Black and White Wednesday

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God's Heart. My Heart. Your Heart??

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TUESDAY MORNING

Pin It GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE!

FINALLY...ENOUGH HAIR FOR BED HEAD! SO STINKIN CUTE

ALWAYS HAS TO TAKE A PEEK IN THE TRASH! WHO NEEDS A PUPPY?

STILL A LITTLE TIRED, THINK I WILL TAKE A REST HERE

TRICKED YOU!!!!

THIS POSE JUST CRACKS ME UP.

ALL RIGHT ENOUGH NOW MOMMY, I'M NOT EVEN DRESSED YET!

You know you have a problem when you have 30 pictures of your child before they are even out of their jammies.... and before 8 am!

Daddy hurt his back doing stiff leg dead lifts, so we are asking for extra prayers for him today. He is hurting pretty bad. Lexi is so cute with him, she knows it's not normal to see him laying on the couch so she will bring him 50 baby wipes (one at a time) walking each one to him back and forth. I guess she thinks wipes will make it all better.

Anyway, it was an early morning for our girl, she slept from 7pm to 6:30 am straight!!! Can you believe 3 months ago I was worried she would never sleep through the night? Praise God! No more night terrors!!!!

Yesterday Bryan came home at 11 am because he was just hurting too bad to stay at work and at about 2 after spending the afternoon with us he said to me, "Is she not the funnest little person ever?, I just love playing with her and watching her respond and take life in. I love her so much and I can not imagine a cuter, funner, better behaved, joyful child." WOW!!! Theres just something so incredible about hearing things like from him. He was spilling with joy, pride, love, and gratefullness all at once. It was very cute. Hope he doesn't mind me sharing. (He doesn't read my blog so he'll never know) :)

Have a fun Tuesday!!

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LAZY SUNDAY

Pin It GOT CORN?

LAZY SUNDAY

PUTTING A LITTLE ENGLISH ON THE CUE BALL

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It's time for swimming and hanging with sis!

Pin It She loves the pool!

All Smiles and Giggles!

Love you Cassidy!

This is really fun!

Anyone else want to join us!

The water is nice and warm...in the hot tub!

Swimming with Cassidy

The salt water tastes great!

Let's stay in here all day! And skip nap!

Yep, I'm still holding my swimsuit tags! I love tags!

Looking Oh Too Precious in her Kate Mack Suit!

She carries the tags off her clothes for the entire day!

I made these little pants to go under some of her heirloom type dresses. Looks like I made them a bit too big! When she walks you see no feet so it looks like she is gliding! So stinkin cute though.

Blowing you a kiss!

She blows the most fantastic kisses. Can't you just feel it coming

through the screen!

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Spring has sprung!

Pin It Helping mama groom the plants

I don't like the way grass feels!

It reminds me of daddy's pokey face!

I think I will pull it out.

This is what I do when Quincie comes to visit me!

Is there a cuter peanut in her swing? With her sunglasses on? NO

She can swing for an hour straight. No joke!

Oh how I love this girl!

The weather is so beautiful right now. We are trying to enjoy every second since we know those triple digits are just a few breaths away. Life is good, God is good, I am truely grateful!

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Friends Forever

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So Very Very Grateful for the gift of friends. We had to go all the way to China to meet our Gilbert Az nieghbors and Lexi's Hunan "cousin". I hope that as these girls get older they grow to be close. Lexi is 3 yrs younger than Shaelee. Isn't she darling! The whole family is seriously so gorgeous! We were blessed with an afternoon together the Sunday before last. Jill, lets do it again soon. We can meet at my house and the kids can swim!

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5 Months Together!

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Baby Cakes, you have been our child for 5 months now. You have given our family a whole new dimension. Loving you came naturally for all of us. We feel our hearts skip a beat at the thought of having you home, finally. You had no choice but to tolerate us, accept us, love us... but now you choose to love us. You choose to shake all over with excitement when you see me for the first time in the morning. You choose to dive in to my arms when I enter the room. You choose to grab my face, turn it towards yours and plant the biggest juiciest kisses all over my face. You choose to give your daddy the googly eye from across the room. You choose to call your sisters and brother by name and blow them kisses when they leave for school. You choose to love us and we are so overjoyed that you do!

We acknowledge and give thanks daily for the blessing God gave us as you truely are a miracle. Your life is a miracle, how you came to us is a miracle, your health is a miracle, and what you have overcome makes you a hero! I know your China mommy loved you. I know she did her very best to take care of you while you were in her tummy and those first 4 months you were with her. I know she must have cried an ocean the last day she saw your face. We will never know why or how or what happened exactly but one thing we will always know is that we love her so much because she gave you life. God chose her to carry you and he chose me to be your mommy. He put the 3 of us together in such a perfect way and he loves all 3 of us just the same. If I could see China mommy right now I would tell her thank you. Thank you for giving baby Lexi life, thank you for feeding her and loving on her for 4 months and thank you for taking her to a safe place that she could stay until we got to China to bring her home.

Our trip to China was nothing like we expected, it was filled with excitement, grief, more excitement, lots of love, some pain, a great deal more love, uncertainty, and some intense emotion. If I had to do it over I would not change one thing. Had we not accepted Hua's referral we would not have gotten our Lexi's referral. We went to China to get our daughter. We came home with a daughter, and a new little girl in China that we would sponsor and always love. As we celebrate 5 months with our baby girl Lexi, we also celebrate for Hua. You see she just had a birthday. She turned 2 years old. She was changed on the waiting child list to the correct special needs and... drum roll.... Sweet Little Hua has been matched!!!!!!!! That's right. We got word this week that her family has sent their letter of intent and they are doing what they need to be doing to go get their daughter and bring her home. Thank you Father God! Your hand has been in this from the beginning and you never ever miss a detail. I know that we are unworthy of any of the Grace you have had on us, Your Mercy we will never understand. We fall to our knees in humility as we look at all You have done and continue to do for our family and the life of Lexi and now the life of Hua. Thank you for getting these girls out of the orphanage. For giving Lexi a family and a place to call home. For now giving Hua a family and a place to thrive and grow and also call home. How Good You are, ALWAYS!

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Milestones

Pin It Blowing kisses is probably my favorite thing Lexi is doing right now. Of course any baby can blow kisses but oh my gosh are these the cutest kisses. They have meaning I tell you. You can feel them as she loudly smacks the kiss and sends it off with the swoosh of her hand. It melts even a grown man strangers heart. Really!
She is getting lazy with her words, saying just the beginning or the end so we are working on that.
She is walking only now and doing very well with it.
She has to have her purse with her at all times. She carries it on the fold of her arm/elbow like a little old lady and it is so very cute and funny. Especially when she is just walking at the park or in the yard with it. She has to have it.
She plays pretend so well. She plays hide and seek and she has pretend tea, pours it and drinks it and says ahhh. She plays puppy and pants with her tongue hanging out.
She is in the 3rd percentile for weight and the -5th percentile for height.
She is a total foofy girly girl. Asking for her jewelry, her pretty socks and of course.. her purse. Pin It

Parenting today

Pin It I love being a parent. I love kids! But I have to say, this time around is just extra special. I know from experience that no stage lasts long. No age stays around long enough to really get everything you can out of it. Lexi has taught me to slow down. She has taught me to enjoy every single creation God has made for us. She blows kisses to the airplanes and the cars that drive by.
When we were having trouble with sleep in our first 3 months home I was tired and I was ready for it to get better, but I was ok with it because I knew it could not last forever. Now she is an excellent sleeper. She takes 2 naps a day and she sleeps a good 11 hour stretch at night.
I'm no perfect parent by any means, but I am going to enjoy every minute as if it were my last because I don't want to miss a thing. Pin It

Lexi is

Pin It Lexi is 16 mos old!

It is hard to believe my little peanut is 16 months old? I think we baby her quite a lot because when I look back at pictures of my older kids at that age they not only looked older but I know we treated them older. I guess since we have only had our girl for 5 months, and since she really is the baby around here... well, we just baby her.

She loves to be held and everyone loves to hold her. Needless to say, she gets held a lot.

Our doctor wanted us to keep her on formula until she reached 20 pounds. She is not there yet so she is still a Similac girl. The kids and I joke about it. We say she will be in kindergarten asking the other kids what type of formula they drink at snack time.

Our doctor also wanted her to have a good 10 months of bottle feeding bonding. We have never handed her a bottle, always hold and feed her til this day. Our doctor is very adoption educated and we feel really lucky to be getting great advice and support.

She is very in to her green veggies still. She loves Swiss Char and will eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner. She loves egg drop soup with tofu and green onions. She likes bananas and grapes. She likes oatmeal and cereal with milk.

She has a cows milk allergy so we are using almond milk. She gets an instant runny nose and exzema with cow's milk. She also gets a big bloated tummy.

She loves to do itsy bitsy spider and is so so good at it. She also loves BINGO and ring around the rosie. I will get that on video soon. She loves to watch her kidsongs video. She still loves Kai Lan goes to China but right now Kidsongs is tops! Music and dance are just her favorite!

She is funny funny funny. She will whine when she needs help with something and all I have to do is look at her and she says *help* . Usually I say oh Lexi we don't whine and she says *help* but the ~look~ does the trick as well. Pin It

catching up

Pin It so much catching up to do. I am going to be making a handful of posts with NO pictures in an attempt to catch up on details and then when I am done, or close to it :)~ I will post some pictures.
Backing up to March.... About a week before Easter my girl Cassidy got a terrible surprise. Shingles!! Yep it's true and no it's not an old person's disease, anyone who has had chicken pox can get Shingles. The younger you were when you had the pox and the lighter the case you had....the better chance you will get Shingles. Well Cassidy was only 4 weeks old and she had only 5 pox. So..... since you can catch Chicken Pox from someone with Shingles we figured there was NO doubt that Lexi would be getting Chicken Pox. She had just finished all her immunizations up to age, but....not the Chicken Pox one. That was the only one she had left. Well here we are, a month later and NO she did not get them!! Praise God!
On March 29th we visited out Orthodist Specialist and found out that Lexi's feet have nothing structurally wrong with them. We were told that she must have figured out how to hold herself up and carry weight with not near enough strength in her ankles and calves to do it correctly. So she trained her feet this way and we can train them back with some orthotics. She will have little orthotics that go in her shoes and she will need to wear them for 5-6 hours a day. We are getting them on the 19th of May. We will fly to Salt Lake City at 5am, spend the day there getting everything done that needs to be done and head back to Az that night. Pin It

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14 yrs ago my sweet little Cassidy came in to this world. She weighed 7 lbs and she was all sugar! She is our nurturing compassionate child. She will give you the shirt off her back without any questions asked. She is passionate for children and the needy. She hungers for ways she can help others and she is always ready to serve. She loves with her entire heart and sees good in everyone. She is my shy one but she is also my drama queen (and I say that lovingly). She is an amazing daughter! Always and Forever I will Love you my baby girl! Happy 14th Birthday Cassidy.

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Lexi's First Easter

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Cousins coloring eggs
Meeting Becky the puppy for the first time
She loves her cousin Cindy
This is what she did when someone cracked an egg!!! REALLY!!
Decorating!
Loves her new car that plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Daddy's Peanut Princess
Tea Time with Auntie K

Love Love Loves Kai Lan
Carry's her basket like a lil old lady carry's her purse.

Thank you Easter Bunny



Tea for Grandma
Snuggle time with Auntie K

Cousing Mikey will be your BUDDY!
Egg Hunt



Last Thursday (can't believe it' been a week already?) we hopped on a plane headed for Northern California. We were so excited to spend Easter with Grandma, Auntie K and all the rest of the family. Lexi did such a fantastic job of opening up and warming up to her family and it was hands down the best Easter ever! My awesome Aunt Jackie hosted Easter at her house on Easter Eve and then my Mom hosted Easter on the actual day. We had an easter egg hunt outside on Saturday and since it rained all day Sunday we had an indoor hunt on Easter. Lexi really loved looking for her eggs and had her own little hunts for the next 3 days. She is loving being a walking girl and crawls less and less every day. Brady went to California a few days before us and spent those days being given the Royal Treatment by his SAC (Super Auntie Kim). My sis took him to the movies, Six Flags, San Francisco Science Center, and basically gave up all her days off to be with him. And thanks to our visits paired with my sisters visits, Lexi remembered her Auntie right off the bat. Thank you sis, I love you!! It was so fun to watch my mom interacting with Lexi on our last day. She sat and played with her in her bedroom for over an hour straight and I know Lexi will remember her Grandma each time we visit because of these special times. Pin It