Summer is flying by!

This summer has been so busy and fun and crazy. We've been going, going, going. In July, we went camping to Garden Valley and saw 2 plays, The Wizard of Oz and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is an outdoor theatre and is in a beautiful area. The following week my sister Sariah came to visit and Tyler and Jeanisha went to spend a week at Grandma and Grandpa's. We went skating and send Sariah and Trish out on their first date (from my house). The next week we went to Utah to see Stephen's family. We always pack a lot into our visits. We went to Lagoon with my family on Tuesday, to Antelope Island out in the Salt Lake on Wednesday, rode the Frontrunner train to Temple Square on Thursday, then to a "fun center" on Friday. The fun center has roller skating, an arcade, bounce houses, and climbing gym thing. Several cousins were able to come and the kids had a blast. That night we had a big barbq at Grandma and Grandpa Cox's house with everyone there. I think we counted 29 people, 12 adults and 17 grandkids. It was fun to see everyone and just visit and have fun. Saturday we went to Fort Buenaventura's Pioneer day Celebration. We went last year and the kids enjoyed it both years. One of the highlights was canoeing in the lake. On the way home, we dropped off Ryan to spend the next week visiting my parents and enjoying one-on-one time with Grandma and Grandpa. They brought him back home last Saturday when they came up for my cousin Lindsey's wedding.

In the middle of all this, we've been getting ready to move to a new house. It's not very far from here, but it's much bigger and on almost an acre! I am so excited for the extra space. It was a shortsale that we put the offer in on in May, so the process has taken awhile, but we should be closing on Aug 16. We are basically just waiting for the seller to get all her stuff moved out. The yard is pretty overgrown and neglected, but has a lot of potential. We've been working on packing up and getting ready to move.

Things are also moving along with adoption and hopefully by the end of August we'll know for sure which kid(s) we will end up with. Either Emilio (6) from Texas or Shania (5) and Kayce (2) from Oregon. It's been a crazy journey, but I know Heavenly Father will bring the right kids home to us.

Commercial made by the kids!

This is an anti-smoking commercial that the kids made up and filmed today! It's pretty cute! Enjoy!

Giveaway: Fruit Roll-ups and Granola Bars

This summer, I had a chance to try some snack products from Costco through MyBlogSpark.com. And I get to give away a "Costco Sunny Day Snacks Pack!" To enter the giveaway, read the review, and leave a comment with your favorite summer snack idea. Make sure you also leave a way for me to contact you if you win. You can get additional entries for posting a link on Facebook or Twitter, or sharing a link on your blog. Just post a comment saying you did that. I will draw a winner on Thursday July 15th, so make sure you enter by then.

So what is a Costco Sunny Day Snacks Pack? It is 2 boxes of SimplyFruit fruit roll-ups (42 count), 1 box of Chewy Trail Mix Granola bars (48 count), and a $25 Costco gift card!

I love Costco size packages because then one box actually lasts my family for a while. These fruit roll-ups are softer than regular fruit roll-ups and more like fruit leather. The variety pack includes strawberry and wild berry, I would have liked to have more varieties, but these are both good. Trish claims they taste better than regular fruit roll-ups because they are not as sweet. The other kids seem to like both equally well.

The Trail Mix Granola bars are more substantial than Quaker or Sunbelt granola bars. They work great for a fast breakfast on the run or snack in the car. These ones are the fruit and nut variety with raisins, dried cranberries, almonds, and peanuts. All of the kids liked them except Tyler because he doesn't like raisins.

Overall, these are both great grab-and-go snacks for summer. They were a hit with the kids and enjoyed by the adults as well. And you can't go wrong with a $25 Costco gift card to go along with it. So please enter the drawing and I'll post the winner next Thursday. (I will put numbers in a hat and have one of the kids draw.) Please make sure I can contact you for shipping info or I'll have to choose a different winner!

The product I was given to review, the prize pack, information, and giveaway have all been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.

Busy, busy, busy

I can't believe it's been 2 1/2 weeks since Trish came. This summer is going so fast!!! Everyone has adjusted really well, and it seems like Trish has been part of the family for much more than a few weeks. The novelty has pretty much worn off and she is just one of the gang now. She is great with the kids and has enjoyed being able to be a kid herself as she does things with them.

We've been running 3 miles almost every night (Trish and I are planning to do a half marathon this fall), went to watch my brother at Special Olympics, went to Bio Blitz at the Wildlife Refuge, fed the ducks, went to the zoo, went to the Discovery Center Science Museum, went to Messiah's Mansion (a life size replica of the tabernacle in Moses time), had Cub Scout Day camp, and spent the last 3 days doing Idaho Youth Games. For the Idaho Youth Games, Trish volunteered with Stephen and I and had lots of fun helping the other kids do swimming, bowling, a one mile race, a mini triathlon, and a "fun night" with lots of bounce houses and activities.

She has jumped into the youth activities at church and is going to be leaving for girls camp on Monday morning for 4 days! She is also taking 2 high school classes this summer, Health and Eng 10A, so she spends time each day working on those. I think she has been surprised at how busy we are and how many fun things there are to do. She also loves to take photos, so now I have tons of fun pictures to add to the blog; I just have to get her in front of the camera too!

Here are some pictures from the zoo!

She's here!!!

We picked up Trish yesterday, finally! We are happy to be through with this set of hoops and I think she is happy to be settling in. It will be an adjustment for her to get used to the kids, and hopefully the kids will move past the novelty stage quickly. They want to follow her everywhere, sit next to her, help her. . . . Jeanisha is especially loving it and copies everything Trish does. If Trish has eggs, Jeanisha wants eggs, if Trish puts ranch on her sandwich, so does Jeanisha. Trish seems to think it is cute for now. Hopefully Jeanisha moves past it before it becomes annoying. She is just so excited to finally get a sister. And to have it be a big sister who likes make up and clothes and girly stuff is just bonus!

Patience

I don't really like learning patience. I would really like to just see where I am going and not have to trust. We still don't have Trish. They didn't give us some paperwork they needed to have filled out before our home visit until Friday the 21st. (We were planning to get Trish on the 22nd.)The different regions of the state have a hard time working together and communicating, plus the caseworkers are a bit overloaded right now. But it's still frustrating. I turned in the paperwork on Monday, they came and did the home visit on Tuesday and told me we needed a screen around the fireplace and to get the carpets cleaned. I knew they needed cleaned, but I was waiting until we finished potty training Adam. And they had told us over and over in our 27 hour training class that the home visit was not to look for cleanliness, but for safety issues. (And I had everything else clean and ready anyway.) Luckily, I have a good friend whose husband has a carpet cleaning business and he came the next morning. My carpets look brand new, which is pretty impressive considering the wear and tear that comes from 5 kids! (If you live in the area, their business is Superior Cleaning and the number is 453-2945.)

She came for the revisit on Wed. afternoon, and passed us off to get our foster care license. Thursday I tried calling every 30 minutes, but the phone system was down or something and I was never able to get through to Trish's caseworker. Then they were off for a furlough day on Friday, and then the long weekend. Maybe we can make something happen this week.

Update: I just found out TODAY that the office I was working with was closed on May 27th due to budget cuts. Nice of them to let us know. The phone number I have was disconnected and I've spent the morning tracking down the caseworker's new number, only to get a message saying she will check her messages after she gets all moved over to the new office. At least this explains why I couldn't get a response to phone calls or emails all last week! Patience is NOT fun!

As far as Emilio goes, we've went through the big box of paperwork, and the additional paperwork they sent last week. We are waiting to hear back on a couple things, but then hopefully we can proceed there. So much for being able to bring him home in early June, we havn't even went down for a visit yet. We were told by friends to expect the process to take 4-6 months, even though the state workers were saying 2 months. Every step so far has taken much longer than we were told, so we just keep waiting and praying for it all to work out.

And, just in case we don't have enough waiting to do right now, we put an offer in on a short sale house yesterday in Nampa. I guess I'll learn patience one way or the other.

Adoption update and Moving beds

Ten more days until we pick up Trish. This is an old picture, but doesn't she look sweet? Also, the box of info on Emilio was sent out today! So things are finally moving with that. Maybe??? The caseworker is back from family leave, so that should help.

We've been moving furniture and food storage and making room for 2 more kids. We cleaned out the food storage/storage room and moved Lincoln's crib in that room. Then we bought some bunkbeds off craigslist and set them up for Jeanisha and Trish. Once we got them all set up, we realized they block the window/fire escape, so we're going to have to trade them with the one Ryan and Adam are using right now. Hopefully we can get that done tomorrow.

We have taken 4 of the 9 required 3 hour classes to be certified for foster care and just have a few more hoops to jump through. We will finish classes on the 21st and go pick up Trish on the 22nd. She is coming for a 2 week trial to see what she thinks about being part of a large family. She's never really been in a family with lots of younger kids, so hopefully the noise and constant busyness won't be too crazy for her. The kids are super excited. We spent Sunday, May 2nd with her and she seemed to fit in really good and said she felt like she belonged. The kids loved her too! It will be an interesting summer!!!!