2 Great Days!

Thanks so much for all the kind words about Sol’s Gotcha Day and for entering the print and key fob giveaway!  We will have our 8 Months Waiting Art Giveaway this Saturday, so make sure you check back then.  I’m really praying and hoping there will be no 8 month piece.  A girl can hope right?

Okay so the winner of the custom print from Dana at Lifelines Design and the custom key fob is…

#36 Aaron.  Aaron I will be emailing you shortly and super congrats.

And thanks so much again for sharing with us Dana.  Totally appreciate it.

These past 2 days have been crazy fun so I have actually taken a few days off from my order list…tsk, tsk!  I did finish up this sweet little bunting for Michelle in Indiana though.  Thanks so much Michelle…totally appreciate it.

I have made very little bunting, but had recently made up some for our family.  I wanted a strand to hang for celebrations other than birthdays…such as Gotcha Days, etc.  I kind of love it.

And speaking of Gotcha Days.  Last year we did a family party for Sol, but this year we wanted to do something with just our little family.  Sol specifically asked for orange cookies for his day and it just so happened that I wanted to make Africa cookies anyways…so orange Africa cookies it was.

I got my Africa cookie cutter a while back from Erica (fellow adoptive mom).  Not sure if they still have them, but someone on Facebook said that you can also get them at cheapcookiecutters.com.  I have actually used the cookie cutter site before, but had never looked for an Africa because I already had one, but sure enough they have one HERE.

And just in case you were wondering, I used this cookie and icing recipe.

They turned out just right and yummy…super pleased.

So we started our day off with cookies…does this = bad parenting or really cool parenting?  I’ll keep telling myself ‘cool’.

And then we headed out early in the morning to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.  Josh has taken off, like negative days this year trying to save up for Ethiopia, but we figured this was the perfect occasion to use one of his days.  We wanted to do something fun and something the kids would really get excited about.  We have even been counting down the days and yes, the calendar had to be orange.  Can you guess Sol’s favorite color yet?

We had an absolute blast and spent the entire day there.  The kids were in love and did so well with all the driving and with tons of walking…we’re no stroller kind of people.  There was so much to do.  Here was everyones favorite part from smallest Kelley to largest:  Sol’s favorite were the sting rays and he was the only kid that pet one.  He was so proud.

Huddy’s favorite were the turtles…big and small.  They even fed the huge sea turtle while we were there.  Apparently feeding a sea turtle consists of tying large broccoli stalks and pieces of lettuce to a PVC pipe and dropping it down into the water.

Harper loved the river otters and penguins, but the butterfly garden came in at #1.  She loved it.  She said she felt just like Fancy Nancy.  I love her.  This was a little, lame butterfly that had lost part of its wing.  Is it sad that I just smiled after typing that last sentence?

Now I loved the river otters, but my favorite of the day was a jellyfish exhibit they had going one.  It was really, really amazing and colors were out of this world.

And Josh’s favorite were the alligators.  Fun Josh Kelley Fact:  When I first met Josh when we were 15 he was a huge fan of The Crocodile Hunter and every time we hung out that’s what we watched.  He has just always had this thing for alligators and crocodiles.

The rest of the aquarium was great as well.  They had huge tanks of fish, tons of exhibits, a great gift shop, food, fish you could touch and water play outside.

Needless to say it was one fantasticly fun Gotcha Day.  And all the kids slept like rocks.

And yesterday we had our family pictures taken.  We always like to get pictures taken before adding another sweet kiddo to our family.  I like to document how we were right before.  Really praying we will see our sweet little boys face soon, so I had scheduled pictures with the amazingly talented Cheyenne of Shots by Cheyenne.

Let me go ahead and write about a million things I loved about Cheyenne.  She was super nice…way too nice.  She was so good with the kids and Huddy was especially smitten with her.  She was quick, precise and got the job done.  Her ideas were awesome.  I’m not really into the whole different clothing changes for pictures, but I do love a good prop.  She said I could bring whatever I wanted.  I brought our ‘Waiting for You’ sign, frames and mustaches…of course, but I had no idea what do with them.  She rocked the props.  She was so fast and so wonderful and her creativity is crazy good.  And it is always a plus when the price is RIGHT!  I cannot say enough how much I loved working with her.  Totally recommend her.  She took the pictures yesterday evening and had a preview up of just a few of the pictures that night.  Good gracious…she is just plain good.  I will let the preview pictures say the rest.

My OH My…I am in LOVE…and that was just the preview.  Thank you so much Cheyenne!  You my lady are really something special.

Happy Thursday!