One tiny step closer...

Chad and I both recieved our letters from CIS for our fingerprinting appointments today! We are scheduled for April 1st...hope this wasn't their idea of a April Fool's joke!

It's a tiny step, but I'm thrilled to have something scheduled to get me one step closer to our next baby!! Please pray that my fingerprints pass the first time. It seems my prints are difficult to read and for Malia and Cole's processes, I've had to go to OKC to have my prints redone. Oh how I would love for them to be processed and approved the FIRST time!!! I've read that cornhuskers oil might to the trick...off to go get some!!

We're On The List!

Yahoo! Chad and I started our adoption process for baby #3 late last August and we can now proudly say, OUR HOMESTUDY IS APPROVED AS OF FEBRURARY 12, 2008 AND WE ARE ON THE LIST!!!!

It's crazy, but it's a true relief to know that we made it this far and now we can settle in and wait. Our agency has told us that we can have up to a 12 month wait for our referral, but things have been moving and we are hoping to know who our next child is by mid to late summer. We'll see. For now we'll be content to wait (I might need help remembering this!).

Our next big step is waiting to hear from CIS to come to Oklahoma City to be fingerprinted. We hope to see this in the next 2-3 weeks.

Cole's weather report...

Our conversation at lunch while Cole watches the noon news today:

Cole: It's gonna rain!

Me: Really? When?

Cole: last night!

Me: Oh..hmmm, that's cool!

Cole is truly fascinated lately with the weather. This morning he asked "why do we need tornados, mommy?" "Do tornados like to eat trees?" Good questions, my boy!

I love three year olds!!!

Fall Fun!

Malia and Cole enjoying a fabulous fall November day!

Halloween Par-tay!!!

Tis the season for some good ol' fashion costume-party-family-fun! My good friend Tracie threw quite the goolish bash this last weekend! I struggled all week trying to find just the right costume...well, the best that you could buy for less than 10 bucks, anyway ;-)!
Chad on the other hand didn't think a thing about it until the day of and he walked away with "Best Costume of the night" award...granted, the only ones who apparently voted were 4 little girls under the age of 8, but hey who can compete with that?! Here are some funny, and scary pictures below! Enjoy!



Here is one of our pumpkin that Chad carved...Pretty impressive if you ask me!

Cole Turns 3!!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Cole!!!!!!!!!!!

We had so much fun celebrating Cole's 3rd birthday! We decided to bite the bullet and go to Chuck E. Cheese...on a Friday night no less! We survived and my sweet boy had a blast!
Below are some pictures of our special day.

WE LOVE YOU, COLE!!!!!!!





Flying high on his big day...

Princesses, Crowns, and stingy mamas...

Boy, O boy, what a day! Today Malia, myself, and Grandma Horton enjoyed the mystery and excitement that is DISNEY. We all loaded up this morning to check out Disney on ice. This was a first for Malia and I, niether one of us had ever been and it was so exciting to be able to share that with her.

Once entering the building, torn ticket stub in hand, Malia blurts out "COTTON CANDY!" Ugh... can we not enter the place without planning out our first snack of the day?! I tried to temper her requests - to no avail. I finally convinced her that we needed to locate our seats and then we'd see about some cotton candy. Once said seats had been located the requests started again "Mom, cotton candy?"...."hello, mom....COTTON CANDY????!!!!" Ok.
I get it, you want cotton candy! About then an all-to-helpful cotton candy dealer swings by so I ask, how much and start reaching for my wallet...then as I glance up I think I hear " $10, mam". SAY WHAT?! I'm sitting there in my chair thinking ok, it's sugar and food coloring, dude. Then he quickly says "you get a crown with it".....uh...ok. I quickly send him away thinking surely I can buy some sugar for less than $10 at the concession right? I promptly exit row G, to 1, make sure we are still in Tulsa and NOT Orlando, Florida and 2, find the chepper cotton candy! I stroll around the corner and ran right into another dealer, YES...success! I see a row of CC missing the $9 crown. I ask, how much and she says with a big ol smile "only $7"....
Wow...OK...I don't know why this came as a big shock. I've been to Seseme street live, I really was not expecting $1 cotton candy, but dude...it's SUGAR AND FOOD COLORING! I went ahead and ponyed up the $7 for the stuff and couldn't wait to hand it over to my sweet girl. Her eyes lit up, they lit up until she asked the question...WHERE'S MY CROWN, MAMA?
UGH........SIGH. I sold out the crown for a lousy $3....but I digress. It was a lovely time and we all really enjoyed the wonder of Disney.

Here are some pictures of our afternoon.

You can tell in this picture Malia's feigning excitment about that bag of cotton candy...