Saturday Biking in prescott

Today, Stephanie and I went up north to prescott for some biking. We are participating in the Go Off Road Duathlon (run – bike – run) in 2 weeks, and we needed to pre ride the course. Good thing we did, because its way more hilly than anything we have here in the valley. I mean some steep, long climbs at altitude.

Stephanie and her bike.

 

the zoom in of what she did to her bike

Yep, she some how over shifted, and then wrapped the chain around the crank arm. I really have no idea how she did it to be honest. 

 

Me riding through a tunnel

Spring Time

I know for a lot of you spring is still a few weeks off, so I thought I would share our spring with you.  🙂

 

Interesting bugs are starting to show up.  This one is the whole reason I even got the camera out, I had never seen one like it before.

 

My cactus is in bloom, pretty pink flowers!

 

Taffi enjoying the lovely afternoon

Swiss Chard and Kale

 

Peach tree is in bloom

 

She is actually trying to pick her own snow pea in this shot, the dogs are addicted!

This is a big no, no!  

Broccoli 

Carter decided he needed to hang with us, so he let himself out

The dogs and I had a great time enjoying our spring weather this afternoon.  I think we all have a touch of spring fever now and will be spending a ton of time outside.

The boys are excited!

I scored a lot of onesies off ebay last week and they showed up this week. What’s a girl to do with no babies to dress? Of course, try it on the cat! 

Carter being a pretty good sport, Jackson would never have allowed this

Here he is with all of the onesies, I think he was upset his mom didn’t think of tucking the tag in.

Jackson checking out the clothes my mom bought, it was hard to get him to move for the picture (he likes to roll around in the clothes)

The matching outfits my mom picked out, fire trucks of course!

The matching outfits my dad picked out, love the overalls!  (notice who is nearby)

I scored a free changing table pad yesterday and Carter just had to give it a try (it was brand new!)

 

The cats love hanging out in the nursery, they are making sure everything is just perfect for Tom and Jerry.  By perfect I mean, small teeth holes and maybe a few claw marks!  Oh, and a lot of cat hair!

So Very Blessed

That has been how Matt and I have been feeling lately. I cannot put into words how grateful we are for our boys. The wait while long and seemingly endless was worth it. Knowing how perfect they are for us makes me wonder why I ever questioned God’s timing. He knew what he was doing, in fact he even gave me exactly what I wanted, twin boys. How awesome is that?

It has been exactly one week since our referral and my head still has not come out of the clouds. I cannot believe I have already known their faces for one week, time is passing quickly. I hope it continues to pass so quickly as we wait to travel. Oh how we cannot wait to hold them for the first time. I do not think it will feel completely real until that moment, at least not for me. Matt already seems more attached which warms my heart even more. To see him so excited brings such joy to me. He never thought he wanted twins, let alone two babies at once, but he is beyond excited and it makes me love him even more.

(My darling boys I go to bed each night thinking of you and wake up doing the same. You are in my thoughts and prayers all day long. I hope you are eating well and being nice to your nannies.)

The Call and some of your questions answered

My day did not start just like any other day. I slept in to about 9 am, not a usual occurrence, but this dang cough has been keeping me up at night, so the additional sleep yesterday morning was appreciated. I had managed to get up start my coffee, feed the dogs, and was settling into my morning blog reading. I had just started reading Sandi’s latest posted about her Mother’s day out when my phone began to ring (9:25 am). I assumed it was my boss, who I had spoken to earlier in the morning about some dogs I was seeing in the afternoon. I looked over at my phone and it was a 314 number, I started to get a little excited, but not too excited, I get wrong numbered a lot. I answered it and it was SHARON, I started to shake, she said something along the lines that they might have a referral for us. Our home study approved us for special needs but we preferred healthy so she wanted to know if we were open to a possible health issue. I said probably, let me call Matt, or something like that, I really have no idea. Matt and I spoke and I tried to call Sharon back. I knew Sharon was getting ready to leave the office in about 30 minutes, so I was trying to catch her because I wanted to see my babies! I got her voice mail, so I called the main line and spoke to a very nice receptionist, when I asked for Sharon I was told she was out of the office, so I then asked for Nicky (who was going to have the file since Sharon would be out of the office) and was told she was in a meeting, bummer! But the receptionist apparently went and found Sharon for me, so I spoke with Sharon and she told me the basics and asked if I had any questions, ummm no? That’s right I couldn’t even think to ask their names! All I knew was gender, weight, and health concerns. So, Sharon says she will email me their photos and info and we disconnect. Matt and I had been chatting on the computer and he was getting ready to have a meeting with a client and couldn’t come home and well I didn’t want to wait! So, we did what all Mac users would do and screen shared! He could see my screen and we could audio chat at the same time, such a nice feature. We were able to see our babies together for the first time and look over some of their information together. It was a very nice moment and nope didn’t catch a bit of it on film. Here is the shocker I didn’t cry, I still haven’t really cried, just started to tear up. I keep waiting for the bawling to began, but it is probably waiting for a really awkward moment when it all finally sinks in.

I then began to try to call people to tell them the news, but no one was answering their phones, I completely forgot about my brother (sorry Jason), but I did leave his lovely wife a long, rambling message that apparently didn’t make sense. Sandi was the only one to answer, and actually she had to call me back because my phone lost signal as I was calling her. Sandi and I had a nice chat, sorry I don’t remember much of it! The rest of the day is really a blur of phone calls, emails, dogs, and other random things. I know I kept asking Matt some pretty silly questions and almost drove to the wrong clients house yesterday, boy they would have been surprised if I had just walked on in to walk their dogs!

I spoke with Sharon again in the afternoon and she said she could tell I was in a state of shock when she called in the morning and she apologized for it not being a typical referral call (they normally get your husband on the line too) and that she had to rush out of the office. Of course, that didn’t really matter to me, we got our referral and I was so HAPPY.

Okay that takes care of Meg C’s question! Now onto the others.

No Rick you cannot change your guess, Papa John does it again, seriously how does he know these things?

Gretchen and Erica they are not at the HOH yet, but I do have a friend that has been to their orphanage and she says it is a great orphanage.

Kim I can’t email or post pics, sorry. They are not officially ours until we pass court in Ethiopia, and I am guessing our court date will be in May.

Jennifer no we are not keeping the names Tom and Jerry, we will continue to use those on the blog until we figure out what we are naming them!

Tegan we have had a trailer for about a year now, pathetic I know, but we have used it to go garage sale shopping in the neighborhood.

Okay just a little more info. We cannot share too much about the boys on our blog until they are officially ours, but I can say they are absolutely adorable, identical, and born in my favorite month. I always wanted twins, seriously for as long as I can remember. Matt and I are still on cloud 9. Pray for a quick and successful court date, so we can bring them home early this summer.

Our wait was officially 11 months 4 days and well worth it. 🙂

Thank you all for your warm wishes yesterday and your support during the wait part of the process. It means so much to us. Thank you so much!

It's Twins!!!!!

We received our referral for twin boys this morning! Matt and I are super excited right now and cannot wait to bring them home. They are 2.5 months old and absolutely precious.

Defining Waste

No Impact Man wrote a post today about prioritizing resource use to improve lives. In his article he defines waste:

I’ve thought a lot about the definition of waste. The way I figure out, a good way of defining waste is the use of planetary resources that don’t improve quality of life.

I like this view a lot. Instead of environmental effectiveness being based on the restrictive view that we should simply “use less,” we should instead “use well.” This offers the intersection of environmentalism and human aspiration.

I like that he puts a more positive spin on thoughts about waste than most environmentalist. Most environmentalist just tell you to reduce, but he encourages prioritize what makes life worth living.

To what extent do we–as individuals and as a culture–prioritize what really makes life worth living?

How much time do we not spend with our kids or friends, for example, because we’re trying to get rich so that we can later, um, have the leisure time to spend with our kids and our friends? How much time–and resources–do we spend on big houses or better cars when really we just want to watch the sunrise?

On a cultural level, then, how much effort is spent on economic throughput when what we want is strong communities full of people that have the time and inclination to support each other? How much effort do we expend on making sure we can all have a third TV when what we really want is a great education for our kids or great theaters for our adults?

Which brings me back to my originally definition of waste. How many resources are we wasting–both as individuals and as a culture–on things that don’t even improve our lives? If we made a rule of targeting resources only at things that delivered quality of life, we would end up automatically saving the planet.

Matt and I have worked over the last couple of years at reducing, we still spend on stuff we don’t need every now and then, but overall we have begun to focus on what really matters to us and we are happier because of those choices. We are both more content then we have ever been.

I wanted to share this definition of waste, because a lot of environmentalist are a little extreme and that can turn off the majority of the population to environmentalism. I just wanted to remind people, myself included, that it is better to focus on what makes you truly happy. For most people that is not acquiring more stuff, but rather time with family and friends.

Valentine's Day

Matt and I were recently discussing Valentine’s Day and I was saying I didn’t need a gift. In fact neither of us remembered if we exchanged gifts last year, so clearly it is a very sentimental day around here. Matt and I are more the types to just give gifts randomly at any time to show our love and thoughtfulness. So I said no gift, no card, nothing. Well honey I have changed my mind! Angel Mission and Charity Water have ways to show your love by providing clean water to people who currently do not have clean water. With Charity Water your recipient receives an e-card and is able to choose the country the clean water is going to. Angel Mission let’s you give as little as $5 to show your love, which means you can share love with more people if you are on a tight budget.