Home Sweet Home

The State Fair We went to the AZ State Fair last Friday and had a great time considering Dale was so sick he could barely talk. We had anticipated a trip to the cabin in Show Low but our friends all backed out on us and Justin already had the day off, so to the fair we went! We hit the petting zoo and animal exhibits first since they were free and out of the sun. Adaira was not too excited about being surrounded by so many animals. It was opening day and admission was only $1...good deal until you start buying tickets for the rides. Using tickets is definitely a scam. You spend $50 on tickets so you don't feel like you are using actual money on the rides. All the good rides cost about 8-9 tickets, that is $4.00 - $4.50 per ride and per person! If you asked people to dole out the cash at each ride they'd think twice, but since tickets are like Monopoly money.... you get what I'm saying here. We coughed up the $50 and let the kids play Monopoly with our money...  $...

Up to No Good Just kidding! We haven't had much excitement around here lately. I worked just over 30 hours last week and that didn't leave me much time for making memories and blogging. Last weekend was the Southwest Regional Adoption Conference and it was a two day event. Adoption is so amazing, so inspiring, and for the first time they had classes all day long for birthparents as well as adoptive couples. It was awesome to see birthmothers walking the halls with adoptive couples. I think a lot of preconceived notions were broken when it comes to what type of women birthmothers are. They are just like us. Many of them place and go on to return to full activity in the church and leave behind completely the lifestyle that led them to their unplanned pregnancy. Many of them have to leave behind  a lot of friends in the process as well. It can be a lonely road, and add on top of that the grief involved in placing a baby for adoption. All the women reading this know...

My books are here!!! I received the email on Wednesday that my books from Blurb had shipped and were due to arrive today. I couldn't help but check my front door stoop at least 5 times today to see if the FedEx truck had dropped them off yet. I'm so excited to have our memories in book form, and to have separate copies for each of my kids (which shall remain wrapped in plastic and hidden away until they get married). Here are few snapshots: The cover (the back side has a bunch of little pictures too). It's not all that creative because by the time I finished the book and got to the cover I was so ready to be done.. . It's the 12x12 book and so it's surprising at first to see how large all my pictures are. When I'm putting it all together on the computer and stuffing five pictures on a single page, all the pictures seem so small. On a book this big even my small pictures are close to 3x5! It was nice being able to make my own templates and using my own p...