Family Pics

Our case worker has been after us to get some updated professional pictures for our adoption profile; so we finally caved and did it.  We attempted to get a few with Chewy, and to honest, he did really well.  However, there were several pictures where he proudly displayed his man-junk.  Nice.  I won't expose you to those.  Anyway, here's a few that are okay looking that we didn't post on facebook.

 

 

YNP '12

July 5 -8 was our annual Yellowstone trip! Scott and I love it there. It's our happy place :) This year we decided to invite niece Kylie and nephew Brady to come with us. We had so much fun! Scott and I realized really quick that we are way too out of shape to keep up with two teenagers. It was go - go - go - but really fun! We rented an SUV (forgot to get a pic) for extra room and off we went. I didn't take a ton of pics - I feel like sometimes vacations are ruined and you miss things because one is so worried about getting that perfect pic. Anyway, pic one - I'm dangerously close to a buffalo. The pic is zoomed, but I was admittedly way too close. As my sister put it, "natural selection at it's finest" watching people walk right up to it and try to touch it. Brilliant.

We saw several really big bull elk! Usually we see lots of females around but rarely the male. This guy was right up next to the road and ignoring everyone around him.

Brady, Kylie and Scott by Old Faithful geyser. It was fun to take the kids as they hadn't been to YNP since they were really little - so it was all new to them. Funny comments from people about "both our kids wearing Angel's hats." We laughed about it a lot at some of the comments about how young of parents we were.

Also ran into my sister Sue and hubby Scott at Old Faithful. Funny ole world in'it?

Yellowstone lake

The Dudes outside Playmill theather.

Lower Falls overlook.

Grizzley bear at the Grizzley Discovery Center.

We took the stairs on "Uncle Tom's Trail" down to the Lower Falls. WOW!

View was amazing. Stairs and steep trail = Scott and I huffing and puffing, Kylie and Brady not even breaking a sweat. Awesome.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Lower Falls overlook.

Scott at the bottom of "The Stairs" at Lower Falls. (Isn't he handsome?)

Kids at dinner. We explored some different dining options in West Yellowstone; found most of the places have the exact same menu at ridiculously high prices.

Main reason for our trip to YNP this year: Other nephew Brian Carey is in the cast of the Playmill Theater in West Yellowstone. He is having a blast and the shows are great! Brian posing with Kylie and Brady during the pre-show.

Brian after "Annie Get Your Gun". He did such a great job!

Below - video of Brian playing the fiddle in the preshow!

Vegas Baby!

We decided to hit Las Vegas for an overnighter to see "The Phantom of the Opera" which is set to close in September. We stayed at the Venetian...oh my goodness. Amazing hotel!! All other hotels will seems like dives in comparison.






Outside the "Phantom" theater. The theater was specifically built in the Venetian to house "Phantom". The chandelier was amazing, the whole atmosphere made you feel like you were in the time period. The show was a bit chopped up - they edited bits and pieces to make it shorter, but still was amazing.





The canal inside the hotel. We didn't get a chance to do a gandola ride - next time!

Good Day

I usually mentally check-out of Mother's Day but I had a really good day. We taught our class, made dinner for my mom and visited with family.






The little angel on the left we've had for a while; we got it to represent our first baby we lost. We thought this was perfect because the little puppy she's holding looks just like Chewy ;) Then Scott bought me the little boy angel and gave it to me Mother's Day to represent our 2nd angel baby. I cried a little when I opened it, but I'm so glad to have both of our little angel's represented!

Oh Yeah - I have a blog!

I've been totally MIA in the blogisphere for a while!  So here's a little picture catch up!

I know no one else cares about Chewy but I'm posting these anyway.  Nana was sitting reading the paper and the Demon-Dog came and about scared her half to death.  It was great.

 Scott and I took Lincoln and Lleyten to see the Muppet movie over Thanksgiving break.  They wanted pictures with Obi Wan so Scott lifted them up to get their little heads in the hole.  So cute.

 Elder Brian Carey came home from his mission right before Christmas.  So fun to have him home!  I still can't believe I have TWO return missionary nephews now.  I'm old.

 Scott tinkering with one of his train sets.  This is what he does on breaks from school.  I bought him the engineer hat for Christmas and he faithfully wears it whenever he gets his trains out.  I love that I'm married to an over sized kid. 

 Got us all jammie pants for Christmas (except Scott who refuses to wear them).  So we had to take pics - and darling little McCoy in his Darth Vader jammies!  Love that kid. 

And in other news....

The adoption process is just that: a process.  An emotional, annoying, maddening process.  I'm sure once we get placement we'll be able to add joyous and other good adjectives in there but right now it's just work. 
We took a small break from it in November/ December when the Lord decided to test our faith - with a really unexpected and positive result.  No - I'm not pregnant.  I'll just throw that out there right now so no one gets their hopes up ;) 
It all started one night in November when Scott and I were discussing what we needed to do the next day - one of which was pay the $1000 initial fee to LDS Family Services.  Suddenly I just kept having this feeling that we needed to wait.  I told Scott and he shrugged and said "okay".  The next day I was cleaning the house and thinking how weird it was that I had the impression to wait when I got a complete bombshell impression:  Try one more IUI.
No. 
No way.
I've closed that door.  We felt SO strongly about adoption.
No.
I had this nice internal argument on all the reasons why I refuse to do that.  But the impression kept coming and I couldn't deny it.  I called Scott and told him and got a "Where did THAT come from?"   I fought it and fought it and cried and cried.  That fertility door was closed for me and it's such an emotional and painful thing I just couldn't do it.  I just wanted to know WHY.  Why was I being asked to do something so painful again?  Get our hopes up again and heaven forbid lose another baby? 
After a couple of weeks of fighting  it, Scott brought up a good point; a statement that will define the rest of our lives:  Well, when we ignore promptings we end up in Texas.
After we got done laughing, I realized he was right.  So in December we started on the devil fertility meds; the specialist up in Sandy ordered a bunch more tests - some we'd already done but whatever- then we did the insemination. 
And then we started to get excited.
I mean, why would we be asked to do it if it wasn't going to work, right? 
And then came all the awesome side-effects of fertility meds.  My assistant manager at work even sent me home early because I was an absolute *$#2&.  And after snapping at Scott a few times and not letting him near me he said, "Oh yeah - this is why we don't do fertility anymore." 
Well, I was late and we started to get even more excited and then quickly found out it didn't take and we were devastated again.  Then we started discussing everything and praying and we realized: this was a confirmation to us that we were on the right path with adoption.  There was still that little hope in the very backs of our brains that we'd get pregnant while filling out paperwork.  But our hearts and our brains are now turned to adoption and we know that it's the right path and choice for us.  It's taken us a while - everyone has to go through the process in their own way and get their own answers.  We wanted to be sure and 100% on board before we moved ahead with it.  I've tried and prayed and tried some more to not be bitter.  I wanted to be able to hold my head up and be okay with things.  That doesn't mean that every now and then it doesn't hurt a little.  That doesn't mean that as I'm filling out the mammoth adoption questionnaire that I don't get annoyed at the complete social injustice of the thing.  But I can laugh when my Dr. says a 3% of conceiving on our own is being generous;  I'm genuinely happy when my friends tell me they're pregnant.  I had to get to a place that I was happy despite this infertility crap.  Scott and I figured out over a year ago that we were wasting our time together worrying and stressing about not being able to have babies.  It can take over your entire life and screw up a marriage if you let it! 
So here we are.  We're good :)  We're almost to the home study, we just have to get our background checks back and suffer through an hour long interview (independent of each other) with our case worker.   AND Scott is set to graduate in December!!!!  Hale-freakin-lujah.  We're excited by life; we're excited about our future as completely unknown as it is to us.  We've FINALLY figured out that Heavenly Father is in charge and we're good with that.