happy birthday, addy!

today is the birthday of my oldest niece, adelynn. i was at the hospital when she was born and was able to meet her when she was just a few minutes old. today she turned 9. she is this little elementary school super star....not a little baby...or a little toddler.

here is one of my favorites of her from when she was just my little addy.

may 2006

confessions of a super mouse.

i'm already feeling a little weird about the content on this blog.  i need to apologize for all of the mentions of mcgruber.  you would understand though if you were here, with us in our house... and if you could see the skills that he has.

we have tried hard to rid the house of any potential food sources but he just keeps finding his way to the few things we've not put in tupper ware.  did you know, by the way, that mice just eat right through ziplock bags? i didn't.

anyway...i just wanted to share a few of the items that he has feasted on which i am sure has led to his impressive inability to be captured. so, in no particular order....

• fiber one poptarts
• doggy dental chews
• homemade wheat bread
• rhodie's "rejuvenate" tablets (for her arthritis) 

i highly encourage you to mcgruber proof any of these items if they are in your home.  

the fight for wavy.

yesterday i got one of the most anticipated and most wonderful phone calls i have ever had.  it was one of my very best friends, molly, telling me that she and her family had won their appeal and that they would continue to parent their beautiful baby girl.

wavy was born in june 2008 and has been with matt, molly and her sister harper since that time. 2 months after coming home from the hospital, the adoption was contested by the birth father. there was a grueling legal battle, during which the birth father proved what was already suspected -- that he was unfit to parent.

the problem was that the best interest of the child wasn't a factor in this type of case and my friends were repeatedly told that the outcome looked bleak for them... but, after many months and several court dates, my dear friends won their case last march, against all odds. god is good.

unfortunately, the birth father appealed, making an already devastating legal nightmare even more unbearable. during this time, wavy continued to grow and my friends continued to be amazing parents to her and her sister.    life went on... and they had faith...and they tried their best not to give way to fear that their daughter would be taken from them.

the appeal date was set after months of waiting and the hearing took place this past november.  from then on, every friday has been met with a mixture of anxiety and hope- friday is decision day. after weeks and weeks, the ruling finally came.

wavy will stay where she belongs. where god obviously placed her.  with a family that was designed for her. with all of the hopes and possibilities and dreams that she deserves. i have never cried so joyously --- not even the first time they won!

i really believe it is over...and their lives are just beginning. i am so blessed to be a part of their incredible lives.

i haven't gotten to wrap my arms around them yet, which is sad considering they live right around the corner.... but i will. and i can't wait, even though i know it will just start the waterworks all over again.

here is a recent picture of wavy that i stole from their blog...without their permission..hope they don't mind!

mcgruber.

i hate to admit this...but we have a mouse in our house. i don't know where he came from. i don't know if he'll ever leave. but, he is one smart little guy, that's for damn sure.

stephen and i have traps around every corner. poison, sticky traps, snappy traps...he gets around them all. i'm half convinced that rhodie and dr. mookie are helping him survive. i believe they are feeding him pellets of dog food and giving him a heads up about the traps. what other explanation could there be?

last night i was telling my friend christie how he eludes our traps. maybe it was our over indulgence in idaho nachos and big beer, but we were a bit loopy. we named the mouse mcgruber and brainstormed clever ways to capture the little bastard. so far, no luck.

i will gladly take your suggestions on how capture this mighty mouse. the idea on the table now is courtesy of my father... sitting with a rifle and waiting for mcgruber to show his face.

please don't make me do that.

growing up.

for more than a decade, i have been experiencing waves of friends getting married, having babies, travelling the world, and changing lives.  for a long time, i felt left in the dust.  despite my own travels and being surrounded by people who i loved deeply and who loved me just as much, it took a bit for me to identify the one and enter into a real adult relationship.

one of my closest friends, justin w., shared a similar fate.  he just couldn't seem to get it right.  he did incredible things, he traveled to far away places, and he impacted everyone he encountered but he didn't have a lot of luck with girls.  until he met autumn....

justin is one of the most genuine people who i have ever had the privilege of knowing. we don't always see eye to eye on things and he isn't the one i typically run to when i need advice, though for years he mailed me unwanted self-help books. he is loyal and real and fairly constant and i know that he will always be a part of my life.

last weekend, stephen and i road tripped to texas to watch him marry his other half.  i'm so glad i finally met autumn and saw for myself how happy they are together.  it was fun to celebrate with them and i  also loved getting to reunite with other old friends!

congratulations justin and autum. i love you guys very much and i am having visions of joint family vacations in the future. thank you for allowing me and stephen to be a part of your very special celebration.

justin, we are really growing up.

in the kitchen.

one of my resolutions for 2010 is to eat out less and cook more at home... especially since we just got so much new stuff for the kitchen as wedding and shower gifts.  so far i'm off to a rocky start but i'm blaming it on the unusually cold weather we've been having in kansas... it has either stranded me at home and prevented me from getting to the store or zapped me of all my energy. it is warming up.... it was a whopping 30 degrees today... i'll be on my way to cooking again soon. one thing we have been doing is using our new bread maker. it is insanely easy to make a delicious loaf of bread. i can't wait to try our more recipes.  here are a couple of pictures from the honey wheat loaf stephen and i made last weekend. 

sister meeting.

i am the youngest of three girls. the baby. when we were growing up our oldest sister, kelly, would call "sister meetings." i don't really remember what went on in these meetings other than 90% of the time kel was in the bathroom when she would call them. i think she mainly wanted liss and i there to amuse her. that isn't important. what is important is that we got to have a sister meeting between christmas and new years, before liss flew back to california. we spent a few hours at granite city brewery eating, drinking, and laughing. i love my sisters.

our reception.

in november, we celebrated our recent marriage with friends and family at boulevard brewing company.  it was a wonderful night with wonderful people.

thank you to boulevard for taking such great care of us and for making such great beer! thank you  to olive events catering for the amazingly delicious food and for supporting local farmers.  thank you to say cheeze photobooth for doing what you do.  thank you to whole foods for delicious cupcakes and to costco for beautiful flowers. thank you to joe for taking beautiful pictures.

and most of all, thank you to everyone who came and supported us as we start this new adventure together. we love you very, very much.

photos from family dinner

while liss was in town visiting from CA for the holidays, she wanted to go to the plaza to see the lights. it was too cold to spend time walking around but we did go to bucca di beppo for a family dinner.

allen and steve are so goofy together. i think allen is very, very happy to have another man (minus grandpa and the boys) in the family.

a weird but wonderful christmas.

for most of my life, i have gone to st. louis for christmas. this was the first time in.... i don't know how many years... that i stayed in kc.  stephen and i had a pretty full schedule planned... christmas eve at my sister's house with my immediate family, christmas morning at his parent's house with his immediate family, and then driving to st. louis for christmas dinner at my "aunt" carol's house where we would see everyone else.

on christmas eve it started raining... then sleeting... then snowing. and it just didn't stop! we had our christmas that night as planned and then decided to trek home.  wow, that was a scary drive! the next morning we were snowed in. it was so bizarre. we did dig ourselves out so we could go to steve's parents house, even though it was about 2-3 hours later than we planned. 

christmas is usually such a hectic time where i just never stop and this year, while it was really strange not seeing my family in st. louis, it was nice just to relax! the following day my brother-in-law picked me up and i met the rest of the family for some sledding. i did plan to go down the hill but between pushing the kids down the hill and trying to take pictures, i just never made it.  

that weekend there were s'mores and then pizza and a lot of wii and family time. then i had the reality of going back to work for 2 days and (thankfully) was on vacation the remainder of last week! 

that day in october.

i woke myself up early on the morning of october 24, 2009 and wandered around our cabin in the woods. i listened to the sound of the stream rushing by. the rain had stopped. the sky was clearing.  it was my wedding day. there isn't much to say about this day other than it was perfect. i'll let the pictures do the talking.

the wedding kiss

with my HUSBAND

with our best dog and dog of honor

with my mom and sisters

with my dad and sisters

my new family

with my nieces and nephews 

it was a seriously beautiful day

and we were married. 

and finally....

our family (including wedding party and guests!)

our pre-wedding story.

for any of you who aren't yet familiar, i wanted to share the story of the days leading up to our wedding day. we were married on october 24, 2009 in maggie valley, nc.  we had never been to maggie valley before but had vacationed in hot springs, nc which was nearby.

we started our drive to nc the wednesday before and spent the night in nashville, tn as we always do on our way there... the sheraton music city is a very nice pet friendly hotel that is right on the way. stephen wasn't feeling that great and he and the dogs crashed pretty early but i stayed up with friends who were nice enough to come to the hotel to visit with me.

the next morning, thursday, steve still wasn't himself. he had some weird things happen in the weeks leading up to the trip but had been to see his regular doctor and been to the minute clinic at cvs and had been given a clean bill of a health. i asked if he wanted to go to a walk-in clinic in nashville but he refused. we started out on the next leg of our trip which would take us to maggie valley.

steve only drove for a short time before he asked me to take over. he was having some sharp pain in his abdomen and in his back and was having a hard time getting comfortable.  as we rounded curvy roads and went through tunnels and trees he began moving around in his seat. he unbuckled his seatbelt and looked as if he might jump out the window.

he was muttering things and i tried talking to him to find out what he needed and when he stopped responding, that is when i got really worried. i had to get him to talk so i pulled off the highway. he was upset because there was no hospital... it was a white water rafting exit. before i could even pull over to the side of the road, he was out of the car pacing back and forth. soon after that, he was curled up in fetal position on the shoulder. i waved down a car passing by (there weren't many!) and to my surprise, there was a nurse inside. she and her husband pulled over and talked with us about steve's symptoms. almost immediately, they determined he had a kidney stone and encouraged us to go to the ER. they believed the nearest hospital would be in asheville, nc (we were still in tn at the time) and guessed that was about an hour away.

steve got into the back seat where he could lay down and rhodie and dr. mookie got up front with me. we started driving. i used sprint gps (thank god for technology) and learned there was a hospital closer than we thought  in waynseville, nc. as i was nearing that exit i connected with my sister via phone. i'd been trying to call our families but a cell phone signal is hard to come by in the mountains! i was happy to have someone else know what was going on besides me, the dogs, and my quiet, pain stricken passenger in the back seat.

we made it to haywood county regional medical center and i dropped stephen at the er. he was there about 5 hours or so. somewhere during that time period i had my dad come to the hospital to drive me and the dogs to our cabin (which we hadn't checked into yet) and stephen's dad came to sit with him. i was still getting adjusted to my surroundings when he showed up at the cabin with a funnel and some pain killers. he was going to have to pass that kidney stone on his own time.

i settled in for a bath while he relaxed. only his relaxation didn't last very long. we (mostly he) had a long night... about every 10 or 15 minutes he was repositioning himself, trying to get comfortable, feeling nauseous...you name it! i began having visions of our wedding day which was supposed to be outdoors in the wooded cove and imagined we'd be at stephen's bedside with him vomiting into a trash can as we said our vows.

thankfully, in the wee hours of the morning, he passed that sucker. immediately he seemed more peaceful, so much happier, and (nearly) pain free. it was friday, it was pouring down rain, we were supposed to be getting married the following morning. aaaaaah! after getting a few hours of sleep, we were up. the rain was still coming down but we had to get our marriage license. time was running out.

we made it to the register of deeds in a neighboring town (not too far from the hospital!) and the grocery store. because of the rain, we cancelled the rehearsal. instead, our minister (and new friend) met us on our front porch and went over what the ceremony would look like. because of exhaustion, we cancelled the rehearsal dinner. instead, we both spent quiet time at our families cabins. it was needed... we were getting married the next day! and that is a story for another post.

first, here is a picture of steve in the er... don't worry, i wasn't being cruel. he asked me to capture this on film.

back to the beginning again.

my first blog was in 2005. i started off strong and over the past five years i have suffered a miserable defeat. in 2010, i am committing to blog again. and really, truly committing this time.

on the first day of this new decade, i took down my former blogs. they were just there taunting me, reminding me of the blogger i used to be. it is time for a fresh start... time to document all of the changes in my life.

2009 was a very full year for me. i turned 30 in may, and in october, i married my favorite person. he doesn't get blogs. he made a grumbling sound when i told him i was starting a one up again...but, i think he'll be grateful down the road to have a place to share news about our family, photos of our kids (there are none to speak of yet - don't worry, you didn't miss an announcement), etc.

here goes nothing!