August is a pretty cool month for our little family on August 4, 2006 Lilly was granted as legally ours deemed by a judge. After placement of a child to their adoptive family there is a waiting period (yes MORE waiting) it's usually around 6 months. During the waiting period a caseworker comes to your home for a post placement visit to make sure everything is still going well. The adoptive parents have to go to the caseworkers office twice for meetings to make sure things are still good then the caseworker sends in their paperwork to the courts giving their recomendation. You hire a lawyer to do all the legal leg work of amending the childs birth certificate and then you can go to court, meet with a judge and get his stamp of approval. A lot of adoptive families call this special day "Gottcha' Day" I like the term, and use it with Lilly.

Labels: adoption, Foto Friday

Lilly is quite the little climber, the other day she climb up the rock wall at the park. She didn't do it just once, though she did it every time she wanted to go down the slide! I am glad to see that she is getting a little braver. She has always been a little timid at trying new things, so watching her climb the rock wall totally made my day.

Labels: Foto Friday

Don't mess with "Vampires Amanda" Saturday we all went to a family reunion in the early afternoon and then we went to the local county fair. Lilly had her first experience with a clown and wasn't too freaked out, he even made her a balloon animal - a pink poodle with a leash. Lilly thought her poodle was the best ever, she walked around the fair going "Arf, Arf" We decided to try out our hiking backpack at the fair, Lilly loved it! Saturday night my parents offered to watch Lilly for us and we went on a date! We hadn't been on a date for a looooooooong time and it was a total blast! We went to a demolition derby. I was laughing so hard at the carnage and crashing that my eyes were watering. Our favorite car almost won. It was this old station wagon that an 18 year old guy driving, he was totally agressive and awesome. The best part of the car was the number, number 2. If anyone knows Mike they know that he does like to joke about #2 :) :)

Car Number 13 was the winner of the demoliton derby, this driver was so crazy! One of the highlights was a girl came in 3rd place! I totally want to try a little demolition derby now, I thought the figure eight racing look like my kind of sport. :)

Do you like Lilly's outfit after swimming? She was cold so I put her in sweat pants, but she also wanted to wear her reading bug library t-shirt and of course topped it off with princess heels! :) Such a diva :)

Labels: Foto Friday

We have a fantastic garden this year and last year my Mom taught me how to can tomatoes. So I felt confident that I could can other things after her lesson. Yesterday I researched a little and figured out how to can PICKLES! I love pickles and I really love homemade pickles, so this was very exciting for me. The hardest part was finding the dill at the grocery store. :) For some reason it was by the torillas instead of in with the herbs.

Lilly really enjoyed helping stuff the jars with all of the ingedients. She called the dill "sticks" and was very good at helping me. Here is the end result, aren't they pretty pickles! I loved the poping noises after they had been processed as the jars were cooling. Canning is such a fullfilling thing, you end up with great food that will last a few years. I just love how food looks in jars too, I think it's so neat to know that I made those.

Here's the next project, JAM! My sister Angie and I picked all of these apricots yesterday too. Today we are going to can jam and maybe even apricot syrup, yummy. When my tomatoes turn red I am going to can salsa too, I think that I have discovered a hobby that I like. I love that I get to wear my cute apron while canning and I also love that I am making something that can be useful. I guess it brings the practical woman out in me.

Lilly and I give this trail four thumbs up :) Lilly was very proud that she could hike along the trail and climb over rocks all by herself. She is getting to be very independent, it's nice but it makes me a little sad to see my baby growing up so quickly. Lilly also wanted to try and cross the stream all by herself, but we decided she wasn't quite big enough to do it alone. Look at those long flexible legs, she is so bendy!We had a great time and love to play in mother natures playground :) I am so glad that Lilly enjoys hiking and being outside as much as we do. We are hoping to go on a few more hikes this summer and enjoy the beauty of the place we live. It's defiantly different terrain than Washington, but that is what I think is so cool about it. We do miss the evergreens and rain, but I think we are starting to find our adventurous groove here.

Lilly loves to paint! Here she is at her art table with a few of her very own paint brushes.

Labels: Foto Friday

"There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm." ~Patrick F. McManus

On Monday Lilly and I went to a Mommy and Me Monet class. It was really fun, Lilly loves to paint, so this class was right up her alley. Lilly got to finger paint and also paint on the windows! We are going to go to the art class for the next few weeks too. I love doing fun things like this with Lilly, the school that is hosting the class is hoping to continue with it in the fall, I sure hope so. I am also going to try and register her for tumbling again.Lilly needs some sort of outside the home stimulation and is totally ready for pre-school. Unfortunately she has an early birthday and so she will have to wait one more year before starting pre-school. I plan on trying to do a few pre-schoolish things with her next year at home, but that just isn't as fun :)