A look Back!

Avrie has grown so much in the last year when she came home she weighed 25lbs and was 35 inches tall. Today she weighs 37 lbs and is 39 inches tall, so 12 lbs and 4 inches in one year is quite a bit of growing. It was hard to keep her in clothes she came home wearing 9-12 months and now she is wearing size 4T. She was wearing a size 5 shoe and now she wears a size 9. I am hoping for a little slow down in the physical growth area, and have been so grateful for friends and family who have helped me keep her dressed this year!


Destina has done just as much growing, when she came home she weighed 45 lbs and was 47 inches tall. Today she weighs 65 lbs and is 51 inches tall. 18 lbs in one year and 4 inches taller. She came home wearing size 5 T and now wears a size 8. In shoes she came home wearing a size 13 and now wears a 2. The pants I bought her for the beginning of school are all too short. It seems I am always on the lookout for clothes on sale for Destina maybe she will slow down too!

Tomorrow is their "GOTCHA DAY" I can't believe how fast this year has gone by and how much each of the girls have learned since they have come home, and how well they fit into our family.

Can You Pop a 6?

I bought a couple of games for the kids for Christmas and Trouble was one of them. I thought this would be great Destina and even Avrie could work on their counting skills and we needed a new younger kids game, Candy Land and Shoots and Ladders was getting old.

During the Christmas break we usually have Settlers going and Pinochle or puzzles but the older kids started playing Trouble and now we still have almost nightly Trouble competitions going on at our house between the OLDER young adults and teenagers, ok Scott and I like to get in on the action too. But now we have a whole new problem at our house, you see Trouble is a game for 4 people and there are usually 10 - 11 people at my house EVERY DAY! As soon as dinner is cleaned up someone will throw down the challenge "Can You Pop a 6" and it is game on.

We have decided that yellow is the bad luck color, and that Kelsie is also bad luck. I am, so far, the champion (finally a game I can win at), and their is no mercy in this game if another player lands on your piece your piece is sent home and you do have to get a 6 to get out of home, and sometimes those are hard to come by. People have to wait out a game so that the next round of players can play and sometimes a game can last a long time. I know lame, but we are pretty easily entertained around here.

***Since I posted this I have not won a game and Kelsie is now the Master Trouble Player***

Adding a Little Perspective

This is my car, Scott was driving and I was in the passenger seat when the car in front of us hit the car in front of him and then we hit the car in front of us. I love how Scott turned the car so that it was my side that was hit, but that is a whole different topic. This happened on Halloween 2008. At the time that it happened, Scott had been out of work for about 4 months trying to figure out what he was going to do to support our family, we were in the middle of the adoption, we had a child in college for her first year, and we had just about used up all of our savings, and wondering how in the world we were going to buy groceries, it was the beginning of some pretty dark days for our family, and we did not need this on top of everything else.
It seems that for our family we tend to ebb and flow as far as trials go, we have had some really great years where things were going along pretty well and we would get caught up in the little things in life, but for the most part it was smooth sailing. When I go back and think about each of these stages the things that were trials for us when we were young and had a young family seem pretty light compared to what we have been through lately. But one of the things that I have learned is that there is always another day, that trials and hard times come and go and somehow we have made it through and we are hoping for some smooth sailing.

When Scott wrecked the car I knew it would be ok, in fact it was a saving grace for us. Yes I lost my car, but the insurance totaled the car and we received enough money for us to live on for a few months. We also had the opportunity to buy the car back at a great price. The car has been sitting in our friends storage for over 2 years, while we were sailing through rough waters. Now that the waves have died down a bit Scott brought the car home and is going to fix it so I can have my car back! I can't wait!


I love downloading pictures off of my camera, Destina loves to take pictures, she has taken all the pictures on this post. I bought Avrie some new shoes and she was so excited because they had butterflies (bows) on them. She wants to wear them everywhere she goes.

Thursday's Thoughts

It was time to take out Destina's braids so I started cutting them off and after I finished cutting them I looked at her and thought "wow your hair looks cute like this." so we have left her with a short braided hair cut, at least for a couple more days.

Avrie wanted beads again and Destina loves to take her picture and has her doing all these cute poses. Yesterday I left the room for about 2 minutes and I came back and I could not find Avrie, then I spotted her out on the deck licking the rain water off of the kids picnic table, just like the dog likes to do, crazy child!

Joining Hands

"I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." ~ Martin Luther King jr.

Grateful for the Uneventful

On January 16, 2010 I heard news that Avrie was alive and well...



On January 16, 2009 Gracie passed away...

I am grateful that this January 16th is uneventful, that we are all safely gathered in. That all my children are under one roof and that we are complete.

One Year Anniversary

Today at 4:53 pm EST marks the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. As I have gone back and read my old posts about the days following the earthquake it has brought back vivid memories as if it were just yesterday. I can still feel all the emotion of that 2 week period, and have been brought to tears again remembering that time when I did not know if the girls were ok and of the moment by moment stress of worrying if Scott and "Team Hope" would make it out of the country before the plane left without them. It was the most stressful time in my life and I was here in the comfort of my own home. Scott has not talked about it since he came home, he says it just too hard.

This past year has brought a lot of joy but it has also brought a lot of guilt as well. I feel guilty that I could not have done more. There are so many people left in Haiti who need help, families with no where to go, living in conditions that no one should have to endure. Children left without hope. There was so much aid pledged to help Haiti, yet not much has been done to even clear the rubble. There are small groups of people making a difference in Haiti but where is the Haitian government at in helping their own, where is all the money that was pledged to rebuild a better Haiti? I feel guilty that my girls are now enjoying the "American dream" but what about those that were left behind will their dreams ever come true? Haiti and the Haitian people are never far from my thoughts and will always remain in my prayers.
Take a moment of silence today to remember Haiti and especially the people of Haiti.

It Has Been a Year and Haiti Still Needs Help!

Random Pictures

This is how the girls sleep every night, they have a bed but it is not big enough for both of them and their babies, even though both of their babies have their own beds too. They fold up and put away the blankets every morning and get them out at night all by themselves. Last night I was laying down with the girls and we were saying our prayers and I didn't hear Destina say "Amen" so I prompted her again and she was sound asleep. It takes her no time at all to fall asleep if she is the least bit tired. I was pretending to sleep so Avrie would fall asleep and she was so cute she kept giving me kisses and patting my back and moving my hair out of my face. When she finally fell asleep her arms were around my neck and she was about an inch from my face I love just laying there and feeling her breath on my cheek, it doesn't get much better!

We had snow again today and more is predicted in the coming week. I don't really like the snow but it has been really pretty to look out across the lake and have everything covered in white. The girls love the snow and could not wait to go outside and play. It takes them about 10 minutes to get all the snow stuff rounded up and put on then they stayed out until they were too cold to stand it any longer.


I just had to take a picture of Destina this morning she looked so cute as she was heading out the door for school! Thanks grandma for the cute outfit!

Haitian Spaghetti

Destina saw on a friend's blog that they were making Haitian Spaghetti and she immediately wanted me to make some too. So the next day Destina came home and she wanted to make a cake and make dinner, she did almost everything except chop the onions. She let Avrie help too. She was so proud that she was able to make something from Haiti and wanted to make sure everyone liked it and everyone did there was not a scrap left. It was such an easy dinner to make we will be making it again. I asked her if she had Haitian Spaghetti at the orphanage and she said no only at the hotel. Thanks Bambi for sharing the recipe, anyone else have any other Haitian food they make? If so let me know I would love to make the Creole Chicken that was yummy!

Mom, Whose Dish Day is it?

Avrie asks me that question every day! Mom, whose dish day is it? Whose dish day is tomorrow? Whose dish day was it yesterday? Then she follows up with "When I get bigger will I get a dish day? I have to try and do the dishes when she is distracted with something else because she always wants to help and "mom I am a good Helper." So today I let her have at it with a sink full of dirty dishes (because someone didn't finish their dish day yesterday) I brought a cup over and put it in the sink and she said "thank you mom." She went to go find her step stool and as she walked away from the sink she looked at McKenzie who was sitting at the counter eating breakfast and said "Don't do any of my dishes ok!" Don't worry Avrie no one will be rushing in to take over the dishes, they are all yours!

She also loves to help with the laundry, vacuum and actually cleans mirrors quite well! When she wants anything that comes is a squirt bottle she says mom I need the "ch ch" because that is the sound it makes when spraying from a squirt bottle, whether it is cleaning stuff or a water bottle for her hair, we play along and now we all ask for the "ch ch"!