Our "snow" day in pictures

So, Houstonians are a bit nuts. Heaven help us but if there is snow in the forecast we all lose our minds! Well there was snow in the forecast for today so everything shut down in preparation for the approaching Winter Storm of 2011. Well, we woke up to some ice and unfortunate car accidents from ice on the roads, but no snow. I think it important to say that I am one of those "better safe than sorry" people, so I am grateful for all the cautions that were taken.

The boys were a bit disappointed, but it really didn't faze them much. I was the total opposite when I was a kid. I would have freaked out, so I had a plan for how to handle the boys' disappointment. We talked about how weathermen make guesses or predictions, but only God knows.

Angel's teacher had given them a homework assignment to make a snowman. I asked Jeff this morning what we should do about it. He suggested we make one out of paper. Later he told me he was kidding, but he should know better than to kid like that with this COM (Craft Obsessed Momma)! I cut out the shapes and the boys glued it all together and decorated it. I taught them to draw snowflakes by telling them to make a letter "x" and then Jesus' cross over top. Who knew that explanation would work, but it did?!

Proud Angel with his snowman

This next picture is not my favorite of J, but I added it to show you the bright and sun shinny day out the window! Poor Mr. Weatherman! I know you are feeling defensive today, but thanks for the extra day with all of my sweet boys!

Here's a better picture showcasing J's snowman and his precious smile!

We made paper snowflakes too. I helped the boys fold them and then they each decided what shapes they wanted where. I had to do the cutting because child safety scissors just wouldn't cut it, literally. Our snowflakes turned out a bit more colorful than the real deal too. The boys got to see that each snowflake was different and we talked about how God makes each person unique and special just like snowflakes! It was "snow" much fun sans the actual snow!

Introducing...

Angel David Albus

and

Jonathan Eli Albus

Here are some collages I made of each boy with a photo per month. It will take a while to catch you up, but there is much more to come! I can't believe how much they have grown and changed since we met!

Also, please read our post below for the details of our Adoption Day! We were featured in an article for the Houston Chronicle which you can read here. There are additional pictures in the link to the photo gallery! I was quickly endeared to the reporter when I found out she adopted an older child from the foster care system a few years ago! It was such an honor to have her write this sweet story about our adoption experience! This is a major shift from such a high level of privacy to being an open book! Although it is quite refreshing if you ask this proud Momma of 2!

Adoption Day

Wow, what a whirlwind of wonderfulness! November 19, 2010 will go down in the history of our family as hugely monumental! Right up there with our wedding day as one of the happiest days for us! I really can't put into words the feeling of relief and joy we feel to finally be recognized as a forever family! We have loved the boys since day 1 and truly felt like family, but this day sealed the deal. We couldn't be happier or feel more blessed to finally be here!

I am sure we will reach all new heights in the multitude of pictures on our blog for the next few weeks because these proud parents have held back for WAY too long! Thanks for your patience in looking at the back of their heads for 14 months! But now, behold the preciousness that is our boys!

Here is a photo of our little family outside the courtroom waiting our turn. The courts were celebrating National Adoption Day so we were one of 30 families finalizing adoptions in the 3 family courts downtown. Thankfully we were at the top of the docket!

My sweet sister drove all the way from Dallas to share the day with us! Thank you Sarah for making the long trip and for capturing our day in pictures!

Here we are getting sworn in and testifying. We were so blown away by the friends and family that came to be with us and by those praying and supporting us that could not be in attendance. Sweet friends from our Sunday School class, our adoption ministry, and my mom's Bible Study all took time out of their busy schedules to share in our joy! We could not be more grateful for the community we have found!

Many organizations and individuals donated their time and resources to make this day of celebration special for all the adoptive families! This picture was taken just after the adoption when the boys got their stuffed animals.

Dear lady in black,

I don't know who you are. However, you made it into one of my favorite shots from the day and therefore on the blog.

The official shot behind the bench. Jonathan may have grabbed a couple more stuffed animals as we shimmied our way back there. Little mischievous man!

This sign, professional family photos in a special frame, and a party with cake were all very sweet gestures from those who organized Harris County's celebration of National Adoption Day! The boys could barely carry all their stuffed animals, but they were happy to try!

After we left the court's celebration, we continued the fun with a family lunch at the Grotto. You can find previous posts here, here, and here about the significance of this restaurant. But it was where Jeff and I had our first real date, our rehearsal dinner, and anniversary dinners. The boys had never been to a fancy restaurant so it was a special treat! Angel may have written his name, in pen, on the cloth napkin. We are a paper napkin kind of family so who can blame him!

My mom (Gran) and dad (Poppa D) joined us for lunch, along with my sister Sarah and nephew Clayton. When Sarah told Clayton that she was coming to the boys' adoption, he told her he wanted to come too! These three boys have so much fun together and are such sweet cousins!

My parents are such proud grandparents and loved getting a photo with 3 of their 4 grandsons!

All 3 boys were well behaved at the restaurant and loved the special boy treat of octopus on the appetizer plate!! Angel and Clayton both tried their own little one and split the big one. I guess I'm officially a boy mom because I proudly took a picture!

The boys also loved the fancy dessert complete with sparkler! The waiter gave us some unlit ones for them to take home. Needless to say those are still unlit for now. What a fun treat and great ending to an amazing lunch!

We headed home and were welcomed with another wonderful surprise!

Our sweet daddy/hubby had celebratory flowers delivered!

The boys took a nap as they were exhausted from all the excitement of the day! Jeff and I tried to nap, but ended up having a great talk about how surreal it all was instead. Then the four of us rented Toy Story 3 and ordered pizza. What a truly perfect day we had! Thank you to all of you who shared it with us both in person and in spirit!

Adoption Eve

Oh.My.Goodness!! I cannot believe we finally made it to Adoption Day! The boys are in bed and I am praying they get good rest for tomorrow. Although Jeff and I have already discussed that we are going to be too excited to sleep! Everything is as ready as it is going to be at this point and I could not be happier to be mere hours away from being official! Thank you to all of our family and friends that have prayed for and supported us over the past 14 months. We are so blessed to have a community of people surrounding our family with encouragement and love. Those of you that will be in attendance tomorrow, thank you for being available. Your presence will mean so much! I am going to go wrap a few things up before trying to sleep!

Family Portraits - "A" & "J" Style

I had several really proud mommy moments lately and I just had to share a couple with you. "A" has been processing what it means to be a family and what adoption means for some time now, but we really thought "J" was sort of in a state of confusion about the whole thing. Well, the other day "J" came home with this drawing and told us it was our family. He identified each person in relationship to one another. This is the very first time he has ever done that! He's drawn pictures with some of us in it but never all of us! He told us that the first person on the left is "A" because he is the bigger brother, then himself, then Daddy and then Mommy. I thought, yay, he is catching on. Then yesterday when I was taking him to school, he asked me if we could tell his teacher his name is going to change. He said he keeps forgetting to tell her. I was THE proudest Momma when he and I walked up to her and he told her his new full name.

For comparison sake, here is one of "A"s first family portraits from February 2010. I remember thinking, "great, he thinks my hips are huge, but at least I have good hair!"

We couldn't be happier to be just ONE week away from officially becoming a forever family with our precious boys!

Back to School

Well, I uploaded these pictures to the blog several days ago, but the fact that they are just now getting posted gives you a glimpse into the first week of school. So far so good and we are getting into a routine MUCH easier than last year! Can you believe that in 2 short weeks, the boys will have been with us for 1 year?! Jeff and I were just talking the other day and we agree that in a lot of ways it seems like they have always been with us, but in other ways we are reminded of how far we have all come in a year.

We went to meet the teacher last Thursday. "J" had his in the morning and "A" had his in the evening. "J" explored his new classroom at the Montessori school we recently enrolled him in for his last year before heading to Kindergarten next year! He may be planning his escape or just checking out the play ground....We aren't sure which! I love his little classroom with the soothing colors and organized learning focused centers.

"A" also enjoyed getting to meet his first grade teacher, who I LOVE!!!!! She is right up there with Ms. S from last year which I didn't think was possible. I also went to curriculum night this week to learn about how she structures their learning and I was so impressed by her as a person and as a teacher! She loves kiddos and the Lord....We couldn't ask for more! "A" learned at meet the teacher that when you bring Daddy, he will buy you all kinds of spirit wear! You will see a portion of it a little further down, but he also got 2 spirit shirts and a calendar.

We went to a back to school picnic with our adoption ministry the weekend before school started. Before the picnic the whole group met at a pottery painting place. Our boys were very energetic, but we successfully completed a family plate and then each painted our own coaster.

"A" wasn't into painting his hand at first, but did humor his momma, thankfully!

This is the pre-glazed finished product! I am excited to display it! The night before school started we opened the envelope that "A"s teacher gave him for the occasion. He and "J" got to sprinkle "Ready Confetti" under their pillows! SO cute and one of the reasons I love Mrs. E!

"J" had just a few things out as most of his things were brought to meet the teacher and were in his cubby waiting for him on the first day. He did get to bring a fun new water bottle though and wear new clothes.

"A" got a big cool new back pack. My mom used to buy us the same brand, Jansport every year so I was excited to do the same! He got a spirit lanyard for his ID and a school water bottle. He also loves his "star" shoes/converse. What a fun First Grader we have!

I also felt a bit like my mom and my sister when I planned a fun back to school breakfast for the boys.

I made pancakes in the shape of the letters in their name for the first day of school...it nearly killed me...darn those super mom bloggers who share these crazy projects and make me think they are easy! The lady "suggested" using a funnel. The truth is if you don't use one, you will have a whole batch of broken letters and 2 good ones...not that I would know anything about that!

Anyway, we made it through the first week and it is going to be a great year!

Another Dose of Authenticity

So, considering that there was very little feedback (thanks mom and Sarah for your sweet comments) on my last post, perhaps these raw emotion blog posts are not so popular. Still, this is where we are at and this is life, so it is definitely worth documenting.

We are truly blessed beyond measure and so grateful for the joys in our life. But things have been rough lately. We are experiencing some difficult circumstances and I have been told by those I confide in that they too would struggle with them. I am not trying to have a pity party, just trying to be real. All this to say, tension is high at times in our house anyway.

Well, today I told myself I would be proactive. Our kiddos always struggle when the agency workers come to visit. It throws them completely off. Their anxiety shots through the roof and because they are still too young to have appropriate coping strategies for this level of stress, their behavior reflects their anxiety. As I have mentioned before, I struggle with remaining emotionally neutral in my parenting, so this is a recipe for disaster. Today I told them what time our agency worker was coming and rehearsed with them that we would all sit at the table and they could color while I chatted with her. Well, that lasted about 5 minutes into the hour long visit. Then they lost control....running, hitting, throwing, disrespect galore! I tried not to lose control too but basically every time the worker leaves I want to cry. Not because of her. All our workers are very sweet, but just because their presence strikes a cord so deep in my boys that they will be taken away again. They don't realize it, but that is why they act the way they do. "A" even told the very same worker last month he wanted to be with us forever unprompted after over an hour of behavior that would have easily convinced her of the opposite.

LORD HELP! I have more of these visits scheduled with the other 2 case workers we have later this week. I don't know why they all wait until the last week of the month to schedule their visits. Any suggestions and or prayers are greatly appreciated!

Happy Birthday Sweet "A"!

I am the mom of a 7 year old! I can't believe it, but "A" celebrated his 7th birthday today! I wish I could slow time down, but I can't so I just cherish every moment! Tonight "A" chose where we would go out to eat and he picked "the Mexican restaurant." He even got a coke. This is such a rare occurrence that I am pretty sure it has never happened on my watch. We ate and opened presents there and then went home for cake. It was a great time and now I am praying the kids go to sleep before midnight with all the sugar and caffeine pumping through their veins! Now for my sentimental birthday letter to our oldest little man.

Dearest "A",

We could not be prouder to be your mom and dad. What a blessing that God chose us to love and care for you! You are the most charming, adorable little guy I have ever met! Everyone loves you the moment you flash that giant dimply grin, especially sans several teeth! Please slow down with the girlfriend talk! It is not good for your Mommy's heart! I can't imagine sharing you yet! I love our special times together and how you shower us with "I love yous!" We love you too...more than you will ever now! Happy birthday sweet boy and I pray for many more amazing years to celebrate with you!

Love,

Mommy

Super Spiderman Shindig!

We are still recovering from our weekend of fun birthday celebration, complete with sugar induced coma. "A"s 7th birthday is July 20th. We have an all day training for our adoption agency next Saturday (can you feel the excitement?), so we had the party this past Saturday (July 10). It was all Spiderman, all the time! I am still dreaming in red and blue. Even the food was primarily red and blue in honor of "A"s favorite super hero! It is a bonus that my boys LOVE blueberries and strawberries!

PS: Do not judge me based on my nasty stripped wall paper in my kitchen. I did NOT pick it out. The previous owners must have thought it was nice, but me....I have disliked it since the day I first saw the house. In fact, it was one of the reasons I wasn't sold on the house right away, but Jeff encouraged me to look past the things that could be changed. Well, over 3 years later...they are getting changed and I couldn't be happier about it! Keep watching for updates on our little home remodeling currently in process. We had to wait until after the party to get started though.

Here are some of our littlest party guests, Drew and Ariana! They were such a cute little duo and I can't help but hope one of my boys or one of my nephews marries this lil' cutie! She is my best friend's daughter and I would love to be related to her!

The Spiderman decorations were borderline over the top, but I think we came in just shy of tacky!
There was a GIANT bounce house in my back yard for the big kids. It was so hot though that all of them were drenching with sweat every time they came in from playing to take a little break!
This action was much more my style. The 3 and under crowd had their own mini bounce house in the comfort of the AC!
Our "A" LOVED opening all his presents. However, he thought he should be able to unwrap all the packaging and play with each one before going on to the next. It was quite a challenge to keep he and his lil' entourage of party goers from busting open every gifts packaging and mixing all the many pieces up in one big mess!
Sweet Michelle, our friend and hair dresser was kind enough to help referee the chaos while keeping a list for thank you notes. I am pretty sure she is a modern day Saint!
The last present was a Spiderman bike from us! "A" has been asking for one for months and my sweet parents got him all the protective gear to go with it (helmet, knee and elbow pads)!
The cake was so fun too! Way to go HEB bakery! I considered briefly making the cake myself, but quickly came to my senses when I remembered I don't know the first thing about cake decorating! As my friend says, "you should always leave birthday cakes to the professionals!"

Thank you to all our family and friends who loved on our sweet "A" and made him feel so special while celebrating his birthday!

The Long Awaited Update

That may seem like a strange title to those of you that are frequent readers. Though I'm guessing there aren't many of you left since a lot of the joy of reading blogs is looking at pictures and ours are all of the backs of our kids' heads. So silly looking!

Anyway my posts, though still not daily, are more consistent lately and for that I am proud. However, I have provided very little information updating you on the adoption process. That will come in this very post, but I am going to build some anticipation by making you wait....I know, not fair, but oh so fun!

I always stress majorly over teachers' gifts!! I just love our boys' teachers dearly and appreciate their dedication to our kiddos even more! So, nothing, particularly that I can afford, seems like enough! This year I polled my teacher friends for ideas and they recommended gift cards. I didn't want to just give a gift card in an envelope so I made a "welcome to your relaxing summer vacation kit". I found a similar idea here. Our version had a pretty beach towel rolled up and tied with ribbon and a travel size bottle of sun screen, in a small beach bag I got at Target for the cost of a plain old gift bag, and a sweet thank you card complete with a Sonic gift card! I went for the "if I were a teacher this is what I would want" factor. Hopefully they liked it, but if not I heard there is some sort of gift card swap teachers do. I'm pretty sure it is somewhat secretive, but I just put it on my blog so I guess it isn't a secret any longer! ;) Anyway, here's a picture of the finished product.

Today is the first full day of summer vacation and we celebrated by having a donut breakfast and playing outside with sidewalk chalk and the sand box. Looks like it will be a frequent occurrence this summer! Not the donuts...that is a VERY rare treat at our house with 2 extremely energetic boys. But the chalk and outdoor play is here to stay though we may have to do most of it in the shade with this crazy Houston heat!
Now on to the adoption update. We are still doing back of the head pictures so I'm sure you have guessed the adoption is not finalized and this is true. In fact it seems it will be a few more months still. I have had a lot of questions and I know it seems like it is taking forever so thanks for continuing to show interest. It has not been an easy road, though I will argue with anyone that thinks periods of waiting are ever easy. We finished up 2009 with some certainty that we would be able to adopt the boys, but the new year brought a giant road bump that looked like a closed door. It was one of the most difficult times of our lives made even more difficult by the inability to share our situation in it's entirety with you, our sweet friends and family. However, in March the apparent closed door swung wide open in a way that only God could have orchestrated. PRAISE GOD who is the Author and Perfecter of our Faith and Sovereign over every aspect of our lives! We were notified that we are in fact the family that has been chosen by the state to adopt the boys and we are over joyed! The waiting isn't over though.

The next step is for us to read the boys' file with all the information that the state has regarding their history. We can't do this until the file is redacted. This is some sort of legal process of taking out aspects of the wording before it can be released. Anyway, it has been taking on average of 5 1/2 months in our county for this process to be completed!! And, it couldn't start until we were chosen to adopt the boys so....If you do the math it will still be 2 or 3 months before we can read the file! Ridiculous I know, but bureaucracy is by nature slower than Christmas! Though we know in our hearts that we are a complete family and the name change is a formality, we truly are so eager to complete this process. We want to go on with life as a family of 4 minus all the extra people and scrutiny! At the same time, we recognize that our wait is very short and has been filled with much less uncertainty in comparison to most people that chose to adopt through the foster care system. On that note, we have experienced such joy in witnessing 3 families who have deeply touched our lives and encouraged us in our adoption process finalize adoptions over the last couple of months! We have seen God work through the beautiful process of adoption to change these lives forever! Therefore, we are encouraged to wait on Him to move in our situation as well because He is so very good to us! Thank you all for your love, encouragement, and most of all your prayers!

P.S.: This clearly should have been 2 separate posts so thanks for hanging in there with me!

Guess Who's Heading for First Grade

We had an exciting week beginning the end of school. A's teacher did something I've never seen before in letting each child that has a summer birthday celebrate their own special day during the last few days of class. "A" got to celebrate his July birthday last Tuesday with cupcakes and a birthday hat! On Thursday we got to celebrate "A" again, along with all his kindergarten classmates. With just a couple of days of school left, they had their kindergarten awards' ceremony. They were so sweet singing their little songs they had been working on, complete with hand motions and receiving their certificates of completion of kindergarten! Who can resist this cuteness? NOT this momma, for sure!

Soccer, Swimming and Sun Burns=Start of Summer!

This past Wednesday Jeff and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. If you read the previous post you know we celebrated last weekend in Dallas, but on the actual day I received these gorgeous flowers! They are extra special because the roses in my bridal bouquet were the exact same shade of pink!

We celebrated at home by ordering pizza with the kiddos. I love how that is such a joy to me now...Wow how life has changed over the last 3 years!

We filled the weekend with more family fun! I guess we were making up for lost time since we were apart from the boys last weekend. And it is definitely a preview of a summer filled with tons of fun family memory making! Thursday night we went to "A"s school for open house/school picnic/yearbook signing. We shared Chick Fil A and hours of sticky hot outdoor fun! We love "A"s school and the whole staff from teachers and nurse to front desk staff! They all adore our little "A" too. In fact this momma is proud to report that all the kids love "A" just as much! He is quite the popular little friendly, smiley guy!

Saturday we spent sweating! We had a 9 am soccer game for "J" and a 2 PM one for "A." In between we went to one of our neighborhood pools with a little splash area that the boys really enjoyed! Looks like we will be frequenting this spot especially since "A" is still pretty terrified of big, deep pools. Somewhere during our hours of sunny fun, we (Jeff and I) got sunburns. Our sweet guys just bronze so thankfully they remain sunburn free! Saturday night after a long nap, we went to our first of many Dynamo soccer games! Our boys love playing soccer and I think they will enjoy watching it as well, especially once they can sit a bit longer at one time.
These games our outdoors of course, but thank goodness the sun went down during it, so the heat was bearable. And really the view of the city in the background made it even more pleasant! The crowd was very engaged and spirited. Our boys spent most of their time inspecting the freebies we got and climbing the bleachers.But the game was pretty amazing to watch! These guys are such stellar athletes, kicking the ball from one end of the field to the other in one giant high flying kick! "A" said he was going to start head butting the ball in his little games so that will be interesting to see. I'm pretty sure that skill takes a lot more practice than he has had so far! And "J" left the game saying he wants to play soccer when he gets big!
"A" really got into cheering and dancing to the Latino music!
All in all our weekend was a blast and I can't wait for more family fun this summer! It will involve substantial sweat with this Houston heat and humidity, but the joy our boys experience is worth any amount of discomfort for their weather wimp of a momma!

Weekend Wrap Up-Mother's Day Edition

We had a wonderful weekend and my boys pampered me with a gift each day, including 2 bouquets of flowers and lots of hugs! I'm also super excited about the spa gift card they gave me to use in the VERY near future! J kept saying I was the princess and they are the three kings! I also got more rest time and the boys had more "guy time." One of the fun "guy" things Jeff and A did was build a wooden car and paint it. We got the kit from one of our new friends and it was a great little project for bounding time! A was a natural with the hammer!

The finished product!
Over the weekend A lost another tooth! He also lost one at school on Friday so he is quite snaggle toothed with 4 missing teeth!
Here is a picture of all my first Mother's Day loot! I sure am one blessed momma! Check out the portrait of me in the left bottom corner...my A is quite an artist!

Much Mommy Love to My Little Loves!

I could not be more excited about celebrating my first Mother's Day with my littlest loves! We started early with two fun events at their schools on Friday. First of I went to Muffins with Mom's at J's Mother's Day Out class. He doesn't usually go on Fridays, but we went just for the event! It was such a sweet time! J chose the chocolate muffin, no surprise there!

The kids made very special gifts for all the moms, a treasure chest they decorated themselves! I will "treasure" it always! His sweet teacher gave J a bigger one to decorate since it was my first Mother's Day! She was so excited and gave me a great big hug! SO sweet! That's my little love in the blue shirt and my green package at the front of the table.
After lunch I went up to A's school for a Mommy Make Over. He was so cute, pampering me with a manicure, pedicure, a massage and of course hair and make up! We shared cookies too! He also made some special art work to give me! Here's a picture of me in all my made over glory, blue eye shadow and all! Thanks Uncle Wade for the idea on that one!
This last photo is a bonus and a preview of our plans for summer fun! We have already started going to one of our community pools and also clocked some hours at Gran and Poppa D's pool! I was editing the pictures and cracked up at this photo.

J walking in like he owned the place, Jeff clearly distracted by the loads of things he is carrying, and a sign that says, "Watch Your Children." HA! Happy Mother's Day and much love from our little fam!