One year!

Can you believe we have been having adventures here in Michigan for a year now!?! This year has flown by.

We want to thank our family for coming out to visit us; helping us paint, plant, weed, decorate, etc.!

I want to thank all our friends, new and old, for making our move easier on us. We are so thankful for our friends for helping us get our house ready to sell, watching D while the movers packed, and keeping us in your thoughts and prayers even though we are far away. We are very blessed to have met some wonderful friends here in Michigan who have helped us settle in and fall in love with our new town. We love you all and can't thank you enough!

We have been in our home for almost a year and have done so much to make it our own. We started off cleaning up the landscaping last August and have continued to work on it this summer. We have or have had a lot of painting done, installed a backsplash, and got new countertops. This next year we hope to continue painting and start getting new carpeting. N is dreaming of a man cave for the basement, but I don't think that dream will come true! We do hope to put in a bathroom down there, so we can just come in from the backyard and be able to wash up.

We can't wait to see what this next year will bring!

Dr. Suess said it best, "Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!"

We have arrived home safely from our road trip! We had a great time and enjoyed all our stops. We started off in New York to pick up my mom and visit with friends and family and then headed towards the mountains for a fun filled week.

Our first stop was in Forest, Virginia to see my old neighbors from our Virginia Tech days. D had a great time playing with their kids and attending VBS with them. It was fun to watch the next generation of HOKIES (we hope!) play together. I loved catching up with Pam, we spent so much time together while living in Christiansburg and I missed our long chats and shared suppers. We also got to spoil their new puppy, Beamer. What a cutey he is.

Next we headed through the mountains to Huntersville, North Carolina to see my brother who lives in Concord. He took us to the Lazy 5 Ranch, what an adventure that was! It is a drive thru farm, so we got to feed the animals right from our car. We were able to feed cattle, horses, goats, deer, pigs, camels, llamas, emu, ostrich, and probably a few more I am forgetting! We explored Dan Nicholas Park the next day. It was a very nice park with lots to do. It is free to get in, but there is a small fee for some of the activities. We enjoyed a ride on the carousel and the train, and D enjoyed running through the splash pad. We also did some gem mining and found some cool gems. The park also has a petting zoo, paddle boats, a huge playground, mini golf and much more!

We headed to Columbus on Monday to meet up with my dad and have dinner with friends. D and I said good-bye to my parents on Tuesday and headed to Dayton to see some friends from back home in NY. The kids had a great time swimming and getting an ice cream treat to end the day. We packed up Wednesday and headed back to Pure Michigan!

On a side note D had been complaining that her mouth hurt and wanted to know when it would stop, after taking a peek we discovered she had one of her six year molars coming in! So while her friends are loosing their teeth, she decided to get a new one instead. This probably explains her headaches and earaches over the last few weeks. She wanted to know why the tooth fairy didn't bring her money, I told her you don't get money for getting teeth just loosing them! And her Uncle Sean told her the tooth fairy brings $10 for each tooth, I hope he plans on being the tooth fairy.

July, please slow down!

Does anyone else think July is going way too fast? I know it is only the 8th, but with so much planned over the next two weeks it is going to be over before I know it.

Some updates:

We tore down the playset that was here when we moved in and built a new one, it looks so much better. We cleared out a lot of branches and trees in our backyard to make room for D's playhouse. We are working on the patio under our deck in hopes of hanging a hammock and fixing the walkway.

We had our last home visit from our foster care case worker! She is hoping to have our home study down and submitted by August!!

D and I are getting ready to go to NY to pick up my mom and then have a road trip to VA, NC and OH. We look forward to seeing friends and my brother!

D past the orange band test at the pool and can go down the slide and swim without me in the pool (in the shallow area).

D got her hair cut, it is the shortest it has been since she was 2! She wanted to go shorter, but I had to say no to that!

We are closing in on our one year anniversary of living in Michigan! Hard to believe. I am hoping to put together a list of things we love about living here and of course the things we miss about NY!

Have a great July everyone! I will try to post when I get back from our road trip!

Oh what a busy month it has been......so far!

D graduated from preschool!! Where has the time gone? She has loved every minute of preschool, starting with her time in Tokyo, her two years at Big Flats Preschool and finishing up here in Michigan. We can only hope she enjoys the BIG school just as much!

We finally met our social worker from Oakland Family Services. We look forward to getting to know her and getting our certification. We still have some items to complete, and they still have some checks that they have to do. She will be back out to our house in a few weeks to go over our autobiographies.

We have begun to work on the backyard, starting with D's play set. The wood pieces need painting, so we started taking it apart only to discover we need to replace some of the boards. We are hoping the rain will hold off this weekend so we can get some of it done.

We are headed to Corning on Wednesday! Nathan has business and D and I hope to catch up with friends and spend time with my parents and Grandma.

Memorial Day Weekend!

Had a fun and busy Memorial Day weekend! Celebrated our 12 year wedding anniversary, planted some flowers, started our garden, swam, and enjoyed dinner with friends! Now a short week filled with lots to do; pricing and setting up for rummage sale, finishing father's day gifts, groceries, school, etc......

Delaney's 2nd Book: Cinderella and the Prince go to the Ball

Metamorphosis

We decided to give into the commercial hype and order some butterflies (or really caterpillars) for D to watch transform. Our little cup had 5 in it (I forgot to take a picture), food in the bottom, and tiny holes in the top. We predicted maybe we would end up with 2 surviving. We watched the caterpillars double in size, and then start changing from the larval to the pupal stage. About a week for so later the chrysalis become darker, a sign that the butterfly would be emerging anytime. It was very exciting to watch, we kept checking to see if there was a butterfly and finally there was! And to our surprise all 5 caterpillars became butterflies! Thankfully the weather warmed up and we were able to release them to live our their short lives.