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???!

Journal

This is all old news but I figured I better write it down for my own journaling purposes... I am telling you this job is keeping me busy and leaving no time for the blog (no fun!)

So since the last time I was on here we have been busy... Mike and Holly have come to visit and we had a great time. They were here for just about a week and we were able to do a lot of great things. We of course did some shopping and had some great dinners. We were also able to see Phantom of the Opera which was great. We also celebrated Mike's birthday while he was here.

We have also celebrated National Social Worker's Month with FSA by honoring the social worker's at the LDS Family Service office and also at our local hospitals. We have also been working on an upcoming campout that is coming up this month.

Mom went to Hawaii for a week which left me busy with work and holding down the "stamping fort". She had a great time and needed the time away for sure.

Other than that... we have been working, planning our trip for the summer to the UK and just being busy. That pretty much sums it up!

New Calling

Well church on Sunday was exciting. Dan and I have been the Stake Technologists for the past two and half years. Basically what that means is that we have been in charge of showing all of the broadcasts that come across from Salt Lake. It also means that we were able to see General Conference without fail; that was a plus for sure. This being said, Sunday we were released from this calling. I was not too disappointed as it has been a long time and I am plenty busy with FSA and Girls Camp for sure and Dan is now involved with Scouts too.

This also being said we were released but Dan was called to something different... and a lot more time consuming if nothing else. You are looking at (well not really Looking at) the new second counselor in the Elder's Quorum presidency! Wish us luck. We really have our plates full now.

I am sure that he will do a great job and he was a wonderful president that he is working with and gets along with great, so I am sure he is going to love this calling and learn a lot while he is in in too.

Blog catch-up....

okay.. so working pretty much full time again and having this new job of FSA co-chairs and just trying to keep up with daily stuff has left little time for my blogging and that is no good... I have felt so out of touch. I have managed to read and keep up to date on everyone else but my posting has fallen way behind!

So... I need to do a little catch-up for sure. Last weekend we had a fun little planning party and we spent the weekend planning and preparing for our trip this summer over to England and now Germany it looks like. It was a lot of fun to get out the maps, and buy some tourist books and surf the Internet and really dig into our plans. It is going to be so much fun.

My first full week of work also came and went and that was great too. I ended with a paycheck and that was nice too. I feel back to normal there and really feel like I never left. I don't know how long I will be there but for now things seem to be going great.

Sunday we did have to get out and enjoy the great weather that is starting to show its face here in the desert so we too a nice hike. We started out near the lake and hiked all the way to the dam. It ended up being 8 miles round trip. We hiked with our hiking companions of Brian, Cindy and Dan, of course and ended the day with a BBQ back at their house.

Other than that we are just working, and staying plenty busy planning things for FSA and also planning our own trips too. More to come!!!

Working Woman

WOW... I made it through my first day back at work. I wasn't sure if I was going to or not, but somehow I did! No, honestly it really wasn't that bad, after all it is the same place I use to work, 6 out of the 9 people are the same and I am doing pretty much the same thing as when I left so that makes it a pretty easy job. I will admit that I am a lot more tired than I thought I would be though.

For those that don't know... My old doctor's office where I use to work has always asked me to come back but I have resisted. Well this time they made it sound pretty good. I will be working there on a pretty much full time basis until they find a replacement for the girl that they let go. BUT... they gave me a pretty good deal. The office is open 6 days a week but I will only be working Monday-Thursday and have Friday and Saturdays off (Sundays too of course when they are closed). I also already told them about some upcoming days that I will need off due to plans I already had and they said no problem. I thought it sounded nice and gave me the opportunity to get out of the house for a bit and hopefully save some of the money I will be making and help them out too.

We will see how long it takes for them to find a replacement and how much I push for it, depending on how tomorrow goes!!!!

Weekend Wrap-Up: Adoption Conference

What a weekend.... Friday was spent doing a little of this and a little of that and actually a whole lot of scrapbooking which I haven't been able to do in a while. I think I tried to forget that on Saturday I was hosting and presenting at the conference so I immersed myself in my scrapbooking and pictures. It was fun and totally worth it. A friend was in town and I had to take advantage of the situation. I did also spend some time in the morning getting ready for Saturday and the conference.

That leads us to Saturday. Wow.... for months (really months and months) we as a committee have been planning and preparing for this adoption conference and the day had finally arrived. Since the start of this planning though one thing had changed. Dan and I are now the Co-chairs and things sort of fall on us when things go right, and when they go wrong! Thankfully we all had done so much planning that things went right this time.

This picture was from before the conference actually started and we weren't sure how it was going to end up and I didn't have to give my presentation yet. Oh, yeah... not only did we have to run the conference but I also had to teach a class. Dan was great. He took over the making sure things were running smooth part and I could just concentrate on my presentation and then we both handled the dinner part together. What a team we make!

Our friend Candise who helped out so much with the conference but moved the very next day. She left us all alone and now we really have to fend for ourselves!!!!

We had a great turn out and I hope that everyone had a great time (they said they did!) Hope this is a sign of the great events that are in our future as co-chairs.....

FSA Co-Chairs

Well, most people know that we have been working with our local FSA; families supporting adoption, group here in Nevada for the entire time that we have been approved and waiting for our adoption. We have loved the experience and enjoyed the events and the activities and met lots of great people. All that being said, just this past weekend the couple that was heading the group up called us and said that we were going to make some changes in the organization and they felt that WE should be the ones running the group. WHAT? Us, running it?! They must have lost their minds. Dan and I aren't ready to do this. We are so not the people to be in charge. We have not been placed with yet. We definitely don't have all the answers, and never will. What in the world were they thinking.

So after telling them that we would have to think about if for a few days for sure. We called them back and talked to them again, and again, and decided that we really do enjoy the work and hope to learn and grow and honestly just hope to not screw up what they have done and accepted the challenge. So here we are.... the new co-chairs of Nevada FSA! Wish us luck. We sort of have a rough outline of what we are going to be working on for the year, but that always changes as the year goes along. We have a great committee and that is what we will so be couting on during our time as the co-chairs. Our first big obstacle is coming soon..... Next weekend we have a Conference that we are putting on for waiting couples.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Joshua Tree

This weekend we celebrated Valentine's day with those that we love... Brian, Cindy and Daniel. We look a trip to California to do some hiking and just get away. We thought that we might have to cancel because of the weather but the clouds parted and we were able to go. Yeah!

We had such a great time in Joshua Tree. We all enjoy getting out and seeing nature and being together. It is great to be able to have friends to do things with and who all get along and who can stand to be together 24 hours a day... a rare find! We already have tons more trip ideas in our heads we just have to find the time and the money to make them happen....