Christmas Morning

1 Year Ago

One year ago today at exactly 3:30 my phone rang at work and I saw the Colorado area code on the caller ID and my heart skipped a beat because our agency is located there. I heard Sarah from the child-match department say “Leslie, I’m looking at the face of a sweet little girl who needs a Mama and a Daddy”. She emailed me the information on Wan Chang and told me to look over everything and to let her know if we were interested in adopting her. She also asked if I would like to see pictures to which I screamed “YES”, it didn’t matter if she was green with blue polka dots I knew she was going to be our little girl. I told Sarah we would review the file but in my heart I knew we would say yes. Of course we did and the rest is history!

Here she is today. Amazing what belonging can do!

Important Phone Call

When we returned from PaPa's we checked our voice mail and Santa had called the girls while we were away. I didn't think to record them listening to his message until about half way through. We still have the message saved.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve evenning with Rusty's father "PaPa" and Rusty's brother and his family. We were joined by one of their cousins and his wife and our sister-in-laws sister. Got that! We really took way more pictures than this but these were the only one's that were not blurred. This group does a lot of moving around so it was hard to catch everyone. I hate I don't have a picture of my nephew Will. Christmas night I asked Gracie what her favorite gift was. She said she loved the Hannah Montanna trading cards her cousin Will gave her. This just proves that Rusty is right, I spend way too much time stressing over the gifts when it's the little things that they love the most.

Laurie Alice getting some assistance from her PaPa.

The "T" girls and their feast. Cousin Angie gave the girls a great collection of books.

We have already read them and then some.

Christmas Eve Hoe Down!

Teaching LA how to play on the Nitendo DS

Little Santa

My Nephew Blake received a Santa outfit from Santa himself about two years ago for Christmas. He loves to wear it in hopes that the little ones will think he is the "real deal".

Grady, Brayden and Gracie, no problem



Mollie Beth seems to enjoy being with Santa

Laurie Alice and Jacob not so sure!

Jacob is REALLY sure Aunt Laurie better not let him go.


Looks like my girl might be warming up (Blake removed the beard)

Santa's not so bad after all!!


I can do this Santa gig!

No, I am not Papa Smurf or an old Troll I AM SANTA!!!!!!

Decorating Christmas Cupcakes

I know its January and I am just now getting around to posting our Christmas pictures but honestly I haven’t had enough time to get them on here. I don’t know how people blog on a daily basis. I hope that when I’m home full time (after May 1st) I’ll do better. Unfortunately, I’m home sick with what I think might be the flu, fortunately I can get the blog up to date. Check back often as I’ll be posting pictures over the next few days.

To start the holidays off my mother had the grandchildren come over and decorate cupcakes. They had a really great time and as you can tell Laurie Alice really loved the icing. Also, my mother broke her arm (although she didn’t know it was broken when the pictures were taken, she only thought it to be a very bad sprain) so she is not holding her hand like that because she thinks it’s cool. She was in some serious pain that day but she insisted we still get together.

My nephew Grady also has a broken arm. Notice his cute little caste.

LWB Video

I saw this video on a fellow adoptive mom's blog and wanted to post it here as well. I know economically it's going to be a lean year for all but I would just ask that you pray about giving to Love Without Boundaries and see if the Lord puts it on your heart to give or to pray for this organization.