My life has just been packed to the max with trying to put together this ginormous event, plus my regular work, taking care of the family and trying really hard to tell my friends that I still love them. But right now my life is consumed with this planning. By the end of the day I have no desire to bang out a blog post (photo editing, writing, tag it, etc). I don’t even have the desire to. So, I’m wondering if I should take a …

Two years ago today we received our referral for Catherine.  What an amazing ride this has been.  It’s so hard to believe that it was years ago and not months ago.  It seems like yesterday we got these two cute little photos of her.  The first thing that I noticed was her hair.  She has soooooo much of it!  And I love it because I have so much hair too.  We were just so excited to finally see her photos and read her reports.  From the moment we received her …

Chinese New Year is only two weeks away and somehow, someway we have a CNY event to go to nearly every weekend until the end of February.  Our Families with Children From China group has an amazing group of families on the north side of Houston.  The group is so big that they have broken into smaller groups for smaller events.  Because we are friends with several families on that side of town, we have participated with them more this year.  Today the festivities were kicked off with a late …

Right now my life is revolving around our Texas Fallen Heroes Memorial Ride & Cook-Off.  I eat, sleep, and breath this fundraiser pretty much non-stop.  It’s getting pretty old around this house and with my friends and family.  I’m pretty sure John is ready to shove me into the hall closet and I get the evil eye from Catherine.  While I am loving the experience of planning the event, I am about ready to get this behind me.  I’m way too stressed about how it’s going to turn out and …

Tonight I spent some time with a family that I met a short seven years ago.  I sat at the same dining room table in their home in which we planned their son’s funeral.  Seven years ago, I watched a mother stare blankly at a baked potato that her family was trying to get her to eat, barely able to concentrate on the arrangements we were discussing.  Seven years ago, his sister was so angered by the tragic circumstances of his death that those emotions were carried out onto me.  …

And it looks like this:

It has been freezing or near freezing temperatures in Houston for over a week now.  My birdbath is frozen solid.  We have a bucket on the back porch that is frozen.  This is just not right!  We live on the Gulf of Mexico where it’s warm most of the time and dang near too hot all of the other time.  It’s too cold to go outside to play, so Cat and I both have cabin fever.  Luckily school started back up for her, so at least …

We are babysitting John’s mother’s cat Rosie.  This cat about drives me insane because she talks non-stop (kind of like Catherine), amongst other things.  Anyway, John brought her to the house today in her crate and so she was not a happy camper.  Catherine however was only too happy to try and befriend Rosie.  I swear this child is going to be a vet when she grows up.  Anyway, here is one of her many exchanges she had while we let Rosie settle for awhile in her crate.  It’s hard …

Catherine turned 32 months today.  Will she really be 3 in 4 months??  When I was putting together the photo montage for last year, I could really see that Catherine made the big leap from babyhood to a full blown toddler.  She grew by leaps and bounds and her development has astounded me.  I wish more than anything I had taken a child development class while we were waiting for Catherine.  I felt like I would have been better prepared to handle the roller coaster ride of changes she went …

Over the holidays we ran into this rooster that was a little bit on the nutty side.  For some reason he was territorial with the Christmas tent at the Hunt Club Farms.  He came running up to us and started pecking at our feet, chasing us, kicking dust up at us, growling, and flapping his wings.  It was hilarious to watch him get riled up, and that didn’t take much!  He was a beautiful rooster but I think he had a few screws loose upstairs.

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There is always something so hopeful about the first day of a new year.  We pin our wishes and dreams upon the shiny, squeaky, clean year ahead.  We make promises and plans.  We want to be better, happier, and healthier.  So many possibilities and so many hopes tumble around in our thoughts as we think about that midnight hour and the many moments that fall after.
2009 was a good year for us.  It was the first full year that we had Catherine in our lives.  We traveled quite a bit.  …

I was scratching my head trying to figure out a good post to close out the year 2009.  I could say all of the usual stuff like, ‘I can’t believe the year has gone by so fast,’ or ‘my resolutions for 2010 are,’ and on and on but I don’t want to bore you with stuff like that, so I am going to post my Top 10 Photos of 2009.  Thanks Tonggumomma for the great idea!

1) We were taking photos for the first day of 2009.  Catherine is such a …