Thanksgiving and Black Friday

So this year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. I should be more correct...we hosted Thanksgiving on the Saturday after Thanksgiving b/c my brother and his wife attend her families annual family get together on Turkey Day, and my mom worked the day after, so we had the day after the day after Thanksgiving :). It was perfect, but busy, so there's only two pictures. Cayleigh smiling at all the food, and a carrot cake I made that was very pretty but never eaten b/c there we also six home-made pies to choose from. For dinner we had all the fixins....Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, swt. potatoe casserole, green bean casserole (courtesy of our friends Whitney and TJ), corn, collard greens (courtesy of my mom!), crescents and two loaves of homemade bread (I'm talking hand-kneaded here folks, yummy!). Oh, and gravy. We ate ourselves into a comma...literally for my father who took up a whole couch laying on it asleep, LOL!

I later ate the carrot cake and it really was delicious...I had with some sweet potatoe pie :)

I also did black friday this year with my dear friend Whitney, and one of her friends Lisa. I hope Lisa doesn't think poorly of me; I met her for the first time at 3:00am on our way to Old Navy and I'm not exactly what one would call a morning person. I did better after our 4:40AM run for coffee. So much better in fact, that when driving through the Target parking lot pointing and laughing at the people standing in the cold without deliciously warm coffee, I fully supported Whitney's excited proclamation that she was going to take pictures of the people like they were a zoo exhibit! So caught up in the moment was I that I felt the need to capture the moment of her capturing the moment...about 4 feet away from the people we were making fun of! Fortunately everybody seemed to groggy to notice (much) our bold-faced fun at their expense, and we made it in and out of Target alive. :)

Whitney, taking the picture of the line...with the flash on so that NO ONE could ignore it.

Still taking pictures....

Adjusting the flash to get the "perfect shot"

She Stands!

Cayleigh has been standing for about a month now! I'm so proud of my baby girl!


Standing!

About to be distracted away from standing, lol!

Noooo Mommy!!!! You have coooooties!!

She has conquered the rainforest....almost. :)

Playing with the tiger .

Being tickled!

Crazy girl was attempting to fit the entire play set in her mouth!

Recovering from the fall...you can see she's devastated!

And a new era begins.....

I find her like this pretty much after every nap time and first thing in the morning. Either this, or I find her gnawing on the crib like a rabid animal and banging the rails with her hands making "music". Of course, when caught in the middle of it, she simply turns her head and flashes one of those melting smiles at me as if to say, "What mommy? I thought that my crib was meant for this! What's that you say? Sleep? But this is so much more fun!" :) Gotta love her!

A favorite activity: Fingerpainting with food coloring and rice cereal. She's gotten so into it now that it's more like "whole body" painting, so I strip her down to her diaper and let her at it! She has SO much fun!

See? Hog Heaven!

Rice Cereal Angels! Kind of like snow angels, but much, much messier!

Mommy and Daddy married 3 years :)

Mmmmm, Homemade apple pie...I thought hearts would be cute!

3 years!!! Yay! :)

Here's a couple pics of Phil and I from our 3 year anniversary in July. Not nearly as fun as the Cayleigh pics, but it's nice to see the parents faces every now and again :)

Cayleigh Pics (at last!) and Big News :)

So here's some long awaited pictures of Cayleigh! I can not believe how much she has grown up in the past few months. She is now 7 and 1/2 months old, standing in her crib, crawling, sitting up, eating big girl food, and talking all the time! Enjoy the pics! :)


I've got the bird mommy!

Look at those beautiful blues!

Finger Painting Fun! (rice cereal and food coloring)

I'm a monkey! OO OO Ah!

So Sweet!

I feed myself mommy!

You can't strap me down!!

Fingerpainting fun with the spoon!

See?! I told you I feed myself Mommy!

Weeeee! I LOVE to swing!!!

Tee-hee! I'm so cute shopping with Mommy!

*Burp* Excuse me Daddy!

Fun in the Sun!

Me? Playing? Nooo, I was sleeping, I promise!

So that's our little Cayleigh Joan! Just a big bundle of energy and giggles :) Now for the big news part of the post. Phil and I have officially decided after lots of prayer to adopt our next child. It will cost about $20,000, so hopefully by February of 2011 we'll have the money saved up to start the process! :) We are so excited; we'll be hopefully adopting a boy from Odessa, Ukraine around the age of 7-9 years old. It's something that God has laid on my heart since meeting Michelle, a missionary at the Odessa orphanage, about 4 years ago. We always thought that we would be too young to adopt, but as it turns out, the legal age to be eligible for adoption is 21 and one parents at least 15 years older than the child. This would make up eligible to adopt a 13 year old, but we're shooting for the younger age range mentioned above. With this news, Phil and I started praying about it alot....I knew from the start that God wanted us to do this, and even though God didn't lay it Phillips heart the same way He did on mine, Phillip has recognized that we were really being called to towards this and has since been supportive and assertive towards making a plan to bring our boy home. It will be a long road filled with alot of challenges (even after we have our son home!) so support from our friends and family is crucial. We know this will be difficult, more difficult than we can really grasp at this point, but neither one of us believe that Jesus whispered under His breath after saying "Pick up your cross and follow Me"..."only so long as it is convenient and comfortable." We're putting ourselves out there with faith that we are doing what God wants us to do and we know that God can do extraordinary things with ordinary people like Phil and I so long as we look to Him for constant guidance and obey what He tells us. Please pray for us on our journey....I mostly need patience while we put aside our pennies before we can start the process officially...Phillip I'm sure needs courage! It's a scary thing to do, but we're both really looking forward to everything God has in store for us!

Big Night Out and Rolling!

Here's a few pics of Cayeigh out for a family night dinner with Mommy and Daddy at Outback, and then some of her "shakin' her money maker" with me :). There's also a very exciting video of her rolling, which she did for the first time last thursday at her 2 month wellness check! My baby girl is SO smart! :)

Playing with Daddy :)

Cayleigh had the biggest smile on her face last night when she was playing with Daddy! She also looks adorable in her cute summer time outfit....but let's face it, she looks adorable in anything!