Phone calls...

Sunday afternoon, Doug decided to ride his bike to church to do the radio program.  He left quite a bit earlier than he normally does to give himself plenty of time.  I asked him to call me when he gets there.  I was relaxing when I got this text message....

I informed him later that he needs to include a couple more details in his messages when he calls for a ride next time...  i.e. "I'm ok, the bike is ok..." LOL

We grabbed towels, clothes and locked the dogs up in case the bike was not well and needed to go in the back of the car, and we headed out.  I was glad for technology and google because it wouldn't have been the easiest to find him without it.  

Here is him and his bike once we arrived at church...

Pictures don't even begin to show how dirty this was!

And he doesn't look that bad either!

...keep in mind that if you are dirty enough to leave mud in my car, you have to have it pretty caked on!

He had fun anyhow!  I can't wait until we can really start riding without deal with all the mud, snow, and slush.

School Year

I can't wait for this funk in the blogging aspect of my life to be done!  I'm assuming it's the weather, but I feel like I have nothing to blog about!  I'm working on it, I promise.  :)

Monday Mom and Dad drove down again so that our extra little guys could have a play date!  I could get used to seeing them every week for sure!  We had a great day and I have a bunch of pictures to post as soon as I finish editing them.  The girls had a short day of school and were able to enjoy the day with us as well.  

Speaking of school, I can't believe how close we are to ending out this year already!  The girls might disagree with me, but it seems to have flown by.  We have about 5-6 weeks of school left!  Hopefully the weather will be nicer by then and make it worth while for having worked through all the school breaks and snow days!  They have really grown up this year.  Both girls are really enjoying their books that they had to read.  Marissa's favorite book was Little Pilgrims Progress and Madalyn's favorite was Charlotte's Web for sure.  

We had another great night at class last night.  It was nice to be back after having last week canceled.  We ended up getting out early and were able to ask a couple questions on the way out the door even.  We researched and asked a lot of questions before starting this process, but more arise and it's been nice to be able to have those put to rest.  We're excited to see what God has for us this summer!

Today should be interesting...

Sleep was not in our favor here last night.  Madalyn's allergies have gone crazy and yesterday her wheezing and coughing set in.  I gave her a treatment before bed, but I probably should have started earlier in the day and been more on top of it.  She is such a trooper.  She had been quiet the longest stretch this morning, so Doug went and checked on her when he got up to take a shower.  She just takes everything in stride.  I hope her attitude continues as she grows.  To have the ability to be in a great mood despite being up to see the clock change every hour is quite the accomplishment.  I suppose since she is hold her chin high today I need to do the same!  Thanks for the encouragement kiddo!

Looking forward to class again tonight!  I hope you all have an awesome day! 

 It's going to be a good one :)

To say that we had an amazing weekend is putting it lightly.  

Anyone who knows me, knows that family is extremely important to me.  Whether it be our Friday night "pizza" nights, Sunday after church lunches, holiday get togethers, or the weekends that we get to see my parents, I don't ever want to take any of them for granted.  

Mom and Dad came in Friday right around dinner time.  After dinner, we played a couple rounds of hand and foot and then decided that we were going to head to bed with the girls! LOL

Saturday we planned to head to Watertown for the day.  Doug's parents were super thoughtful and offered to keep the pups for us so we didn't have to worry about how long we had been away and if they could hold it.  I'm sure they appreciated the gesture.  It meant a lot to me especially since they weren't feeling well.  

We had an awesome day spending time with them.  I love watching them with the girls.   We got to enjoy walking around PetsMart...just because the girls asked to and Mom got to test out the new Starbucks drink that I'm in love with.  I'm so blessed.  My family is amazing...both sides.  Doug's parents have been keeping the girls on Tuesday nights so that these MAPP classes are feasible for us.  I told my parents on Saturday multiple times that I feel spoiled....and I am.  I'm so grateful for the relationships that he has given me/us.  

Wow...

...I totally have stunk at this whole blogging thing lately!

I've had a lot on my mind, and a lot going on here.  I guess this just has taken a back seat.  :(

Classes were phenomenal again this week!  I can't wait until next week!  

Thankfully we got all our paperwork finished that we were given last week and we didn't get much back.  Our homework is minimal and we only have a couple pages of paperwork this week.  Last week, the girls even had some paperwork that they needed to fill out.  Marissa had questions she needed to answer, and Madalyn had the choice of writing a short story, or drawing a picture.  I think we all could have guessed which one she was going to choose.  Her picture needed to include our house, our family, and the new child/children that will come to live with us.  

She did an amazing job!

They were both disappointed Wednesday morning when they woke up and asked if they had more "homework" to do for foster/adoption classes and I told them no.  HAHA 

This week has felt like it has been a pretty busy week.  Tuesday we had our field trip for the month of March.  We went to the Beaver Falls Paper Mill...Omniafiltra.  It was super interesting and the girls loved it!  It was really neat to learn what they do there, and how it is all accomplished.  I unfortunately didn't get any pictures due to just keeping an eye on all the little ones and where their hands were located!  LOL  The girls would tell you that their favorite part was all the samples that they came home with.

Wednesday I had a dentist appointment.

Today my parents are coming...shhhh the girls don't know!  ;)

I'm looking forward to a weekend with them!

I'm going to try to get back into this blogging thing.  My head has been full and I haven't made sitting down to this this a priority.  I'm going to be better!  I hope you all have a great weekend!!!

The weekend...

I hope you all had a great weekend!  

I can't believe it's Monday already.  This weekend flew by for us.

We had a baby here all weekend, even over night, which was kind of fun.  The girls enjoyed playing the role of "big sisters" and honestly it was really easy.  Saturday afternoon during her nap time, we started a game of Monopoly.  Madalyn and I lost horribly, and Marissa gave Daddy a good run for his money.  In the end, Daddy took it all though ;)

Doug had a fire call Saturday night.  They were able to respond quickly and did a phenomenal job.  It's nice to see a community effort in place without the "we can do it alone" philosophy.  

When we got back from church yesterday, Doug took his bike out for a quick ride....the rest of us chickened out!  LOL  It was COLD!  

We were able to get all our paperwork/homework done for class on Tuesday which was huge.  It's nice to have that off our shoulders.  As long as things go as planned for Tuesday, Doug should be able to make class.  God certainly has been good to us in working on all the little details on this!

I think thats it for now.  

We have a fairly busy week, or at least beginning of the week.  

More on that to come!  

Update on 1st class...

Heading into class, I think one of my biggest fears was is this going to work.  Doug having the schedule that he does, he more than likely is going to miss some classes.  In the weeks leading up to the class, we found out that they preferred you to not miss more than 2 classes as it made making those up complicated.  They did agree to work with us and one way or another we would get this done.  I took that as our step to move forward, but was unsure how it was going to look.  

First off, the staff at Jefferson County DSS is amazing!  Almost felt like a united group and it was only our first night.  We also found out that 1/2 the group was from Fort Drum and they were also going to need some grace when it came to scheduling.  It was neat to see God use something as simple as that to make be realize that He has it all and is working it all out.  

Class was 3 hours long and I was wondering how bad it would be...It was amazing!  The staff was really easy to listen to, and there is a lot of interaction throughout the class time.  They did end up splitting us into two groups so that classes are able to be kept to the correct time frames, but we will still have some together.  It will be neat to go through this as a group and hopefully utilize each other on the other side!  Thank you all for your prayers and support.  It really means a lot.