Because I never really intended to have a blog, I’ve never had a blogging anniversary.  My blog grew out of my grief and loss.  I can’t seem to tell anyone what I feel but if I pick up a pen or start to type, wow, there I am!

I had intended to work on finishing our adoption story today, but instead I’m finding myself lost in my blog.  At some point I put together a list of my favorite posts – I really don’t even remember doing it – so I added it to my menu above.  And I’m remembering why I like some of them.

Like, Where I’m from, where I shared some special memories.

And, the last time I visited my Grandma Magdalene.

And a poem I wrote about grief.

And sharing posts from friends that encourage me!  A few year later I bought this print from that same friend. <3

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I hope you will read some of my favorite blog posts. I will most likely be adding new ones to it as I type out my feelings. 🙂

We are a family created through adoption. 4 of our 5 children are adopted and, though they came to our family at different times, they are a sibling group.

About 5 years ago I started to write our adoption story and now I’m going to take some time and finish it. It will take me a bit, but here are the first 4 parts for you to catch up: Part 1 :: Part 2 :: Part 3 :: Part 4 ::

I’m mainly posting this for accountability to get this done! 😉 Here we go!

I’m not a fan of halloween, but I have one of the best memories of our early halloweens when our big boys (now 19 and 18) were preschoolers!

There was the year we lived by the local High school (so lots of traffic) and three year old James yelled out the door to the retreating trick or treaters, “Hey Kid! Do you know God?  Well, you need to!” lol He was quickly shuffled back inside!

But the best memory was when he was 4.  We had moved from our little house by the high school in to a very cheap mobile home in a park that was more like a country woods than a mobile home park – it was beautiful with a lake across road.  That road gave one lady nightmares and she called me VERY early one morning and asked if she could give our boys free swim lessons – I guess she’d had a nightmare, poor thing!

But this was halloween, and we bought candy like normal, but didn’t realize that no one was going to venture into the woods for candy!  So, we put the big bowl of candy on the top of the refrigerator and went to bed.

The next morning, we woke up and realized that James was already awake. He was at the end of our bed – eyes wide, both fists full of candy wrappers as he yelled, “I GOT CANDY!!!!!”  He had woken up, wandered in to the kitchen, climbed the cupboards, crawled across the stove and grabbed as much candy as he could grab!

He was pretty manic all that day and we got much better at hiding the candy after that! 😉