M3 Birthday Party!!!

Paul and I returned home from Grammy's late Friday evening, unpacked, and went to bed, after, that is we slathered ourselves down with Aloe Vera Gel to treat the sunburns we received at the lake.

Saturday we did our normal household chores and then attended my cousin's wedding in the afternoon. We made a brief appearance at the reception because we had major plans that evening:

We met the M3 crew for dinner at Dave and Busters, has a great time playing games after dinner and then all returned to Kelley and Chuck's for a birthday celebration.

Dinner was fabulous and the company was even better. After stuffing ourselves we made our way down to the midway where we proceeded to play games and challenge each other. I learned a very important lesson: Valerie is not above banging her hips on the machines to make more coins drop out. She totally cracks me up and I was so afraid we were going to get kicked out. Paul and I wound up racking up 1200 tickets to spend in the "prize store" but after looking things over we decided to save them for a future playdate.

We all headed back to Kelley's where she had made us a fabulous birthday cake. Chuck, Valerie, Gary, and I all share July birthdays so it was a major celebration. We fired up the margarator and had a great time with each other. Anton decided to take on the daunting task of teaching the girls to play poker. Bless his heart, he was trying to be so serious and precise and we were just not having that at all. We wound up wrapping up the evening of fun around 1am!!

Sunday, Paul and I attended church and then came back home to rest from our full week/weekend.

So that was our week in a nutshell!!! Hope everyone else had a fun-filled weekend with family and friends.

Happy Birthday to me!!!! Hopefully this year I will receive the most precious gift ever, my daughter!! I can't wait until the day she is placed in my arms. With the current trend of referrals we seem so close yet so far. So my dear Avery, where ever you may be know that on mommy's birthday her greatest wish is to bring you home!!

Get-a-way at Grammy's

As I previously mentioned our plans to go camping last week were changed due to all the rain our area has received. Instead we went up to Paul's grandparents for a couple of nights and had a ton of fun with his grandparents, parents, and aunt&uncle. We arrived on Wednesday evening and grilled hamburgers and then had birthday cake in honor of me and Kay whose birthdays are just a week apart this month. While everyone was still coasting on a sugar high we hooked up the Wii game system. Needless to say a great time was had by all. We started out with bowling, where Aunt Kay (who had never played the Wii before) proceeded to kick the crap out of all of us and score 202!!! We then moved on to a little tennis, some great mini games on Mario Party 8, and then finished the night with the cow races on Wii Play. Grammy was laughing so hard while she was racing her cow that the pictures in the slide show looks like she is crying. We were all exhausted after exerting all that energy game playing so we went to bed soon after.

Thursday morning the Paul and his dad went to play golf, while Daddy Sonny and Uncle Larry went fishing. Sandra treated the girls to a Birthday Tea Party. She fixed up her dining area just like a tea room. We lunched on finger sandwiches, fruit salad, cookies, and of course there were a variety of hot and cold teas to choose from. She put alot of time and effort into this lunch for the ladies and it was fabulous!! Thank you so much Sandra!!

Thursday evening we has a good ole fish fry. I'll tell you there is nothing quite like fish fresh and hot out of the fryer. After dinner we all gathered around Grammy and Daddy Sonny's new poker table for a 2 hour marathon of Texas Hold 'Em. I have to admit that I could never be a real poker player because I bet big on every hand. Glad we were not playing for real money!!

Friday we spent the afternoon at the lake. Last month while Paul and I were in San Antonio we purchased a new tow toy. In the past I have always had an innertube to pull behind the jet skis because I love doing that. We finally wore out our tube and it was time to get something new. This time we purchased a "Superfly". It is just a flat solid area that you inflate and then you lay down on your stomach and hold on for dear life. This worked out alot better than the tube because you did not have to worry about falling in the hole of the innertube. I had an absolute blast riding on this and Paul pulled me all over the lake. We even managed to get Grammy, Daddy Sonny, and Kay in on the superfly action!! We all got a little too much sun but we had fun doing it. We were exhausted when we finally left the lake but it was totally worth it. Paul and I then packed up and headed home. We were sorry to see our family time end but we had even more plans for the weekend awaiting us........

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post and slide show of the M3 birthday party we had Saturday night and the rest of our weekend adventures!!!!!!

Thought for the day

Last night we had a local pastor come the hospital to visit a patient. He passed out mints to all the nurses and being the sugar-holics we are we gobbled them up. After eating my mint I noticed there were scriptures listed on each wrapper. This is the scripture that was on my mint:



Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5


This really reached out and grabbed me. I am having a hard time lately with the seemingly endless wait to bring Avery home, but seeing this and remembering that I do trust in the Lord and he WILL bring this to pass it what I really needed to be reminded of.....

So my prayer today is that the Lord will give me the strength to make it through this rough patch and the knowledge to know that he is in control and watching over my baby until she is ready to come home to us.

Hope everyone is having a great week!!

Change of plans........

Every summer Paul and I like to take a few days and go camping at the lake. Of course I use the term "camping" loosely because we don't actually sleep in a tent, we sleep in our travel trailer with all the comforts of home. We spend our days reading(me), playing video games or watching movies(him), and then several hours a day we spend playing on the lake riding the jet skis or riding the tube. This year however things are different..........

We made our reservations a couple of months ago and were all set to go EXCEPT the campground (and all the surrounding ones) is now under water!! If you watch any national weather at all you may have seen that Texas has received an unusually large amount of rain in the last month. We happen to live close to the largest lake in the state that also feeds into a river and because of all the rain things are flooded everywhere. Every boat ramp on the lake is closed and the lake patrols are not encouraging anyone to be on the lake because of high waters and debris.

We usually camp with Paul's parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncle. We decided that we still wanted to be together so instead we are all traveling to Grammy and Daddy Sonny's house for a few days. Hopefully we can partake of the same activities and still get some good relaxing and family time.

We are going to head out Wednesday so I am sure I will have some funny stories for you when we get back home.

Hope everyone is having a good week!!