One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today around 3:30 pm, my life was changed forever. I was at work and had just finished cleaning up one of the cubicles to get ready for a new co-worker in my department. I had sat down at my desk and my cellphone rang. It took me a second before it registered that the area code was from Colorado and my heart skipped a beat when I answered and realized that it was Pam from the waiting child department on the other end.

I don't remember much about the conversation, but I remember her telling me that she had a sweet little boy who needed a Mommy & Daddy. She emailed me his pictures, but warned me that they were not the best she had ever seen.

I was in shock and didn't quite know what to do. I opened the email to find this picture...

I called Michael after that, he was home with Cackie who was sick that day. I was crying, of course, and he immediately wondered what was wrong. I told him that I had a picture of his son and I could tell that it took at second for the news to register with him. I was glad I wasn't the only one in shock over this!

I went home shortly after that and we had many discussions. We took a few days to think about this little boy and how he would change our lives. It took us a little longer than we would have liked, but all this happened just 2 days before Thanksgiving. I remember when we finally heard from our pediatrician, we were out eating dinner and we were soo glad to hear that she said we needed to bring this little boy home. We had already come to that decision, but just needed that last bit of confirmation before we jumped in. After we got home from dinner and had put Cackie to bed I called CCAI and left a voicemail for Pam, I just couldn't wait till the next morning to call!

Today that sweet little boy is my Owen and I can't imagine what our lives would be without him!

P.S. On that day, one year ago, after I called Michael and shared my shock with him, I went back into the cubicle that I was cleaning out just to check and make sure I had put everythinig away. Sitting right in the middle of the desk was a little red string off of an interoffice envelope. I knew deep in my heart that the red thread was at work.

ARRRGH!

Anyone remember the movie "The Money Pit"?
I'm beginning to think we're starring in the sequel that is being filmed by candid camera!

First, the previous owners left us with a horribly green pool. Actually, it was a beautiful green color, just not something you would ever want to swim in. We were soo frustrated with trying to get the sellers out of our house and get moved in that we just let it go. Finally, two weeks ago we were able to get some pool guys to come out and winterize the pool, at a cost that was much greater due to the fact that it had been neglected by the previous owners.

Then, there's been the issue our guest house. The previous owner's had a renter there and had told us before closing that he had moved out.... not true! He finally moved out the same weekend we moved in, but now we've been left with his disgusting mess and the previous owners never came forward to give us the cleaning deposit that they collected from him.

We also have electrical issues in the family room that was added on to the original house. Let's just say that the electrical wiring is sooo not to code (this is where having an engineer for a husband is a GREAT thing!). We found one electrical outlet behind the dishwasher in the wetbar that was SPARKING!!!!! YIKES!

Now, our latest issue is a leak.... it's in a lovely spot, just off the kitchen in the breakfast room. I came home the other day during a rain storm to find the ceiling leaking. It has continued to leak steadily, but it's not raining any longer. Michael has been working on drawing up the layout of the house and it looks like the issue is not the roof (a good thing?), but that it's the toilet in the master bath. We are very unhappy with the master bath and bought the house knowing that we would be changing it up and expanding it, but we weren't quite prepared to do it right now.

Oh, in addition to the leak appearing the other day. It kinda looks like this is not the first time it has happened. It also appears that there may be termite damage in the ceiling of the breakfast room (hmmm, termites like moisture).

So, right now the ceiling is falling in my breakfast room and there's an awful wet, musty stench throughout the whole house. I'm just praying that it's not termites and that we can get it fixed and cleaned up soon (and that we can stay sane in the process!). Fingers Crossed!

6 Months!

Six months ago yesterday was Owen's gotcha day!
In six months he has gone from this shy, careful little boy who was scared of just about everything...


To this little ham who loves to see his pictures on the camera, is still kinda scared of animals but is very curious about them, thinks his big sister holds the moon and stars and loves to jump, run and play!

Wow! What an amazing 6 months it has been! A lot has changed in his life, but he takes it all in stride and brings smiles to everyone's faces. We love you Owee!

So, as a celebration of his 6 months home we are starting him in gymnastics lessons tonight. He's always wanting to take classes with Cackie, but we were a little worried that a class together would be hard on them and the coach. Hopefully he'll enjoy tonight and will want to do more. Cackie won't be there with us tonight which I hope will give him a chance to open up and enjoy his own thing.

Cackie & Owen Tearing Up the Polls

Well, the polling booth at least! Yesterday Michael went to pick the kids up from school and came home with this great story...

The teachers were planning a voting activity for today and had fashioned a voting booth out of a large cardboard box. Well, when Michael picked the kids up they got a little out of hand (who, my kids?) and were fighting over a spot in the voting booth. In the process of fighting they knocked down the booth and tried to tear it up. If I remember correctly, when Michael was telling me about it he lovingly referred to Cackie & Owen as "numbnuts".

Today I'm happy to report that the polling booth was intact and that the kids had overwhelmingly voted for mint over strawberry... um, I mean Obama over McCain.

Never a dull moment here!

Happy Halloween!

 

Thank You Good Samaritan!

I have a bad habit that has got to stop! My bad habit it that I will use my credit or debit card for something and instead of putting it back in my wallet, I will put it in my pocket and move it to my wallet later. I do this a lot at work when I go to the cafeteria for lunch. I'll take out my debit card and forget to put it back in my purse. Often I'll forget to take it out of my pocket and the next day I'll go to get lunch only to realize that I have no debit card.
Well, my habit gets even worse... Last week I filled up my car with gas and instead of putting my American Express card back in my purse, I put it in the pocket of the jacket that I was wearing. You can guess what happened next... the card fell out of my jacket pocket and I never knew it. I actually discovered it when I was trying to buy something online, I have the card number memorized and when I went to complete my transaction it came up as rejected with some note about a lost card. I went searching for my card and couldn't find it. That night I called American Express and sure enough I had lost the card and some nice person had called it in to AmEx. They cancelled my card and are sending a new one. I got sooo lucky! No fraudlent charges and all the mess that goes along with that, I just have to wait for my new card to arrive.
So, THANK YOU whoever you are that took the honest approach and called in my lost card! I SOOOO APPRECIATE YOUR HONESTY!!!!

May 14 Pictures

Yes, I'm really catching up on pictures! Here's a slideshow of May 14, our last full day in China. At the end there is a picture of us on the plane on our way home. Then there is a picture of Chris Douglas Roberts, Michael got to meet him in Chicago when he got stranded there trying to get our painting back. The last picture is the balloons that our friends brought when they met us at the airport. The kids lost control of them at the airport and they were there on the ceiling when Michael finally arrived home.

May 13th photos

I'm catching up on photos from our China trip. Here is a slideshow from May 13. This was the day that we had the red couch photos and then went out to dinner at the Thai Restaurant.

It's a Gloomy Day

Here in Memphis it's rainy and gloomy. I needed something to help cheer me up, so I thought I would share some old pictures. These are from May 12th when we were in Guangzhou. Enjoy!

9-1-1

You may have missed it, but two weeks ago it was Fire Prevention Week. It presents the perfect opportunity to teach preschoolers about fire prevention and how to handle a fire emergency. You know... stop, drop and roll... and how to dial 9-1-1.

Well, Cackie apparently learned her lessons at school well since she dialed 9-1-1 at least 4 times this morning while she and Owen were downstairs watching TV and Michael & I were upstairs getting ready!

I got downstairs to find the phone on speaker and when pressed Cackie admitted that she had played with it. I hung up the phone and it immediately started ringing I picked it up and Michael also picked it up from upstairs. On the line was a Memphis Police dispatcher asking if everything was OK because 9-1-1 had been dialed. I reassured them that our 4 year-old had learned how to dial 9-1-1 at school and tried to practice on our house phone. When we hung up the phone immediately rang again. It was another dispatcher telling us that the police were on their way since someone had dialed 9-1-1 at least 4 times from our number. Within seconds Cackie was in the corner!

I had already decided that she was going to have to tell the police officers what she had done when the phone rang again. The police were verifying that everything was OK and that we did not need officers dispatched to our house. Michael apologized profusely and that must have done the trick since we never saw signs of the good boys in blue.

Needless to say, I'm now glad to be at work! Michael hopefully brought her little mishap to the attention of her teachers, we sure can use their help in reinforcing that she made a VERY BAD choice!

More later about our weekend and Cackie & Owen's mishaps with the lotion bottle at my parents house....

Boots are in style this season, right?

I sure hope they are in style since I'm sporting this nifty one...

I know it's no excuse, but this is one reason why I haven't updated lately. I've been running so hard I broke my foot!
No, not really. Actually this is what exercise will do for you! Back in July I started a women's running program. After a few weeks I lost a little momentum and then picked it up again just before the program was over. So, when I found out that our gym was starting a program to train for the half marathon I jumped at the opportunity. I was doing great, feeling good and was motivated when my ankle started to hurt. I took a few days off and it didn't get any better so I made an appointment with an orthopedic doc. He took some xrays and found nothing, so I was scheduled for an MRI. The MRI showed that I have a number of horizontal stress fractures in my foot and ankle. Yuck! I went for about a week after that just wearing a brace on my foot and it started to hurt more and more so I called and asked for a boot. It's soo fashionable, dont'cha think? Tomorrow I go for a bone density test and hopefully that will provide some answers as to what's going on.
In addition to my foot woes the kids are keeping us ever busy, we've moved to our new house and I'm halfway through the fall semester in my MBA Finance class. Just a few things keeping me away from the computer!
The move went OK. It wasn't the smoothest, but once we got through with dealing with the sellers it has been a lot better. There are a lot of things around the house that need fixing or updating and I keep telling Michael that this house needs him. It will take some time and a lot of hard work, but I have no doubts that it will be absolutely beautiful when we are finished.
This weekend we are headed to Knoxville for the Tennessee vs. Mississippi State game. My Uncle Donald is coming down to visit and it will be the first time Owen will get to meet him. We're looking forward to getting away and might not know what to do with a little free time on our hands.
That's it for now. I'm soo tired I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open! I stayed up too late last night watching the Phillies win the NLCS and was soo excited that they're going to the World Series that I had trouble falling asleep. Go Phillies!

All better!

I know it's been a long time since I've posted here. We've been staying busy with lots going on and I just haven't had much time to spend on the computer. I'm going to try to do better to keep this updated.

I'm soo happy to share that right now I'm sitting on the couch while Owen lays next to me watching his favorite Little Einsteins. We've been home about half an hour from having his ear tubes put in, adenoids removed and his circumcision done. He's doing wonderfully right now, even if he does look a little pitiful and groggy. He's already told Michael & I both that he loves us and gave Michael a big kiss. I'm very excited to see the changes that the ear tubes and adenoids bring.

So, to back up a little... we followed up with the ENT a few weeks ago and even after 2 months of medication therapy it was obvious that Owen had a lot of fluid in his ears. The doctor told us that he would definitely need tubes and his adenoids removed. We had to wait a few weeks for our appointment with the pediatric urologist, but then it all came together quickly. The two doctors were able to work out their schedules so that they could take care of everything during the same surgery. This was a relief to us since he would only need to be put under anesthesia once.

When the ENT doc was finished he told Michael & I that there was quite a bit of fluid in Owen's ears and he probably had about a 25 decible hearing loss. He's sure the tubes will help a lot and expects that Owen's speech and pronunciation will take off! The urologist said everything went just fine and the only restriction is that Owen needs to keep off of bikes & tricycles for a couple of weeks.

So, now that is behind us and we are very happy!

We've been up to all kinds of other things around here. Two weeks ago we were on vacation at Dauphin Island, AL. We ended up leaving home a couple days late because tropical storm Fay was coming through and there was a little bit of storm surge that we were worried about. The rental agency was able to change our reseravations, so leaving a few days late wasn't a big deal. But then we had to leave a day early because there was a mandatory evacuation because hurricane Gustav was headed that way.

In between the two storms we had a great week at the beach. The kids absolutely LOVED it and wanted to spend all their time swimming and playing in the water. We got to see all kinds of sealife (hermit crabs, sting rays, blue crabs, fish, dolphins) both on the beach and at the SeaLab on the island. We also got to spend some time with my Uncle Bruce and the kids had fun, even though his dog Bruno scared Owen.

The week that we went to the beach, I also started back working on my MBA. I'm taking a finance class this semester and I'm already behind, no surprise there! It will be tough to keep up, but I always enjoyed finance, so that will help me to get through.

We're also in the process of packing and working on all the stuff needed so that we can move. Right now we are scheduled to close on Monday morning. We don't have all the paperwork, etc ready yet, so who knows if Monday will be the day or not. In the meantime we'll keep packing. The house is an absolute wreck because of the packing, at least when we move we'll have a little more room with all the boxes around.

I guess the last bit of big news around here is that Cackie has been moved up at school and is now in the big kid preschool class. It was time for the kids to finally be separated and it's turning out to be great for both of them. I've attended preschool parent meetings for both of their classes and there is a lot of excitement in both of them. Cackie is going to start having "homework" each week and in a few weeks her class will be taking a field trip to the fair!

OK, Owen is starting to stir a bit and needs some mommy loving. I have a ton of pictures from this summer that need to be added, it may take a while with all that we've got going on, but I will try really hard to do that.
Till later....

Moving on Up....

So, it's official... we're moving! We came to the final agreement with the sellers this weekend so that means it's time to start packing. Ugh!

This whole thing is really a huge surprise to us. We got back from China and started talking about our plans to add on to our house, because it was very obvious that we needed more room. But, since our lives have been so busy with work this summer we never got any further than just talking about our plans.
Then just before Cackie's birthday, Michael told me about a house in our neighborhood that was just put up for sale and that it had always intrigued him and he wanted to see it. So, we called our realtor and she took us by to check it out. It turned out to be a great house with a lot of potential, but it's potential could only be reached through lots of time, hard work and MONEY! It was really just too much for us to even consider and it didn't meet all of our needs so we knew it wasn't meant to be.
But, it did get us thinking about what a good market it is to buy in right now and we looked at some listings online to see if there was anything that interested us. We identified a couple and had emailed our realtor about them, but just hadn't been able to set up a time to get together to see them.
I was also looking at the ads in the Sunday paper and came across an open house that sounded interesting (it was like 105 degrees that day, so the pool sounded wonderful). I had to go into work that morning for a little while, but then after I got home and the kids woke up from their naps we decided to go ahead and check out the open house. We walked in and within a couple of minutes I was totally in love! By the time we left there Michael & I both knew that we wanted to buy the house. In fact, I remember us walking down the front sidewalk to leave and he said... let's buy it!
That was Sunday and by Tuesday night we had a contract to buy it! On the 8th we had our home inspection and some things were identified that needed to be taken care of, so we came to an agreement with the sellers and we're set to close on the house on September 15th!
We're all really excited, but know that we have a TON of stuff to do before now and then. We leave on Saturday for our vacation at Dauphin Island, so that's a whole week lost packing. We need the time away, though and the kids need some Mommy & Daddy time.
For now we are going to keep our current house and try to rent it out. We've had someone express interest in it and hopefully that will come to fruition.

So, that's about all the news on our new house. Well, except for the fact that it was featured in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago! How cool is that??!!!


Go here to check it out... New York Times Great Homes and Destinations

We can't wait to move in and make it our own!

Been Working Too Much!

Yes, I've been gone for a LONG time because I've been working too much! Michael has been working too much as well, so we've been a pretty grouchy bunch around our house.
I'm finally getting some relief from my work, YAY! Michael should be getting some relief real soon.
Even though we've been working a lot we've still had a lot of stuff going on around our house. We celebrated 2 months with Owen, the 4th of July, Cackie's 4th birthday, our 9th wedding anniversary, the kids and I took a weekend to visit LaoLao & LaoYe, we're buying a new house & moving and we're about to celebrate 3 months with Owen!

I'm hoping to get some time this weekend to share more about what we've been up to and on our big upcoming plans. I've also got quite a few pictures that I'm hoping to get posted to share.
One thing that is for sure around here... we're staying busy!

Rebuttal

A rebuttal to the idiot at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

http://www.popehat.com/2008/06/23/mike-seate-of-the-pittsburgh-tribune-review-doesnt-approve-of-your-familys-skin-color/

This makes me MAD!

I first read this article on Saturday night and it just made me soo mad! This guy is a total idiot (I wanted to use another word here, but decided against it).

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/seate/s_573477.html

Booked!

For one week, later this summer this beautiful house will be our home! That's right... we're headed to the beach! I can't wait! We haven't been to the beach in years and neither Cackie or Owen has ever been, so it should be an awesome week.
It's also motivation to keep watching what I eat, maybe I'll be able to treat myself to a new swimsuit!

Progress

Open... a simple little word, but music to my ears yesterday.

I was loading the kids in the car after picking them up from school and while I was buckling Cackie in Owen hands me his little bag of Teddy Grahams and says "open".
I was soo excited! I ran around to his side of the car, opened his Teddy Grahams and gave him a big kiss! I think I'll remember this like I remember Cackie taking her first steps.

Later, after we were home Owen came running from the kitchen saying "water". He wanted a drink of water and told me instead of grabbing my hand and dragging me into the kitchen. Yay!

The best part of the day was when he copied me and said "night night, love you" as I was tucking him into bed. Small steps, but we're getting there!

I was outnumbered...

and I survived... SORT OF!

Last night was a first for us. It was the first time Michael had to go out of town since Owen has joined our family. It was the first time for me to be the sole caregiver for more than a couple of hours.

Things went pretty well, thankfully! Of course Michael's trip coincided with a busy important day for me at work where everything came down to the last minute and it was also the day that I had to take Katie to the vet for her monthly shot, oh and then it was also the night of Cackie's gymnastics lesson, no biggie! I'm happy to report that the work got done, Katie got picked up from the vet and taken home and we all got to gymnastics early. After gymnastics I treated the kids to McDonald's and they even got to bed before 9 pm! Whoo hoo for me!

When Michael is not home I never sleep well, but was surprised that I slept until I was awakened to screaming at 4 am. I rushed down the stairs to figure out WHO was screaming and wouldn't you know it, once I turned on the hall light they stopped screaming! I checked on both kids... Cackie appeared to be sleeping and Owen was readjusting himself, but seemed fine and didn't respond when I spoke to him so I figured it was just a dream. I kissed them both, left the room and headed back upstairs. Just as I was about to climb back in bed the screaming started again! I still couldn't figure out which one of them it was, so I raced back downstairs, turned on the hall light and they stopped!

This time Cackie had her eyes slightly open and looked at me. I asked her if she was the one screaming and she just looked at me and said "Good Night". Owen was out, so I knew it wasn't him. I headed back upstairs, the whole time praying that whatever the problem was had passed.

I never heard from them again the rest of the night, and I would have known since I only got little cat naps until I had to get up at 6:15. I need 7 to 8 hours a night, so it's killing me now that I didn't get it. I'm soo glad Michael will be back tonight!

This morning went much better than expected, we were all out of the house by 7:30 without any major tears or arguments! How I did that I'll never know! Maybe I should play tonight's Powerball, it may just be my lucky day!

Watch This!

This is a new documentary that will show on PBS tomorrow. Looks very interesting!