dear baby,

today your mama thought about you all day long.  and prayed for you.  and your birth mother.
and imagined what your hands and feet and smile will look like.
your sisters colored you some pictures today.  the biggest sister wishes you would come home soon.  she and little, big sister LOVE babies.

we listened to some ethiopian music before we ate dinner, and danced around the kitchen.  and felt just a little closer to you...even though we have no clue who you are.
you are growing in our hearts.  you have taken root.  and just the idea of you makes us so joyful.

I love you sweet, precious one.
just waiting until my dreams of you come true.

how to eat a cadbury creme egg

by: charlotte mae

she told everyone with great joy at church this morning that she had a "chockit egg" for breakfast.
girl definitely inherited the sweet tooth (or teeth) from mama.

hope you had a beautiful easter.  we spent ours with our el paso family celebrating our risen Christ.  such a magnificent day.

the colors of us

my bff natalie gave eden and charlotte some really wonderful books for Christmas.  she is one of the best gift givers of all times.  always special and meaningful and favorite.
one of the books was the colors of us by karen katz.  it's about a little girl named lena whose mother is an artist.  she and lena go all around town and notice the beautiful skin colors of all of their friends and neighbors.  then lena goes home and paints pictures of all of her friends...mixing up all sorts of colors of paint to match their skin tones.
I think I've read this book 3 times a day for the last week.
at the end of the book lena sits in her room painting surrounded by her painter's palette and "squeezy paints" as eden calls them.  this is one of eden's favorite pages.
yesterday, I told eden we could go and buy her very own painter's palette and squeezy paints at hobby lobby and she could hardly wait.
she and sister really got into pretending to be lena this afternoon.

and now our house smells like craft painted projects drying...and the curry cooking in my crock pot.  mmmmm.

springness

spring is not my favorite season.  I just get so sneezy and itchy eyed.  I'm a summer and fall kind of girl.  but I can't help but love all the pastel candy and frilly easter dresses in the front of every store.  oh and the tulips.
we really don't have much of a spring here in the desert.  winter just sort of morphs into summer sometime in march.  but it is still fun to pretend we are surrounded by daffodils instead of hot sandy wind.
we dyed easter eggs this weekend.  eden picked out a toy story kit.  she really got into dipping the eggs into the stinky vinegar color baths this year.  charlotte just liked crushing the shells with her chubby fingers...and kept wondering why we weren't eating the eggs.

we also planted some tomatoes this weekend.  and cilantro...and some kind of spicy pepper for pete.
I will eat a tomato sandwich for lunch every day for weeks some sweet time this summer.  cannot even wait.

and lastly...we played dress-up with java.  and that turned out to be pretty funny looking.

oh and one more thing.  if you or your church or youth group are looking for a great opportunity to serve this summer...please consider coming and building a house with us!  we need volunteers to build homes in juarez and acuna, mexico and we are also building homes in guatemala this summer!!
check out our website: www.casasporcristo.org it has all the info you'll need.
thanks!

nothin' yet...

we're still waiting away for our referral.  we know that we are close to next in line, but we just don't know when the next batch of referrals will come.  could be next week...could be next month.
it seems like referrals with our agency come in waves.  the last bunch was about a month ago.  it isn't easy waiting, but I just have to keep reminding myself that it will all happen when it is supposed to.
I wonder who is rocking our baby...who has already seen and kissed his face.
what day I'll get to see that face myself.
sigh.  it's tough...all this not knowing.
but I know the one who does know.  and really...that's more than enough.
the little ladies and I have been enjoying playing outside every day.  they go through several outfits most days...and I could care less.  I love watching them play with the water hose and drink out of it :)  and I love to kiss their faces when they smell like sunscreen.
today we played at the park up the way from our house.  java seemed to like being pulled around by her new little friends.

then we made little pizzas for lunch.  see charlotte's ONE curl in the back of her hair?  cracks me up.
thank you so much for your prayers and support.  it means the world.

meet java!

here she is!
we are so happy that java is home!  she is a 3 year old boxer...and is sweet as pie.  we got her from the humane society because we prefer rescue dogs to fancy breeder kinds.  my brother, parents, and sister all have boxers and love them...so we thought she'd be a great fit for our family.

 and the greatest face of all...when her tooth gets caught in her jowls.

welcome to the family miss java.  hope we have many years with you.

new leash and collar

we are back home in our mountains and desert.  we call this home, too.
when we fly into atlanta I tear up seeing the pine trees.  and when we return and travel west... my girls see their mountains and the sandy earth below and we get just as excited.
so thankful for this home and this life.
an exciting thing happened for eden as we boarded our plane bound for el paso.  the pilot invited her to sit down next to him and pretend to fly the plane!  she was so adorable and thrilled!

(blurry pic because mommy was holding charlotte and a zillion other things!)

after a couple of hours of travel we got off the plane and glided down the escalator to daddy and were SO HAPPY!!  

we put our luggage in the back of the car...and drove to pick out a new friend for our family.  I won't give all the details away until tomorrow when I have more pictures of this furry girl.  it just hasn't been the same around our house without our Jesse dog, and we can't wait to have another canine member officially added to the fam this afternoon.

also.  one more thing.  I don't usually care about taking pictures of nature.  but this beautiful butterfly was on the tree in our front yard this weekend and I thought she was so lovely.  I think it was definitely a "she".

hope you have a wonderful monday!! I know we will.
let us rejoice and be glad!

take me home

well...I really didn't intend to neglect the blog, but it seems that I have for awhile.  woops.

we've been visiting family for the last two weeks and that just took a back seat to anything else.  

I've got a lot of catching up to do...but we'll just start with the events of today.  

today my dad went to mow the pasture that I grew up playing in.  it is down the hill from our old house.  we had black angus cows and horses.  and a tractor.   and a big barn.  

the big barn still stands, but the animals and tractor are no longer.  the air and the grass still smell the same delicious, and with the dogwoods in bloom I could hardly keep my eyes from misting over.

I love those acres of grass and trees.  I have since I was a baby.

and I just happened to marry my dream boy in that very same place almost 6 years ago.

so you can see why it is deeply special for me to bring my daughters to run around there.  

and why I loved seeing the sun shine on their faces while they played with my old toys, had a picnic lunch, and road on the mower with pawpaw.

I am aching to hear news of our son...and for the day he joins us for play time in the pasture.  there haven't been any referrals for awhile...hoping for some soon!