Our Journey has begun

I've been trying to post pictures from Christmas and also our nice family pictures from our Christmas card but this stupid blogger won't let me upload pictures from home. So, once I get that figured out, I'll post some pictures. But I wanted to write a little about what Sean and I have started. I think we are crazy :) About 2 months ago I was stalking The R house blog. (like always:) It's an awesome blog about open adoption and this family that has 3 little boys that are all adopted. So cute. anyway. They have something called "Matching Mondays." She had posted about a sibling group of 3 that were out west and they were in foster care. I couldn't get those little faces out of my mind. So I talked to Sean about it. I can't remember if I talked to anyone about it but about 3 years ago we started on a journey for adoption, wanting a baby, but felt we hadn't gotten the support or help we needed to get a child. So we dropped our agency and made lots of plans for vacations we were going to take, all over the world. The doctors still have no idea why we can't have biological children, so they can't fix it, so we have given up in that area as well. But, back to my point. I couldn't get these kids out of my mind. Sean was still in the "having fun on vacation" stage. Can't say as I blame him :) I talked to a friend of mine from church, Amy, about wanting more kids. I have felt for a while that our house is empty and it needs to be filled up. So I had been doing a little research on my own. Then another friend, Chelsea, called me. She used to be a social worker and now works with an adoption agency that helps families in the US adopt children from overseas. She had said that she really wanted to talk to me about it, but had been shot down too many times before by friends that she didn't want to step over that boundary. Amy told her to talk to me. So anyway. After Chelsea talked to me about international adoption Sean and I talked again about adopting kids.  We decided that maybe this was Heavenly Fathers way of telling us that yes, our house was empty and we needed to fill it up. We did research and I talked to Chelsea about international adoption and the cost really freaked us out. Then I talked to another friend and she said that money should never be an issue when it came to something this important. "Money can be a hurdle, not a mountain in your way." hmm. Well after looking, thinking, and discussing (Sean is in school) we decided that maybe be should look at domestic adoption. There are over 400,000 kids in foster care in the US alone. Sean and I have decided that we need to shrink that number by a few. Before Christmas we sent in our background checks to the appropriate departments and last Wednesday we got fingerprinted. We've already got 3 of the 6 background checks back. Crazy! And we have called the adoption agency that we will be working with and adopting kids from foster care is basically FREE!!! We will have to travel to meet and pick up the kids, but it's nothing compared to the expense we would have had to incur to adopt internationally. Maybe when we are both working at real jobs we will look internationally but for now, we'll hang out in the US. We've already been looking at kids and have a few favorites. We know that we are going to adopt a sibling group, we just haven't decided on how many for sure yet. But the process has started and we are looking forward to having a house full of fun, laughter and love. Can't wait. 

Fall colors & the carved pumpkin

We have a great view out  the front door of our house. Except for the guard rail, of course. I saw this view out of the door the other day and really wanted to capture the awesome colors of the season. I used all kinds of settings on my camera to get just the right look. I think it turned out pretty well.  This was before I carved up the pumpkin. That came next. When I was in Ohio visiting my sister I got this huge one cheap!

After cutting off the top & taking out the seeds I got to carving. I got this face off a website. Had to make it a little bigger, because like I said, it was huge. Thought he turned out pretty nice! Yet again I played with the camera trying to get just the right look. I think I'm getting better at the settings, but I doubt it.

Eeyore's vacation 2012

I posted a few years ago about how I'm probably too old to have Eeyore vacation with me, but o well, it still happens :) And the family enables me in my ....hmm, maybe it's an obsession. who knows.

 Anyway. E spent some time learning how to sail.

 Then he went kayaking. Canoeing too.

 He learned how to drive the motorboat

 And even tried to ride the tube

 He liked the pancakes at the Pancake House

 And Sean got a picture of him enjoying the sunshine

 Grandma Rife let him join her in the shade.

 Putting his toes in the water at Blue Lake

 And the best is... The donkey riding the donkey :)

Um, I think I need a life! :) Oh, and he seriously needed a bath after this vacation. he looked like a whole new donkey when he got out of the washing machine!

Holiday and birthday pics

Having teenagers and wanting to take nice family pics can be interesting. Annoying but highly entertaining :) Sean had just gotten home from a long day of work and I knew the weather wasn't gong to hold too much longer. And the girls are only here every other weekend, so had to get this done while I could. Sean was soo excited to be out taking pictures.

 He gets kinda goofy after a while.

 The girls were getting bored, or just looking for an excuse to play the latest: "ninja." Everytime I would stop to try & find a better spot this is what they were doing. so funny.

 After being in the sun and not liking the shadow and the sun in the face, we moved up to the patio of the mansion.  There were professionals up there taking pictures at the other end, I got annoyed, felt VERY amateur-ish, and we left to find a less "commercial" spot.

Sabrina doesn't like to smile with her mouth open. We tried our hardest to get her to smile bigger, but this is what we got. sigh.

The next weekend the girls were over we had a little time during the day when the weather was good and I had the girls come out to take some more pics. It was Abby's birthday and Sabrinas was in 2 weeks, so I thought it would be a good time to get some pics. Needless to say, I got a lot of this :) And then they were done.

Some more Idaho & the last of it :)

The girls & Sean love to fish. The next day Sean went and got them all fishing licenses and they headed out to the dam to try & catch some trout.

 All they managed to catch were some perch. But there were some nice guys that just kept pulling in these large fish and offered them to the girls. We weren't about to say "no." I, of course, came armed with my book & camera.

 For dinner we had some surf & turf. Oh yeah, so yummy!! Abby actually learned how to clean the fish. Sean cleaned most of them.

 The next day we went looking for some hot springs and weren't very successful. In fact we drove around for 4 hours and didn't find ONE!!! We did find this really sweet part of the river. The crappy part was, none of us had our water shoes. But Sean and the girls didn't mind. They went hunting for freshwater clams.

 That evening Dad returned from Boise and took us to a hot spring he knew about. Nothing large, or too hot, but pretty cool. The girls thought it was cool.

 There was a nice little outcrop above the hot springs and the girls took a seat.

 The girls had had enough sun, so when we went to the beach one more time, this is where they parked their towels :)

 Dad knows a man & his wife in Cascade that have horses and are willing to let the family come ride. We took the girls out to get some exposure to real riding.

 This 23 year old mare was pretty calm. She didn't do more than walk for either of them.

 There was also a donkey, Amos,  that Sean and I rode. He was pretty cool. Pretty stubborn too, but fun.

We headed back to Boise the next day. We left just in time. Once we got through the mountains they closed the road because of a forest fire moving through the area. Once we got back to Boise we went to find the Oregon trail area. It was a waste of time. I took a trip down the Boise river with the girls. Pretty minor river. It was so shallow in one spot that I had to get out and pull the raft and then get back in. The pictures for that are lost somewhere. hopefully not permanently lost :( And the next day we headed home. It was an awesome trip!

More Idaho - part 6

I really need to finish up these Idaho posts. The vacation was two whole months ago :) And I have more recent.....hmm, no actually I don't have anytime more recent to post. My life is boring!

So after the DeAnn, Daren & their horde left, we decided to spent some time OUT of the water. There is a place near Cascade called Blue Lake. It is amazing! The water was crystal clear. So pretty. We had a really easy hike down the trail. It's only about a mile down to the lake. Along the way there were some butterflies sitting on the trail. So cool. Once down at the lake we decided to put our feet in. The water was COLD. But it was great on the really warm day. We were actually the first people out there. Except for the people that had camped there. They had their alpacas & their horses. Kind of funny to come across an alpaca on the trail. ha.

Once we were done admiring the lake and eating our snacks we headed back out. The really easy downhill hike in turned into the uphill hellish hike out. It was a mile uphill. The girls, especially Abby, were out of shape. The altitude didn't do much for any of us either. So we just took lots of breaks on our way up and drank all our water. The only thing that would have made it better would have been my book & some fishing poles for the rest of them. Once we returned to the cabin we watched TV. Then went for a little walk by the lake to watch some guys fishing. Then we went back & watched more TV :) It was great.