it with people in person, but for some reason I just don't feel right writing about it where anyone can read it.  However, I read something the other day, that is adoption related, that I wanted to write about. I have heard from several places that adoptive couples try to adopt children so that they can "save" them.  A lot of times the term "save" is used in international adoption, but I have also heard it in domestic adoption.  I know that I am not an expert on adoption but I have to say that any person who is adopting to save a child, should not be adopting.  Adoption is about bringing a child into your home to be a part of your family.  No one would say that they saved their biological child and that should never be said about a child that is adopted.  Saying that you are saving a child, insinuates that the child owes you.  That is not what adoption is about.  No child makes the choice of what family they belong too, so parents should never make a child feel like they owe their parents. 
    I guess the reason that I am writing about this is because I love Isaac so much and could never think of him as a child I saved.  We did not save him, he was placed in our home to be a part of our family.  We are his parents, not his savior and he is our son, not a person in our debt.  We treat him just like he was our biological child, and love him that way too.  He does not owe us anything for adopting him.  He has brought so much joy to our lives and made our family feel more complete.  We feel so grateful and humbled that we get to be his parents and we are so grateful to his wonderful birthmother who chose us to be his parents.  We did not save Isaac, if anything we owe him for making our lives better, but that is what family hopefully does; make each other's lives better.  I just hope that when he gets older that we have been good enough parents that he will be able to say that we made his life happy and that we were good enough parents to deserve him.

Adorable

I know that I am biased, but isn't he just so adorable even with drool on his chin.  I am so blessed to be his mom.

Newborn pics

A week after we brought Isaac home my sister in law was so generous and took newborn pictures of him.  I had done some looking on Pinterest of different newborn pictures and decided I wanted to do them outside and in an orchard.  My sister in law was so nice to do them, even though I am sure shooting in an orchard is not super easy.  I bought a little wooden crate at Michael's and my dad stained it to look like it was weathered.  I wanted it to look like the fruit bins my grandpa used when they had their orchard.  Isaac was really good during the shoot and I was super excited to see the pictures.  To say I am pleased with the pictures would be an understatement.  I think that they are gorgeous and I am so grateful to my wonderful sister in law who was so willing to give up her time to take them so that we can have these beautiful pictures. 
    Just a side note:  Afterwards we decided to go to Popeye's because the orchard was in Provo.  It was after 9 and when we got there we were told the wait would be 45 minutes.  We left.  Can you believe 45 minutes for fast food fried chicken?Popeye's is pretty good, but not that good.

 I just love that in the pictures with me he looks like he is going to cry, but he is so peaceful with Jason.

He is just so adorable.  Sometimes it is hard to believe that he is our son.  We are so lucky.

  

The Wait is Over

 
If someone had told me five years ago that waiting five years would mean that we got to have this little guy in our home I would have been more patient.  Today we became the lucky parents of this wonderful baby boy.  It was such an amazing day and it would not have been possible without the selfless act of his wonderful mom who placed him in our arms today.  We will forever be grateful that she trusted us to be his parents and raise him and that she sacrificed so much for him.  We feel so blessed.  He is such a joy to us already. 

Our first family photo

Madness

  So I am not trying to ignore my blog, it is just that it is really hard to get anything done with a little puppy who gets into everything.  Right now I am letting her gleefully tear apart some Artic Circle coupons while I get this blog post written.  Apparently all the toys she has are just not as fun as paper we get in the mail. 
   March is my favorite month, partly because it is the beginning of spring and the weather warms up, but mostly it is the beginning of the NCAA March Madness tournament which is one of my favorite things of the year.  This year the second and third round games were here in Salt Lake City and we had tickets.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  I have been looking forward to this since the last time that we went three years ago.  I was really hoping that Oregon would come here, they did not, but it was ok we had lots of fun anyways.  For the most part the games were good, there were some blow outs, but even they were fun to be at, even if it was just because we got to make fun of the horrible cheerleaders.  I mean come on all they did was clap and shake their pom poms, they could have at least done a flip or something. 

Here we are on the second day of the games with our official tournament t-shirts.  

 This is my elusive Papa John's pizza that I wanted.  The first day of the games I really wanted a pizza, but when I went to get one none of the Papa Johns were open.  Which is weird because they had lots of people there so why wouldn't they be open.  So I decided to get a rice bowl.  By the time I got there they were out of rice and noodles.  Which was ridiculous because they knew about the games you would think that they would have plenty of food.  So then I saw there was a Papa Johns open so I went down there and when I got in line a lady came out and said they would not have enough pizzas for everyone.  So instead I had chicken fingers.  So the second day I finally got a pizza and decided to take a picture of it.  To be honest it was not as good as I had hoped.

 

This is the guy that we fondly nicknamed Bumblebee man, because of his overalls.  He was a fan for Wichita St, who beat Gonzaga, ruining my Mom's bracket. 

 

 And here is the court with the players from the Gonzaga game, which was a pretty good game. 

 

So that was our tournament experience this year.  It was awesome.  As a side note I won our bracket competition this year, by being the least sucky and having one team that made it to the Final Four.  So I guess all those hours of watching basketball did not really help me that much because we had the puppy do a bracket, we put the teams on paper and whichever one she bit that was her team very scientific, and she got as many teams in the Final Four as I did.  In fact we have the same title team.  It was still fun and we are thinking about maybe going to Portland in a couple of years to watch the games there.    





Introducing Gracie

   January 29, 2013 we welcomed a new member into our family, our puppy Gracie. She is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and is freaking adorable. We have had her for almost two weeks and I can't believe how much she has become a part of our family and how much we love her.  I am so glad that we picked her.  We were trying to decide between her and another puppy in her litter.  The other one was more of a lap dog and Gracie is more playful and I think has more personality.  After we decided on her she climbed up on my shoulder and started to nuzzle into my neck and that is when I knew we made the right decision.  I feel in love with her right away.  Being with her all day has been a change for me because I have to worry about how long I am leaving her and I can't come and go like I used to.  However, she has brought so much happiness into our home those little sacrifices don't seem that big.
  

     About Gracie

 

-Right now her favorite chew toy is me, which is not always super fun.  My hands are kind of chewed up.

 

-  She loves to sleep on either Jason or I.  She likes to get up by my face and curl up and sleep.  This does make doing things hard, but she is so cute I love it. 

 

-  She does not like her crate, I think that she thinks it is prison.

 

-  At her vet appointment on Thursday she weighed 2.6 lbs at 9 weeks.

 

-  She will sit when she sees a treat because I have been trying to teach her the command sit, and she associates it with food.

 

-  She likes to use under the couch as a way of getting around the family room, and it is kind of funny.

 

-She loves people and she has not seen a face yet that she does not want to cover in doggy kisses.

 

-She really wants to be friends with the cat, but the cat wants nothing to do with her right now and the cat will hide under the bed because she is afraid of her.

 

  Well that is a little about our new family member.  Here are some cute pictures of her playing with Jason today.  

 

Good-bye Misty

   Today our family dog passed away.  Misty was 14 so it was not much of a surprise, but I am surprised at how hard it is.  She was such a wonderful dog and we all loved her very much.  It is going to be hard going to my family's house and not having her there welcoming us in the house.  I know in this picture she has demon eyes, but I don't have many pictures of her on my computer.  This one seems fitting though because she always wanted people to rub her tummy.  It was her favorite thing.  I will miss her very much and always love her very much.