Here are a couple pictures of our Liam yesterday...


In the car right after officially becoming a part of our forever family!!! :)

After, we went north to get pictures taken, do a little shopping, and spend the day together.

He was POOPED! :)

Wow! I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last blog post! Where has the time gone????

A "quick" catch up -

My parents arrived May 13 for Olivia's dance recital on the 16th and 17th. She danced ballet to "Simple Gifts" played by a wonderful cellist, and tap to "Joy to the World." Braeden went around singing "Jeremiah was a bullfrog..." forever! Relatives from my dad's side of the family drove almost 2 1/2 hours each way to come watch her performance on Sunday! It was a long weekend, but she did great!

This past weekend we drove 2 1/2 hours to their area to visit while my dad was still here. I was also able to meet up with a friend from high school whom I recently reconnected with through facebook, and her two kids. We had a great time, and the two hours we were able to spend at the park flew by! I hope we'll get to see each other again soon! :)

Monday we left our hotel (you have to love being able to do the fitness room while grandma stays in the room with the kids - what a treat!) and drove my dad to the airport where he headed back to FL. My mom is staying and doing the first part of our summer vacation with us.

The end of the school year is fast approaching so things there have been crazy busy - lots of cleaning out, reorganizing, long field trips, etc. We have the rest of this week, a teacher institute day on Monday, then one hour on Tuesday and we're done!

After school Tuesday my mom and I will take Olivia north for her next three month doctor appointment. Then on Thursday we head out.

We are first going to Atlanta. When Olivia received her Make a Wish last October, she was given a World Passport which enabled us to get in free for a year to amusement parks around the country. I had originally thought of hitting them all the way down to FL, but then decided to just do Atlanta since there were four or five just in that area. I rented us a house outside the city (with free internet) at a very reasonable rate! We'll be there June 4-11. We can go to Six Flags, Six Flags White Water, the Aquarium, the Georgia Zoo, and a Wild Animal Park all free. I also want to take them to the Martin Luther King Center I think.

After Atlanta, we'll head to FL until around July 7. That's the great thing about not being married and being a teacher, no schedule to worry about. Plus, with none of my kids being foster kids anymore I don't have to have travel papers with specific dates and destinations (of course, I'm anal enough that I do need a plan, but still, I can do whatever and not let someone know!). :)

I'm hoping to get back into our craft mode once on summer vacation again, I miss that from last summer. I also bought Olivia an iPod shuffle so that hopefully we can start running together. I have to take advantage of the time with my parents, because once we're back home I can't just go running without the kids. :) I printed off a training program called From Couch to 5K in two months and someone made podcasts to go along with them and time out your intervals while you listen on the ipod. I can't wait to try them! I am HOPING to run a 5K in August - we'll see!!! :)

Weight wise, I am now down 41.6 lbs as of last night.! :) I am hoping for about 32 more and then want to see where my body is at that time. I don't want to just go by a specific weight as I think people are very different with bone structure, muscle, etc, so at that point we'll see... :) And while I KNOW this is NOT something to complain about, and it HAS been lots of fun, it's getting quite expensive to keep replacing clothes! I have NOTHING from pre healthy lifestyle that will fit. I have had to completely redo my whole wardrobe. I admit I'm becoming quite a shopper, but it's so not cheap. I can't just run north to the good thrift stores with work and the boys. Olivia would be fine, but the other two, good luck. :)

That's life in a nutshell. No calls for kids. No drastic changes. Pretty steady living. :)

OH - and Liam's adoption day is only TWO DAYS away!!!! :)

What great weather we FINALLY have! Too bad I have lovely cramps today and can't enjoy it as much as I'd like. :( Oh well! We had a picnic lunch out on the front lawn (yea, they think I'm the coolest mom ever! OH what a simple picnic lunch can do!). After lunch there were a bunch of kids playing in the neighborhood and Braeden being the social butterfly that he's becoming stayed out to play basketball in our drive. He ended up attracting a neighborhood boy and two boys visiting their grandparents next door. They played ball, played sword fights, and just played. I finally had to call him in for "quiet/rest time." And he listens so well and came right in. He and Olivia are playing quietly in the basement while Liam naps. He was so funny. Crying and saying he didn't want a nap and then didn't hear a peep from him within about 3 minutes! :) I'm catching up on laundry and doing some more work on organization in the laundry/storage area, what joy! The next few weeks are going to be crazy so we are in for a quiet relaxing weekend...