I have a new niece and nephew!!

My sister in law, Gina, and her husband, Jason, just got the fabulous news that they passed court in Ethiopia and get to bring home their 4 year old daughter and 2 year old son soon!!! I believe we may even be in China and Ethiopia at the same time getting our children! Their names will now be Bekeh and Caleb................they are ADORABLE!!! I can't wait to meet them! If you want to follow along as they go to Ethiopia and adopt these children you can click on the link HERE. I don't think she has made it home yet to update her blog to reflect this information. She has announced it on Facebook so I'm not jumping ahead of her! I promise!! Just wanted to share their sweet faces with my bloggy friends!!

Pioneer Woman field trip!!

As many of you know, I Heart Pioneer Woman! AKA...P Dub, Ree Drummond, etc. So does most of Dallas apparently!! Ree came to Dallas to do a book signing at a Borders on Tuesday night and there was no way you could keep me from going! My sister, Sara, and I along with my older girls loaded up in the car on Tuesday and headed to meet her. I had all sorts of things in my head that I was going to say to her when we got to the table. So did my girls! Emily and Natalie LOVE her!! I mean....LOOOOOVVVVEEEE her. I find them surfing her website often to find a new recipe to cook. And all I have to say to the men in my life is "Its a PW recipe" and they'll eat it!
Anyway, we arrived on Tuesday along with 2.7 million other people and collected our color coded wrist band. Orange is such a pretty color. Unless its the color wrist band you received that night which happened to be the 5th color group. With about 100 people in each group it didn't look so good!! We stuck it out until about 10pm but when we realized we weren't even to the halfway mark and had already been standing in line for 3 hours we decided to go home. My girls had school the next day!! But we had a lot of fun that night, anyway. We stood in line with some girls who had gone to ACU so that was fun connecting/reconnecting with them. And we did get some pictures with her. Well, not really WITH her but close enough!

After we got our orange bracelet we headed to eat some dinner...

Sara passed some time by playing games on her phone. Have you ever played Word Warp? Fun!!


This was my view from my place in line. We were at the very back at this point.

Bored. Hey, lets take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other!!

Aunt Sara got the girls some chocolate!!

We did get to see PW's daughters too! I believe Natalie and Sara stood behind the oldest daughter in line at the coffee shop and Natalie made some "loud" statement about her. Like "THERE she IS!!!". This is her oldest daughter...

Her youngest daughter...

And there is REE!!! Apparently she really took her time signing all of the books and making people feel welcome. Sweet!!

As we left we snapped some shots from afar!


We love you, P Dub!

TA!!!!! (repost from our adoption blog)

I really can't believe I get to type these words!! We got our TA today!!! At 9:29 this morning, our travel coordinator called and said the words I'd been waiting to hear since we saw Rhett's face in May...."I have some good news to share with you!". And the rest is a blur!! She will be requesting our Consulate Appointment tonight and once that is made we can book our plane tickets. It looks like there is a group leaving on December 24th. If the cost isn't ridiculously more expensive we will probably skip the Beijing portion of our trip and leave on the 26th so we can spend Christmas day with our other kids. I'll have more details later this week but I just wanted to share the good news with all of my faithful prayer warriors and blog followers.

Even though we know that God's timing is perfect it still hurts in our flesh when things don't "seem" to go right. My sister in law and her husband did not pass court last night in Ethiopia due to a reason beyond their control. So its been a very bitter sweet day. Praying that they will get to go to court again on the 8th and bring those sweet babies home!! Its all for His glory!!!

Stay tuned for more details!!

Let's look at him again, shall we? Oh, Rhett! We can't wait to hold you and love you and smother you with kisses!! And get you a dude's jacket!!

If you want to follow along on that blog go to www.theroadtorhett.blogspot.com. That is where we will post while in China!

I have been posting some over on our adoption blog for Rhett. You can check it out here.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately!! Trying to get ready to go to China at a VERY crazy time of year!!

Iron Chef America...kids edition

Tonight the kids wanted to do an at home version of Iron Chef America. So I got to choose the secret ingredient that they MUST include in their recipe. I really should have thought this one through before I started randomly choosing things from our pantry. Because Brian and I got to be the judges!! That's right. That means we had to actually EAT what they made. So what were the secret ingredients you ask? Well....I chose 2 actually. Blueberries and Dried Beef. Yup. You read that correctly. Don't ask me why I have dried beef in my pantry.

Ok, fine.

Its for a dip I like to make but whatever.

Chef Ridge...

Chef Natalie...

Chef Emily...

I believe this was Natalie's blueberry concoction...

If you don't have this stuff in your pantry its a MUST!!! I'm sure they have it in the Biggest Loser pantry. For sure!

My poor sink...its supposed to be a copper sink.

This was Chef Ridge's meal. It was Rolled Dried Beef with blueberry sauce and leaves from the bush out in front of our house. Caution...don't eat the leaves.

Chef Natalie's meal....a dried beef and turkey hot dog with blueberry and a sprig of parsley for color. I like her style.

And Chef Emily's meal...a dried beef and turkey biscuit with blueberry and sugar sauce drizzled over it. Mmmm. Mouth watering.

They worked very hard on their concoctions and even had me interview them in the middle of the show about what it is they were doing. Have you watched Iron Chef America? You should! Go find it on The Food Network!! So when they were done Brian and I got to sit down and judge the appearance and the taste of the food. It was interesting to say the least!! But in the end the winner was......Iron Chef NATALIE!!!!!!!!!!!




Next week the defending champ will take on her sister and brother....and the mom will choose a much better secret ingredient!!!!!!!!!!

I do not heart kidney stones

Well, my husband has officially joined the Kidney Stone club. Except its not really a club. And you don't get lots of fun stuff once you join. Unless you count ER visits, throwing up from pain, lots of drugs, and a pee strainer as fun! Brian started having some severe pain on Sunday night in his kidney and because he is a dr. he knows RIGHT where his kidney is. Funny how that works. So off to the ER we went!! My brother in law, Matt, is a family practice dr here so he called ahead to let them know we were coming. We were seen right away and got a CT scan done promptly but with it being a Sunday night at midnight it took quite a bit longer to receive the results. Turns out he did have a kidney stone as expected and we were sent home with meds and other paraphernalia to help us as we wait for the beloved stone to pass. However, all day on Monday Brian couldn't keep anything down due to pain so the meds weren't working and he wasn't hydrating so that this thing would "COME ON DOWN"!!! Finally about 10pm on Monday night we got him comfortable and able to sleep through the night with out throwing up. Yesterday we woke up with a goal in mind. Drink!!!!!!! So he did but we figured it wouldn't hurt to go get some IV fluids from my brother in law's office. The problem there is that they are not a hospital and haven't done IV's in quite some time. Praise God my sister (who is a nurse practitioner) works there 2 times a week. She used to work in the NICU several years ago and did all sorts of stuff on tiny babies. So starting an IV on a grown man was probably cake to her! However....it had been years since she did it AND it was Brian....her brother in law. So Sara came in and made some crack about how this is her dream come true...sticking her brother in law...yadda yadda yadda. And got 'er done. Brian felt so much better after receiving the fluid and hopefully will pass the thing soon!! Of course, you know me...I had to document! And don't be surprised if I take pictures of the stone once its here!!