an epic beach trip

Today concludes our epic beach trip of 2011. Much fun was had by all.

Although I think the grandkids had the MOST fun.




Down to the beach! The adventurer’s braved epic weather to enjoy the the Oregon Coast in it’s natural state.

Sisters.

Cousins.

Father and son

Maggie was all about making her epic mark on the earth.

And doing the beach boogie!

No! That way Grandpa!

Pretty girl.

Anna loved playing in the water with papa…

Until she got knocked down cause she was a little too far away when the epic wave came. Papa picked her up quickly but she was soaked and ready to go home. Still she braved a trip through the cave to see the other side of the beach! And we also got to play on the beach sunday, in the the sun! Can you believe it? We were all in such shock we forgot to take pictures.

Jennifer making Brian’s epic birthday dinner. Thanks Mom & Jennifer!

The epic entertainment: Smurfs on stairs!

Business women and their epic computers.

Thank you everyone for coming! You made it a special (one might even say epic) time!

3 Comments

Filed under Everyday Stuff

Dossier Photos and A Fundraiser I Plan on Purchasing from

First of all, I don’t know when to capitalize letters in a title and when to leave it lower case. I usually go by instinct, but this title just didn’t feel right.

Secondly, I love this fundraiser that a fellow adoptive parent is doing! Her husband is in the military and he is SEWING… and he is sewing things that I WANT! Check them out here and here! (My favorite thing are the personalized “quiet bags” for church)

Finally, I thought you might enjoy seeing our family photo pages, the ones we made for our dossier. I think they’re kind of fun! I used some online program to translate the words so hopefully they are correct. I’ll have to have it reviewed! The purpose of these photos is to introduce our family and home to the authorities to help them feel comfortable with us as a family. We are making a photo album for Seamus too… well, I will be. I bought this album for him.

We’re making photo albums for the girls too. Not the same album, but hopefully equally indestructible. When we leave for 9+ days to see him for the first time and when we go again later this year to get him, they will need something to help them “hold onto” us. A friend also had the great idea of writing letters for them, one letter to be read to them each night. This sounds perfect, since it will add a little routine and predictability to their day in a way that “connects” with us. I think we’ll be skyping with them on their mornings.

But back to the family photo pages for the dossier.

[Edited to remove photo pages for now, because they have his country’s language on them and I’d prefer this blog remain free of specifics. If you are family and you’re curious to look at our family photo pages, they’re kind of fun and I’m happy to share via email!]

You know, I just realized… if I’m going to have some quiet bags made for the kids from that fundraiser, I’m going to have to decide for sure what Seamus’ name is! I keep changing what I call him. And the poor little guy has no idea. Probably will stick with James and then play with the middle name(s). Dad, I was really wanting a little Edward sometime, but we’ll have to wait a few years, because the dude in the vampire love story (The Twilight books and movies) is named Edward and I don’t want his name to be associated with a chick flick!

As a consolation, here is another picture of our little guy:

3 Comments

Filed under Everyday Stuff

Pictures for the Officials

One of my current projects is to create a few pages of pictures that represent our house and family. I haven’t worked on it much, because I haven’t had a scanner to scan our latest professional family photos and I haven’t had the spare brain cells to figure out how to pick up a room and take a picture and keep the girls out of the room while I’m taking the picture. This morning I picked up a bit and took a few pictures.

But first, before I show you those, here is what an apostille looks like from the state of Oregon! This is a picture of our commitment docs for Seamus, ready to ship on over to Eastern Europe! The apostilles cost $10 each. Yowza. Shipping these babies cost $86.97. Youch! We’ll have two more packets of papers to ship before we’re done adopting him, I think. One that is our dossier and one that is our stage two paperwork with updated medicals, etc.

Maggie Portrait, by Anna:

Mama sporting her new birthday apron (Thank you Hollie!) and Maggie sporting her Christmas dressup:

1 out of 10 potatoes really do explode if you don’t prick them with a fork before baking! And that is Brian’s birthday cake, half cooked. OOooooh, yummy.

We got a pass to the Children’s Museum from our library. There is a great “Pet Hospital” area that had so much fun stuff to do. I wanted to pretend! Anna was wanting to go from place to place really quick to make sure she saw and touched everything. Maggie was overawed and just kind of walked around staring and stopping to stare with an amazed look on her face. It was pretty adorable.

Here is Anna taking her dog to go potty:

Here is my dad reading to Maggie. She has begun to sit still for books… instead of just bringing you a book, climbing onto your lap, flipping through the book, closing the book, then climbing down saying “All done!” (“ah dah!”) with the satisfaction of accomplishing her task. Rinse and repeat. I prefer the sitting still myself.

Here we are at the hotel in the Dalles where Brian was working for two days. We really had a lot of fun, going to the pool four times in two days. The girls were content to play on the steps or sit on the side and kick their feet. I got cold faster than they did and finished the play times in the hot tub. We were all pretty tired and bored by the time we went home, but that was ok…. it was time to go home! I am so glad I went with Brian. A day or two without seeing Brian is the pits!

We also drove across the river to Schreiner Farm and drove up and down their driveway as allowed and saw zebras, camels and what I think were reindeer. Crazy!

And now since you were really wondering what the inside of our house looks like:

Kids’ bedroom 1:

Kids’ bedroom 2:

Love my kitchen. Love my new table:

Living room. Does it look weird that I forgot to open both sides of the curtains or can I get away with it like this?

And now, since I have a few more pictures of our little guy, I will tease you by sharing them one by one as I remember to.

3 Comments

Filed under Everyday Stuff

Just Going to Ramble

Tonight I’m just going to ramble.

I am sitting on a hotel room bed with Brian reading a book beside me. We’ve got a lamp on, but thankfully both the girls were able to fall asleep with it on. Brian’s work was going to take him away overnight for the first time and I’m just so not interested in that. So we came with him and hung out and played in the hotel all day today while he worked. I am blessed to be part of a family where being together is so, so, dearly enjoyed that the “inconvenience” of travel is hardly noted.

I wonder if they are going to kick us out of our room before Brian is done with work tomorrow. I hope they let us stay through Maggie’s nap. Hmm. We shall see! I doubt it’s worth the additional $77 to book teh room for another night so she can sleep. 🙂 But really, i will be winging it tomorrow.

We shared in front of church on Sunday about orphans and the orphan crisis and that WE ARE ADOPTING SEAMUS! I am so thrilled to be in a position to announce that. After seriously hoping/trying to adopt for so long, it just feels so GOOD to be moving forward for real. So often I feel like I am a kid playing at being a grown up. How great that being a grown up is not boring. Too bad it doesn’t mean that we have all the answers, like I thought it did when I was a kid.

I was surprised for the first time recently when somebody unexpected made a unloving comment about kids with special needs. And followed it with an uncomplimentary, ungenerous attitude about people who live in other countries. I’ve been working on processing the experience… to find the loving, God-honoring HEART response that I should have. The one where I can grieve for the hurt children, give the person the benefit of the doubt…. i don’t know. I’m still processing. And I haven’t even begun to know what I should say. But most of the people I know are pretty disconnected with special needs and don’t realize the God-given PERFECT gifts that they are. And I can’t blame them for devaluing these children and adults in their heads without even trying to. But for God, I wouldn’t have been opened to the blessings of people who are treasures to God but who are so different.

Ok, time to turn off the lights. And I could have rambled on for many more paragraphs!

1 Comment

Filed under Everyday Stuff

Seamus, Seemus, James, Seymen, Simon

We are now allowed to share who we are in the commitment phase for!

Here is his Reece’s Rainbow page with his PICTURE. http://reecesrainbow.org/seamus-1-1 His Internet name is “Seamus” which is pronounced “Shay-mus.” He was born in July of 2009 so he is older than Maggie. We think he’s going to be a perfect fit! He is trying to crawl and can sit on his own briefly, according to his file.

Aren’t his cheeks precious!? I can not wait to hold him and cover them with kisses!

Want to know something special? I had almost forgotten that in the midst of doubt, I had prayed God would “give us” the name of the child we were supposed to adopt. Brian also prayed that God would somehow give us the name of our child so that we’d know who we should adopt. Do you know what Seemus’ name came from? The name James. Do you know the name we chose for our first son when before we even conceived Anna? James Edward Davis. Wow. I love my God and how He cares about my little prayers!

We will need to make a final decision of what his name no later than immediately after our first trip this spring (May/June). For now, we are tired of shuffling through the five names he’s had for us. 🙂 So we’re calling him Simon for now, since it’s so close to Seymen in sound. I think Simon means “heard” and we feel like we heard God’s call to come and get him! Does anybody know what Seymen means? All I can find out is that it is of Turkish origin.

We are still waiting for our USCIS (immigration) approval to adopt, and now that we know who we are adopting, it is harder to wait. We are likely still a couple months out from getting that approval and then we will get our paperwork shipped overseas to Eastern Europe (EE) as quickly as possible so that we can go meet him and eventually give him a permanent home! God willing, this little boy will never see the inside of an asylum!!!

We are still hopeful that we will bring home a brother or sister with him at the same time, but we are at peace that God will take care of this detail if that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Throughout the ENTIRE process, we should not say his country of birth on the blog or in any public forum. We do not want to jeopardize any adoptions out of this country by publishing any sentiment about their country in a public forum.

I feel over the moon. I feel like we hit the jackpot. We are very confident and at peace that God is with us.

5 Comments

Filed under Everyday Stuff