Soon-To-Be Father's Day Post

I think that more than I want to be a mom... I want Dan to have the chance to be a DAD! He is going to be the best DAD ever. He is such a great person, friend, husband and I know he will make a great DAD. He has such great traits that I hope he is able to pass on to our children. He is patient and kind. He is giving. He is funny and lighthearted and easy-going. He is understanding and easy to get along with. He makes friends with people quickly.

I can't wait to watch him interact with our children and be the DAD that he wants to be. I can't wait to see him playing catch, going on camp-outs, building forts, teaching them how to work on cars, showing them how to fix fire extinguishers... and he has already told me this will all happen weather it is a boy or girl! But right now we have all nieces and it is sweet to watch him with them too. He does play dolls with them and blocks and reads to them. So that side is there in Dan he just needs a "princess" to help bring it out. Either way I know Dan will be a great DAD and I hope that he will have that chance very soon. I hope this is the last Father's Day he will have to spend without a little one looking up at him in pure adoration!

By the way... Happy Father's Day to my Dad for being a great example to me and for always being there for me, and to Dan's Dad for helping him be the great guy that he is today.... We love you both!

Weekend of Good Deeds

This weekend we headed to California to spend some time doing some good deeds and hanging out with some friends. After arriving late on Thursday night, Friday morning we headed into Downey and visited Maria at her new office. It was great to see at at work (especially since I don't work there with her anymore!)

Friday night we hung out with Maria, Crystal, Officer Jesse, Marvin and Arianna at Maria's house. We had some dinner and then watched a movie. We had to get up early on Saturday for the....

HOGS AND RODS POKER RUN

Saturday we participated in the 4th annual poker run that benefits the Orange County Ovarian Alliance. My Dad is friends with the guy who runs the organization and it is a great cause and a lot of fun so we decided to go and participate this year. My dad has been going since the beginning... It was a lot of fun. We were able to see lots of vintage cars and tons of motorcycles. We didn't have the winning poker hands but that was okay too.... Dan had a pair of 3s and I had a pair of 7s... Better luck next year!

After a busy day of driving around Orange County we made a stop at Wendy's to help out a good cause there as well. They were donating 50 cents of every frosty purchased to the Dave Thomas Adoption Foundation. It is not the service that we are using but adoption is a great service and we were glad to support a good cause and have a yummy treat at the same time.

Sunday we woke up and picked up Morgan and she came back to Nevada with us. She is out of school and came to visit for a couple weeks. She is staying at Grandma and Grandpa's house and then dad and McKenna will be coming to get her.

Frosty Anyone?

IN THE MOOD FOR A FROSTY???

This Saturday we should all take advantage of this wonderful program and help out a great cause and beat the heat by enjoying a frosty.

Celebrate Father's Day and help a child find a forever family. For every Frosty product purchased on June 14 and 15, Wendy's will donate 50 cents to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Please join us for Father's Day Frosty Weekend at a participating Wendy's near you!Proceeds support the mission of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption to dramatically increase the number of adoptions of waiting children in North America so that every child will have a permanent home and loving family.

Take a look here http://www.davethomasfoundationforadoption.com/ and see what this wonderful program is really all about!

WEEKEND WRAP-UP: Visitors, Registers and Swimmers

THURSDAY NIGHT: We went to the airport to pick up Laura who would be visiting for the weekend. She was coming basically just to visit and get away from LA for the weekend...



FRIDAY: Dan had to work in the AM for a little while. My dad was having a work BBQ on Saturday so we spent some time shopping and helping him get ready for that. The main event for us on Friday afternoon/evening was that we decided to go and start a registry at Babies R Us. We decided that since LDS Family Services thinks that we have been on the "List" for about a year we figured it was about time that we start getting things a little more ready than we are. We also thought it was pretty good timing since Laura is good at that kinda stuff and she was very helpful with reminding us of things that we would need right at the very beginning and man is there a ton of stuff. It really was fun though. Now at least if we get the call we won't have to go and start from scratch on a registry, we have a big head start and can just add gender specific items to the list.




SATURDAY: My dad has his BBQ and we participated by spending a lot of the day in the pool. The weather was great and the water in the pool has finally gotten nice. We also had purchased a new volleyball set for the pool and Dan and I made good use of that. Fun, Fun, Fun!



SUNDAY: Church and then relaxing. Another busy weekend, but we felt like we were able to accomplish a big task and hopefully now that we have taken this big step maybe it won't be long and we will actually need some of the things that we have on our list... that is the plan at least!

A Little Off The Top

So after months, no maybe years, of Dan talking about wanting to shave his head he finally did it. I was a little unsure about the idea to say the least. I don't mind shaved heads, but you never know how it is going to turn out. Some people just don't have cute heads and you can't tell under all that hair until it is too late. I think we lucked out with Dan. Besides... his hair grows so stinking fast that he will have his crazy mop back before the end of the summer anyways!

Has it been a year already?

Well I opened my email yesterday and got two sort of unpleasant messages. The first one was a note from our caseworker Brad stating that because we had done all of our paperwork on real paper we were in a group that we going to have to re-do/update our file and change over our paperwork into an online format... oh and it needs to be done by JUNE 9th... WHAT?! Like I have nothing better to do. And like that whole process didn't take us months to do before. The only good news is that we don't have to fill out the 44 long answer questions but the rest of it still takes a while, so that made me a little upset. But I was dealing with it....

Then the next email came..... We got an email that just said "Annual Update". I opened it. It was from LDS Family Services in Salt Lake and it said that because we were approaching our year mark that we needed to update certain things in our file. WHAT? Our year mark... they must be mistaken. It hasn't been a year since we were approved. It can't be?! The letter that we got from Salt Lake stating that we are "fit to be parents" is dated October 2007... I was prepared to have this email come in October, but not in May.... It was a shocker that is for sure. I had always told myself that it takes 9 months to have a baby naturally so not to stress or worry for at least then first 9 months... I also told myself that Brad has told us a "normal" turn around in our agency is anywhere from 1-1.5 or even 2 years.... so I was going to be okay with waiting about that long. I would be a little impatient but okay with it. After that is when I would start wondering what was wrong with us and why no one was choosing us and what we were doing wrong. I was not ready to already be at that year mark though. May to October is a big difference.

I do have to sit back and think about where we really are in the process though. We really haven't only been waiting a year, or 9 months, or even 2-3 years... it has been much longer than that... so I am not sure why this upsets me so much. We started the paperwork in approximately January of 2007 and then told our families in July, and got the approval in October... It really doesn't seem like we have been waiting that long. We have been able to keep ourselves busy and active with the group and with members of FSA and we are grateful for that. We need to remember what we are here for and remember the blessings we will receive and the final outcome of this process. We will be an eternal family and there is nothing that we want more. No matter how long this process takes it will be worth it.

So this week we have a lot of "paperwork" to finish up online and fingerprints to re-do, Bishop recommends to get again, and all of that fun stuff. We have to do all of the updates by the end of the month but I want to just get it over with and hope this is the last Annual Update that we have to do.

WEEKEND WRAP-UP

FUN IN THE SUN......

FRIDAY: We started our weekend a little early by going out to the lake with some friends on Friday. It was a perfect day with very little wind (which is rare here in Vegas) and the weather was fabulous. We took out the grill and had some chicken and a great time on the skis.

We continued our day in the sun by going back to my parents house for some more BBQing for dinner and a dip in the spa later that evening.

SATURDAY: We spent the day with my Dad running errands and just sort of hanging out. We went to the bank, Costco (gotta love Costco), went to a couple furniture stores looking for a new bookshelf... Nothing really exciting but that is what we wanted. We stopped by Hollywood Video on our way home so that we could watch movies on Sunday.

SUNDAY: After church on Sunday we did NOTHING! It was wonderful. We sat around all day and vegged-out. It has been weeks since we have been able to do this and it was great. We came home and put on jammies and did nothing but watch movies. I loved every minute of it. I watched a really good movie that I am sure a lot of people have already seen but I hadn't. It was called "The Ultimate Gift". Very sweet and touching (kinda cheesy) but if you are in the mood for a few tears and a lot of cheese... a great movie.

This was a well deserved, relaxing weekend and we were ready for it. The next two weekends will be busy once again, so we have this week to get ready for them. Wish us luck!

The Scintas

We took in another show last night. We were able to go and see the Scintas. It was a really good show. They have been in Vegas for 8 years and sing, and dance and do impressions during their singing... They are two brothers, one sister and then one friend who has been singing with them for 22 years, so he is basically family. They put on a great show and it was a fun thing to do on a Tuesday night.

WEEKEND WRAP-UP: Amy and Steve

The weekend had finally arrived when Amy and Steve were coming to visit. We had been planning it and waiting for it for what seemed like FOREVER, and it was finally here. We were all very excited and looking forward to spending some time together.

It is so great to have a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law that both of us get along with so well. We can spend time doing NOTHING together and still have a blast. We just have a lot of things in common and also just enjoy each other's company. They are great people and we just "click".

FRIDAY: They got here late on Friday night and we headed to IHOP after making them open back up just for us (thanks Dan). We then came home and just hung out until the wee hours of the AM...

SATURDAY: We shopped a little, watched the new Indiana Jones movie, had some CPK for dinner, hid from the rain that fell sporadically throughout the day. We then had ourselves an fun time people watching! Nothing beats people watching in Vegas... NOTHING! After that we had an Academy Marathon.

SUNDAY: We went to church (an adventure in itself ) then came home and had a BBQ complete with Steve being a "spilly-spillerson". After some down-time (but no napping) we had a marathon of games including a 24-round Scattegories session which Steve won!

MONDAY: After sleeping in due to our late nights we decided to hit the strip and we did a lot of walking, and walking, and walking. We bought some tickets and we saw Bodies - The Exhibition and also Madame Tassaude's Wax Museum which were both really cool. We also got ourselves some really big smoothies and really big sugar highs.

It was a great weekend and we can't wait to see them again. Hopefully before the baby gets here in November, but we will just have to wait and see!

Book Club: Watership Down

Okay so I was suppose to write this up yesterday and I should be able to tell you what this book is about since I should have read it....BUT... I did not. All I know is that it is about talking rabbits! After chasing down the book at two different libraries and all of that drama, I started the book but just could not get into it. Partly I am sure just because we have been so busy and I have not been doing much reading at all and mostly because it really is not my style of books for sure.

Well... we will see what next month's choice is and maybe it will be something I can get into and hopefully something I have never read, but in the meantime I better get going on "The Host" and try to finish that up first. Like I said I haven't been able to do much reading at all because we have been so busy with other stuff.

TV Talk

With so much stuff going on lately I have had to just TiVo some of my shows and last night after my dance recital I played catch up on some of them.... Of course I had to start with "American Idol". Now all along I have been voting for David Archuleta but secretly I had a feeling he wasn't going to make it all the way. I wasn't sure how long he was going to make it really. I was so glad each week when he was still there. I was getting very nervous when Sayesha was hanging around, but when it ended up with just the two David's I was pretty sure it would end up being Cook that won the whole thing. But no worries... David Archuleta will be fine and will go off and make a million for sure.

Now I am also back on to "The Bachelorette". I missed most of "The Bachelor" last season. A mishap with the TiVo..OOPS! But I hated the season where DeAnna was on and he didn't pick either of them. And lets not remind Dan about the whole situation.. he gets a little heated! I didn't really like DeAnna and was voting for Jenni but she seems to be different this time around and I look forward to seeing what she does in this situation. We will have to wait and see, but I am totally tuned in.

And of course we have "So you think you can Dance?" It starts tonight and I can hardly wait. This is one of my favorite shows by far. I can't wait to see who is on there and what they have to bring to the table. Last year was amazing and they are going to have to work their butts off to be better. I loved seeing them on the finale of "American Idol" too.


And now for all of the finales... so many of my shows have left us... "One Tree Hill" is over for the season and they totally left us hanging... BAD. "Lost" will be over next week and I am still totally confused on tons of stuff... What is Freckles doing for Sawyer? What is Jack doing with her? How do they actually get off of the island? Is anyone left on the island alive? Really are we ever going to know any of these things....? "America's Next Top Model" was named and I pretty much think it was a publicity stunt. While I think Whitney is pretty and all I think they had to finally give a plus-size model the title. I think there were lots of other girls that had done a better job than her but her time had come and that is why she got it... but that is just my opinion. And "Survivor"... poor Amanda. She has been in the final two twice and still no cash for her. What is the poor girl doing wrong? And James, everyone loves James. He hasn't come close to the finals and still wins money both times... I guess the only thing that Amanda got from this is a connection with Ozzy... but how true is a reality TV love connection??? and last but not least "The Hills" they are still fighting, but will be back for yet another season. Aren't we are so excited?

Man... I really do watch too much TV and too much Reality TV... I need to find something better to do with my time. I really need to get a hobby or something.

Star of the Show

OH, THE PLACES YOU'LL GO

That was the theme of this year's show and again it was way fun. Was I prepared?...NO... but it was fun. I could not believe how big our class was. Usually about 15 or so girls start at the beginning of the session and by showtime there are only about 8-10 of us doing the show... Not this year. This year there were 19 at the start of the session and all 19 of us did the recital. It was a record for sure. We were the biggest class of the night. Not the best, but the biggest!

This is us (as the opening number I might add) in our tourists shirts doing our jazz routine to "Those Fabulous Places"

Me and my "newbie" friend Tessa. She wanted to quit lots of times but I wouldn't let her. I think she was glad that she didn't and she had fun at the recital.

Our tap dance was to "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which was fun because I danced to that when I was a little kid too. I probably did better then, but it is still fun to get out there and do it still.