Signing off.....

We've had a wonderful day celebrating Christmas today....probably one of the best! We've enjoyed family (I've been working on a Christmas post but blogger isn't cooperating with pictures), opened gifts (also involved a HORSE!! and a LAPTOP!! We have some happy kids in the house tonight), food, laughter, and wonderful memories. And tonight we are winding things down and preparing to leave the house at 3:30am (yowzers!!!! Once again....thank you, Dad!!). So I'm off to cuddle my kids for one last time until I see them in 2 weeks. I'm so honored to be doing this again.....Rhett, we love you! We can't wait to celebrate Christmas with you HERE next year. Please be praying for us as we go! Brian is hurting in his hip(the hip he hurt in his accident a few years ago) so I'm sure this trip could be hard on him. But we serve an awesome God who loves us and takes care of us! Victory is already ours!!
See you from China!!!!

You can follow us on our blog for Rhett while we are there....www.theroadtorhett.blogspot.com!

The day the coyotes ate my chickens....(its sad but true)

Last week my neighbors came over to inform me that a couple of my chickens had been eaten. They knew this because my yard looked like a feather pillow had exploded on it and because they found a "corpse" and saw a coyote running off through my yard with another one. If I had my head about me I would have grabbed my camera to document. Its just how sick I am. But I didn't. Apparently, someone had left the door to the coop open after feeding them. So to say "thanks for helping me and cleaning up my mess so the kids didn't have to see the mayhem" I made them some cookies. You like?



We still have 2 chickens and the kids are already asking when we can get more.

I have a new niece and nephew!!

My sister in law, Gina, and her husband, Jason, just got the fabulous news that they passed court in Ethiopia and get to bring home their 4 year old daughter and 2 year old son soon!!! I believe we may even be in China and Ethiopia at the same time getting our children! Their names will now be Bekeh and Caleb................they are ADORABLE!!! I can't wait to meet them! If you want to follow along as they go to Ethiopia and adopt these children you can click on the link HERE. I don't think she has made it home yet to update her blog to reflect this information. She has announced it on Facebook so I'm not jumping ahead of her! I promise!! Just wanted to share their sweet faces with my bloggy friends!!

Pioneer Woman field trip!!

As many of you know, I Heart Pioneer Woman! AKA...P Dub, Ree Drummond, etc. So does most of Dallas apparently!! Ree came to Dallas to do a book signing at a Borders on Tuesday night and there was no way you could keep me from going! My sister, Sara, and I along with my older girls loaded up in the car on Tuesday and headed to meet her. I had all sorts of things in my head that I was going to say to her when we got to the table. So did my girls! Emily and Natalie LOVE her!! I mean....LOOOOOVVVVEEEE her. I find them surfing her website often to find a new recipe to cook. And all I have to say to the men in my life is "Its a PW recipe" and they'll eat it!
Anyway, we arrived on Tuesday along with 2.7 million other people and collected our color coded wrist band. Orange is such a pretty color. Unless its the color wrist band you received that night which happened to be the 5th color group. With about 100 people in each group it didn't look so good!! We stuck it out until about 10pm but when we realized we weren't even to the halfway mark and had already been standing in line for 3 hours we decided to go home. My girls had school the next day!! But we had a lot of fun that night, anyway. We stood in line with some girls who had gone to ACU so that was fun connecting/reconnecting with them. And we did get some pictures with her. Well, not really WITH her but close enough!

After we got our orange bracelet we headed to eat some dinner...

Sara passed some time by playing games on her phone. Have you ever played Word Warp? Fun!!


This was my view from my place in line. We were at the very back at this point.

Bored. Hey, lets take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other!!

Aunt Sara got the girls some chocolate!!

We did get to see PW's daughters too! I believe Natalie and Sara stood behind the oldest daughter in line at the coffee shop and Natalie made some "loud" statement about her. Like "THERE she IS!!!". This is her oldest daughter...

Her youngest daughter...

And there is REE!!! Apparently she really took her time signing all of the books and making people feel welcome. Sweet!!

As we left we snapped some shots from afar!


We love you, P Dub!

TA!!!!! (repost from our adoption blog)

I really can't believe I get to type these words!! We got our TA today!!! At 9:29 this morning, our travel coordinator called and said the words I'd been waiting to hear since we saw Rhett's face in May...."I have some good news to share with you!". And the rest is a blur!! She will be requesting our Consulate Appointment tonight and once that is made we can book our plane tickets. It looks like there is a group leaving on December 24th. If the cost isn't ridiculously more expensive we will probably skip the Beijing portion of our trip and leave on the 26th so we can spend Christmas day with our other kids. I'll have more details later this week but I just wanted to share the good news with all of my faithful prayer warriors and blog followers.

Even though we know that God's timing is perfect it still hurts in our flesh when things don't "seem" to go right. My sister in law and her husband did not pass court last night in Ethiopia due to a reason beyond their control. So its been a very bitter sweet day. Praying that they will get to go to court again on the 8th and bring those sweet babies home!! Its all for His glory!!!

Stay tuned for more details!!

Let's look at him again, shall we? Oh, Rhett! We can't wait to hold you and love you and smother you with kisses!! And get you a dude's jacket!!

If you want to follow along on that blog go to www.theroadtorhett.blogspot.com. That is where we will post while in China!