MY MOUNTAIN--please watch

www.rubytoots.com

Hi. This weekend has been good. Friday night we went to opening night at our local community theater where my daughter was in Bridge to Teribithia. It was really good. Then I took my 3 girls to church today to a Mom and daughter retreat. We missed Friday night because of the play but today was really good. I have really wonderful daughters. I am so proud of them. They are honest and sweet and have great hearts and much compassion. They are open with me and we are close.:) I am praying that we can keep things that way!

Now the rubytoots thing...i love that website. I ordered the most adorable sling!! I love it because it is small..can easily fold up and put in your purse. It wasn't too expensive, in comparison to others. I have only used it with a doll..haven't found a Solomon sized kid to practice with yet!! The fabrics they have are adorable too! In my research, i found a pattern too..so i am going to make another sling too..this would be a great gift for some of my friends!:)
THE PICTURE ABOVE IS THE ONE I ORDERED!

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Waiting, missing, praising

I miss Markenley and Solomon so much. I love to get updates and I treasure them but they also shows me what I am missing. When we were with Solomon in Aug. he had 4 teeth. Now he has 14. He is now starting to talk. :( It is so hard to go about my normal life with 2 of my children not with me. I know parents who leave their kids for a weekend with grandparents and miss them...imaging months and years. My love for the boys is no different than my bio kids. I try to live my daily life not dwelling on the sadness..some days are harder than others. I am not whole right now. My heart is not. I praise God that the boys are doing well. I praise God for the kids I have at home. I praise God for my wonderful husband and friends. Is it wrong to also feel this sadness? I suppose my sadness shows my love as well. I will continue to praise God through the sadness...my heart is just aching so much right now. I thank God for my online friends who know exactly what I am feeling. I am praying for all my waiting friends as well.
Hugs,
Renee

January update photos

Update!! :)

Hi! I know it's been forever since I have posted! Thank you to those who have asked about how we are doing. Well...let me think back to what has been going on...
Adoption---
We have been missing our boys so much. Obviously with the holidays it is very hard. Every event we were at, I imagined how the boys would be having so much fun...and aching to share these experiences with them. Then on Jan. 10th, our sweet son Markenley turned 4 in Haiti. We were praying it was a great day for him and imagining his Haitian Mom visiting and enjoying some time with him. I am not sure if she did or not, but I felt better knowing she may be getting that time with him and treasuring it in her heart...but we missed him so much!!
Our file is in MOI, we have been in for one month. They are saying that that office is taking 3-5 months to process...then it's at least a month after MOI for passports and visas. It is just hard to tell, I have seen files get signed out of MOI in one week, and others take a year! I have heard that the MOI office is getting more organized and processing much quicker. Obviously we are praying that it is soon.

Jessica, my beautiful daughter who has been recovering from mono, has been having stomach pains that weren't related to the mono. They did some tests and found out that her pancreas isn't working correctly. They did a stool sample test and the lactaid # (not sure what it is) was 60..and should be around 460. They retested it and it came back at 50. They said that she either has a pancreatic insufficiency or Cystic Fibrosis. That news was horrible...we found this out on Dec. 19th. Kaiser was sending her to Stanford to do a sweat test to rule out CF. That test wasn't until Jan. 3rd. We had lots of waiting/praying days. We didn't tell Jess what the test was for. There was no need to worry her, she already hadn't felt good for 2 months. Well, we are praising GOD that the results came back that she does NOT have CF. She was given enzymes that she has to take every time she eats. We are praying that is all she needs. She had a MRI last week..hopefully we will get the results of that this week. Please pray that all of her organs are fine. She only has one kidney, so that is always a concern for us.
She is feeling better, she is working hard to get all her grades up..she missed 2 months of school.
What else has been happening...well, in Dec., the 2 weeks before Christmas, I worked full time at he Family Giving Tree. That was fun..I made some great friends and it was great working for this organization. I was doing this to help out my friend, Tara, but I am not cut out for part time work, i get too attached! I was sad to leave. Oh, I am getting sad all over again. I MISS YOU FAMILY GIVING TREE FAMILY!!

Christmas was fun, the kids got a Wii...so, all we heard for days was the guitar hero game. Now TJ has a wrestling game..he is so into wrestling! I am not liking that at all, but again, I am not a 9 year old boy. He is a good kid who loves his family, loves God, and wrestling! He is trying to get me to buy him wrestling pants...I don't think so!!
My parents and aunt and uncle came over on Christmas, that was nice. I am happy, my mommy had Leukemia a couple years ago, and she is in remission and doing great! :)
We spent time in Windsor with Todd's family after Christmas. It was wonderful. My sister-in-law told us she is having another baby!! I am so happy. She has a beautiful 19 year old daughter and an adorable 1 year old son. She is having another boy. I love him already!! It was great to spend time with Todd's family.

We got home from time with family and quickly got ready for a new year's eve party. Our small group came over, and the girls had a bunch of friends over. Finally, time to relax, and then I got sick. :(

A couple days later, I was helping Taylor clean and organize her room...she has been wanting to switch rooms with TJ for a while. I was fighting it because I didn't want to re-paint anything...I feel like i am always painting!! Well, TJ's room is really small...there are bunk beds and a crib in TJ's room. It was cute, but small!!
Todd said, "it may be better to do it now, so the boys don't have to change rooms later", that's all it took...I painted over taylor's tinkerbell room design, it is now "oh brother blue"! The perfect color for the boys room. Taylors big girl room (her birthday is tomorrow, she will be 12) is now white, brown and pink. She loves it...then a couple days later i helped paint my friend Jen's babies room. Todd thinks I love to paint...i only love to paint at the beginning of a project...i just love things painted!! And someone has to do it!! It was a great idea to change rooms, the boys have more space now!! I was a bit concerned because that room is further down the hall..but it will be fine. I am excited because I can lay in the boys bunk bed and see the hills. I was imagining laying there showing the boys the farm house and cows that are on the hill outside his window....I will have to take a picture of that and post it. It's beautiful.
Well, that is it for now. I will try to update more often..so there isn't so much to read. I will try to get pics posted too.
love to you all,
Renee

VALUABLE INFO. TO SHARE WITH YOU ALL....

Did you know that on your computer keyboard there are 2 shift keys????!!!! I feel sooo majorly lame, but I just learned this!! My left shift key broke a week or so ago and I have been telling people when i email them that my shift key is broken so I may not capitalize when I need to...today my 14 year old tells me that there are 2 shift keys!! Although it is weird to use the right one..I am so excited to learn that it is there...so I thought I would share with you, in case you didn't know...or am I the only lame one who didn't know that?

LOVE U LOTS!!!!

I have gone to the dark side

After being many shades of blonde/light brown etc. I had Todd dye my hair this morning and this was the result!! Not sure about it yet. Very weird!!

Family!

Below is a picture of my beautiful sister in law and my sweetie pie nephew. I was so happy to be able to spend time with them last weekend when Gavin turned one!
I ran across www.smilebox.com it's a cute website!
Have a beautiful day!

Make a slide show, scrapbook, or ecard

November update pics....oh how happy I am to see pictures of my boys but..it makes my heart ache to be with them. I miss them so much. They are my children...why can't i be with them?

 

 

 

 

Our families Christmas gift from a friend....

Last night a friend of mine said they had a pure bred Chiuahua that needed a home. They didn't want to sell her, they wanted her with our family. They have another dog and these two do not get along. By the end of the night she came to live with us. She is only 5 months old and is super sweet. She is very loved already!
Hugs,
Renee

 

 

 

 

What has been happening...hmmmm
*My hubby and I went to see Karen Kingsbury (wonderful Christian author who adopted 3 boys from Haiti) at a local church. She was speaking with Alex Smith (49'ers quarterback). He has a foundation Alex Smith Foundation that helps foster kids who are 18 and now have no support at all. I never really thought about that. How sad it that? I would hope that my kids will be able to support themselves at 18 (having grown up in a somewhat normal home) but chances are they will still need a family!
Karen was wonderful and spoke about spending time with family. We were very touched by her and encouraged. We then got to meet her and Alex (as cute as Alex is I was very excited to hug Karen and tell her that I learned about Haiti from reading about her adoption story!!)

*Operation Christmas Child!! I love this Ministry and for about 5 years I have spearheaded this at church. After being in Haiti and seeing these kids get 'simple things' and being so happy, this has meant even more to me. You can check it out for next year at www.samaritanspurse.org It is easy, you fill a shoebox with simple things, toothbrush, washcloth, toothpaste, soap, socks, crayons, lolipops, etc.
We advertised at church for people to donate money (if they didn't have time to do the box themselves) and I would be a personal shopper. That really helped and i was able to fill 100 more boxes that way! My friend and I shopped and put all 100 boxes (with our kids help) in a day.

*Jessica update--still has mono--but i think she may be on the mend!! She is so behind on school. Please pray for her to go back to school on Monday and be able to survive school and then homework...then makeup work. She is very smart, but just needs energy.

*Adoption update!! Well we have our adoption decree and now our I-600 approval as well!! Yippee...now we are waiting to hear that we are in MOI. We miss the boys tremendously. Jessica said last night that if the boys aren't home for christmas she doesn't want any gifts. She doesn't think it is fair.

Ok, well I better go for now!!
Hugs,
Renee

Happy Birthday Noah

Today is Noah's birthday. It has been a little more than a year since he went to be with Jesus. I am still processing how to deal with all of this. We had cake and sang to him. We miss him.

I don't want to ever forget him, our family never will. I am praying about a simple way to touch someones life, in honor of Noah. I want to bless someone, in Noah's name.

I just ask all who read this, if you feel led, to pray about a simple way to bless someone, to bring sunshine in someone's life, in honor of Noah. Our world was touched and our hearts filled because of Noah and I don't want his light to stop shining.

Hugs,
Renee

I have had a really busy week, but have experienced so many blessings along the way. As event coordinator at our church the Family Fall Festival is one of my big events. We had lots of fun games, trick or treat doors, astro jump, hay maze and a really BIG bouncy slide. Being as I was at church working the last couple days Taylor and TJ got to spend lots of time on the slide....and had to help us clean the darn thing for hours today! It was super fun! I had fun with the kids, and todd and pammi!
I am always so blessed to see so many people sign up to volunteer to help. I don't even worry anymore a week before an event when I am trying to recruit volunteers, God provides. I am so thankful for the many people who were willing to serve God, and it was sooo fun!!! Shanay even had fun when I made her do the FLUSHER..basically she had to sit on a toilet and let kids play a bean bag game with the end result being getting to flush the toilet which released a tank of COLD water on her head!! She did this for about 15 minutes!
Todd never ceases to amaze me with the amount of time he gives to the children's ministries at church, because he loves to serve God, and I ask him to! hee hee...I am so thankful for all his help. I wish I could find a way to be involved in Worship Ministries to help him out! I try to help by telling him which songs I want to hear at church! I actually did pick the special songs for Mother's Day (Carrie Underwood 'don't forget to remember') and Fathers Day (Rodney Atkins, 'watching you') Both songs made me cry! I am not that much into country music, it just worked out that way!

Oh, we did have some excitement the night before the fall festival. I had been at church all day and was standing with my friend Emily in my office. All of a sudden I thought it was hailing really loud, or else there was someone running really fast on the roof...then it all started shaking. Instead of running to a doorway, Emily and I just held onto eachother. It shook for a while. It was a 5.6 earthquake centered 6 miles from our house. I immediatly called home and Tay and TJ were scared. Jess was home with them. She made them go in the doorway. I was proud of her. She kept calm. Todd was in the sanctuary running musical rehearsal. He yelled 'go to the glu lams' or something like that..apparently that is what the big beame in the sanctuary are called! But of course being involved in the planning of the building he only knows these things so everyone was thinking todd was freaking out! Hee hee...anyway, we had lots of aftershocks after that. Yesterday we had a pretty big one but i was too busy to stop and think about it. :) Gotta love CA!
ok, well...that's all for now.
love you all...
renee