Trick or Treat

First stop, our house:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had a great time this year dressing up and trick or treating. Ellie was very excited and highly enjoyed the candy :) Ainsley wasn't thrilled about her costume, but liked all the excitement. Ellie was a beautiful pink butterfly/fairy:
Here she is saying cheese, she puts her hand up to her eyes like she's taking a picture, too cute:
Ainsley was a ladybug (Ellie's costume last year):


We started off the weekend by going to the annual HollyFest in our town Holly Springs. It's somewhat like a mini fair, lots of rides, games, food, and friends!
Ellie actually asked to ride a ride, I was shocked! She really enjoyed it:

There was a petting zoo, which the girls loved to look (not pet) the animals. A fun barn to take pictures in:
Saturday night, we went to a cook out/surprise baby shower at the Jamison's which was a ton of fun, I sure miss seeing those friends every week. Brought the camera, but wasn't in the mood to take pictures. Enjoyed talking and being occupied with the girls instead of taking pictures.

We had to get some pictures of Ellie and Addison trick or treating on Halloween. We wanted to go with the neighbors, but enjoyed dinner a little too much and were late. The girls were so cute! Ellie and Addison had so much fun! They looked extremely adorable...



Lastly, one of all three of my loves:

Doctor Visit #3- Bug Bites

So we had our third doctor visit in 2 weeks last Thursday. Ainsley was eaten up by some bug?? We are pretty positive it was a few mosquitoes, but the bites didn't react like mosquito bites should.

Here's the story: We took Ellie to the doctor on Tuesday, she had an ear infection. We then went to pick up her prescription. We went through the drive-thru, where mosquitoes were EVERYWHERE. We know at least 3-4 flew in the window, we think we killed 2. Well when we got home, Ainsley was cover in bites on her right side. We counted 12 bites total, all on her right side. It was so pitiful looking, it was on her face, her arm, her hand, her leg, and her foot. They looked like regular mosquito bites, but then the next day they were very swollen and really red. Still not too abnormal, but then Thursday they had blistered! I didn't know what to think of it and after talking to a friend, I decided just to call the nurse to check in. I didn't think they would want to see her, but maybe just suggest I give her some benadryl. Well, since they weren't quite sure what they were dealing with and it didn't sound like mosquito bites, they wanted to see her. We took her in, over bug bites. The doctor looked at them and was concerned, but since she was acting normal otherwise he suggested benadryl and a topical antibiotic on some of them to prevent infection. So we aren't really sure what bit her, looked more like ant bites but there were no signs of ants! Strange, yet a story to be told.


They still have not gone away, but they do look better. Not all of them blistered, which was good. We'll be going to the doctor this Thursday to check on Ainsley's ears, then again next week to check on Ellie's ears. Hopefully no more unexpected visits this year, I'm thinking yea right on that one...

Not a Box

We checked out a book at the library called 'Not a Box'. It was a fun book about a bunny with an imagination. We had our own imagination with our own box. At first the girls had a lot of fun in the cave:



But then I thought we could go on a boat ride, sounds like fun right? Well in the transition from a cave to a boat, fear struck Ellie and the box no longer was fun. She cried and screamed her head off, so the box was put away. Luckily, Ellie changed her mind later in the week when a diaper box was laying around. She decided it would be fun to brave it out and go on a boat ride again. She also decided it would be a fun race car... we'll see what else she comes up with next!

Cool in Shades

We had some more fun with the sunglasses from the yard sale. Ainsley was the victim, because she can be. She's a good sport :)

HOMESTUDY = DONE.

We finished the second part of our homestudy yesterday! We had the first part last Tuesday, where we went to our social worker's house, and then had the second part yesterday at our house. We definitely had a different experience than what we expected, but everything turned out great. Our social worker, Francie, was very nice and very encouraging.

We are glad it's over, and are excited we get to move on to the next step... finalizing all paperwork!

Sick Ellie

Ainsley got better, Ellie got sick. I'm hoping she doesn't have an ear infection, but with her sometimes it's hard to tell. She started with a fever on Wednesday, but it went away on Friday. Came back on Saturday, and has been off and on since. Last night and today she has been running a pretty low temperature, 97 degrees. This always concerns me, but she's acting pretty normal. She actually has been on her best behavior and is super cuddly, we kind of like this Ellie! Doesn't she look pitiful though??

Sick Ainsley

The sick little girl, just look at those eyes:
Our sweet little Ainsley has been sick this past weekend. She looks so pitiful when she is sick, but she hardly will let you know it otherwise. She is such a trooper, she's had a fever, congestion, cough, and runny nose. She has been waking up frequently during the night due to the cough mostly, but she usually will go right back to sleep. If her fever doesn't go away by tomorrow, I'll probably call the doctor.

Poor little baby...

She sure is cute, even when she's sick:

Get better soon little boo boo, I want to see that happy crawling baby girl (although I do love cuddling with you bunches)!

10 months!

My sweet little girl is 10 months old! This is her lion, aka Ike, that she isn't quite attached to (not like Ellie & Jack). Ainsley is more attached to her mommy and now more recently, daddy, nana, and papa. She loves to cuddle with you and be held in your arms, although she definitely really enjoys exploring now that she's crawling! She has started to cruise a tad bit, stand on her own, and take steps while holding onto your hands. No teeth, and no sign of them.. but that hasn't changed her love for food, ALL kinds of food. Well maybe not all food, she is really protesting baby food, but she will eat it once she realizes I'm not giving her anything else.

Ainsley is such a great baby, I have really enjoyed these past 10 months. This little one is so content and super sweet, I'm just in LOVE with her! What a blessing she has been to my life.

Meet the Neighbors

We have 5 girls between the ages of 6-10 in our culdesac. I absolutely love these girls, and Ellie does too. She begs to go outside to play when she sees them, and they come over and ask if she can play. It's so much fun, and these girls are so sweet. If we ever do move, I would want to take all these girls with us :)

Meet Emma and Megan:

We Miss Daddy

Zach has been traveling a lot this past month, and it probably won't slow down until the holidays. We're glad we get to have special moments with him when he is home. We all definitely miss him bunches when he's gone. Ellie asks me a lot if daddy's going to be home, or she wants her daddy to kiss her (and even to spank her), or she says "please come home daddy". She also points at every airplane she sees and ask if that's daddy. She sure is a daddy's girl. Too bad I'm already his girl :) hehe.

Silly Ellie

Ellie loves underwear. She still is in diapers because yes, she's still not ready to poo on the potty. During nap time, we usually find her getting into her drawer and putting her underwear on. Sometimes she'll even take off her diaper and put the underwear on (to our surprise when we find her after she has woken from her nap)! Luckily there have been no accidents while this has happened.

One day she woke up with underwear on over her pants, she looked like a super hero. Pretty funny.

YARD SALE!

I know some of you are dying to know how our yard sale went. Well it went well! We made over $570!! We are so excited to see how much money came in, especially since all but a handful of the items sold were donated to us. We are extremely blessed by such generous people having a heart for the orphans like we do. THANK YOU to all who donated! Also many thanks to those who helped out. We had a lot of people from our small group come help, we couldn't have done it without them.

We still had a bunch of stuff left over, I wish we had more traffic/people, but the Lord was still good to us. We will be giving all of the leftovers to another family who will be having a sale to bring another orphan home. Here are some pictures to enjoy:

Zach freaking out about all that we had to do to set up:

The items (our whole garage):

Making signs, in the cool sunglasses we found:

Ellie the Teenager

She sure does love when her Aunt Ashlei lets her carry her purse and play with her phone, mommy doesn't have cool things like that. I look at her doing this and think, "You are not 16 yet! Stop growing up!"
Kids this young should not know how to use the iPhone. Sometimes she can figure out stuff better than I can!

All the Girls

My sister, Carla, came into town this past weekend from Texas. It was so nice having all the sisters together, family definitely has a unique bond like no other. I made sure to take some pictures, so here are a few of the weekend.

I'm Stuck!

This looks like fun to crawl through:

Ahh... I'm stuck:

Daddy made room, thank you!

Ainsley is really enjoying herself crawling. She loves to explore, follow you around, play with whatever she can get her hands on, and pull everything off the table and shelves. Not only is Ainsley having a really good time, I am as well. I have absolutely enjoyed watching her explore and get around, it just makes me smile! She's so stinking cute, and she loves to come crawl on your lap. It makes you feel extremely special when they take the time to come to you!

Ainsley has also really started to pull up and walk while holding onto your hands. I thought that since she loves to crawl that walking wouldn't be very interesting, but I was wrong. She definitely wants to stand and walk, so we'll see how long it takes her to do this on her own. That's going to be a whole other adventure! She's growing up so fast... (tear).

Adoption Update

So some of you might be wondering how the process is going with our adoption. Well, we have officially completed all the paperwork for our agency, Gladney. We have not sent it all in yet, but that will be done by the end of the week, hopefully! We have also started the paperwork for our dossier, which is MUCH more complicated. This will take about 3 more months to be completed because this stack of documents must be authenticated (signed to make official) many times. Here is the levels that the dossier must be authenticated: 1) notary 2) secretary of state 3) United States Department of State 4) Ethiopia Embassy.

As you see the paperwork for international adoption takes about 4 months to complete if you are going at a relatively fast pace. After we complete our paperwork/dossier, the dossier gets shipped to Ethiopia where it will be put on the bottom of a stack. At this time we will be assigned a number and this begins the waiting period. We will wait, and wait, and wait for a referral. It will take approximately 8 months to receive a referral. Once we get our referral of a child that they think will fit into our family, we will either accept it or decline. After accepting the referral, we will wait for a court date and then make travel arrangements to go to Ethiopia for the court date (usually about 8-13 weeks after accepting referral). We will travel twice to Ethiopia. Once for the court date (where we will get to meet our child for the first time) and then again to take our child home (about 3-6 weeks later)! In summary, from the time of the referral to the time we take our child home, it will be about 3-5 months. Overall, from the start of this process (August 2010) we hopefully will be able to bring home our son in 16-18 months (December 2011-February 2012). It definitely could take longer, and most likely not any shorter...

I know there might be a lot of questions you all have about this process. If you would like to ask a question for me to answer, please leave a comment!! I would love to inform you of how all of this works.

Mowing the Grass

Mowing the grass, this is a constant thing Ellie wants to do. For her second birthday, some friends of our gave Ellie a lawn mower that is supposed to blow bubbles while pushing. Although the bubbles never work, Ellie loves the lawn mower. I think about everyday she mows the grass. She's definitely going to be sad when we tell her it's too cold to go outside.

This is her mad face when I tell her to stay still for a picture:

What am I going to do when winter comes?? I forget what it's like to stay inside all the time.

Fun with the Girls

We like to make animal sounds together, Ainsley always loves it.

Animal Sounds at 9 months from Laura Hanlon on Vimeo.

Ainsley Crawling!

So last Thursday, Ainsley still wasn't crawling. However, much to my surprise, on Friday, Ainsley figured it out! She started finally going forward and getting place to place. This weekend she really got it down and is getting faster and faster.

Ainsley Crawling from Laura Hanlon on Vimeo.

She absolutely loves crawling, it's keeping her very occupied and entertained. She also gets really tired, but doesn't want to sleep not that she has this new skill. She's sleeping soundly right now, hopefully she'll stay that way for a little while longer. :)