May Glad List

Here are the little things that brought me happiness in May.

1. mother goose popcorn
2. long stretches of days off for KG
3. memories
4. carnivals
5. late night donut runs
6. BBQ's with friends
7. knee surgery success
8. mother's day projects/FHE
9. free movies
10. watching Flower play with friends
11. moms
12. intensity
13. strawberries
14. marriage
15. fondue
16. love notes
17. yard toys
18. gazing at the clouds
19. nieces softball
20. dancing in the rain
21. finger painting
22. the zoo
23. new car
24. helping friends
25. piano recitals
26. excitement of adoption
27. discussing names...so much fun!(we have the name and we're not tellin'!)
28. lunch dates with Flower
29. nature
30. Ellektra's cute curls
31. inner strength

Mitch and Kristi Sittin' in a tree...

They got married today at Municipal Park. Mitch is KG's karate instructor as well as John and his boys and Benjamin. He's a such a great guy! And we love Kristi. They met because he was her instructor as well. Ahhh. Congratulations to them. It was a nice, casual wedding. Just how I like them. They had a big BBQ after the ceremony, a big bounce house for the kids and of course the playground.
It was also right next to the MK Nature Center so we tagged along with Cliff, Jenn, Benjamin and Madison.












It was a really lovely afternoon.

Congratulations Graduate!

Kassidee graduated from Kindergarten today! I'm so happy we were able to go! We are so proud of her.
Kas' class is all the yellow hats. She was in the afternoon class.
This is the entire kindergarten. There were two morning classes, the ones in blue.
Although it's blurry, I still wanted to show her getting her diploma.
Each student was given a special award as they received their diploma. She was awarded the best singer. That girl is constantly singing! :)

Kas is smiling about her best little friend getting her diploma. I love that they are so proud of each other.
Spencer was so proud of his sister.
Flower loves her cousins.
I swear I am going to be the embarrassing blubbering idiot mom! I got choked up a couple of times and she's my sister's kids not mine! I get that way at her son's games as well as at Roger's kids games too. Pathetic. I just love them so much! I love to see them do well and be proud of themselves. Luckily I'm one who can hold in the tears as I don't like crying in front of people, so usually nobody knows I'm even choked up. Hopefully that will remain true when my kids are at these fun stages.
Good luck in First Grade Kasifras!!

We're doing it again.

We've started the adoption process. This time is so much different then last! We were not ready for another child even two months ago and wondered if we'd ever want more. Then I started having dreams about *gasp* babies. Ever since we had Flower, we were kind of over wanting a baby, because we saw that having a baby wasn't the only option. Our favorite age has always been 18 months to 3 years. That still remains true so why not start at the age you love? Well that's apparently not what someone else has planned for us. I approached KG and told him we should start thinking about it. He looked like a dear in head lights. I would wait and bring it up ever few days with updates on dreams or thoughts after praying. We thought a lot about getting pregnant but that just didn't feel right. We always thought we'd go back to China, and maybe we will, but that's not what's supposed to happen now. We are feeling most lead toward domestic infant but are open to a toddler as well. This scares the crap out of both of us! We never thought we'd go with domestic because it's so uncertain. With international you are guaranteed a child in a certain time line. You are also guaranteed a cost. There is NO guarantees with domestic. You have no idea when and if you'll be chosen. And then what if the birth mother changes her mind. That's like having a miscarriage. There are also no guarantees with the cost because each agency had different costs and we just don't know where our little one might be waiting for us. There is also the potential of birth complications which you are responsible for the cost of. There is so much uncertainty! We're terrified. But if that's where our child is, we'll do what it takes. Amongst all the fear we are super excited!
We printed off all the paper work the weekend of the 17th and sat down Monday, the 19th, and completed most of it. We finished what we hadn't completed on the 27th and we met with our social worker yesterday, the 28th! She was SHOCKED that we had it all done. She thought she was coming over to bring us the paper work and walk us through it. No. Once we decide we're ready for something, we don't waste anytime. The process of when we started for Flower was meeting with our social worker in February, done with all the paper work a month later, waiting for state and government approval, getting her referral in July and bringing her home in February. One year exactly. But everything on our end was done in a month and our social worker was amazed. We don't mess around! We have our fingerprints scheduled for the 9th of June, our doctor appointments on the 17th, our next(and final) meeting with our social worker on June 18th for our interviews and our mandatory training on the 20th and 21st of June. She is going to have our homestudy done by then so she just has to add our training certificate to it and then we can be viewed! :) I am going to work on our profile, which I am the most nervous about, this weekend and complete it by the following weekend. I'm so excited.
We are being a little more, or should a say A LOT more open about this one and letting everyone know at the beginning of the process. With Flower no one had clue that we were adopting, other then those we'd asked to be references, until after we had her referral in August. But with domestic, you really should network for yourself. I've had friends who have adopted a child that they found out about because it was someones sister, friend, cousin or distant relative or someone they met from the blogging world. So please keep us in mind if you know of a birth mother that is considering adoption for her baby. Flower will make the best big sister! :) When our homestudy is complete we will have more information for you to give a potential birthmother if you know one, but for now you are welcome to send them to our blog so they can get to know us. www.zflowerz.blogspot.com
Thank you so much to everyone that is already being a huge help to us through this. Your love and support is what makes us who we are. It gives us the confidence to move forward in expanding our family.
Love,
KG, Ang and Flower :)

Piano Prodigy

Ok so maybe not a prodigy, but Victoria certainly was the cutest one at the piano! We got to go to her piano recital on Tuesday night. Flower loved watching Torta play and kept begging to be able to play too but that behavior only last for the five minutes Victoria played. Unfortunately she was being a little s*** that night and super ornery. She wouldn't have anything to do with anyone, including me, and was mean to those that even looked at her.
We sat next to my brother, Victoria's dad, Roger and my cute nephew Zach.Torta did an excellent job!Thanks for inviting us! :)

Memorial Day.

KG has a three day weekend so that makes it good no matter what we do! We kicked off the weekend with a BBQ at the clubhouse on Saturday. We enjoyed the company of my parents, KG's parents, my sister and her family, her friend Jenn and her two kids, the Goodsell bunch, and Lisa's sister and her four kids. (We also invited Sara but she was too good for us. The nerve of picking your mom's birthday over us!) Everyone brought excellent food! We ate and chatted and laughed. Some of the kids and John went swimming. Those of us that are sane did not swim because it was freezing! My parents left to go see a movie and we sent the kids to the school to play so we could enjoy a game in peace. We all played Mad Gab, boys against girls, which is the funniest game! KG's dad even played! He doesn't like to play games so when he honors us with his presence and plays, we love it! The boys won. KG's parents then left and the kids came back and wanted to watch a movie so we went outside to play Quelf. That was funny as usual! By then it was 9:30 so everyone helped clean up and everyone left except the Goodsell's. We chatted with them until 11:30. KG also got some fun photos of himself and the kids.







We spent Sunday night with my parents, the details of which are in my last post.
This morning KG went and played frisbee golf at the ass crack of dawn with John and a bunch of other boys. I woke up with a nasty headache so I just tried really hard to be patient with Flower. I wasn't so successful at times. We played a hand of Uno. I then went to help a friend, Kris' daughter Jenna, organize all the crap she's leaving behind at Kris' house as she moves. She can't take it to her new place but will need it when school starts at yet another place. The headache subsided shortly after arriving, perhaps it's because Jerry fed me. :) I had fun and was happy to help.
While I was gone KG and Flower cleaned and detailed the car and getting it ready to sell.
Tonight we were treated to dinner by KG's parents at Tepanyaki! Yummy! That is definitely one of our favorite restaurants, the other three being Texas Road House, Gino's and Oriental Express depending on whether we want Japanese, stake/salmon, Italian or Chinese, respectively. Anyway we had a great time with them. I took some awesome photos but they have magically disappeared from my camera! I came home and plugged it in as usual, and no photos! ??? Bummer.
We love our friends and family so much and are grateful for all the time we had to spend with them this weekend!
Happy Memorial Day!

Sunday fun and KG's new toy!

I finally unpacked my sewing machine today! Yes, I know, it took forever. But it was now necessary because I sold some custom orders in my shop that I forgot were still listed and therefore I have to get them made and sent off.
It was well worth. I love it! While KG and Flower were napping I was trying out all the settings and just playing around.
I can now monogram things if I so choose.And just for more practice I made a new pillow for our sofa. Check out how closely that turquoise matches our walls! So cool. It adds fun color to our neutral sofa.
At 6:00 we went to my parents for dinner. The reason for the invite was so that KG could fix their computer. He was successful. We had breakfast for dinner which is always a favorite! It was de-lish!
After that we went for a ride in our new ride. :)
When we got back we played Uno. It was such a fun game to help Flower learn numbers and colors. She was on a team with Grandma and they won the first hand.
After five hands Flower was done and went outside to run around in the backyard with Suzee. She also pushed a gorilla in the swing. :)

At one point she was trying to get the gorilla up the ladder to take it down the slide. It was so cute to watch. We all stopped playing and just watched out the window as she tried to figure this out. First she got behind the ladder to look up at the platform to see if she could set it up there and then climb. Too high to reach. Then she started to climb with one arm around the gorilla's waste but was afraid to fall so she set the gorilla on the ground and started climbing but then realized she wouldn't be able to reach it from the top and climbed back down to pick it up again, only this time by the arm. She started to climb again. Once she got towards the top things got tricky as she needed both hands more free to navigate the last step. She tucked it under her chin but it almost fell so then she stuck the hand in her mouth. That worked! It was so cute to watch her be so determined and then finally succeed. She went down the slide with the gorilla and had the biggest smile on her face! So did we. :)
While she was outside we played Redneck Life.It was so fun playing with them because they'd never played before so it made it that much funnier. We laughed the whole game! Mom totally kicked butt!
Flower eventually came in and watched Cinderella with this giant bear. She cuddled right up to it!
Thanks for such a fun night ma and pa!
So did you catch what I said a few paragraphs up? "We went for a ride in our new ride"
Yep we bought a new car.



We're excited and KG's logic sold me. We are going to sell our truck, which is only used in the summer when he's running a paintball event. When we all drove that we were crammed in the front or I drove the car and met him there and that is a big waste of gas! Now we will get a trailer for the paintball equipment and tow it with this.
We are also going to sell our car. The thing is falling apart. We've had it for 7 years and it's 11 years old. It's got almost 200,000 miles on it. We just spent $2000 putting in a new radiator and fixing the idle and I think something else. It needs more work plus it needs body work. It needs about $5000 worth of work and it's not even worth that! What's the point? The new car also gets better gas mileage then the old car and truck. Soooo, we'll now have two cars instead of three, thereby saving on insurance. We'll save on gas and all be able to ride together for paintball events. We're a little nervous because of other events that are coming up but we feel like it's a smart move. And hey, we're just ready for something new! It drives so nice and it's super comfy! Oh and it's got a kick ass stereo system which is really all I care about. :0)