Arkansas Travels

Helping Olivia with roller skating for the first time was a treat for me! For anyone out there in blog world who doesn't know, I was a competitive roller skater for 7 years. I still love roller skating (o:
Go Hogs!
Sweet baby Georgia was born last May. Olivia tried helping with her every once in a while, but we had to be super careful because one time she tried wrapping her up in a nap map.
Curtis, JP, Pookie, and Mammy took the girls to a high school football game. Olivia loved it and still calls out, "Go Eagles!"
Um, Olivia, what's your fork doing on Avery's plate?
Family photo before heading to Ouachita Baptist University to honor Mr. & Mrs. Arnold.
Sweet cousins.

Avery did Olivia's hair first, and now it's Olivia's turn to do Avery's (o:
Avery helping Olivia make sure she has on the proper tricycle riding shoes.
Olivia had a blast with her cousins!


So...the last two weeks have been so very busy. We've had a lot of fun traveling, but it does feel good to be home.

First we headed to Arkansas to visit with JP's family. Olivia had a blast playing with her cousins Avery and Claire, as well as occasionally trying to help out with baby Georgia. And we had a special day to honor Mr. & Mrs. Arnold at Ouachita Baptist University. JP's parents met there in the cafeteria, and that is the college both JP and Curtis graduated from. A new technology lab is being built and named after the Arnold's, so we got to go to the college, have a nice luncheon, and then see the area where the lab will be built.

After we came back from Arkansas we had 4 days to rest, wash laundry, pack, make a connection with a possible birthmom in CA (more in a minute), and catch a plane to Boston. JP was heading to Boston for TDY, so we all went out a few days early and made a family vacation of it. We had a blast!!! Boston is a great city, and I would head back there in a minute. There's something about the big city and being able to walk everywhere that I love. I loved it when I visited NY, I loved it when I visited Chicago, and I especially loved it in Boston. The city is so kid friendly and so dog friendly. I almost wanted to rename it the "Dog City" because almost everyone there has a dog. JP wanted to rename it the "Park City" because there were so many parks. Even on the few days when Olivia and I hit the city by ourselves I felt totally at ease and comfortable. I'll try to post a few pictures in a few days...we just haven't uploaded the pictures to our personal computer yet (but, if you are a Facebook friend you can see a few pictures).

All the travels have put us behind our "preschool" time, but that's okay. At 3 it's certainly not essential to force a school schedule, especially when Olivia can experience so many wonderful things by traveling. I do look forward to getting back to our routine, though our house feels like it is exploding with clutter right now. I never had time to truly unpack from Arkansas before repacking for Boston, and I still haven't had a chance to unpack from Boston. Plus, in my scattered brain ways I started organizing the nursery and now that room is a mess. I keep telling myself to focus on one project before moving on to the next, but somehow I seem to always have multiple tasks going on at one time.

So, the adoption. Well, we had been moving at turtle speed. But then the Tuesday after we got home from Arkansas I got a phone call from my mom who had a friend who had a friend who is mentoring a soon to be mommy (Oct. 1) who is considering an adoption plan. As of today, it doesn't look like anything is going to come from the connection, but at the time of the phone call right before we left for Boston we kicked our adoption process into jet speed. We quickly finished up what we could and mailed it all off to Bethany so they could send out our reference letter requests. Now, we have almost all of our paperwork turned into Bethany...we are missing 2 pieces that should be wrapped up in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully we can start the home study interviews sometime in October and be approved sometime in November. I have to say...this process has not been anything like the process with Olivia. I always think of a line from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Aslan says, "Things rarely happen the same way twice."

So, that's an update on the latest happenings of our life (o: