Good 'Ol Songs

Over the past several weeks we have heard Annaliese begin to sing a lot of songs that we used to sing in Sunday School. How sweet it is to hear her sing ones like, “Do Lord, O Do Lord,” “I’m in the Lord’s Army,” and “He’s Got the Whole World.” Another big thanks to our great children’s ministry volunteers at church. You are making an impression : )

VBS

Annaliese finished her first week of VBS tonight – she loved it!! A big thanks to all the great staff and volunteers who made this week  happen : )

One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today, Jonathan and I received a phone call that forever changed our lives!

I can hardly believe it has been one year since we received our referral for Annaliese! I will never forget how it happened – the secretary at work came and found me in a patient’s room and told me that my husband was on the phone and I needed to come. I was worried – Jonathan never calls me at work – so I assumed something was wrong. When I got to the phone, Jonathan assured me everything was just fine but that I needed to get my cellphone and get to a quiet place because Jennifer (our family coordinator) was going to call me on a three way call to tell us about a little girl who was being referred to us! You could have knocked me over with a feather!!

If you remember, this was on a Monday and Jonathan and I had just been approved on Friday to expand our age request to 0-5 years old. We would have never guessed how quickly this would change things!

When we got home that day, we opened the email from Jennifer together and got to see our beautiful daughter’s face for the first time!

Here were the first pictures of her that we got to see (but could not share at that time).

And here are a few of her today…

God has been so good to us over this past year – what a wild ride we have been on! Thank you to everyone who shared in it with us : ) 

New Routine

This week we completed our first week of our new routine for the summer. Annaliese did well with all the changes and enjoyed her time with all of her new experiences. We are thankful that she is such a flexible little girl – sooo many changes seem to keep happening in her life and she just goes with the flow : )

Strawberries

Our first strawberry crop came in over this past week. Annaliese LOVES helping daddy pick new ones each morning and has discovered that she really likes to eat them : )

First Camping Trip

We just got home from our first camping trip and Annaliese loved it!! We have been trying to schedule a trip for several weeks and kept getting rained out, so we finally decided to just go for it. It was a little damper than we would have liked, but the temperatures were great for camping – high 60s to low 70s.

We did end up in the shower house on Friday night because of storms that came through the area, but Annaliese seemed to think this was just part of camping. The next night she asked when we would go up to the shower house : )

She continues to not enjoy sweets very much, which we know is good, but we failed to get her to even like s’mores. So, as a family our s’mores get smaller by the person – Jonathan likes a “real” s’more, I like the graham cracker with the marshmallows and Annaliese just likes the graham cracker : )

When we asked her what her favorite part was, she basically named everything we did for the weekend - helping daddy make the fire, cooking over the fire, sleeping in the tent, playing games, and going on walks.

The one thing she specifically mentioned not liking was going to the potty so much : ) The shower house was a little distance from the camping site, so every time mommy or daddy went, we had her go with us so she could try. She thought we went too much!

Overall, we had a great time and she cannot wait to go again!