FSA Campout

This was going to be our first real test as the Co-Chairs of Nevada FSA! We had planned an overnight camping trip to Warm Springs.... well, of course everything went wrong! We had drama trying to find a lifeguard, our activities committee decided they couldn't make it and I had to run around buying food and getting things totally ready, Dan had to work late that night so my dad actually drove up to Warm Springs with me so we could set up and be there when people arrived, and then to top it off the wind blew ALL NIGHT LONG and in the morning we were greeted with Rain! Rain, in Vegas, in April, only because we were having a campout!

In spite of all these things everyone had a great time and played, enjoyed the river behind our site and the smores in the evening and are even ready for us to make the reservations to come back next year! What a daring group we have.

Our fearless leader - Brad our caseworker!

Everyone setting up camp and enjoying some dinner.

Dan building us a fire in the morning so we didn't freeze to death

The few remaining survivors after a long night. You can't tell but it is freezing and raining in this picture and we are huddled around the stove to keep warm while Dan is cooking pancakes!!! What a weekend!

Asking for help....

We just got home from our monthly FSA meeting and while I feel great about the meeting and great about the activities we are planning, I can't help but feel a little frustrated with our own progress and our own situation. Many of you know we are fast approaching the 2 year mark of our adoption process and that is testing our patience beyond measure some days; other days we are fine and don't even really think about it. On our way home from the meeting tonight we were talking and trying to come up with ways to reach our goal of an eternal family faster and what we might be able to do to help speed the process along. While we don't really have any "good" ideas we were hoping that we might be able to call upon our family and friends yet again.

I gave a class a while ago to new couples and told them all about ways that they could "promote" their own adoption and while we have done many of these ideas ourselves we are still trying to come up with more ways. I am hoping that we might be able to get some of you on board with us on this effort as we hope it might reach someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, etc.

What we are asking is that if you would be willing we would love to have you "STEAL" our picture that I have on the top of this post and place it somewhere on your blog. I would then love for you to have a link attached that leads back to our adoption blog which is www.danielandaranne.blogspot.com. That is the least that we are asking. If you feel like you want to do more and write an actual post telling who we are and why you suddenly have a picture of two strange people on your sidebar that would be awesome! Anything that you could do would be great.

Please let me know if you did any of the above, for one because I want to see it, and for two because I want to thank you. It really does mean a lot to us. We are just trying to get our names and faces out there and figure this might be a good way for a lot of people to see us. No pressure, honestly, but if you think you can... great! If you have any other questions about it, just leave me a comment and I can get back to you.

Thanks again!

Hoppy Easter to You

We had a great Easter. The weather was wonderful. Our house (okay my mom and dad's house) was filled with tons of family and friends. We had great food. We couldn't ask for a better day. We had Marvin, Maria and their daughter Arianna here from California. My brother Robert and sister in law Lisa with their daughters Morgan and McKenna here from California as well. We also had some local friends come and spend the day with us too. We had Brian, Cindy and Dan join us, as well as Cira and her son Jack.

The weather was so wonderful we decided to ditch the traditional Easter dinner and had a BBQ outside.
We had fun blowing bubbles and the kiddos had fun trying to catch them!

We had an egg hunt and that was fun for all ages. The adults had fun hiding the eggs and the kids of course had fun trying to find them.

Taking a leap

We went ahead and took a big leap of faith you could say... We bought our nursery furniture the other day. We have been "looking" for a while now. We will walk through the stores and casually look. We see some things we like and some we definitely don't like. We happened to walk into Target and it so happened that they had all of the pieces of a set that we had previously seen (and they didn't have all of the pieces of) so we decided it had to be a sign.

So... we walked into Target just to do some random looking and we walked out the proud owners of a crib, a changing table and a dresser. We are really excited but also nervous for some reason. It is fun to have the furniture but it would be even more exciting to know when there is going to be a little one to use it. We know that it is going to happen we just don't know when and that is the most frustrating part. Oh well... at least we are ready for whenever the time comes!

One with Nature

Our friends Cindy and Dan were about to start their Spring Break from teaching so we decided we wanted to head out of town and enjoy the great outdoors and get out and do some hiking. So we all packed up our stuff and jumped in the car (for an 8 hour car ride!) and were on our way to Yosemite for 5 days of fun....


We were able to hike to Mariposa Grove and see the Giant Sequoias... Dan is standing there in the picture but you can barely see him....

We also took a great hike up to Mirror Lake...

The first hike we thought we were tough and decided to do a "moderately strenuous" hike and hiked Upper Yosemite Falls... We were a little shocked by the difficulty but it was a great sight when we made it to the top. The falls were beautiful and we were able to see a mountain lion on our way back down too. Because of this hike the rest of our trip we chose shorter, easier hikes but did multiple ones!

Dan and I during our Upper Yosemite Falls hike.

This is where we stayed the first night.. The Yosemite Bug... It was not a pleasant experience and because it wasn't... we changed our sleeping location and spent the rest of the trip at the Mariposa Inn... We ended up saving money and our sanity... Thank goodness for that!

We had a great time, as usual, getting away, enjoying each other's company and just having fun. Can't wait for our next trip... wonder where it will be???!