Big News and Soccer

UPDATE: Mike popped the question today. I picked up the ring from the jewelers (it was resized). I took it off of my finger so he could look at it under the microscope and when he put it back on he got on one knee and asked, "Will you marry me?" My response, "Yes" (one day)....heeheee. I love this man!

Wow, what an exciting week we have had.

First I would like to post the sad news of the people who have been laid off from Covidien. I feel so bad for these people and know that I was probably close to the lay off as I have 18 years in the company. Many people that were cut had been there longer and close to that time. I feel blessed to have not been one to be cut. I swear I will not complain about it again. It is all beyond my control and I am thankful to have a good job with good benefits. I just hope I can stay on a night shift schedule so I can have the time to homeschool my boys the way I want to do it. Whatever happens we will work through it. My cousin was one who was laid off. My heart goes out to all laid off that they can quickly find new, good, if not better, jobs.

Okay, now the good news. Mike and I are now engaged. Well, I say engaged because he gave me the big diamond ring, however, he never really asked the question, "Will you marry me?" The joke is I just got the big ring and am going to call him fiance because it sounds better than boyfriend. He gave me the ring before we went to dinner with his coworker Bill and his wife Ellen. We went to a fabulous Japanese Hibachi Restaruant. It was great! The ring is now at the jewelers getting resized. I can't wait to wear it on the correct finger. Over the weekend I had to wear it on my index finger.

The fine dining establishment we went to. They have a great lunch buffet....but dinner was fantastic.

Here we are, the happy couple. This is truly the love of mylife. He supports me in everything I do and is not afraid to tell me it is a bad idea. He keeps me strong when things are looking grim. Even if we never got engaged or never actually get married, he is the one I want to be with until the day I die.

Our chef. I was not overly impressed with his fanciness as he didn't do all the food flipping and creativity stuff the others were doing. However, the food was cooked to perfection.
Mike picked out a beautiful ring. I always said I don't want to pick out my own engagement ring. It should be a surprise....and a surprise it was.


Last weekend was also Nico's first soccer game of the season. He and his team played so well for being together for the first time. They were passing the ball and not always playing mob ball. Nico scored two goals and ran his little tush off.

Nico always has a smile on his face. Even on some of the pictures where he is down on the ground, he is smiling. If I had a dollar for everytime someone told me how he smiles all the time, I would be rich.Nico has his game face on. No, not a smile yet, it is the look of "I'm ready, bring it on!"

Nico is one of the smallest on the team, but always seems to keep up running with the big guys. Now I know why....look at that stride.
Here he is making one of his goals. This is the first time I ever captured a picture of him scoring. However, this time I took about 70 pictures. I was snapping the whole game.

Just Hanging Out - A Quick Post

This has been a week of just hanging out at home. Last Friday my friend Melissa and her fiance, Nate, came over for some BBQ. Melissa and I tie-dyed shirts with the boys while the big boys went flying and taking pictures with a tilt lens Nate was trying out. It was a lot of fun. I took pictures of us creating them, but still need to photograph the finished products. My family and I are going to wear our matching shirts in Disney during one of our days there. My sister is also making us all matching shirts to wear. It makes it much easier to find your family when you can look at what you are wearing and remember what color shirt to look for.

Below are some random photos of the kids. I was playing around on Lightroom adjusting some photos and thought I would share. Brian was here on Friday and Saturday, but I didn't get any real good pictures of him. I need to do a Senior Photo Shoot with him this fall.

Here is my baby doll, Luca. I captured this photo in Tan-Tar-A. He was looking over the back of a chair. The best photos are the ones caught off guard and not posed.

Nico went to the neighbors house last week and did some fishing. He caught two huge catfish. Although he refused to eat them, he let Daddy and I eat them (and clean them). They were quite tasty. This is one of the photos. I like the effect of it. He was so proud of himself (as can be seen by the smile!)

I liked the portrait picture I had of Luca and needed one of Nico. We attempted to take one outside. He kept complaining about the sun and this is the best I was able to get. He is adorable no matter what pose he has. This will go in his school scrapbook as his 3rd grade picture. I can't believe he is going to be 8 in another month!

Friend Award

Sorry Audrey, http://acountrymomma.blogspot.com/, for not getting on this sooner. Audrey, a new blog follower, has given me "The Loyal Friend Award". I need to pass on this award. I don't have many followers, but the ones I have I am thankful for. I think I have a lot more people reading my blog, they just don't post messages. I wish they did. I love reading and following everyone's blog.

My friend awards go to:

Melissa - http://www.mbenyr.blogspot.com/- my good friend at work and out of work. We have a great time together. She makes my work nights bearable and our days off together fun (on those occasions we get to hang out together).

Vanessa- http://www.bayoandvane.blogspot.com/ - this is a wonderful couple who are doctors in the Dominican Republic. I love following the wonderful things they are doing and the dedication they have.

Leslie - http://www.guatmama-leslie.blogspot.com/ - she is a very funny mom with a beautiful daughter from Guatemala who I recently met through FB.

Thank you to my new and old friends.

Photos

The children! Aren't they all adorable!

Two brothers; best buddies. My boys Nico and Luca
Luca loves the water.
Nico and Luca hanging with some new friends: Ethan, Jacob, and Tanner
Cheesy smile!
Two spoiled Guat babies.
We were so excited to get eggs on the first day.
The chicken coop. We are going to extend the roaming area for them once we get the fencing from our other house. This was going to be our school house....but the chickens sure seem to like it.
Our newest additions. The two roosters are the all white silky and the large black and white one on the right. (Devastator and Black Out)
Here's Nico...happy with his new pets. Yep, they are pets and will not be eaten for dinner. We will be eating the eggs though. Thanks girls!
From California surfer boy to Troy, MO country boy. You should see him driving my tractor!

Another Busy Weekend

I have a lot of blog catching up to do this week. I am so far behind on reading all the blogs I follow.

This last week for us was busy, busy. After coming home from WI, we spent a day getting our out building (which was to be the schoolhouse), turned into a chicken coop. We went to pick up the chickens on Wednesday thinking we were only going to get 3 or 4 hens but when we got there she asked if we wanted them all. We were like sure, they're free, why not? Well, we found out there were 8 hens and 2 roosters. I didn't really want roosters, but we couldn't tell her no as they were free. They had been in their coop all day until we got there. Her two older boys were trying to get a system down to get one out of the coop at a time to load in the dog cage we had brought, when three chickens 'flew the coop'. It was fun watching them trying to catch these last three chickens as they went under the coop. They had to be bribed out with goodies. Eventually they were all caught and brought to their new home. We were curious to see how they would adjust and if they would start laying right away.....well, Thursday we ended up with 4 eggs. We were excited. Everyday since then we have gotten on average 3 eggs. I know they are not all laying yet, so we are anxious to see what happens when they all get going. My mom has already agreed to buy eggs off of us. I can't wait to get home tomorrow morning and have some for breakfast!

Nico and I have named all the chickens. Nico named the roosters Devastator and BlackOut (yep, Transformers names). I love it! We also have Penny, Millie, Chloe (the escape artist, but she flies back in), Marsha, Jan, and Cindy (these are our 3 reds), Bella and one left unnamed. Mike is suppose to name her, but keeps coming up with stupid names.

On Thursday, Nico, Luca, and I left for Tan-Tar-A resort on the Lake of the Ozarks. It was the MOGUAT weekend. This is a get together of families from Missouri and extended areas that have adopted children from Guatemala. It was so great to see so many families; some even came from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas. We had a great turnout. Nico had a blast this year playing with the kids his age and older. Luca pretty much stuck to mom, but some of the older girls just loved him and played with him on the couple of evenings when we had big get togethers.

We spent 2 full days out in the sun. The boys got nicely tanned and mom got nicely sun burnt. I didn't get burnt too bad as I had Nico put sunscreen on me Saturday so I wouldn't turn 'red like a cherry' as he says. I missed having Mike there, but it was a great time for me to have special time with my boys. Nico, especially, likes to have mom and Nico time. They both behaved SOOOOO well I am so proud of them. All the kids were great!!! They are all so adorable! We are truely blessed.

I will post pictures in a day or two of both of these exciting events!

Oshkosh, WI photos

Here are just a few photos from our trip to Oshkosh, WI.

I need to dig out the old photos when I was a kid and show a 'then and now' photo. We always took a family photo standing in front of our RV before we left.
This is my future car, Terrafugia; except I want mine to have rotor blades on top to get me out of the traffic jam I am stuck in. This one still needs a run way.
Just a cool pics of several airplanes flying through the sky in groups.
Yay, a photo of me with the kids!
Like father, like son! These boys are the loves of my life. (Brian too, but he is not into airplanes and I knew he would not enjoy this trip).
Withstanding 78 mph hurricane winds. Luca loved the wind blowing in his face.
Car vs. airplane. Nothing really hit and blew up, just pyrotechnics to make it look cool. There were two planes and two cars racing each other going in opposite directions.
This little experimental helicopter is called the Mosquito. There is no way I would get in that thing and actually go up in the sky.
Nico was excited to get to go up into an old Canadian fighter plane.
It rained one morning, but we put on our raincoats and forged ahead. The rain only lasted for a few hours. It was then just overcast the rest of the day (and cool).
I love the skywriter!
This is a jet powered glider.
A wing walker....nuts!
The parachute team opened the airshow each day.
They SkyCrane releasing a load of water in its demonstration. This was cool!
Nico getting into a little 'hands on' demonstration in the NASA building.
Luca loving the ride on airplanes. I actually made a rocking airplane and gave it to a benefit auction. I have more pieces to make one but just need to get it put together.
This boy loves his ice cream!!!! He would take a bite and just giggle.

A Year Ago!

I can't believe it was a year ago that I arrived in Guatemala City, Guatemala to hold my little boy and prepare to go to the US Embassy on August 5. I can remember the excitement so well. After visiting twice I was so excited to get there and know I was bringing him home this time. It was a difficult time as there were/are many babies still stuck there in the process waiting to get home to their forever families. I am thankful I had a great agency in our process. From referral to bringing him home it was about 9.5 months waiting.

Here we are the morning of August 5, 2008, bright and early prepared to go the US Embassy for our special day, the adoption! This is what we call our Gotcha Day. I am not sure how we are going to spend it; probably some cake and icecream with the immediate family. Here he is almost a year later. He settled into our family with no issues at all. He is such a loving, cuddly, funny little boy. He has a great sense of humor for such a little guy. He has brought so much joy to our family. He has Daddy twisted around his finger and Nico and Brian love him immensely. Someone was looking out for all of us when he placed these three special boys in my arms!

A Wonderful Trip

We made it back from our trip to WI. We had a wonderful time. I am definitely airplaned and helicoptered out; although Nico says he is not. He had so much fun trying to find particular planes he wanted to see. He had about 15 books he had checked out of the library that he and Luca browsed through on the drive up. He also brought his little back pack with him full of his die cast helicopters and airplanes. Luca and him spent a lot of time playing with these.

Speaking of the drive, the boys did fabulous in the RV. Nico spent a few hours watching some DVD's on the mini player and Luca took a nice nap, as did I. I even took over driving for a while so Mike could stretch his legs. We were able to drive straight through as we had the bathroom to use and made lunch while driving. It brought back so many great memories of when I was a child. (The trip home was a bit different.)

Nico only had one melt down when we wouldn't let him spend all his money on the first day for a big set of airplanes. We hadn't even seen all the tents (which sell all the same stuff). He cried for over an hour as we had to drag him along as we walked back to the camper. It is quite unusual for Nico to throw a fit, especially for so long. He was grounded for a day of not buying anything. Eventually we let him buy his items but he couldn't open them. It drove him crazy. Finally we talked about why he couldn't get them and why he was in trouble so he understood what was going on. I feel like he learned his lesson. He is usually one thrifty spender, but was so excited to buy new planes and be on vacation he wanted it NOW! I can so relate!

Other than that, the trip was without tears and screaming. The boys played around the camper in the evening. One night we went to the outdoor theater and watched part of "Six Nights, Seven Days" with Harrison Ford. We even got to see Harrison Ford as he was there. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera to the event, so have no pictures of him. We were hoping to run into him throughout the week but never did.

Our journey home gave us a little of an event, we had to replace a tire. Mike went to fill up the front tire and a huge bubble came out the side of it. He knew there was no driving on it, so we pulled over to a truck stop and he changed it out with the spare tire. He had filled the spare before we left so it had air in it, but as we were driving it was slowly leaking. We pulled into a little town to get some new tires when he realized the spare was a 16" tire and all the other tires were 16.5"....oops, a problem with two different size tires on the front and of course, the place we stopped at did not have 16.5" tires. So, Mike swapped the spare out with one tire in the back (there is a double axle), so the two front tires were the same size. The tire continued to lose air. We drove a few more hours and then used our handy dandy GPS to locate a Super WalMart and prayed their tire service was still open. It was 6:10pm and I just knew they closed at 6pm....we were lucky, they were open until 8pm and had a 16" tire for the spare (but no 16.5"...apparently not a common size anymore!). Anyway, we replaced that tire and carried on!

When were an hour from home, Mike stepped on the brake and said, "UH-OH!",,,I don't like those words associated with the brakes...He said, "We lost the brakes on one side, but it's okay." Eventually he stopped for gas and found that a brake line was leaking. He tightened it up, added some brake fluid, we bled the brakes, and all was well. Half an hour later we were at home.

For those that know me and my family's wonderful vacation excursions as a kid might find this humorous. We always had a break down on our trips. Mom would get so mad and swore she was not camping again! I am so glad I have a man that knows how to fix these things and I give him the award for the fastest tire changer ever! He had those tires swapped out in no time flat. He got us home safely! I also feel his grandpa was watching over us. The RV is the one his grandpa and grandma used. I am sure his grandpa was smiling down on us and watching our journey. I am sure he is happy it is being used and we are loving it!

I will take RVing over dealing with airports, airplanes and airfare any day! Especially with the kids.

I took 335 pictures of our trip and just downloaded them today. I did not have time to do any resizing or modifications to them so I could post them. I can't do any of that at work so I will make a new post later this week with some of the pictures.