Pictures are in!

They turned out great as usual. We love our photographer. He always does a wonderful job with a wiggly girl. And somehow, our favorites every year seem to be the one where he makes her put her head in her hands.

This year, I promised Halle that she could wear her favorite dress-up outfit for pictures, and I am so glad I did. They turned out to be my favorite ones. Thanks to Uncle Alan for her fabulous hat.

Halle's Birthday

When the Christmas tree comes out, Halle knows it's her birthday. So we set up the tree and she brings out all the stuffed bears, puppies, and monkeys to sit underneath. We have started to accumulate quite a few since she joined our family, but she doesn't feel like she can exclude any. So here is the cat, taking her ceremonious place with the animals just after the last bear was added. Apparently she feels at home there.
Halle's 4th birthday was practically a coming-of-age for her. For the whole day, she insisted she could do everything herself now -

- including setting the table with the nice dishes (Hawaiian Haystacks are a favorite at our house)

-and baking her own cake. This would be fine with me if it weren't for that hazardous oven. So we baked her cake together, and she got to add as many sprinkles as she wanted, which was enough to make it quite crunchy.
While we were in Arizona, we found this dollhouse in great condition on Craigslist. The person was in Scottsdale, so it was perfect timing. Fortunately, it disassembles so we could get it home without too much trouble.

I love it because she can't hurt the furniture and it came with everything you would want, plus we didn't have to pay full price which was even better. And she loves it for all the reasons a little girl loves a dollhouse.


And here is the real shocker. All that time away apparently makes a kitty's heart grow fonder. She is suddenly willing to let Halle get near her and spend a little time petting her without having to be held in my lap. It only took her 4 years. Despite her fearful tendencies, we really do love DaNalli. She has never scratched or bitten Halle. And Halle has tormented her for a fare share of the time.

More of our Vacation

I had a few more pictures left to post of our vacation, so here you go. We went to the beach the day after Thanksgiving. The guy at the hotel looked at us funny when we asked where the nearest public beach was. Probably because it's November. There was hardly anyone there, as it turns out. But for 9:00 am in November, the weather was beautiful to us. The water wasn't even that chilly just for sticking our feet in.

There was obviously at least one passer-by who was nice enough to take this picture of us.
Halle wouldn't get very near the water though. It got pretty stressful when it started heading towards her. I have a pretty tight grip on her hand as she is trying to escape the oncoming waves.
My favorite picture of Neal and Halle, and it looks like a lone fisherman.Halle building sand castles with our expensive sand toys from Best Western.

Our Travels over Thanksgiving

After having many disappointments this year on the adoption front, we decided to take a much needed vacation. We drove down to Arizona and visited with my sister and her family, and tried to catch up with a few friends we left behind. Unfortunately we didn't have time to see everyone we wanted to see, and ran into a few people we didn't expect to see. The last part of our trip included going to Sea World, so I am just warning you now, we have a lot of pictures.

We took the route through the Hoover Dam to see the progress on the amazing bridge they are building.

We stayed with my cousin, Tyler's family our first night in Phoenix. They have a daughter Halle's age and they had tons of fun playing together. We went together to the Children's Museum in Phoenix where we met Jolene. The kids had lot of fun with the pretend grocery store and all the other stuff they had there. It was just perfect for their ages.Going through the tricycle car wash.
Up on the platform where they load balls. Good job Halle for not being scared.
And serving ice cream cones.

Then we spent a few days at Jolene and Kimball's house. It was crazy because I was trying to get some of my Christmas shopping done since we don't have all those great stores in Idaho, and especially in our little town.

Katie followed Halle around the whole time we were there. She wanted to be just like Halle and do everything she was doing. It was adorable. This picture wasn't planned, but we realized they were wearing similar jammies.

We made Halle burn off some energy at a park near their house before we got on the road to California. Apparently they didn't plant winter grass there.

We went to Sea World on Thanksgiving Day. It turned out to be the best time to go because there weren't any crowds. We did hear a lot of other languages besides our own though.


She would only put one finger on the dolphin, but she touched it. She said it felt like a hot dog.

No kids to speak of in the play area. She just walked right in and had the place to herself.

This is the pose you will see my sister, Jolene, doing in just about every picture we have of her as a child. We have always said that Halle is so much like her, and here is another similarity. She was doing it for every picture I tried to take of her.

Neal is standing in line with Halle to get on a ride. The people surrounding him are fully grown adults, mind you. Like I said, we heard a lot of foreign languages. I had this same view when I went to Hong Kong. I felt like a giant looking over everyone's heads in the subway.

Here's Halle being brave on the rope bridge with Dad. She went down a twisty slide that was over 2 stories high. Way to go!
We saw the Shamu show twice. Earlier in the day as we were leaving the first show, I looked down and Halle had tears streaming down her face. She was sad because she didn't get to be splashed. We had time at the end of the day, so we went again. We only moved forward maybe three rows, but they brought out the big guns and had two splashing at a time.

Shamu definitely made it up to her - and us. So then she starts complaining that she's freezing cold! But she was all smiles. She told us on the way home that she is going to be Shamu's trainer when she grows up. I told her she would have to feed him the fish. She replied by telling me she would just have to bring her gloves. She had apparently already thought this through.

It's been 4 years

We are finally back from our extended vacation to Arizona and California. We had tons of fun, and believe me, more pictures are coming. On our way back home, we stopped by the hospital where Halle was born and took her picture. It's been four years since we were there. We have the deepest respect and gratitude for her birth parents who made such a tough choice at an emotional time in their lives, but blessed our lives in a way we could never begin to repay. Thank you so much for your sacrifice.

Pictures from Mary's

I hope Mary doesn't mind that I stole a few pictures from her blog. Mary showed the kids a picture of her daughter with her date to homecoming.

And apparently Halle and Mary's son, Jacob came up a little later wearing this. I especially love the gun in the pocket. That's a classic coming from our little rural community. It cracks me up every time I look at it.

And here is Halle with her really good friend, Ellie, making beaded necklaces. They took their jobs very seriously.

The Most Beautiful Princess-Witch Who Did Good in All the Land

This Halloween has been two months in the making, or actually more. I found a really cute witch hat at the DI (thrift store) last July. When I finally pulled it out in September, Halle wanted nothing to do with it, despite her love for all kinds of hats. I then realized that the only witches she knows are evil to her precious princesses and fairies. So we had to do some education and costume beautification to help her be totally excited about this. Now had there been more than one child to worry about, maybe we wouldn't have spent so much energy on this, but we had the time.

Here she is, second prize costume winner at our church party last night.

The night before, we went to a carnival at an elementary school with Aedin. They had a lot of fun, but they seemed more interested in sitting in the perfectly sized chairs and playing school than actually participating in the games.

Halle did win a pair of Bride and Groom goblets at the penny toss - she landed two pennies in glasses. We can finally start her dowry! Here they are in the candy walk and tattoo booths.

Then on Halloween morning, we had a party at our house with her friends. It was my substitute for a birthday party for her since in a month, Thanksgiving and Christmas completely take over and there isn't as much time for her birthday. (Don't worry parents, we weren't expecting presents). I had her help make the invitations. She glued them together and signed her H to the back.

My sister, Angie, took most of the pictures, so hopefully we will get a few. The kids were a ton of fun. They were still learning the ropes on all the party games like eating doughnuts from a string and pinning a nose to a scarecrow, but they did a really good job. Here are our neighbors, Will and Emma. Emma apparently was obsessed with this black wig for a week, wearing it constantly including at nap times, so it became part of her fairy costume. Too cute, and the robot costume was awesome too.

Here is post-party witches picnic with Abbie and Halle. They had fun playing together for a little bit after the guests had to leave.

And one last picture of Halle and me when she came to see me at work. She thought it was totally cool that I got to wear my costume to work, but felt I still needed a broom. In fact, she wanted to lend me hers. What a sweet kid.

Pre-Halloween Pumpkin Carving

We celebrated my mom's birthday a week before Halloween by carving pumpkins as a family. In Halle's words, "that is totally asgusting Daddy."

It took the longest time before she would reach inside the pumpkin to even touch it. But she was finally brave enough to try it. My mom mentioned that her face was reminscent of a time when my dad showed me how to clean a fish. I think I much prefer pumpkin guts.
And after dinner and pumpkins, the girls ran downstairs to play dress up as usual. Halle found this wig that my sisters and I played with when we were kids.

Halle's Halloween pictures

I know, Halloween is long gone, but my sister just barely posted these on her blog (way to go Angie :-). And since I was too busy running games and entertaining, we didn't have any pictures of our own so I thought I would add them to our blog and then eventually move them to the right date in about a week.


The best part of the doughnut game was when one of the kids would get tired of trying to catch it without hands and would sneak a whole mouthful by using their hands, thinking no one had seen.

We made bone necklaces (painted pasta shells). And the pin the nose on the scarecrow game seemed to be brand new to everyone. But once they caught on, they all wanted to play it over and over.