Sugar cookies

My Sister-In-Law alerted me to a wonderful food/recipe site. Ourbestbites.com. It's fabulous. She also tried their sugar cookie recipe and loved and recommended it. Ben and I decided to make them today as it is 96+ degrees outside and we aren't going out until it cools down a tad. All week has been hot and humid...I'm anxious to have this heat wave over. Here is a picture of our creations. We had fun doing them. Ben especially liked the gingerbread men. We'll feed them to the missionaries tonight. My guess is that we won't have many left.

Sensational 4th

We have had a wonderful weekend. That is a nice change compared to the last few weeks. It felt nice. Yesterday we had dinner and watched fireworks with some good friends and today we went to a water-park. Ben had a ball!!!
Thunder Island is about 30 miles from us - not bad - and little kid friendly. The slides were fun for all of us.
I have a terrible sunburn. I forgot that the bathing suit I was wearing has a very open back. I'm feeling thankful for aloe.
I'll post more soon, for now enjoy looking at this cutie pie! He is such a fish, and so brave -he was almost a foot shorter than most of the others on the big slide.
There was a DJ at the park - the music was mixed. He played Ice, Ice, Baby. Joseph and I started fooling around and singing it. Benjamin broke into a rendition of Ice, Ice, Benjamin....He's hilarious!

Gardening

I have been doing quite a bit of work in the garden. I have peas that have needed to be picked and beans that have also needed my attention. I've realized that has been a great blessing. I love being out in the garden with the birds chirping and all the world around is quiet. It has been nice having something that needed my attention and a place to focus my energies. I canned 18 pints of beans yesterday and Joseph shells peas every evening when he gets home from work. Benjamin has been great he rides his tractor all around the yard while I pick.
A year ago I gave a talk in church that included some lessons learned from my garden. What a blessing a garden has been for me. Here are some things I've learned from my garden:
~If you want good things to grow in your garden and in your life you have to plant them there. Tomatoes will not float out of the sky and plant themselves in rows in your garden. Good things take effort.
~You can’t rush a seed.
~It's important to select the right mix for optimal growth. Some plants tend to do better when surrounded by other certain types of plants. Some plant varieties are good are warding off insects (such as marigolds). Surrounding ourselves with good people is critical to our ability to make good decisions. (I am thankful for so many good friends that have been praying for us. I have felt those prayers and am so thankful for those who honestly care about our little family.)
~Weeds will come out of nowhere. Life in a garden is a constant war on weeds. Pres. Eyring said: "Because you are so valuable, some of your trials may be severe. You need never be discouraged or afraid. The way through difficulties has always been prepared for you, and you will find it if you exercise faith."
~All you have to do to loose your garden is to do nothing.

At the risk of sounding bitter I am going to post something that has made me so mad about this whole failed adoption thing. Attorneys. We paid for Kimberly's attorney (as is the custom in private adoptions.) We got a statement of professional services today in the mail and it made me mad all over again. Kim's attorney spent 1 1/2 hours preparing consents and supplemental orders (the real work) for the adoption and 10 hours making or receiving calls or emails and 7 1/2 hours traveling and charged us $3760.19. I take that back; we paid upfront $4500 and they refunded $1,000 so that actual charge was only $3500. There is something sick and wrong with the system. There was a hand written note on our statement asking us to please remember that the adoption tax credit is applicable for failed adoptions. What they don't know is that it takes years to recoup and in our situation if we have the chance to adopt again that we will be well above the governmental limit. I'm disgusted that they would charge us that much for doing so little. LDS family services did so much and they only got our original $1000 home-study fee. I feel better. That was a great rant.

Now back to feeling grateful for my garden.....

Stephanie Nielson

I thought that this was beautiful and expresses my feeling about motherhood and trials so well. Enjoy

Fly a kite

We tried to fly a kite in the field behind our house last night. There wasn't enough wind so we gave up. Ben loved riding his tractor though. Yesterday we went with the Hales to a bounce house. They have 4 boys. Ben was fearless. He climbed and slid and bounced the whole 3 hours and followed all the boys around. I was wishing I had my camera. We were grateful for the chance to spend time with friends and for such a fun diversion.

There's no place like home

We decided to do something fun for Benjamin this week. He loves toy story and so we decorated his room with some of the images from the movie. You should see him when he goes into his room. He makes the rounds and "visits" every character naming them and laughing. I was so pleased with how it turned out. Ben loves Rex. Here are some snap shots of some of the different characters. Slinky, and Hamm, and several of the toy soldiers are also in the room framing his bed and dresser. So cute!

Maine trip

I'm not sure what to write to describe out latest trip to Maine. Things didn't turn out as expected and we are left feeling hurt, disappointed, sad, angry, and a variety of other emotions that I haven't even put into words yet.

We got a call at about 1:45 PM Saturday (6/19) from Brian, the birth-father, telling us that Kimberly had had contractions all night and morning. After conversing with the doctors, they decided to call in the weekend crew to have the C-section that day. He said the Operating Room would be available at 2 PM and it would take about an hour. He asked us to come.

We panicked. We scrambled. We ditched all other plans. We were out of there by 6 PM, which included packing, packing, packing (Boy cloths, girl clothes, Benjamin's clothes and toys and other forms of entertainment packing our clothes), changing our cell phone plan, stopping the mail and paper, Joseph going to the office to turn in a time sheet and get the company laptop to work while away, and our sister-in-law bringing the minivan to us from the farm. We threw everything into the van in some haphazard fashion. (It's amazing what you can get done in 4 hours.)

We expected to get a call a little after 3 PM to tell us whether to bring the boy clothes box or the girl clothes box, but we did not get any such call. Brian had called from home, and was for good reason no longer home. We went anyway. A few hours later, while driving somewhere east of Albany, we decided call the hospital. We actually got hold of Kimberly, and she gave us the news: it's a boy, 8 lbs 15 oz, and
healthy. We were glad to hear it had not been a false alarm, because by then we were 150 miles from home. There had been a delay at the hospital because of some other emergency, and Brian had called our home phone instead of our cell phone. She said "tell Joseph happy father's day."

A kind friend in our ward reserved a room for us in Amesbury, MA, north of Boston, with his frequent-traveler points. We didn't get there until after midnight, and weren't asleep until 2. We were dragging the next morning, but continued onward and arrived in Rockland, Maine in the afternoon. It's hard to entertain a 2-year-old in a hospital nursery, so Joseph took a lot of walks with Ben in the hall while Diane and Kim conversed and admired the baby. Benjamin and Joseph also took a trip to the beach, just down the hill past the sign that said access to shore at own risk. Beaches in Maine are rocky, not sandy, so Benjamin threw rocks into the bay.

When we got back to the room, a lawyer was there with paperwork to give us shared power of attorney for the baby. Kimberly signed it, then went home - yes, home. She hadn't slept much the night before, and wanted to get away from it. The next morning she called and said that she had gone to the hospital at 4 AM, and asked that we not come to the hospital before noon. Uh oh. She wanted to have some family time with the baby and her daughter.

At 11:40 the phone rang. Kimberly told us she had changed her mind and wants to raise the child. We were devastated. We talked to the social worker from LDS Family Services and she advised us there was nothing to do except make sure the hospital revocation was in force so that we weren't responsible for the hospital bills.

We stopped by the hospital to say goodbye. Joseph was gracious and told her thanks for considering us. She said if it was any consolation that she would choose us if she were going to place the baby. (I've never been a fan of the consolation prize)
We needed to leave Maine --We made it to Worcester, MA that night, swam in the pool, slept in, swam in the pool again, and made it home by 4 PM yesterday. The whole experience was barely 72 hours, but seemed like a month.

I don't know how to describe the feeling that is left over, but I do believe in the atonement and that Christ can heal our hearts. Strangely enough even with the grief we somehow feel better off. We are however left wondering about The Plan. For us, it's a different course than we imagined over the last 5 weeks. We wonder what will become of this child and hope that Ben might get to be a big brother someday. He was so cute with the little guy.




Originally I wasn't going to post these, but I had a change of heart. Isn't Ben a cutie?