"Say a Little Prayer for Me"

Two nights a week I have to leave my family to go to work.
That's two nights a week with no evening family time, no bedtime rituals of kissing on my children, saying our sweet prayers, and loving on them before the next day is to come. I miss those times with my family. My sweet husband made this video for me while I was at work last night, so that I could have a little piece of my little Hutter man before bed. We do this every night with him and he is getting better at saying these sweet words. Last week he was saying Jesus like "JeJe" which was adorable but this week he is saying it even better. Thank you my sweet husband for making this for me!

Friday Foto Favorites~

These are pictures of my wonderful husband and me on our last vacation, cruising on Carnival. He and my Bestest, Katie, have planned a surprise vacation for me to Colorado next weekend to visit her. They are so snicky and it makes me glow to think they planned something together just for me. My husband is so sweet and thoughtful. Hopefully, we will have more vacation photos to share when we get back.









Here is my Bestest! I am so blessed to have her in my life and a little (okay big)sad that she is so far away. We are so much alike and have shared many experiences together in the short amount of time that we have known each other. It's going on three years as "Bestests" and time has flown by. Here is a picture of us

Making us a little more private

I am new to the blogging thing and before I knew some of the things I would be getting into, I had used our first and last names. However, from reading other bloggers who have many more readers than I do, I have noticed some nasty comments being stated and some unpleasant people. I have not encountered this, thank goodness, but I thought I would take our first names out of our blog. Even though I love all of our names. Some very unique and fun, I think! Since I love names! I figured it would be safest to do this now than later. Thanks for your understanding! Hopefully I can come up with some more creative names for the family later! I am spent from writing three blogs today.

Taking our Time, I guess

We are waiting to file this year’s taxes before submitting out application to our adoption agency. We need the last three years of taxes and of course we can’t find the 2004 taxes. Note to self, save everything! I am really bad about filing important documents and this adoption is definitely going to teach me to file appropriately. I bought some filing folders, go me! However, I have not filed anything yet.
Hooray all the paperwork is here. Now SDC needs to do the taxes! Which means, we are actually going to get our application submitted by next week.
We are trying to be relaxed about this whole process, we know it takes a while and we are going to try and be as patient as possible. Check back with me later, that may not be so true later in the process!

15 Random Things about Me

1. I love Jesus! Surprise!
2. I am deathly afraid of being in a really bad car accident. Praise God I have not!
3. I am deathly afraid of my husband's driving abilities. Speed, swerving, middle lane driving is not acceptable in my standards.
4. I gave birth to Hutson naturally and it was an amazing experience
5. I never lose weight breastfeeding and am completely jealous when other moms say "Oh the weight just fell off!" Not for me!
6. I have had to lose a total of 75lbs with the pregnancies
7. When I was 12 years old I had 20+ doctors look at my arm and try to determine what was wrong with it! They concluded it is just an extra layer of tissue from the back of my shoulder down my humerus! I concluded it is just a self conscious, cellulite looking, ugly growth that is completely unnecessary.
8. Thank goodness most people don't realize it is there or thank goodness no one points it out!
9. I work out atleast four times a week and love Turbo Jam!
10. My husband and I are 6 years apart. He is older, HeHe!
11. My two boys are 4 years apart
12. I hate it when the dinner room chairs are not pushed in.
13. I hate tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers, asperagus, cooked carrots and wish that I loved more vegatables because they are so good for you.
14. I hate coffee.
15. I love my life, my husband, my children, and I praise God everyday for it!

Not Me! Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

This week I was not shocked, saddened, and grieving because my step grandfather past away. He was not a great poet and an amazing example of a great Christian man who loved his family deeply. He will not be missed at all! I was also not happy at all to see some family that I have not seen in a long time! Nope not me!

I did not create an indoor jungle gym with chairs in my house this week for the boys because they are not cooped up inside all day long during this brutally cold winter!

I was not a little bit scared that they would injure themselves either because that is just ridiculous! However they did not have a blast on our Mommy-Made gym!

I did not buy myself a new pair of jeans and a pair of shoes this weekend for no reason because I am a frugile woman who does not spend money on stuff I do not need!

The boys did not have a great time being thrown around and wrestled with the not so fun daddy that they have! Nope they did not!


I am not going to add some random adorable pictures just because I want to! So here we don't go!

Adoption video from my church

When Love Comes to Town from Westside Family Church on Vimeo.

Devil or Angel?

Recently, I have been making comments about HDC's tantrums and how frequently they were occuring. The other day MckMama (a blog I follow), posted a video of her daughter having a tantrum. Which just made me have to video HDC because of his recent outbursts. Remember I stated we needed to go to the grocery store badly, well we finally made it on Thursday.

Oh, a quick little side note...If you have more than one child, I highly recommend this advice that works extremely well for us. Step 1: Memmorize your grocery store by aisles and where things are. Step 2: Or just write it down and don't memmorize. Step 3: Split the grocery store in half by aisles. Step 4: Make two grocery lists, one for the hubby and one for yourself. Step 5: Each person take a child or two and do your grocery list. For example, my husband takes the meat, cheese, and milk section that goes along with all the cold items and I take all the boxed and canned good aisles. We are finished buying $400.00 worth of groceries in 30 minutes.

Okay, back to what I was saying...We were finishing up bagging items and of course Hutson was done with the grocery shopping. Now I normally ignore his tantrums. However if you watch this video closely you will notice that he is strapped in and nearly climbing over the top of the cart. He is so strong and determined when he is mad.





So, I decided to take him into the bathroom to calm him down. There is a little chair hooked to the wall where you can strap children in and the mother can use the restroom. Also, a perfect time out chair. Notice that he is NOT buckled into the chair! I just sat him into the chair.




He is the devil...he went from suicide attempt to a sober little angel in minutes! Can you see his face at the end, he is so sweet. Thank you HDC for challenging me and still being such a sweet little man!

Thursday Thoughts

I have a dear close friend of mine that is currently working in Korea, teaching children English. I find that quite interesting and ironic that we are both connected to Korea. She continues to tell me she could just stick a little girl in her luggage to bring her back. Oh, how I wish it was that easy. However, the great part about all of this is she can really give me some information about the Korean culture and be a really good auntie to our daughter. So, she sent me a picture of the sweetest little girl today. Oh, how beautiful is she? She is dressed from head to toe! I am going to have to have her take more pictures more me. Just seeing that picture makes it so much more real that someday I will love on such a sweet face. But until that day I will have this adorable little girl to look at.


I have worked the last two nights and I am extremely tired. I took care of the two smallest and cutest little peanuts. Both only weighing about 1.5lbs and very sick. If you can imagine…take your wedding ring off, look at the parameter of it, and sliding the ring all the way up a infant’s arm to it’s shoulder. That is how small these children are.
People always ask me “How I do it, taking care of such sick babies.” Honestly, I don’t know how I do it other than I have the comfort of Jesus with me. This past fall I was on an emotional roller coaster. I had two babies die the night I worked within a two week period. Now, sadly there are many children that die on our unit because we are such a large unit, however, the odds that I am there when these babies die are against me. Praise the Lord. However I have seen many babies die. Sometimes I just don’t think that I completely comprehend what just happened. Sadly, I just continue on living, place it in the back of my head, acting like it doesn’t phase me. And for a long time I thought that is what I am suppose to do.
However, this fall I was crying all the time for no reason, very emotional. My sweet husband felt so helpless because he didn’t know what was wrong with me and he couldn’t fix it for me. All he could do was hold me and be there for me, which is all I wanted from him. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me either. I have never been depressed or so emotional in my life. It was so unusual and I didn’t understand why I was feeling that way. Finally, I came to grips that I am human and I am allowed to feel sad when babies die and I am allowed to grieve about it. The thought that I have held many dead babies in my arms is unbearable at times. I love my career and my job and I know God wants me right where I am. I want to be there for those parents and for the baby that is going through one of the most frightening, scary, and life changing moments in their lives. It is challenging and trying on my heart at times but I give all my grieve and sadness to God, for He will take the burdens away.
I am hoping that writing my feelings and thoughts down will help me cope with what I do every week of my life and being honest with myself. God says “mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice” For it is all in our calling to be there for others who are hurt and be a person to lean on. I feel I am doing what God as called us all to do. It is an amazing feeling to know that I have hopefully made a sad time in someone’s life a little easier.

Not Me! Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

And as for me and this past week

I certainly did not let my children dump all the toys out of the toy box in the living room, just so they could shove each other into it while the other stood on top of the toy box, not letting the other one escape! Why would I ever do that!

I did not listen in on my son and my little niece as they talked about getting married and having children together. While putting stuffed animals under their shirts! No I would not allow that!

Today we did not go to a place called Pump It Up with a ton of inflatable equipment and enjoy every momment of it! Except once again having my two year old throw a tantrum in front of many moms and children and I did not feel completely embarrassed about my out of control weekly outting tantrums! Because two year olds just don't throw tantrums. Nope not me!

On Thursday I was not even a little bit nervous about meeting with our adoption agency about making this huge life changing decision on adopting a child from another country. Because that would just not be human of me!

And to top it all off...I do not desperately need to go to the grocery because we do not need any bread, eggs, milk, and the basic neccessities of life to live! My refrigerated does not look like it had been robbed from an elephant! Because I am not a procrasinator, ever!

Why Korea?

I told you I would explain why we chose Korea to adopt from.
Here’s why:
First off every country has a list of criteria and every country’s criteria are different. Once we started looking into the different criteria, we began to realize that we are very limited in our country choices. Also, currently Vietnam and Guatemala are not adopting international along with some other countries. Korea became a front runner in the race to see who would win our vote. Korea’s age range starts at 25 years old to be able to adopt. A lot of countries you have to be 30 years old. Well, I am just not there yet and proud of it! Also, the amount of time you are married varies with countries especially if there is a divorce prior. Korea is a very established international adoption country. The agency we are using was one of the first to ever adopt from Korea. A Mr. Holt fought in the Korean War and brought orphans back to the U.S. after the war ended. There was such an interest generated from his family’s adoption that he started Holt International. Korea’s medical care is of high standards and on par with the U.S. Their children even have monthly doctor visits versus the U.S. which we only take our children every three months for the first year. All the children are in foster care and are well taken care of until they are adopted. During my research I looked into adopting children with minor special needs. These children are most likely children that are born early (premature), are low birth weight infants, club foot, birthmarks needing surgical removal, anemia, etc… Being a neonatal nurse I understand in depth medical diagnosis for infants. So, in the back of my head I was thinking that may be an idea! Well, come to find out Korea is only open to adopting children with special needs for families new to adoption from Korea. So with God’s grace he has led us to adopt a child with minor special needs. We can be very specific on what we feel comfortable with and what we can handle.
So, that is how we chose Korea, plus the children are beautiful from there! Just an added bonus to our already beautiful family!
Currently, we are beginning the paperwork to start our adoption process. Once we have our application in, we will begin the home study. This is a process where a social worker comes out to our home and she gets the ins and outs of our lives. She will become very acquainted with every detail of our family dynamics, our finances, and our children. Once that is completed we will be waiting for our child referral. While we wait we have to get paperwork done with the United States Home Land Security or USCIS. I don’t know all the details of that yet, but will very soon.
Tonight I came across a family’s blog that has adopted three children within a very short time frame. One of her blog friends asked about the financial aspect of the adoption. Because as most of you know, it is not cheap! She explained how God provided every time they needed the money. With adoption the costs happens in phases. The first amount of money needed is to pay for the application and the home study. Then once the child is referred, the majority of the expense occurs. The referral can happen a few months from when all the paperwork is complete or could take a year or longer. So, we have no idea how soon we will need most of the money. The financial aspect is one of our biggest worries and concerns about this adoption. However, I have complete faith that God will provide everything we need. I know God led me to that blog tonight, to tell me to not worry, and that He will take care of us and will bring a child home to us. Please be praying for us in all aspects of this adoption but especially that God will bring us the money we need to continue.
Father, thank you for revealing your love and grace to me tonight. Thank you for the reassurance that you will not leave us and you are right here leading us through this process

Our Newest Mission...Adoption!

As some of you may know, Stanton and I have been praying and thinking about adoption. We have felt God place this on our hearts and speaking to both of us about his desire for us to adopt.

A little history on how we decided….
SDC was wonderfully blessed with two children before we met and fell madly in love with one another. He has a daughter and a son, who are absolutely amazing and smart. I was also blessed with a son before SDC and I met, who is the funniest, sweetest, and my best little friend who makes me laugh and is such a joy in our lives. I could go on with how great our children are. But that is for another blog and hopefully everyone will get to know them a little bit better as time goes on. Then HDC came along, who is SDC and I’s biological child together. Who looks nothing like me! I always say, thank goodness I gave birth to this child or I would be questioning who he belongs too. He is so loving and passionate and shy and just a great combination of the both of us. So, we are an Yours, Mine, and Ours Family and I love every bit of it. So, to say the least, poor GCC ( SDC’s daughter) is weigh out numbered!

When I was 10 years old, I wanted to send money to an orphan in India. So I did chores to raise $10.00 a month to send to this child. Even as a child, I had a heart for orphaned and sick children. That is true to this day because everyday at my job I care for some of the sickest babies in our area. I feel so compelled to help God’s children because we are all lost without Him. We also sponsor a child in India currently through our church. We pray for her and give her money for education, food, and shelter!

So with that being said, I have a passion for children especially children that are vulnerable, sick, and lost!

This last year, I have had thoughts of adoption and talks with God about these feelings. Off and on throughout this past year SDC and I have mentioned to one another about our feelings on wanting to adopt. But never took a step in that direction. Then on December 23rd, it was a Tuesday. I was driving to Walmart and the children were quiet in the car (Can you believe it!) and I couldn’t stop thinking about adopting a child. So, I began to pray. God I don’t know what you have in store for my life, but I know I have this feeling to adopt. If this is what you want from me then please show this to me. I continued talking with God about why I feel this way and ask Him if this is really what He wants from me. I am scared to take that leap and trust solely on Him. We already have four healthy beautiful children, do we really need another to love? However, I just could not get those thoughts out of my head for the entire day. That night, we had our Christmas program at church. We sang some beautiful Christmas songs that I had never heard before and the church was completely filled. That night changed my life…When our pastor came out he began to talk about being an orphan without God. That all of us are like orphans lost, homeless, and weak. However God chose us and He can give us an eternal home and love. The pastor showed a film on one of the other pastor’s recent adoption from China. He spoke about how awesome it is to be able to choose a child who had no parents, no one to love them or take care of them and be able to give them the love and home they deserve and need. God was speaking directly to me that night. As I sat in the chair crying uncontrollable, which I tried very hard to not cry in public because I get so embarrassed, I knew that God wanted us to adopt. After church, as we got in the car. Stanton asked me what I was feeling in church tonight. Because he definitely saw the tears rolling down my face. I just said I think God wants us to adopt. Stanton replied, Me too, I have felt God tugging at my heart about adopting.

So as the weeks went on, we began to research intensively about international adoption. We found out so much through the national adoption information clearinghouse. We have found our agency and are filling out our application currently.

Thursday night, we went a met with the agency and had all our questioned answered and received all the information to begin the journey to find our child, God’s child. We have decided on Korea to adopt from. For many reasons and hopefully the next blog can explain why we chose that country and where we are at in our process.
Please be praying for our mission to bring our child home. The adoption process can be long and very trying at times. But we are ready to take this leap of faith. We know God will take care of us and he has already picked our child out for us. It’s 4am and I am at work. So, maybe I should get to working!

Please pray for this family!

This family just lost their home in a fire. They have many adopted children and a large family to feed and clothe! www.aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com

A Tooth and a Prayer...

CBS’s front tooth has been hanging on barely for a week. To scared to pull, he waits patiently everyday until it falls out. However, the crazy mom that I am, I couldn’t resist to tease and wiggle that front tooth at least a couple times a day. He was not amused by my sense of humor over this tooth that was so lose that it stuck out over is lip! A couple of days ago it finally fell out. Not by pulling it out of course, but by me teasing him once more before bedtime. As we sat on the couch I began to reach for the tangling tooth hanging on by a string. Scared that I was going to pull it out, he ran across the couch and flipped over the side and to our amusement it fell out during his stunt devil maneuver over the couch. We all laughed, Oh how I wish I had it on video camera!


CBS ran into the bathroom to inspect his new look. “I look silly mommy!” I heard coming from the bathroom. Of course, I think he looks adorable! He crawled into bed and we had our nightly prayer, hugs, and kisses. But this night Conlan had a prayer request. “Mommy, all the kids are going to make fun of me at school!” (This makes me feel so helpless as mother to not be able to protect my child from other mean things that other children say). I began to explain to CBS that God can protect you. Whenever you feel fearful or scared, you just ask God to protect you. That he is always right next to you. Even when mommy can not be. How great is that feeling to know that even when we cannot be there for our children, that God is always right there. We prayed that night that the children would be kind and that God would protect him. The next day CBS came home from school and as he ran inside from the bus, he was yelling “No one made fun of me today! No one made fun of me today mommy!” Praise God for his protection and thank you for teaching my children how great You are!

A Two Hour Spa for Free!

Today I walked into a dark room full of candles, rocks, and aromatherapy. I was greeted by a chiropractor who tested my nervous system and showed me where I was tense. This followed by a back and neck message where I almost fell asleep. There was no children, no loud noises, a place of relaxation. I think I might have slipped into heaven unknowingly. Next I went to have my hands dipped into warm wax and mittens placed on them. While waiting for the wax to dry, I had an adult conversation with some lady next to me. A table full of food was waiting for me next. The table had quiche, sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, a chocolate fountain, and so much more! I ate so much chocolate with fruit and marshmallows. Well, there went my dieting for the day, but so worth it.

So, how did I get to enjoy all this free and wonderful stuff? It’s called MOPS (mothers of preschoolers). The steering team pampered all of us this morning with spa day. It was amazing!

Oh and to top the morning, I went to pick up HDC from the childcare. He was being very sweet and happy. He wanted to run in the hallway. So I thought why not. As he was running and playing he came upon a water fountain. “Okay, you can have a drink” So I propped him up and he got a drink. Well of course he wants to continue this over and over and over. Finally, after at least 5 times at the fountain, I explained to him that it was time to leave. That didn’t go over so well with what he had in mind. On our way out of church, I had a two year old kicking and screaming because he wasn’t ready to leave. I walked calmly with him in my hands to the car. While all the other children are walking so nicely out to their cars with their mommies! Well the life of motherhood continues.

Our Mission

So I'm joining the blogging world! I have been reading some random blogs lately and have been inspired to join along. Everyone has a mission in life, what would life be without a mission. Maybe your mission is to become a better mom, wife, friend, or a painter, photographer. My belief is with God anyone can accomplish their mission. I am dependent on God, I surrender my life to Him, and with my many missions in life, I believe I can accomplish them. Because ultimately they are God's missions.

For some time now, My husband and I (along with the children's create thoughts) have been trying to create a Family Mission Statement and to have it hang in our home. This blog has inspired me to try to complete our mission statement and hopefully I can finish it soon.

Here is what I have so far:
Our Home will be a safe haven, God centered place where we will love and respect one another, a nuturing place of order, truth, love, happines, and relaxation. It is unique, spiritual, organized, and simple. We will provide opportunities for each person to become responsible independent. Habits of our home: to love, honor, and pray for one another, to tell the truth, to not hurt one another, to take good care of the things God has given us, and to speak quietly and respectfully to one another. God has called our family to demonstrate unconditional love to each other and to other people around us. As for me and my household we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15)

So, there it is so far...definitely needs some improvement, editing. This was just in my documents in different lines and not put together at all.

So, what is your Mission?