Easter fun!

After an unusual winter with only a couple of snowfalls for us here at the base of Mt. Adams, we were surprised to wake up to 6 inches of fresh snow a couple of days before Easter. The snow kept falling throughout the day until we had about a foot on the ground. Unlike the nightly skiffs of snow we had been getting all week that melted away by noon, this snow decided to stay. We still have patches of snow around even after the sun peeking through today. This made for an interesting Easter egg hunt on Saturday. The annual community Easter egg hunt will always go on--rain or snow or shine!! Kind of like how school is never canceled here in our valley because of snow. The only time it has ever been cancelled in the last--oh...thirty-some years was on account of it being so freezing cold the buses wouldn't start. Yep. We're real die-hards here. Gotta make the most of it when you have snow six months out of the year--typically.

Saturday's Easter egg hunt was anything but typical. The eggs looked as though they were tossed here and there and everywhere in the snow by a frozen-toed Easter bunny eager to get inside and get warm. You wouldn't think that finding brightly colored eggs in a white landscape would be hard, but when they are half buried it is! The kids still had a blast...

Frozen hard-boiled egg? Anyone?

My little Easter bunnies helping to make cookies...

I was super excited and pleased with how Miss Smiley's Easter dress turned out. I found two adorable patterns--one for a dress and the other for a hat--on the website youcanmakethis.com. I recently researched and bought a new sewing machine and was anxiously awaiting its arrival by mail, but it didn't make it before Easter. (It arrived on Monday, wouldn't you know it!) So...I was working away on a borrowed clunker machine (and I mean CLUNKER!!--FarmDad could barely sleep all the way on the other side of the house when I stayed up late to finish.) Thank goodness it clunked it's way through without giving up on me and I got 'er done. I thought about making a matching tie for Tractor Boy and maybe a matching shirt for me, but...maybe for Mother's Day. =) Thank goodness I only have one little darling to dress frilly for Easter. My friend, bless her heart, made THREE adorable twirly dresses for her little girls. I'm not sure I could ever keep up with that!! Here are my little sweethearts ready for church...

Our church puts on an annual community Easter breakfast, complete with huckleberry pancakes, fruit and ham--Yum!! The trick every year is to keep the kids clean until church. Especially when they eat like this...

After all, the syrup is the best part...

Miss Smiley loves to sing with the rest of the kids for their mini-program at the breakfast and then again at church...

All in all, a joyful celebration of Christ's resurrection!!

He is risen indeed!!

A long overdue update...

After reading my last post, I realized how long overdue I am for an update on our family! The past few weeks have seemed to fly by, but our most exciting new news is that we are expecting a new baby to join our family in September! We were hoping to get a referral for our Ethiopian baby by then, but God had other plans! Near the end of January, I began to suspect that I was pregnant, and we soon found out that sure enough I was!

We contacted our adoption agency, AAI, later in February to find out what the procedure is for a family getting pregnant in the middle of an adoption. Once again, we felt so grateful to God for leading us to choose AAI. Many, if not most, adoption agencies have a pregnancy policy where you have to begin your paperwork all over again after your baby is born and you are not refunded any money you've spent up to that point. AAI. however, is very supportive of families getting pregnant during the process. After calling AAI's office, I discovered:
-We will be put on hold for a referral until after our baby is born.
-We will continue to move up the wait list.
-We will not have to pay any extra fees unless any of our paperwork expires
-We will be taken off "hold" once our bio baby is six months old (AAI has this policy so that the new baby has time to bond with the family before introducing a new member)
-By the time our bio baby is six months old, we will be at the top of the wait list, meaning we will most likely receive a referral within weeks of our baby turning six month old.
-This puts the approximate time for our referral sometime around March of next year.

Of course, after learning I was pregnant, my emotions ran the full gamut--excitement, disappointment, uncertainty about raising two babies at once (one possibly quite needy), etc. However, as I get used to the idea, I look forward to seeing how God plans to grow our family in the next couple of years. As busy and crazy as I was raising our first two (a year and five days apart in age), I love how close they are now and how they love to play with each other. They are very rarely apart. I hope for the same bond between our next two.

I have been blessed with this pregnancy. So far, I have been feeling pretty good--just tired. I had my first doctor appointment this last week and was glad to hear the flutter of a miniature heartbeat. The last two days, I have enjoyed feeling what I suspect are tiny movements. I hope to have an ultrasound this next week to better pin down a due date. Right now the doctor is thinking September 16th. Meanwhile, life goes on and seems to be picking up pace, gearing up for summer already!

Fingerprinting

Yesterday, we traveled 2 1/2 hours to Yakima to be fingerprinted for our adoption. It was a LONG drive to and from the USCIS office for ten minutes of having our hands manhandled and twisted this way and that for our prints to officially be on record. I wasn't expecting to have to go through a security checkpoint either!

Anyway, we are now done with everything we have to do until we get our referral. Other than the grants we hope to apply for, we are officially done paper signing, paper chasing and paper mailing! Yay!

Our dossier was sent to Ethiopia (DTE) on Jan. 21, at which point our waiting officially began for a referral. The wait list is still about 8-10 months long for a baby boy. Even though we are open to either gender, in all likelihood we will get a boy since the wait list is shorter.

Puzzles!

Both our kids love to put together puzzles, but Miss Smiley amazes me with her abilities sometimes. She is often the first one awake in the morning and her favorite thing to do is to go out to sit at the coffee table in the living room and work quietly on a puzzle until everyone else rouses.

She started putting together simple 25 piece puzzles at age 2. For Christmas this year we gave her two small 50 piece puzzles in her stocking. I didn't really think she could do them since the pieces were tiny, but they were just from the dollar store so I figured why not? I was amazed when she sat down one day for about an hour and put them together all by herself! I guess we're on to 100 piece puzzles now...

Tractor Boy, on the other hand, doesn't have enough patience (or attention span) to put together more than 10 pieces, so he likes the card matching game we gave him for Christmas. It only takes three cards to form a tractor, truck, car, ambulance, military vehicle, etc.--perfect for him! He gets pretty proud when he makes a match.