Ahhhhh, Summer.

Coolest chick at the campground. She loved camping and romping around in the great outdoors. 

Millenium Park's Crown Fountain.  Total fun!  We spent the day downtown and started at Millenium Park, walked up to the Hancock Center, back South to Water Tower Place, then Navy Pier and found our van after walking through the parking garage for 30 minutes.  Yep, felt like a Seinfeld episode.



Getting ready for a swim.



We met up with some old friends.  Micah and Jadyn met last Winter in China, and we had a little reunion last week.  So great to see those guys again!



Guess who learned to smile for the camera?



Made some new friends.  We travelled to South Dakota to visit family.  This is Jadyn on Al (the Alpaca).  We all enjoyed our trip, it was a great time hanging out with cousins! (and their furry critters).

Jadyn is loving summer as much as the rest of us.  The bigger kids are having a hard time getting outside--they much prefer electronics and air conditioning.  I was thinking about another "fast" or tech-free day.  Maybe a week.  I think it's time to shake things up a bit.

Time to change the Orange walls.

I am under the impression that it's time to change the orange walls to brown. Maybe if I completely immerse myself in a project and tear up the house, the phone will ring. I found out another friend of mine is expecting, maybe we will have babies together. (scratch head) I like brown with blue, I am keeping the blue.

The weather has been so beautiful, I feel like we are making up for summer now. Too bad the kids are in school, I have to enjoy it all by myself.

This end of summer is a great time. The tomatoes are OVER abundant, the pumkins are already ripe (and will probably be rotten by Shannon's birthday), green chili peppers-mmmmmmmm, homemade salsa, leaves are starting to fall, I turn 41 soon, and I have decided to spend some spare time couponing.

Two weeks ago I saved about 40% and last week I saved over 50%. I got good stuff, too. Mostly things I always want to buy, but don't because it's too expensive. Super Kmart has weekly free items, if you spend like $15 or $25. I got a 4 pack of die-hard AA's, 6 pack of Zest soap, paper towels, V0-5 shampoo and a few other things I forgot, all for free. Tomorrow is Sunday, I subscribed to the newspaper to help in the couponing endeavor. Also, the Suntimes has a free scratch and win thing going on, so I have the change to win up to $50K(Yeah, right).

I am blogging to the sounds of Elmo in Grouchland. Austin has his buddy Miles over and it's the night-night movie. It's just one of the best things of Austin's 7 year-old life to have a friend living next door. They don't see each other that much, only a few times a week, but they pick up where they left off each time. Usually crafting weapons out of thin air. They got to run errands all day with Dwayne today. Boy stuff. Shannon had a play date at a friends house. I was soooo close to getting the nose stud today, maybe Monday. It's a wait and see. By the way, I have a coupon for $5 off! That kind of nails it for me, no pun intended.

Alright, Elmo is over, the boys are trying to sleep in the same chair--have you seen the size of Austin and Miles lately? Have you see the size of my chair? This will be interesting. Time for lights out, or lights mostly out.

Happy September!

Summer Break

School's out! The Summer schedule begins. We sleep in, wear jammies until.....well all day unless we have to go out. The kids play together. It's all so much easier. Avon Walk training is over. All we need is for the weather to cooperate and we will be outside as much as possible. The pond is a lighter shade of green, the grass--darker. Cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, strawberries and sunflowers are growing right before our eyes. Hot lunches and quick suppers are the norm. Ahhhhhhhh SUMMER!

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We had a busy start, though. My Avon Walk last Saturday and Sunday went great. We had a few surprises and a few aches and pains, but were all extremely blessed by the whole event. The thing that struck me most, was their presentation of "Every 3 Minutes". This explained that in the US, someone is diagnosed with Breast Cancer, every 3 minutes. It happens randomly as well as inherited. So throughout the weekend, Avon Staff handed out a Pink ribbon every 3 minutes to a walker on the event. That visual impact was hard. It could be me or you, it needs to stop.



Ok, deep breath....moving on. Austin had a hernia repair surgery on Monday. That went well. He is such a trooper. He is not in need of pain meds and I have to keep reminding him to take it easy. Shannon headed out from Sunday-Wednesday with Grandparents to McBain to hang out with cousins. She was thrilled to go and thrilled to be back. I missed her like crazy which is not strange for me, I missed my kids every day between 8 and 3 throughout the school year. Dwayne's the school board president for a year. Apparently he disagreed with me that he was overextended already. He is Superman and makes my head spin with everything he does. He will do very well, but it sort of makes me want to do even less to even things out more.




The kids have already met their summer reading goals. I am so proud. They still want to read and Austin was even happy to do some math worksheets today. It's actually fun when it's not required!

Can you tell that I LOVE SUMMER? I am terrible at schedule keeping, in fact I already forgot about the first summer T.R.I.P. order pickup.

The downside of the Summer Slowdown is that I have more time to realize that we are still waiting to be matched with our daughter. Just venting here......but this shouldn't be so hard. Let's see: There are tons of kids who need a home, there are tons of homes who need a kid. Sounds like basic math to me. Unless you add in 2 governments who require ridiculous reams of redundancy in order to make this happen. Of course, about 1/16th of it is necessary, but seriously do they need to know my underwear size? I know it will be worth it in the end, but it's difficult when you cannot possibly predict the end. All I can do is leave it in God's hands. His timing. That really does help, but so does blowing off a little steam about it all. This goes for all the adoption processes I have experienced up to now, you go in with eyes wide open, standing upright and hopeful, then BAM! you get smacked back with a "not so fast". So it's been a year since we were convicted to add to our family. Only 10 months of actually waiting. It feels like too long.

Here's my joy today. 1--All the Avon walkers got FREE Kenny Chesney tickets for Saturday! WooHoo! and 2--I am off to snuggle with my kids to watch the Tale of Desperaux. Perfect activity for this rainy cold June day.