Some serious thoughts for a moment

I don't know how many of you have been following the news on the Earthquake in China, or maybe I should say earthquakes as many of the aftershocks have been nearly as strong as the initial quake. I have been following the stories, closely, and getting updates from Half the Sky as well. We have been home with Julia for nearly 2 years but a part of us will always be in China and my heart breaks for the tragedies I read every morning. Please join with me in prayer for those lost, those waiting to be reunited with family, and those that never will.

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake
Fund
you can do so through Global Giving:

Or directly to Half the Sky. or you can donate by calling Half the Sky
(+1-510-525-3377)

And more bad news, I woke this morning to read the news of Steven Curtis Chapman's family. I know I've spoken/written about Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman before, but as it's been awhile so I'll refresh your memory. Steven Curtis is a Contemporary Christian music artist and he and his wife are passionate about China's orphans. So much so that they have adopted 3 times from China and started the foundation Shaohannah's Hope. We were blessed enough to receive a grant from them while working to bring Julia home. They lost their youngest daughter in a tragic accident at their home yesterday. Apparently one of the older boys was going down the gravel driveway and didn't see the younger girl. I can't even fathom how he must be feeling today and the grief this family that gives so much is going through. So please also add them to your prayers today. For more information on them or the foundation please go to their website Shaohannah's Hope

Silly song time and outdoor fun

Our little munchkin loves to sing, more and more lately as her vocabulary continues to expand. She will have me sing with her until I am hoarse and even likes to have Daddy sing with her.. don't get me wrong here I love my husband but his singing.. tends to put my teeth on edge.. of course he's usually not trying very hard or I should say that is exactly his intention when he sings around me.. so in a sense he's a success. lol. now back to Julia. She has learned so many nursery rhymes songs, among songs from her favorite TV shows and she has a few nursery rhyme books and can now sit and pretty sing her way through them as she flips the pages. So cute. She's still not crazy about being caught on video though, so the clip I have she is singing but playing peek a boo under the blanket at the same time. But as you can tell we were having fun. :)


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The outdoor fun is that we picked up a small bounce house last weekend. We decided that since we are moving this summer and have a trip to Ohio later this month planned, and now a house hunting trip to FL in June as well before we move that we would not mess with setting the pool up this year. Obviously since we are moving we don't want to get an outdoor play structure either so we decided this would be a good alternative. Add this to her outdoor art easel, sand box and of course just being outside and I think she's all set for the short amount time we have left here. :) We are getting very excited for the move and Julia is asking almost weekly now to go to the beach, I can only thank Dora for that one I guess, but hopefully that will help make the move easier for her. I'm getting nervous about how she is going to handle everything. At least she will see Braden right at first when we move, he'll still be there on vacation and every summer after that as well, but when she realizes how long it's going to be between visits might be a bit rough. Do me a favor and say some prayers that she handles this next transition in her life as well as she has handled everything else. I can't believe that she will be turning 3 in just 3 short months or that we will be celebrating 2 years of bringing her home this June. She sure has seen a lot already in her life, her time in China, the trip home for the first time, trips to Ohio and Maine to see family and grandparents that adore her from afar, so much to take in.. not a wonder she still has trouble sleeping. That still comes and goes and I guess we have just learned to live on less sleep for now and I'm not even going to worry about how spoiled she is until after we move and get settled.. again. lol

Anyways.. here she is enjoying her bounce house for the first time, mostly she likes to bounce through and slide, so glad we got the one with the little slide too.


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Daddy's Girl





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I know both of these videos are dark, they were taken in this living room that appears to just swallow the light. But they were still too cute not to share. Last night Julia was watching out the window while Daddy was mowing the lawn, you can see the result. She called and talked to him like this off and on for about 15 minutes. At several points she even had Moosey looking out the window and was calling out "look Dad it's Moosey"... LOL. She is too funny.

The other was taken this morning and yes we needed to pick up the toys and books we weren't quite awake yet either of us. Anyway Julia turned the tv on as usual but I didn't change the channel right away... I usually have it on Nick Jr before the tv is even on..so it was still on Daddy's favorite Food Network. She sat herself down in her chair and proceeded to watch.. intently. I didn't realize just how much she was watching at first until the commercial came on and that was when she would take a break and ask for a drink or more food! As soon as Emeril came back on, she was lost in the tv again! What probably didn't come across on the video is that when I asked her "what does Emeril say?" she did actually whisper "Bam" Yes obviously she has seen him before and loves watching Food Tv on the weekends with Daddy, and you know what?? hey it got me out of Dora this morning!

So back to the title of this post, yes she is most definitely.. Daddy's girl!

Outdoor fun




































Since the weather has been steadily warming up, we have naturally been taking advantage and spending some time outside. Julia loves to be outside. Today I finally got sand put in her sand and water table. Good thing we didn't put water in the other side since she thought that was the perfect place to take a break and have a seat. If you look close at some of the pictures you might be able to see the blue chalk on her cheek as well. I'm not quite sure why she thought it would be good to color her face or how she smudged it but it was very funny at the time. Obviously the sand was a hit. I bought this inflatable sand and water table years ago, I think the year before we even traveled to China to get Julia. I had found it on clearance and couldn't pass it up. Glad I did, inflatable toys are great for people that move often, and Princesses are perfect for Julia. Definitely a win, win.

Good thing we went out this morning since we have storms this evening. Spring time in Texas, oh the fun.

Well we did it. We got last minute cheap seats and took Julia to see Disney's High School Musical on Ice last night. We hadn't really planned on going, but decided at the last minute it would be worth it. I have to say it so was! Watching Julia dance to "Get'cha head in the game" alone was worth it! She really enjoyed the first act and sang and danced and made Daddy and I hold hands during the duets. It was a riot! By the second half, we were kind of pushing bed time so she wasn't as into it, but she sure didn't want to leave either. However when the last song was done she looked at us and said "bye bye?" LOL.

She had us in stitches all night. On the way over to the show, she had begun chanting "Mommy, Daddy, Daddy, Mommy"... repeatedly in the car, not yelling or anything just kind of in a sing song kind of way, well at some point, she added the word "nuts" into that little chant, so it was "Mommy, Daddy, nuts, Daddy, Mommy, nuts"..etc so as Daddy is parking the car at the Ice show, she finally just comes out with "Mommy Nuts"... it's amazing he didn't wreck the car! Took him about 2 minutes to be able to breathe again to just open the car door. This is the kind of stuff this child comes out with all the time.

All in all, it was a very fun night.

Pirates and Princesses

















I may have mentioned previously that Julia loves Pirates of the Caribbean. She loves Cap'n Jack. Well a few weeks ago we took a day trip down to Grapevine to check out the Kids Room to Go showroom among other things. Julia has outgrown her baby dresser and is in need of a real one, we had seen this online and wanted to see the quality of it. Especially since they have a store close to where we will be living in FL. We are very likely going to go with the Princess set. But I have to share some of that afternoon with you. We walked into the store and Julia thought it was a giant playroom. She was having a blast checking out all the furniture and decorations, yes we have a true shopper here I believe, I think her and Aunt Alissa could have lots of fun together. So we checked out the Princess set first because this is the one I had looked most at online, then we went walking around the show room. Of course with a sales guy kind of tagging along just in case we should be buying anything. Julia got to the Pirates room set up and flipped! Her exact words " Mama it's a Pirate ship, where's the treasure??" Then she proceeded to look at the posters on the walls and point out "Will" and "Captain Jack"... the sales guy was tripping at this point! LOL. The next set was "Hannah Montana"... so Daddy asks Julia "who's that on the tag?" answer "Hannah Tana" then she read off the label on the mattress set... it said you guessed it.. DISNEY! By now the sales guy is choking and asking again "how old is she?" thought he was going to lose it when we told him 2 and 1/2. So yes, my child watches way too much TV and as you can see most of it is Disney. Can't wait to take this girl to Disney World, hopefully that will be next year. :)

Oh and I asked her which furniture she liked when we got back in the car, half afraid she would say the Pirate ship, she actually gave it some thought and said "Cinderelly bed" so I guess we were looking at the right set after all. This child is entirely too much some days! :)

Easter Morning


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More videos from our Easter morning at Dropshots all in all it was a good day and yes the Easter Bunny might have gone a bit over board.. so what else is new?? lol Sorry no pictures, I'm looking into a new camera now to solve that issue;)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Potty Training and Kai-lan

This was the start to my week and yes we are trying to work on potty training here this week. By this I mean try to give Julia just a bit of a push, she's used the potty occasionally in the past but we are hoping to get her to understand to use it all the time. Some days she gets this, others not at all. It's been a long week so far, here's a peek into the last couple of days. Enjoy and be forewarned, yes there is talk of "poo" there I said it! So if you don't want to know the details, stop reading now! :)

Since Ray is on call this week and worked most of Tuesday night, he finally got home around 9 only to get 2 more calls within 10 minutes of being home and having to head right back out the door. Because of this Julia was sleeping with me Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. From 3 Am to 4 AM I can't tell you how many times I got kicked and HARD, til finally at 4 I was just exasperated and got out of bed and came out here! Naturally within a minute my munchkin followed me. We didn't get back to sleep til around 6:30 or so, almost to the point of just getting up and dealing with it with it for the rest of the day. I almost wish we had.

Now you have to keep in mind we are potty training this week. So Julia has been in big girl underwear and we have been making an effort to go to the potty every half hour-45 minutes this first few days to get her really used to going. It's been going fairly well, of course there have been accidents. Yesterdays was a doozy. I guess I either lost track of the time or got distracted. I had a couple of phone calls come in back to back so it was likely distracted. So I didn't notice her slip her undies off (she had a dress on) well we were supposed to have another play date so I wanted to try to get her down for an early nap. I figured after our rough morning, shouldn't be too hard. On the way to check her and turn off the tv and I realize oh my she's wet, then I realize, nope no undies.. GREAT.. so where are they??? I find them and a trail of "presents" that you can imagine was very hard to see on this dark carpet in this ever so dark room, you can't light this room, it just sucks the light up. YEP, she had pooped and at least she knew she didn't like the feel of the dirty undies.. I'm holding on to that thought for all it's worth at this point... so I calmly clean it all up (or I thought all, I was still finding some as late as 7 last night!!! yikes!) and show her where it was "supposed" to go. And we go on and get ready for nap.

So nap time. At this point I was exhausted too so I'm trying every trick to get her to lie down and give in to sleep. NO such luck. The play date was supposed to be at 3 so we started this process around 1:30. she was bouncing off the ceiling., the heck with the walls. After a friend stopped by a little after 2 (and she can attest to how exhausted I'm sure I looked at this point! lol) we tried again to lie down, now I'm pretty sure at this point we are not going on the play date, because I know my child and if doesn't get at least a 45 minutes nap she's a nightmare through the evening and I was not prepared to deal with that on top of everything else. So I am getting more and more frustrated with her by the moment,

Julia has been watching "Nihao Kailan" and yesterday's lesson, yes believe it or not, was on "calm, calm down". IN the show Kailan had her friends watch the "hula ducks" going "side to side, side to side, side to side" to calm, calm down. So my entirely too intelligent child starts whispering in my ear... "side to side, side to side, side to side" LMAO off at this point because yes I am beyond exhausted and let's face it she learned the lesson!!! And then, THANK GOD she went to sleep! So I come out here, and email a quick note to daddy, only to get an unsympathetic reply of "can't breathe laughing too hard".... and found out we were the entertainment for a few guys at the shop yesterday! Wonderful, he's lucky they are dad's too and I know they and their wives have been or are currently in similar situations daily.

Good thing Ray didn't have any calls last night, however he might have been better off if he had. He could NOT stop taking delight in my day, to the point that I started picking up Julia's shoes near my chair and aiming them at him. (just the light shoes, no heels and it was really done in fun, though I'm not sure his mom understood that part. lol) To top it off, on the bottom of one of the shoes... was yep you guessed it more Poo!!!!

At this point, I called it a night and went to bed to watch a movie, he gave Julia a bath and put her to bed. Good Daddy.

Today has been better, she's already pooped on the potty first thing and told me "we don't poop in pants!" Thank you Lord!! Sadly this hasn't lasted and we have changed wet pants several times today. But we will get there. She's just learning after all.

I'm sorry this was so long, but it was truly the only way to convey our day to you all. Hope it makes you smile. Go ahead laugh, we all have.

Easter Party



Just arrived and just woke up from a nap here.


Not too sure about this party thing yet


Oh there are eggs with candy inside??


Now we're liking this deal. lol


Mama and Julia


All worn out.


Parties are such hard work.


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Meeting the Easter Bunny

Our Squadron held it's annual kids Easter party a little early this year, but as you can see we were fortunate to be blessed with an absolutely perfect day for it!! After all the recent up and down weather, 75 one day and snowing the next you can imagine how nervous the girls planning it must have been this past week. But it was truly a gorgeous day and the kids all had a great time so it worked out. Julia slept on the way to the party and on the way home, we were kind of off the beaten path aways so at least she got some sleep today. The party did fall right in the middle of her nap time, so she was pretty quiet right up til the egg hunt. There are of course more videos and pictures on Dropshots, but I'll warn you they include a lot of moving around so be prepared. LOL.

Have I mentioned lately that Julia is a "GIRL"??! LOL By that I mean she is truly becoming a girlie girl more and more the older she gets. She could not wait to get this dress on today and stood ever so still for me to put her hair quickly in pigtails because of course we were running behind. then checked herself out in the mirror before we left and I wish I had had the camera for the smile, I guess she liked the result. I promise you there really were pigtails under all those ribbons!

She absolutely loves to dress up! So grandma's and aunties if you're ever lacking in ideas for something to get her, summer dresses would be a hit every time I promise you! Her eyes light up and she says "gimme, gimme please." I wish I could say I was kidding. Auntie Alexa we were going through sorting out clothes you handed down to us, gosh I have no idea when you gave us these bags I found, but I was sure they were size 4's, imagine my surprise to find 2 whole bags of clothes in size 3's. That she is wearing RIGHT NOW! I think we just tripled her wardrobe! Now I really need to pick out a dresser for this girl!! You should have seen the fashion show as Julia tried almost all of it on. The sad part is, unless she has a major slow down and oh isn't she due to slow down here soon, the 3's will not fit for long. As it is, I think if the dress runs at all short, I'll be looking at 4's for her. Crazy isn't it?? That's just for DRESSES though, everything else I think she's fine in 3's for awhile, she's just so tall that dresses tend to look and I guess even feel short on her. She's always trying to tug at the hem to make it longer. lol. I think she likes the longer styles better. She's so funny.

All in all, we've had a really good week and with it starting to warm up hopefully a bit more consistently it will just get better from here on out.

Fun Stuff


Julia has been reminding us this week of how funny she is and how much fun a 2 year old can have! And leaving us in stitches the whole time. I'm adding some video of her singing with Steven Curtis Chapman's latest song "Cinderella" Julia and I both love this song. :) And then last night she spent about 10 minutes rolling around inside the pillowcase with the pillow inching across the room and just plain being silly. For more video of both go to Dropshots, well worth checking out I assure you. I must have thought they were cute I'm allowing Julia to show you my cluttered desk top and the family room after a day with Hurricane Julia. Enjoy! :)


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Moosey's back and more..



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Happily tearing paper


what??


Silly Daddy


Her secret stash!












Nope, not the same moose, but Mama's a good internet searcher! ;) Took a chance and went online and found what I thought was at least a close possibility to our lost Moose (no he never turned up, I seriously think she slipped him into the trash that day while she was helping :( ) so I ordered the one I found online and it's the exact same Moose!! YAY!! Julia was so happy to see him in the box that came in the mail, I'm sure she thinks her original one was just on a trip or something. Needless to say she is keeping a very close eye on this Moosey and has yet to put him down for more than a few minutes at a time. She never did really attach to anything else while he was gone either and would oh so sadly ask for him every night, sometimes only once a night (thank goodness) but every night. I'm so grateful and relieved we were able to replace this one. Oh if only everything were that easy.

I'm sure you noticed the tearing paper pictures above, we are not quite sure what to make of this, but Julia will quite happily and contentedly shred any paper she can get her hands on til it's in the tiniest pieces possible. We caught her the other night with this left over wrapping paper, you can see in the last picture she had been at it for awhile, so yes I knew she was tearing paper, but after a bit I guess I tuned out the tearing noise because I knew it wasn't anything important that had fallen into her hands. Should I be worried about this?? It's just such an odd thing to me but fascinates her for some reason.

You may also notice how big our munchkin looks in the latest pics. I'm going to have to find a new nickname for her I guess. We finally noticed the other day while chatting with another friend that Julia had indeed had another growth spurt. Funny how I'm the last one to notice these things, so we measured her that night. 37 and 3/4 of an inch tall! I knew she had grown but wasn't expecting that much at all! We still have to weigh her but I'm sure she's still around 27lbs or so, I'll be very shocked if she's gained much more than that. But then she shocks me daily. She's starting recognizing shapes now too. We haven't worked a whole lot on that, but I guess between what we have done, Noggin, and her puzzles it's sinking in for her. I love this age!

There are a couple of more videos on Dropshots, one from a night at Chuck E Cheese back in January for Bradon's birthday the other is another one from this weekend with her Moose. :)

Happy Chinese New Year


































I wanted to get these pictures yesterday, but Julia was having none of getting dressed up yesterday. Probably a good thing with all the other things we had to do, I wouldn't have gotten nearly as many pictures. This morning however despite the lack of sleep she woke up happy and couldn't wait to get dressed up. So of course I let her. She's a funny little thing and more independent every day.

The bed pictures are her showing off on her new Princess bedding. Grammie Hall wanted to know what it looked like and we finally got it onto her bed. I think she likes it.;) I know it doesn't match her room right now, but with moving so soon, we are NOT painting again. When we get into our new house, we'll paint that room pink or green or something that goes with this set for her. Debra she likes the Princess rug very much as well and as you can see it goes great with her new bedding. Thanks so much.

I'm still brain-fried with a lack of sleep so I'm going to cut this short, and as yet we still haven't seen Moose anywhere...:(

oh Mr. Moose???!!


Well, it's happened the moose that featured so prominently in the pictures below, has come up missing. I've searched the house high and low and for the life of me, can't find where she put him down yesterday. He came up missing yesterday afternoon, so it was a nap without him, which went better than expected, but was a short nap. That worked out because we had errands to run. I thought sure that when we got home one of us would find him. Nope, nada, nothing. Bed time came around, still no moose. A few tears but not dreadful and off to sleep she went. To toss and turn and wake every hour or so and ask for him. Then at 12:30 she woke and has yet to go back to sleep, it's now almost 3:30, we still can't find moose and we have to try to get some more sleep. Why did he have to be the same color brown as the carpet in this house???!!! I'm sure he'll turn up eventually, I'm just not sure how much sleep we'll get in the mean time. Please pray we find him soon or that she attaches to one of her many other toys soon!!

Some random shots

Julia and Bradon

Doing some artwork

using the glue stick

it's not a wonder I don't get much sleep...












Julia recently spent a couple of hours hanging out with her buddy Bradon... always a good choice as far as she is concerned. We really don't have that much going on, we didn't make it to the area Chinese New Year celebration, Mama's back went out, so there was no driving, let alone getting us both ready and out of the house... :( Oh well, hopefully we'll find a good group when we move and can try again next year or maybe even one of the other festivals later this year.

Julia has this thing with shredding paper, she will tear it up into tiny pieces when given a chance. So this week since she had done that with some white tissue paper, we decided to put it to use and I got the glue stick out and some construction paper and we made a "snow" picture. :) She thought it was cool. I really need to be doing more things like this with her, I'm going to make more of an effort in that department.

As for the sleeping picture... yes, she spends at least part of each night in bed with me, and with Daddy gone she's just been camping out there. It's just easier on my back and as she still has nightmares it's easier on her too. As you can see though she has a tendancy to be all over the bed. I never know when I'll wake up with a foot in my face or her head pushed into my shoulder blades, but most of the time lately she's been better. Maybe she's just been sleeping better, I dont' know anymore.

Oh and Nai-Nai that's her Moose-moose, as you can see it's never far from her. She attached to it when Daddy went to school. Makes it so much fun when she drops him on the brown carpet. lol


Right now we are enjoying the Superbowl,("GO PATRIOTS!") Julia really liked Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the half time show, Papa and Uncle Joel would be proud. ;)


Edited to add... yeah we're pretty bummed at the end of the game...:( oh well. you win some, you lose some.

Our weekend


A birthday picture for Mama.



At Playhouse Disney, yes she was quite in awe.



And it was dark in there :)


Checking out her program after the show



After having some of Mama's birthday cake, and yes that is cake on her face!









Saturday was a busy day around here. Mama's birthday and Playhouse Disney and Daddy made it home again for the weekend. Couldn't have been any better :)

Julia certainly enjoyed the show, she sat most of the first half in absolute awe just taking it all in. After intermission we couldn't get her to sit back down, she spent the second half leaning on the seat in front of her, it was empty for a good part of the second half and then the little boy that came back was also leaning ahead so we let her get away with that. The second half she did everything the characters told her to do, clap, pat, you name it. She was having fun. After it was all over and we were back in the car we asked her if she had fun. She popped her cup out of her mouth and said "I had fun" took another sip and out came the cup again, "Go see Bradon now?" All about priorities. LOL. So yes we went and saw Bradon. They are too funny together.

Later on it was time for cake and ice cream for Mama's birthday and just an evening spent together having fun. Before bed that night, I had gotten down on the floor with Julia to change her and after a bit she threw herself into my lap, gave me a big hug and said "I love you SO MUCH Mama" Love those spontaneous moments. So all in all it was a great weekend here. Hope all of yours were just as nice.