Question: What can you build with scrap lumber, a steel bar and some screws?

Don't worry, we took the couch cushion off and use them as mats while Lilly flips, swings and squeals with delight on her new Daddy made (mommy approved) monkey bar!

Mike also made sure to make the monkey bar height adjustable and very simple to adjust. It's so much fun and even sturdy enough for me to hang on, Mike's tried it out too :) You know in high school one of Mike's nicknames was 'Monkey Boy' :) I guess Lilly has inherited the name.
It also makes an awesome base for a blanket fort, oh and Bryn really thought it was fun too :)

P.S. Don't forget to post your adoption questions, there's still time left to win a really cool prize! Post your comments on this post: http://mandamike.com/blog/2008/10/november-is-national-adoption-month.html (even if you just post a comment with out a question you will be entered into my random drawing)

We didn't have to buy any pumpkins this year for Halloween, we harvested (is that a word?) 7 pumpkins from our garden. We carved jack-o-lanterns on Sunday and had a ton of fun. Lilly wanted a silly one, I carved a screaming one and Mike carved a scarey one. I did the grunt work, I cut the top off and helped scoop out all the guts and seeds :) We saved some of the seeds and roasted them. They are soooooooo yummy, and really easy to make.Mike helped Lilly carve her pumpkin, she wanted it to have 3 teeth :)

We have a couple extra pumpkins and Lilly really wanted to paint one so I put an apron on her and let her do her thang, she had a blast! It looks quite colorful too :)

I decided to write a little poem about adoption, of course adoption is always on my mind and I always have plenty to say about it, I love it with all my heart!

We have you!

We longed for you to join our family
even before you surprised us all.
We tried with all our might to create an angel
just like you, but God knew that you were
meant to be in our family.

Adoption is a roller coaster ride
but we hopped on knowing you
were worth the ride.
And even though the voyage had
many ups, downs and loops de-loops
the pure joy of holding you was all worth it
when we became your parents.

How difficult it was to embrace the idea of
Becoming parents when we can't control when
and need the help of our friends.
This is why you are a miracle,
God blessed Us with you.

We hoped for a family
We longed for you
We rode the ride
And know we have you!
~Amanda

A couple in our ward just brought home their third baby, all adopted! I am so happy for them, yet it feels bitter sweet. Is it bad to say "I wish that was me holding the new precious baby?" Our family is sooooooo ready for another member and we pray every day to be choosen by a birthmother. My heart is feeling quite heavy lately because I know that someone is missing from our family. Yet, I really don't have any control on when or how. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers and please keep Lilly's birthmother and our future birthparents in your prayers as well. Also, we have lots of pass along cards still so if you need some please comment, or e-mail me and I will gladly send you some.

Labels: adoption

Lilly has the MOST amazing hair ever! It's the prettiest color, it's really long and naturally curly. I love playing with her hair and fixing it cute for her. I have no idea how to care for curly hair, but I've been doing a lot of research and trying different products. So far I haven't really found the perfect product for her hair type, but it's fun trying new things too :) My hair is straighter than straight so having a child with curly hair is such a fun surprise and adventure. If anyone has any curly hair tips please let me know :) With the colder weather coming in I've noticed that Lilly's hair is getting quite dry.
I cut out scraps of fabric and tied them with some yarn and had Lilly draw faces on them. Lilly wanted me to make a Mommy, Daddy, sister and baby ghost so I made them different sizes. We hung up our green ghouls in the tree in our front yard and boy do they look spookey :)

I am transitioning to a new position with my job and in order to do this I was asked to become a certified Phlebotomist. I have been taking a course over the past few weeks, it was a fun class and towards the end I got pretty good at drawing blood. One of the hard parts about this class was you practiced on eachother. So if you wanted lots of practice you had to let the other students practice on you. One night I had my blood drawn 9 times, and I have the pictures to prove it.My Left arm didn't look too bad...

Labels: Foto Friday

We decided to ban TV watching for the next few days. I've been sick so Lilly has watched a lot of TV lately so when she totally yelled and cried this morning begging to watch cartoons Mike and I decided no way and put the entire family on TV restriction :P It's actually been really good for all of us and we really don't watch that much TV (we don't even have cable) so it's not too hard, just in the mornings when Lilly NEEDS her cartoons :)
We've been trying to do a few fun things as a family and today we decked out the house in Spider webs for Halloween. They look pretty spooky and Lilly had a good time sticking the spiders on their webs.I think tomorrow we will make ghosts and hang them on the big cedar tree in our front yard. I really enjoy fall and Halloween is a fun holiday to celebrate with a child. It's so neat to see how Lilly reacts to the different activities we do to celebrate, I love being a Mom :)

Lilly really likes singing, she has been making up her own songs lately and she sings them in her microphone. (don't forget to scroll down to the music player and press pause to hear the video better)

It was BYU's homecoming this Saturday! We were invited to ride on the FSA (Families Supporting Adoption) float in the parade, but we slept in and didn't make it on time. But that's ok we had a blast watching the parade and cheering as loud as we could for the FSA Float and also the Fine Arts entries in the parade. Lilly LOVES parades and so do I so it's nice going to them with someone with as much if not more enthusiasm as me :) It was really, really cold, but still so much fun. We woke up to little snow flurries and snow on the mountians around us. Lately, Lilly has been totally into her building blocks and we usually end up taking a few blocks along with us where ever we go. Lilly likes to make tools out of her blocks to aid her in construction. For the parade she brought her hammer, and it also duels as a scrubbing brush - because you have to have a clean sparkely tower too :)

Here's a video of Lilly shaking her booty at the parade :) She scored a sweet yellow balloon for her hard work :) (If you want to hear the video better scroll down to the bottom of the blog page and pause the music player)

I've noticed that a lot of blogs have added a site feed to their favorite blogs this usually lists when the blogs were last updated. I asked Mike to figure out how we can be included in the feeds since we have our blog linked to our website the coding is a little different. Of course Mike figured it out so if you would like to add the site feed feature to our link on your blog please follow these instructions:

Labels: Tech tips

I've been trying to think of fun interesting things to post for the month of November. It is National Adoption Month, so I would like to post a few things during the month about adoption.

I 'm thinking it might be fun to have my blog readers ask me questions about adoption. So if you have any questions please leave a comment and I will try my best to address it during the month of November.

I'll throw in a PRIZE to one of the people who leave me a comment in this post. The deadline for the Prize is November 1st :)

Labels: adoption

Lilly started her gymnastic class on Thursday and she looked so CUTE! She was so excited to start tumbling again. I can just imagine Lilly in the 2024 Summer Olympics :) Lilly will be 18 years old in 2024. I am already so proud of her, she can do summer salts and jump with one foot and with both feet, she also has been practicing doing straddle jumps and is really good playing in the huge foam pit. Don't you just love her blue leotard, it was the only on in a size XXS. We arrived for class a little early so Lilly and I waited on the bleachers and watched the earlier class. She could hardly wait to start, but did a great job waiting patiently. She also helped a little kid who had fallen off of the bleachers. They dropped their apple and Lilly told their mommy and went and picked it up for her, it was very sweet :) People are always amazed at how polite Lilly is. She has such good manners and is such a friendly girl.

Labels: Foto Friday