My Happy Place

This is my happy place…

My lifegroup from church.  I love these people.  They, collectively, make up my happy place.

She’s 12

Oh my word.

How did 12 years pass already?  How did this chunky monkey…

turn into this beautiful young woman????

12 years ago today, at the moment this post is set to publish, this girl came busting into our lives and they have never been the same.

She has made everything in our lives better.  Somehow her arrival sped up time…and I know in the blink of an eye, I will be posting a photo of her high school graduation.  And that almost makes it hard to breathe.

Jenna is getting close to being as tall as I am.  She is wearing the same size shoes as me and she’s turning into a wonderful young woman.

Jenna is the kind of big sister that a parent only dreams about.  She has experienced things that most people don’t in a lifetime.  I can easily envision Jenna and I being best friends in her adult life. I love her like nuts…

And today as we celebrate everything about her, I can only savor every second of the day today and the days to follow because all too soon, they will be memories.

Reading

I can’t express how happy the above photo makes me.  I love to read and I wanted so badly for Jenna to love to read.  And she does!  And I am forever thankful.  It wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t get Kylie to sit still for a book but now, she loves her books and we read at least 3 before bed at night.

Back when we were struggling with sleep issues, we were told to pick a couple books and read the same ones every night.  We ended up with Goodnight Moon, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and usually a Bible story.  Over time, Goodnight Moon has been retired and in it’s place is Llama Llama Red Pajama.  We went through about 3 Bible story books and then retired those.  Now, we do Alexander, Llama Llama, The Kissing Hand, Here Comes Trouble, There’s a Mouse About the House and Just In Case You Ever Wonder with some variations.  If she falls asleep before we get through them all, I stop. 

Anyway, she really likes to read and point to pictures and talk to me about them.  The other day I didn’t think I could take another night of Alexander or Llama Llama so I put them back in the bookshelf buried between all the other books so she can’t find them.  A few nights later, she finishes getting her PJs on and walks over to the bookshelf, finds BOTH books and pulls them out.  Then proceeds over to the stack of nightly reading books, pulls out the ones she doesn’t like and put the replacements in there.  My girl is SMART!

I love that Kylie likes to be read to.  We try and talk about the pictures and drawings in the book and they all facilitate her speech progression.  The girls in this house love to read and it make my heart happy.

Mark it off the Bucket List!

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to blog about this…

My bucket list is truly a work in progress…it’s quite short right now but I have been able to mark something off and it was something that has been on there even before I knew what a bucket list was. Here we go…

Yes, my friends…that is myself, Jenna, Kylie and none other than Steven Curtis Chapman!!!!  EEEEK!  I mean, this has been a dream of mine since I was a tween!  I was stoked!  Let me share with you a quick story about SCC…I have loved his music since he was just coming out on the Christian music scene.  The year The Great Adventure was released, my answering machine at home had that song playing in the background.  I mean, I was ALL about it.  There were a group of us in youth group who wanted to go see his GA tour.  So we got up early on the Saturday tickets were to go on sale and stood in line at TURTLES (who remembers the music place Turtles???) to get tickets.  The funny thing was that I guess we thought everyone would be standing in line for his tickets but there were just a few folks there.  We got our tickets and they were in row H!!!  Like 8 rows back!  We were ecstatic and could not wait for the night to come.
So finally, concert night came and I’m sure we loaded up and laughed and giggled our way (chaperoned, of course) all the way to Starwood Amphitheater (am I taking anyone else down memory lane?).  We show them our tickets and file down to row H, front and center…just about the best seats in the house…I mean, 8th row…that’s good right?!  As we sat there talking and laughing waiting for everyone to get there, Rachel stands up and states (and if you know her, you will be able to totally picture this…) “I don’t know about YOU people, but MY ticket says row A!!!!”  So this was back in the day of dot matrix printing and sure enough the A in “Row” looked a lot like an H but sure enough, we were all on the FRONT ROW!!!  We rocked it out right in the front row with SCC and it ended up being one of my most favorite memories from my youth.

I have faithfully followed SCC and his family through the years and I wept the night the news reported the tragic story of Maria Sue.  Their adoptions played a huge part in our move forward to adopt and that we chose China.  I just really love and appreciate the work the Chapman family has done.  So when I found out I had the chance to meet them, I was stoked.  This was during the Show Hope 10 year celebration.  I was also able to meet Mary Beth…

And their daughter (and catalyst for their first adoption), Emily..

The whole weekend was great fun and I have more photos, but that will come later.  It was a great time and I am just so excited to be able to say I met this lovely family.

Ouch!!

We always knew our girl was sweet, but apparently the mosquitoes know too!  A few weekends ago, Jenna noticed a mosquito-esque bug flitting around the car.  We managed to shoo it out without too much trouble and didn’t think another thing about it.  That is, until we got out of the car at our next stop and I noticed Kylie had a little bit right under her eye.  We ate dinner and it never seemed to itch or bother her, so I didn’t think much about it.

Then Sunday she woke up and the bit was red, angry and it was spreading down into her cheek.  Jenna had something like this happen to her when she was 3 and the pediatrician had us bring her in and gave her a shot of antibiotic because the bite she had was on her cheek and they didn’t want it to get infected being so close to her brain.  Kylie’s looked way worse, but I didn’t panic…just gave her a dose of Benadryl and went to church.  This is after the Benadryl (so you can imagine what it looked like before!)

After church it really didn’t look any better than this, so I called the dr. on call.  She was totally not worried and said to keep dosing the Benadryl so I did and went on my way with the day’s activities.

Later that night, I was out with a friend and Steve texted me the following photo which was after a full day of dosing Benadryl.

He dosed her one more time before bed and then put her down for the night.  I was out late that night and about 9:30, I got a text that he’d checked on her and didn’t think the Benadryl was doing any good.  We decided to wait and see what the morning brought. 

The next morning I was off work for Memorial Day and things had definitely not improved.  Not only had they not improved but she now had a runny nose which was yucky green.  With no symptoms leading up to that, I decided to visit our new local ER.

Clearly she can put on a sad face when needed.  Is that not the most pitiful looking baby?

And she wasn’t impressed with the blood pressure cuff they were using on her.  However, we were in an out from the TriStar Spring Hill ER within an hour and was armed with prescriptions for broad spectrum antibiotics and anti-nausea meds just in case.  Later that afternoon, we got a dose of antibiotics in her and she was clearly feeling fine.

24 hours later and the difference was amazing.

A week and 1/2 later and the bite is gone but she still has a little bit of a dark circle under her eye.  Hopefully she’ll build up her immunity soon.

I am…A Conflict Avoider

Of all the things I am, this one is pretty big.  I will avoid direct conflict at all costs.  Sometimes it takes the form of being a peace maker, but I do hate conflict.  So, what happens when someone offends me?  Whether it be on purpose or accidentally?  I stuff.

If you upset me or make me mad, rather than just tell you about it so we can work it out, I stuff it inside, deal with it internally and then hopefully get over it.  I just hate conflict.

I even hate conflict that I’m not involved in directly.  If I am in a group of folks (or like a meeting at work) and two other people start to disagree, I immediately have the urge to step in, make a joke (defense mechanism) and try to diffuse the situation.  It is slightly ridiculous I realize, but it is just the way I am.  Even when I’m reading blogs, reading some of the comments makes me uncomfortable.

Let me give you another perfect (albeit silly) example.  Steve DVRs those shows like Lizard Lick Towing.  I absolutely cannot stand to watch them, one because I think they are dumb (sorry fans, but it’s just not my cup of tea) and because of the constant conflict they are in the middle of all the time.

I’m just not an in-your-face kinda girl.  Now, mess with my family and like any other Mama on the planet, I’m gonna come up fighting.  But most of the time, I will vent to a close friend or two and then I’m going to take some time to stew on it and then eventually I’ll move on.

So if you think you’ve offended me in the past…you very well could be right.  But then again, you’ll probably never know!!!

Making Music

Kylie has always enjoyed music.  And dancing.  But lately, she REALLY likes to dance.  And she really does like music.  I was spring cleaning the bonus room recently and I found two pan lids.  I put them near the trash since there were no matching pans and a few minutes later my ears were ringing…this is what she discovered all on her own…

A New Look!

Welcome to my new blog!  If you remember, I used to be Just Haven't Met You Yet, which was a throw back to Buble's song and play on words for our pending adoption.

Now that we've been home with Kylie more than a year, I felt like Just Haven't Met You Yet didn't make much sense, so for the past months, I have batted around a number of different blog titles.  Finally, in keeping with the song theme, I landed on Accidentally In Love. Why this title?  Because in my life, I never knew love could be like this.

The pursuing love of a patient God who never quits coming after his prodigal daughter and bringing her home.

The amazing love for children who were not my own, but who were loved as if they were.

The fierce and sacrificial love for two girls, one born from my body and one born in my heart, who love me unconditionally despite my parenting failures.

The continual love for a man which grows wider and deeper every year and his perfect love for a woman who doesn't always get it right.

I never knew love could be like this.  But I'm so glad it is.  I'm definitely...accidentally in love.

You'll notice some tabs at the top of the blog now.  One of them is all about our adoption journey.  It includes our adoption story, our adoption timeline and a few links to posts that might be helpful to other adoptive families. Also, our Gotcha Video resides there!

There are social media icons right over there -------------------> click on any of them to link to me directly. The contact one should take you to a page which lets you know how to email me.

Right underneath that is a box where you can enter your email address and you will receive an email everytime I post an update.  Handy, no?  :)

Further down is a search box.  If you seem to remember seeing something on the blog and need to find it, just type the word in the box and all the posts with that word will pop up.  My blogroll and blog archives are still there where they always were.

Lastly, at the very bottom of the right sidebar is a link to my blog BUTTON!  That's right!  If you like my blog and want to put a button on your own blog, you can find the code to it there.  So cool!

Thanks to Courtney at A Faithfulness Told blog, my blog has a new, more updated and way less busy look! Y'all, you need to check her out here.  She basically asked me a few questions and went to work!  It took just a few days and her prices are SO ECONOMICAL!

I highly encourage you to hop over and visit her blog.  If you see something you like, contact her, tell her you saw her here and let her do some work for you!

Thank you Courtney!  I love my new blog!  In fact, you could say, I'm accidentally in love with it!