A day for Jacob

 With the impending changes ahead, we thought it would be fun for Jacob to have a day for him.  We had planned a trip to the Sioux Falls Zoo (Great Plains Zoo I think is it's real name).  If you have been following the weather for the mid-west, you know the forecast for today...catastrophic I believe was a word used to describe the forecast.  That is not a word I would like to hear.  So we debated about leaving town or not today.  We figured we could get up early, leave the house before 8 and arrive when the zoo opened that we would be able to be back home in time before any weather threat set in.   Also, at this point, I was very glad that we had not planned a trip to Omaha - which their weather seems to be a bit more severe than ours at the time being.

 We were able to go and have an enjoyable morning at the zoo.  I don't know if I have seen a peacock with it's wings spread before!  This bird was so beautiful!  It was quite the trick, good thing it wasn't a windy day, because it seemed like quite a feat to keep its balance.

 The petting zoo was fun, Jacob loved getting in the goats faces!

 Isn't this so sweet?!  :)

 Jacob testing out some rhino ears.

 Jacob found this "reptile" and quickly became 'friends' with it.  It was very sweet.  I love the stories that he creates.

 He was so excited to see the tigers!  He was so adamant telling two other boys (who were maybe 7-9 years old) how he was going to ride on a tiger.  I'm surprised these boys put up with his story!  

Checking out a T-Rex on the wall.  Pretty proud and excited!

 

And then, we saw the robotic T-Rex...NOT as excited.  He liked the first couple displays that we saw, but as we were approaching the T-Rex his grip definitely tightened on my hand, his knees buckled and he did not want to get near it!  Once we were in the car later he explained that he did not like the T-Rex because he was afraid it would eat him.  Even though he knows theropods eat herbivores.

But he liked the sauropods!  They were the "nice" dinosaurs who are "herbivores", so they wouldn't eat him. :)

 We had fun pretending to be paleontologists, brushing off the bones.

 We had a very exciting day!

It was good to go away and be back home at a good time too.  We are just getting some good rain showers right now (much needed might I add!)  We are praying for our family and friends who are located in areas that are PDS - "Particularly Dangerous Situation" areas.  The Lord is good.  

Baby update:  35 1/2 weeks.  Mom & baby are growing and healthy.  No signs of labor.  At this point things seem good.  We are continuing to prepare for baby.  Today Jacob said, "I'm lonely without my Simba".  (what he calls his baby)  "I can't wait for Simba, cause we'll ask him to be here and he'll have to come."  By the way, we are NOT naming our child Simba! :)  Jacob is calling him that, and may still continue?  Not sure.  We have not told him the potential name - no one knows except Nate and I, so you won't be able to drag it out of him...or us.  

We are also quite close to our financial commitment towards the adoption.  We have been truly blessed by the gifts we have received towards this child.  We knew this was God's plan for our family to grow through adoption, and when faced with the huge mountain of adoption expenses it seemed daunting.  But we knew God would provide.  We are seeing that, almost a year (April 16, 2011) after making the decision to adopt again His faithfulness continuing.  We feel honored that others are hearing God's calling in our lives to adopt and the financial burden being lifted.  Thank you!  

Easter's on it's way

Jacob had homework for nursery school this week.  He had to decorate a paper egg in some way and return it to school on Tuesday.  He decided he wanted to paint and glitter it.  He had a lot of fun "swirling the colors to make it look pretty."

On the topic of Easter, his Sunday School lesson focused on Easter this past Sunday.  He listened quite well, because mid-afternoon he started reciting what he had heard.  Most things he was pretty accurate one, except that Jesus rose from the dead on Saturday morning :).  He has requested the Easter Bible story several times this week already because he wants to know how Jesus died.

On a whole different topic, he says that we need to get him a 3 year old, he needs a 3 year old to play with.  I'm just guessing that this is not going to get better when baby comes.

Our Friday evening

We had an enjoyable evening at the swimming pool and getting some tasty ice cream, too!  We also made a Wal-Mart trip, purchasing our first big box of diapers.  :)  7 weeks to go til due date.  What on earth do people do at 33 weeks to prepare their home/life etc. for baby?  I feel like a fish out of water.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can do too much until our basement is back in order.  Tomorrow the contractor is suppose to come and begin the rebuilding of some stuff, so it seems like we are starting that road.  Hopefully in 2 weeks or less our life will be "back to normal", as much as it can be, right?!  At least we won't be living with boxes and stuff EVERYWHERE - I hope!

Tip Night Success!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  We had a successful night at the ranch on Monday night because of so many people!  The people that we recruited to help us at the ranch, they were amazing!!!  Then, the people who came to support us, they were amazing!!!  Then, the people who came to the ranch, because, well, they just wanted pizza and had no clue what a tip night was/what was going on...people that God definitely placed there, we heard stories of adoptions (one lady was in the area from California back in Iowa for her dads funeral, she was adopted and had connections to one of Nate's college roommates, Nate's Uncle Dave in Michigan, and multiple other "Dutch Bingo's")...they were amazing!!!  Then, did you know we still have people telling us, "Hey, we couldn't make it Monday night, but we'd like to contribute, can you tell us how to do that"...uh, yup!  Sure thing!  God is good, we have trusted Him throughout this whole journey that He would provide for this adoption.  He is.  His faithfulness continues.  So, to all people who have helped us along the way, by either running hundreds of miles to train for a marathon, prayed for us, gave financially, gave us hugs when the going got tough, asked us about our adoption journey, served pizza, cared for Jacob during our many visits with our social worker...THANK YOU!  Thank you for giving us hope and finding confidence in His plan for our family.  We hope to be able to some day pay it forward to other families adopting.

We cannot wait to meet our bundle of joy!  We are so thrilled to meet him, kiss him, snuggle him and not let go!  Please pray him home with us!

Tip Night TONIGHT!

Sheldon Pizza Ranch

5-7:30

tip night to benefit our adoption

We are so excited for these days again! :)

remember this little fella?

The bad and the good

The opening song for the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire" starts out like this, Now this is the story all about how, my life got flipped, turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute just sit right there...you're welcome :)  Because now, you're singing it in your mind.

The past couple weeks have literally felt like our life being flipped, turned upside down.  Below is a picture of the water we had from a pipe the sprung a leak 3 1/2 weeks ago.  Seriously, I really hope I don't have to deal with something like this again in my basement.  All of our belongings that resided in the basement are now jam packed into our bedroom, living room, entry way, laundry room and garage.  I don't feel like we have a lot of "stuff", especially because of the amount of "stuff" that we have purged over the last several years.  We don't have a lot of storage in our house...we used our basement for that and now...well...sigh.

The good news is that demolition has taken place (I think) and now we wait for materials to come in.  Today the carpet man came...he was all about to let us have his samples for days...we were all about making a decision and getting stuff ordered.  He was here for 45 minutes, pretty good I'd say.  I just hope the stuff we picked is in our  the insurance budget - because our budget is a big fat zero!  We'll find out tomorrow.  In all seriousness though, through the junk of dealing with this disaster, we have felt the presence of God.  Once the shock wore off and we got the appropriate people here, we felt God put specific people in our path.  We have felt blown away by the helpfulness of several companies and pure disbelief that there are 'good' people in the world who are looking out for their customers, working for them and getting them the best deals possible.

Enough about all of that...

A few days before our disaster we had our last (I hope) snowstorm of the year.  Our last little snow pile melted away today, as it was unseasonably WARM!  I'm not sure what the high was, 70ish, fabulous!  I'm sure Jacob will miss playing in the snow, having snowball fights and riding his scooter in the snow.  I can only imagine how much he'll grow between now and next winter!  

3 1/2 years old.  Kind of.  Jacob doesn't have a half birthday, but we celebrated it anyway.  During January there were several kids in his class at school who celebrated their half birthday.  He was so excited for his half birthday and had such great expectations...we didn't do anything really, other than blow out a candle and sing happy half birthday to him!  :)  Oh, and we celebrated it on leap day.

And then the next day, he was sick.  Seriously!  Actually, the night before was bad.  He was coughing and crying and out of control, the poor child couldn't relax.  It was quite scary to hear the sound of him.  We did a lot of cuddling and reading stories and wiping noses. Oh, the nose.  I will keep the gross details to myself!  We are thankful he is back to his normal self.  Unfortunately, mom and dad caught a bit of something too shortly after that.  Tis the season, right?

Go fly a kite.  Actually, Jacob asked to fly his kite today.  It was a perfect day for it.  In fact, it was so perfect that even Nate got excited...you may have to reference a past blog about this...but he got so excited about flying the kite really high that the string broke!!!  It was hilarious, but Jacob did not like it!  He was so concentrated on watching the kite soar higher, he didn't realized how much string he didn't have left.  I was down wind though and as the string was floating past, I was able to step on the string.  Phew!  Good thing the string was long!  After some retying we were back in business.

We spent hours outside today, it was so great!  Nate worked different hours today, so we were able to enjoy a beautiful afternoon together.  Jacob wanted to eat a snack outside under his umbrella.  He was so concerned about the sun and getting a sunburn, so he needed shade and also mosquitoes.  He continues to tell me that in the summer, he's not going outside because of the mosquitoes and bees.  We did however see a butterfly (moth?) and a regular ole fly. He was intrigued by those.  I'm excited for the grass to turn green.  I noticed today tulips poking out of the ground and the irises are coming out further as well.  Makes me wonder if the OC will have a stem fest this year.  Maybe the OC tulips aren't coming out yet like mine. 

A few quick stats at 3 1/2:
Jacob is 39 inches tall and he weighs roughly 32 lbs.  He hardly wore 3T clothes.  I am now into buying basically 4T for jeans, tops can vary on brand 3/4 T.

He still loves cheese, chocolate milk and eats most things - not broccoli (even with cheese!)

Has memorized a few bible verses that we are working with him on - Joshua 24:15 - As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord and Be kind to one another and build each other up  1 Thessalonians 5:11.  Knows most of Create in my a pure heart, O God.  And renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Psalm 51:10.  I have a collection of verses called ABC scriptures to memorize with your children that I have put together on a ring.  Jacob has an incredible memory, so we're trying to hide the Word of God in his precious heart. :)

This was also heard in our house just today:  Nate reads: "This poor man lying on the ground was going on a trip, and all the sudden some men came and took away his money and some of his clothes and hurt him and ran away."
Jacob says: "Hey, this is the story of the Good Samaritan!"  We sat amazed...no where were those words in our conversation today!
He talks a lot about adoption lately as well.  That he is adopted, his brother is going to be adopted (that mommy and daddy are adopting him, but so is HE!), and about how we adopted our cats.

He is very interested in letters and letter sounds.  While reading, we'll say the sounds of letters/words and he can blend them together to get the word.  We have been making an effort to buy/borrow very simple beginning reading texts that he reads part of with us.  So cool to see him learning and reading in this way.

Interests are cars, lions, sharks, trains.  He makes up his own stories while playing...one day, on the island of Sodor, Bill was looking for his freight cars...and goes on and on.

Pizza Ranch Tip Night

Hi!

It's been awhile since the last blog post, but without going into too much detail our world has been turned upside down.  Our basement belongings are currently residing in our living room, bedroom, laundry room, garage, and wherever else we I could squeeze stuff.  I made nearly a thousand trips up our stairs on Sunday afternoon.  A pipe sprung a leak almost 2 weeks ago.  Lovely, right?!  The last thing on our minds is to sit down at the computer, read/respond to email, blog, etc.  Nate returned less than 24 hours ago from a business trip to Texas for a conference to help him be even awesomer (that IS a word!) at his job and I even gave him an idea of a way to be effective with his trainees while talking on the phone one night.  Jacob and I were SO ready to have him home again and try to get life back to normal.  (Not even sure if that will be possible before baby comes!)

As we prepare for May 15 to arrive (give or take a week or two) and mainly the arrival of bundle number 2, we are faced with the reality that there are adoption fees that go along with this and through the generosity of so many we are inching closer to the final amount.  We figure we are about 75% of the way to covering all of the fees!   In light of this, we invite you to the Sheldon Pizza Ranch for a tip night to help cover adoption expenses.

Monday, March 19

Sheldon Pizza Ranch

5:00-7:30

Pizza Ranch will donate 10% of the sales plus all tips to our adoption.  We invite you to come get some good food and celebrate a good cause!  We look forward to seeing you!