Finally Blogging about Baby Harper!

When we mailed our Christmas cards this year, I was excited to include a letter letting many of our friends and family know about our good news! In case you read our blog and you haven't heard the latest from the Harpers.....here it is! We are adding to our family through an international adoption! We are adopting a son from Ethiopia! I have not blogged about the process until now because there really hasn't been a lot to tell. I could have bored you with the ins and outs of paper-chasing: homestudy interviews, doctor visits, adoption education courses, fingerprints, criminal background checks, notarizing documents, state-certifying documents and so on, but that isn't very exciting. HOWEVER...I am so happy to let you all know that our homestudy has FINALLY been approved (after 3 weeks of "issues" with our case manager) and our dossier (international paperwork) has finally been mailed to our adoption agency in Oregon! If all goes well, we will be on the official "waiting list" for our son within the next 5 to 7 days! Here is a picture of the dossier paperwork that has taken us 3 months to compile!

This is a picture of the check-list for all of the documents and one file folder full of the original documents as well as two more file folders with copies of everything! I went over that checklist SO MANY times! I'm just praying that it has all been done correctly and that there will be no mistakes!
On Thursday afternoon, Beckett, Helen and I went to UPS to mail those three file folders to AGCI (All God's Children International) which is our adoption agency in Oregon! I'm tracking the package and expect it to arrive in Oregon on Monday morning! We have been talking to Beckett and Helen about all of this from the beginning and when I gave them the package of paperwork to pose for a picture, Helen said, "We are holding our baby brother!" And in a way, she is right! That package of paperwork represents a lot of work that was necessary for us to begin this journey to bring him home to his forever family!
We are so glad to have this part of the process behind us! I'm excited to begin to share with you all how God has been moving in our lives and in our hearts about adoption and His love for orphans! I won't make this a mega-post, but I did want to go ahead and share this huge step in our journey! I'll share more soon! Thanks for all of your prayers and support!

Valentine Party!

We had our Homeschool Family Connection Valentine party today and I think that everyone had a great time! We had a wonderful turn out for this new group that we just started this past September! We meet once a month as parents to talk about specific homeschool topics and to support one another. We are trying to plan more opportunities for our children to get together, so this month we planned a Valentine party! We started at 11:30 with pizza! Yum!

Then each child decorated a bag. They all brought valentines to give to their friends, so after the bags were decorated, they delivered their valentines! They love to see what their friends gave them! So sweet!

Each child got a box of conversation hearts and they sorted and graphed their hearts! Here is Helen lining up her hearts!

Then we headed to the kitchen to decorate heart shaped sugar cookies! Lots of icing and sprinkles!
More cookie decorating and a "cake walk" game where each child won a pink rice crispie treat!

Beckett with Lake and Wheat!

Home Depot!

We took the kids to the Home Depot workshop last Saturday! for a few more pictures, check out Beckett's blog, "The Slam"!

Helen and Hair Bows

A few weeks ago, Beckett and Helen's friend, Emma gave Helen all of her pretty hair bows! Helen and I had fun trying them on this afternoon and here are a few of my favorite pictures! I wanted to put my favorite Todd Snider song on my playlist to go along with this post, but I couldn't find it! It is called "My Generation" and it has a line about "big bow-headed chicks"! In MY generation....even us "big" girls wore BIG bows. (I won't scan and show any of those old pictures! Just imagine....big permed hair and big hair bows on an 18 year old! Oh my!) Anyway...enjoy the pictures!

100th Day Celebration

Last week we had our 100th day of school, but for various reasons we did not have our "celebration" on that specific day. I decided to wait until today when Sean would be home so that he could enjoy some of the activities with us. Beckett and Helen remembered all of the fun things we did last year and they were really looking forward to it. It was a good day, but it wasn't quite as exciting as last year! The thing that they both remembered and were looking forward to was the 100 piece snack! (Obviously they are my kids and love anything that has to do with eating!) I thought I would share a few pictures from our day.........

Beckett made the number 100 and a smiley face out of his cars!

The first snack of the day. 100% juice and a 100 calorie Oreo snack pack! They are wearing their hats with 100 stickers.
Sean and Beckett rolling a die 100 times and using tally marks to see which number turned up the most!
And the highly anticipated 100 piece snack!

Cold Days and Frozen Pipes

We have been enjoying the snow that fell on Monday. It is VERY cold here today. With temps not rising above 25 degrees today, we are experiencing wind chill temps close to zero! Unfortunately, these cold temps caused frozen water pipes last night that left us with no water this morning. When Sean went out to check on the problem at 5:00 this morning, he found that the door to our crawl space was wide open. We have had some guys here working on putting up new vinyl on our soffits and fascia around the house and they evidently left the door open yesterday. Maybe they closed it, but didn't close it well and it blew open. Either way, it was wide open which is not good when it gets as cold as it did last night! Sean put a space heater down there to try to warm the area up slowly, but while we were gone on a quick trip to McDonald's to grab some breakfast, the pipe burst! After a few trips to Home Depot, he almost has it fixed! He is such a wonderful handyman! He works so hard to fix anything and everything! My mind always starts racing...thinking how much will this cost us? If we had to call a plumber, I'm sure it would be close to $300! But I think we have spent about $22 at Home Depot and if all goes well, we will be taking warm showers in an hour or so! We love you Sean! You are the best husband, father and plumber we know!

Helen is modeling her new hat that Auntie Mame made for her! Isn't it cute?

Getting ready to sled down the hill!

Go Cobras!

This morning was Beckett's first basketball game of the season! He is playing Upward basketball at a local church and his team is named the Cobras! He was really excited and looking forward to the game. He told me before the game that he was thinking that he was going to be able to slam dunk this season, but he is pretty sure that they raised the goals, so he can't do it yet! I love his confidence! :)

Posing for a picture before we left home for the game!

Connor and Papa came to watch Beckett play this morning. Connor had a game in Sweetwater at noon, so he was able to come watch Beckett before he had his game! I love the picture of #13 and #31! of course Helen had to get in a picture too!

I'm not able to take good pictures while he is playing because there is some weird lighting going on in the gym, but I took this picture below of the team after the game as they received their awards. Beckett received the red star for best defense today! It was a great morning! Beckett played well and had fun!