Daisy's baptism day

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 how amazing that moment is when your baby is born and you hold him/her for the first time. The way your breath is taken away and you heart swells with the strongest love you've ever felt in your life...Birthmothers feel this same love for their babies. A lot of people can't seem to understand that, because how can someone love that much and then let go? Could you do it? I don't even know if I could do it, but these women feel that love and still do it because they love their babies more than themselves. They know their babies deserve more than they have to offer. Watching these "transactions" is something I compare to watching that tear jerk movie where the hero does something amazing in the end, sacrificing everything for the one he loves, etc., and you leave the movie theater feeling all warm and fuzzy. Well watching a birthmother place her newborn into the arms of another woman and bestowing "motherhood" upon her is more incredible than I can describe. As these women embrace in tears and love you can't help but wipe your own tears. Not to mention seeing the adoptive father break down in tears as he expresses his gratitude to that birthmother for making him a father and his wife a mother. You think you feel warm and fuzzy after watching a good movie? Try witnessing the sacred event of adoption sometime. I'm lucky enough to get paid to do it :) You can read about the last hero I was privileged to work with by clicking here. It's an excellent story and I definitely recommend everyone read it!

Anyway, as I say in our birthmother group "That was a tangent, let's move back to where we were!" It was a great, busy, and exhausting week of adoption for me, but here are a few highlights of our past two weeks:
Irrigation!
I used to play in the irrigation well into my teenage years (hey it was the closest thing we had to a swimming pool!)

Dale even joined in!

 Just look at that enthusiasm!

Breaking news.......WE HAVE EGGS! Bucket loads of eggs! Anybody  nearby that wants some home grown organic eggs please come by. Brighton is selling them for $1 a dozen. The picture below shows our starter eggs compared to a store bought egg (on the left). The brown eggs are now the same size as the Large eggs from the store. We have two chickens who are "Americana" breed and they lay pastel green eggs (below). Their eggs are smaller but it's always fun to show people our green eggs!

This is what General Conference weekend looked like at our house

Adaira's backside view below. I can't believe how much this child has trimmed up in the past few months. She has always been thick from head to toe but all the sudden she is growing and losing the butterball look. You could hardly tell her stick legs from Brighton's in the picture below. She and Brighton are both growing so fast that they wake up in the middle of the night a couple times a month with "growing pains". Their legs or arms will be aching and I'll have to rub them for a few minutes before they'll feel well enough to go back to sleep. I remember experiencing the same thing when I was little. I guess there is a temporary downside to having tall genes!

Dust storm that preceded a huge rainstorm about a week and half ago. We were out in the yard and all the sudden I looked to the neighbors yard and saw a huge wall of dust moving toward us. Crazy!

This is just how cute Dale is. He's still such a drama queen but his cuteness makes up for it.

And this is how beautiful my little girl is. Is she a knockout or what? I am working harder on fixing the damage in our relationship since Dale was born. She is just super sassy with me (an angel for Justin) and is very jealous of any attention Justin gives me. She won't even let us sit by each other! We spend time together when Dale naps and I make sure she comes with me on my errands during the day rather than going downstairs with Frances. She went with me to the dinner to kick off the adoption conference last Friday. We had a good time and they had a cowboy entertainer, Chance Carter, from Moab UT. He got up on the stage with his guitar and started talking to us with his deep singing voice, and Adaira said loud and clear to the whole table, "IS THAT JOHNNY CASH MOM?!" Everyone at the table got a kick out of the fact that this little four year old knows who Johnny Cash is. We bought his CD after watching "Walk The Line" a few years back and she and Brighton love dancing to it at home. One time at church during the passing of the sacrament Adaira was sitting there in her own little world singing to herself, "I fell in to the burning ring of fire...went down down down an uh flames went higher...." I had to tell her to be quiet but we couldn't help but chuckle. I think she was still three at that point.

Can't leave Brighton out. He's such a good natured kid. He loves to please and still has a such a tender heart. He's so easy to read, too. Doesn't matter if he's trying to lie to me or trying to hold in hurt feelings if I've been too hard on him for something. I'm glad I can still read him at this point so I can catch myself and offer the extra love (and apology if it applies) when needed.

We have had this huge ugly box in our house for at least a month, probably 2-3 months. The kids love the box houses but I hate them. They are cool for a day or two, but then I've just got this big ugly box hanging around the house. The kids barely play with it but they are such pack rats, they hate to say goodbye to anything. Over time they had played and scribbled pictures all over the inside. I told Brighton it was time to burn the box in the backyard (burning it was the only way to get him to agree, since fire is way more interesting than putting it in the recycle bin). He insisted that I get the camera and take pictures of the inside of the box so he could remember it.

Unfortunately the box wouldn't burn. The cardboard was too thick and it would just smolder a little bit and then smoke. I didn't want to introduce Brighton to fire propellants at this point so I just told him it wouldn't burn. He was bored by then and let me put it in the recycle bin.

That's all for now! We do have a few other posts we are working on, but Justin is doing those and hasn't had time to finish them. Life is good!