Thanksgiving

 Showing off our newly finished office.

Elizabeth playing with our cute neighbor.  Dress ups all around.

 Lizy with her pile-o-gifts, Barbies seemed to be a theme this year.  :D

 Andrew wanted a remote control car all the time as a kid and never got one, so I got him one this year and Elizabeth and Charlie had about as much fun with it as Andrew did. 

We were hoping to head to St. Maries, Andrew's hometown, for Christmas, but we have been renovating the house and there is so much to do and we wanted to take advantage of the time that we had off.  We did get a lot done though and have 2 rooms completely finished.  We spent the morning with just the 3 of us instead, which was pretty fun.  We have never done Christmas here before, so that was a first.  We were able to Skype with Andrew's family and my sister in Michigan and had a fun chat.  Our close friends were also in town with just the two of them, so we had dinner at their house and then frosted sugar cookies and had pie.

Elizabeth loved all her gifts, she cleaned out her room the other day and made room for the new stuff.  (She got rid of all the Wendy's toys she has been hanging on to, ha ha).  She said her favorite was the bag that her daycare lady gave her, but the bubble bath is already gone and she has wanted to spend an awful lot of time in her room playing.  Partly why I was quick to call the neighbor gal, so she wouldn't have to play alone. 

 Andrew with Elizabeth after her Christmas program.  She was pretty cute.  We watched her pick her nose only twice and tried to lead the music (which seems to be a recurring thing for her) with her teacher.  (Probably because I am the choir director for my ward - church - )  Otherwise, she was one of the cutest kids on the front row. 

 I love it when she does grown up things.  She loves to quilt with me. 

 A bit about when we went bowling the night before Thanksgiving, she was so cute.  She would hoot and hollar and give everyone in the whole group high 5 before she would go again.  This was quite the feet because my family took up 4 lanes. 

This is us visiting the Logan temple.  Such a fun night and these beautiful fluffy white snowflakes were falling when we came out.

Remember

Things that I want to remember about today:

1. The way Elizabeth looked as she walked into the sealing room and how I was so overwhelmed with joy I audibly sobbed as she walked through the door.  (making everyone else sob too).
2.  How sweet her little hand looked on ours.
3.  How wonderful it was so see our close friends and family there.
4.  How Andrew even got choked up and cried.
5. Cherilyn Knighton was the temple worker that helped me around - an old friend I worked with at Millville when I taught art.
6.  How Kenny couldn't hold it together when he gave me a hug after.
7.  When asked what she thought about it Elizabeth said "pretty good".
8.  Having a wonderful stress-free dinner at Cafe Sabor afterwards.
9.  It was also Mom's birthday.
10. She wore two little braids tied together in the back and the temple workers added a pretty bow. 
11. How much I love her.
12.  How much I felt like a team going through this with Andrew.
13.  The beautiful fluffy snow falling as we walked out the temple with our white clothes on.

Attorney

Today we met with the Utah Attorney to talk about the documents and prepare for going to court with Elizabeth.  It has nearly been a year since we brought her home and over a year since we started the adoption process.  It has been a learning experience.  We hired a Utah attorney as recommended by Charity our caseworker through LDS family services.  He had never done an adoption through Colorado so he and Andrew found an attorney to work with there.  They talked to a guy that told them they could do what we needed and sounded great.  Our Utah attorney felt that he sounded competent and we hired him to represent Krystal. 

Long story short, he was full of it.  He had never worked with ICPC (the international adoption people).  Everything he did was wrong and we went to pick up Elizabeth just to find that we were denied a week or so later.  Gratefully they didn't make us bring Elizabeth back, but they were about to and weren't very happy at first.  We ended up firing them and working with an attorney selected through LDS family services.  Krystal had to go to counseling and her counselor had to submit paper work and she took much longer than she needed.  The new attorney had to wait for all the paperwork to get sent to them, which took forever.  They then had to review and resign and get all kinds of other things worked out.  This took a while.  Andrew found that the documents that were supposed to be sent to Krystal never got sent to her and a month had passed.  Andrew sent an unhappy email.  Things sped up a bit from there and then we waited for the court date to take place November 14th.  Krystal had to appear in court and they asked her questions.  They almost delayed the date because the birth father didn't show up.  Thankfully the attorney convinced the judge that was not necessary.  We got word that everything passed.  Our Utah attorney hit the ground running and less than a week later we had a court date ready.  December 3rd.

I asked my Mom what she was doing for her birthday, and she said nothing.  I asked if she wanted to come to the sealing of her granddaughter and she cried and said that would be the best birthday ever :D.

SO, there it is,  A week from today we will be getting sealed to our little Elizabeth day.  So wonderful.   

a year.

It was about a year ago that we started skypeing and getting to know our little munchkin. Things are much more comfortable now. She knows our standards and rules. She is obedient and respectful. She makes everything fun. I love when she whoops or says yippeee! She loves to help and be involved and do things together. She and I have grown very close and she wants to be "wit" me all the time. She was with me in the store as I picked out a shirt and she was so complimentary in telling me how I looked so cute in that shirt. I laughed and told her I was going to bring her shopping every time! She didn't forget it either. She would remind me "remember when you said you would always bring me shopping"? We wouldn't even be anywhere close to shopping, but she liked to know I wanted her there and that she would be there. She and I read together almost every night. She puts her head on my shoulder and we battle every night over who gets to turn the pages...since she can't really read yet, she never knows when to turn. She is a happy girl, fun and full of life. She makes friends easily and is quickly accepted. Her eyes are quite impressive. They are a light blue with a green or gold (it changes) ring around the iris. The change of color really makes them look like jewels.


 

 She and Andrew have a really fun relationship.  Andrew likes to tickle to show love.  This, I hated.  Elizabeth on the other hand...LOVES it.  She loves doing things outside with Dad and the animals.  She is always letting out the dogs, or feeding the horses.  She opens the pigeon coup to help Dad out. She comes in with hay in her hair and smells like dog.  That is okay, she gets to be outside with Dad and loves spending that time with him. 

She is doing well in school.  She gets good grades in all the subjects.  I don't feel that we overly prepared her for kindergarten, but she learns quickly and does her homework very readily.  I bring her with me in the morning and she has breakfast at the school.  The lunch ladies love her and miss her if she is ever gone.  The secretaries share their secret candy stash with her and love it when she stops in.  The other day she stopped in another teachers classroom and chatted for about 10 minutes.  Elementary teachers know how to have long conversations with kids, so she could have gone all day.  The teacher loved it and thought she was the cutest thing.  The students in my class all love her and play with her until she has to go to her own class.  She always wants me to walk her to class, until a certain point, then I can go no further and have to let her go.  She always gives me a kiss and a hug. 

Funny kid

Elizabeth playing the recordian - and is taking charge.

Fun Saturday

Not as fun.

Today we went for a walk in the pasture across the street to give a few of the dogs a good walk.  As we walked we found our cat that we had been missing for a few days.  He looked like he got run over by a tractor.  :C  This was particularly sad because we had an even more unfortunate event the week before.

Our dog Missy has been getting into our neighbors chickens.  They have been super nice about it and told us and didn't want to cause any issues, but just wanted to let us know.  We bought a electric fence thing and a collar for her but didn't want to set it up yet because our yard was in such a mess from putting in our septic system that we weren't sure how to go about it.  As you I'm sure you guessed the other neighbor saw her in the other neighbors chickens.  He walked over and tried to get her out, but she growled and snarled at him being protective of the chicken that she thought were hers.  The neighbor regrettably shot her.  She came back home with several holes and bleeding all over.  I broke down as I saw her bleeding and we decided that there wasn't anything we could do.  I pet her and tried to calm her for the last time before Andrew "finished the job".  She was such a sweet dog it was really sad to see her go that way.  I cried a lot and Lizzy did a little too.  I was still upset the next day and cleaned the house and detailed both our cars.  By Sunday I felt my head and wondered what was wrong with it.  It felt like I had hit it on something.  I finally realized that my forehead muscles were sore from frowning and crying ha ha.  I guess that is a good sign that my frowning muscles get used so seldom that they get sore. 

The neighbor that shot her and the neighbors that owned the chickens came over and talked to Andrew and explained what happened.  We talked to the owners again at church today and really hoped their weren't hard feelings and felt horrible.  They mentioned that the shooter felt really awful about it too and wished he had gone about it differently.

Earlier this last summer we lost our baby horse Pearly Girly to colic,  it has been a unfortunate year for pets.

this is the norm lately