Showered with Love

My friends gave us the most fabulous baby shower! It was extra special because my mom was able to attend and meet my friends who re my family here in Illinois. The decorations were gorgeous (notice how Molly's name is spelled out and hanging from the mantle). The food was beautiful. And my amazing friends, who have been such a strength and support to us, poured out their love and affection for our precious Molly! Thank you for your love and friendship! I love you!

"Sunday Shots"

3 weeks old

My friend Cheryl gave me the idea of taking a picture of Molly every Sunday after church so that we could see how she changes week by week (not like we're already taking a hundred pictures a day anyway...)! I thought it would be fun to post these photos every Sunday so that you can watch our cute girl too.

3 Weeks Old

Our sweet Molly is 3 weeks old! We finally made it back home last Thursday after living out of a hotel for 3 weeks. It's wonderful to be home and we've had a perfect week getting settled in. Here are some of our highlights from the week:

Hanging out with our farm animal friends on the cute quilt that Grandma hand quilted with love.

The three of us!

Getting loved to pieces by Grandma!

Falling asleep in Daddy's arms.

Holding Mommy's finger while walking around the outlet mall.

It's Official!!!

We got to bring our litlle Molly home from the hospital today! This has been a wonderful and emotional day and we feel so blessed to have Molly become a part of our family. Thank you for all of your love, prayers and support!

Molly is all cozy tucked safe in her car seat!

All dressed up and ready for her first trip into the outside world!

The football hold! This position calms Molly down within seconds!

Molly is such a good little baby! She loves her bottle and is a great little eater!

Shane is already a master at swaddling Molly. She loves it!

Hello precious one!


Watching (or rather sleeping through) her first BYU football game with Daddy!

Look at those beautiful brown eyes!

It's a girl!

Molly Makayla

6lbs 15 oz

20 1/2 long

September 3, 2009

We were planning to wait until the adoption papers are signed on Tuesday to tell everyone, but we've waited so many years to make this announcement we can't contain our excitement any longer. Thank you for your love and support.

Adam-Ondi-Ahman

We're in Missouri visiting family and some of the local church sites. This is a picture taken at the Adam-Ondi-Ahman Valley viewpoint - the valley being behind us. It is a beautiful valley! We're enjoying our review of church history and having a blast playing with our Flip video camera. I'll post a video once I get a hang of the editing and such.

We love our Flip!

Boating on the Illinois River

One of the blessing of home teaching is being invited by the family you home teach to go boating. They needed an extra driver...so I graciously accepted the invitation. Mind you, I have not been wakeboarding in about 4 years so I was a bit nervous. But I summoned the power of Cyrstal Light Mango flavored Slurpees and did just fine.
I also braved the "Death Tube" and only crashed once. I think I got whiplash from the waves.

And to top it all off, we did back flips off the boat into the river. This picture is of Seth...great form.Great times at the river and I'm still sore a couple days later.

Clipping Coupons

I've always loved clipping coupons! When I sit down to read the Sunday paper I hurry through the "news" to get to the ads. I don't clip every coupon, just the coupons for things we normally buy or products that we've wanted to try. I have an envelope I keep in my purse to hold my coupons and I dutiful place the newly cut coupons into the envelope and back into my purse every Sunday. And that's where they sit, safely tucked away, until the next week when I add to the pile. More likely than not, these coupons will meet the recycling bin with expired dates of use before they ever see the bright lights of the grocery store.

Last week I made a real effort to use coupons on my shopping trip. Before I left for the store I went through the coupons pulling out the ones for item we needed. So far so good. I also pulled out some coupons for things we wanted (Ben & Jerry's ice cream) on the condition I'd use them only if the items were already on sale. With coupons and shopping list in hand it was time to hit the store. I'm not going to bore you with the particulars, so let's just say those few extra minutes of sorting through my coupons saved me a a pocketful of cash! Almost everything I bought was on sale and I had a coupon for 1/2 of the items. With them combined I was able to get $56 worth of products for $18! Yeah for sales! Yeah for clipping coupons! But most of all: Yeah for using my clipped coupons on sale items! I could get used to saving that kind of money!

If you have any ideas or tips for clipping and using coupons let me know!

Fair Time

On July 18th, we were in Kirksville, Missouri visiting Todd, Tamara, Preslee and Jonah. Fortunately we were there for the NEMO fair (Northeast Missouri Fair). There were a lot of great times to be had.

If one word can describe the type of food at the Fair...it is FRIED! They can fry about anything. Our menu was as follows:

1. Appetizer - Deep Fried Oreos

2. Deep Fried Cajun Chicken - On a Stick!

3. Funnel Cake Mountain!

Then we went to the Demolition Derby and watched cars crash into each other.
We had a great time and our stomachs are still recovering!
Thanks to Todd and Tam and all our other friends in Kirksville! We had a blast!