Wordless Wednesday

Created for Care 2014

I was so blessed to be able to attend Created for Care at Lake Lanier again this year! And this time I got to take one of my dearest friends, Melissa with me! She brought her daughter Zoe home in August from Ethiopia.  Zoe and Aven lived in the same care center for a short time.

I also got to see some dear friends again while I was there! Devin and Jessica were in Ethiopia with us on our first trip for court and we stayed in close contact during our process encouraging each other and praying for each other. Wendy was another sweet one that we prayed with and for, and I finally got to meet her face to face after months of emailing back and forth!

 We had such a refreshing time at the retreat! It is so important to spend time with other adoptive mommas who "get it" and can encourage each other in the journey of raising an adopted child. I hope there will be many more years of attending C4C!

Disney: Day 5

We headed home around 7 a.m. The trip took much longer on the way home thanks to ALOT of traffic, and Levi throwing up once on the way home. He had gotten sick as soon as we arrived at our condo the night before, and once during the middle of the night. He never once acted like he felt bad, thankfully! I am so thankful that he waited until after our time at Disney was over:) I had been covering us all in prayer the week leading up to our trip. They have all been so well this winter and I was so nervous that they would get sick right before or during our trip! I guess I should have prayed for them to stay well on the drive home too;)

Other than that, our Disney trip was absolutely PERFECT!! The kids were absolute angels! I can't wait to do it again!!

Disney: Day 4

My parents had to leave to go back home because of my dad's work schedule, so we hit up Magic Kingdom without them on our last day at the parks. We got there early again to see the "Good Morning Show" before the gates opened. The kids already had in mind which rides they wanted to ride again, so I headed straight to get fast passes for those rides while Brian hopped on Aladdin's carpet with the kids. We were able to get on a few rides with no wait. Brian took Brody to ride Space mountain while I took Aven and Levi to ride Buzz Lightyear (even though we had a fast pass for later). It was definitely one of their favorite rides!

Here are the boys and I on the Astro Orbiter

They loved Dumbo!

We met Buzz!

Aladdin's magic carpet

We took the boys on Thunder Mountain 2 more times and Levi especially loved it! I was amazed on our first day at Magic Kingdom how much Levi loved roller coasters! 

We enjoyed lots of Popsicles and ice cream in the amazing 80 degree weather!

The Parades and shows were Aven's favorites!

In this particular parade the characters get off the floats and dance with the kids. Aven has an obsession with Woody from toy story, so we were so excited when Woody and Jesse stopped right in front of us! When they got off the floats Woody went farther down the road so I took Aven to dance with Jesse. She danced for a second and the looked up at me with the most disappointed face and said "Woody!"  So we pushed our way through the crowd and found him:) she was in heaven! Can you tell she has two older brothers?

We headed back a littler earlier to enjoy the pools one last time before we went home to cold NC!

Disney: Day 3

We spent day 3 at Hollywood Studios! The boys are all into Star Wars right now and love Indiana Jones so they were especially excited about our day!

We ended up riding the Star Wars ride 3 times! The boys LOVED it! I couldn't believe how well Levi handled all of the rides. He was not scared of anything and thoroughly enjoyed himself!  The boys picked out and built their own light sabers after the star wars ride. They are still enjoying them!

The only ride we had to really wait in line for over our 3 days was the Toy Story Ride at Hollywood Studios. We had to wait around an hour and it may have just been worth it! We all loved it!! And Levi got to get a little nap in while we were waiting in line:)

As soon as we arrived at the park, we headed straight over to sign Brody up for the Jedi Training! His time slot wasn't until later in the evening.  He had been talking about this for weeks! He went through all of the Jedi training up on stage and was having a ball! Until....Darth Vader walked out on stage. Honestly, it scared even me. He looked 7 feet tall and just like the movies. There was smoke all around him, 2 storm troopers, and "that music". I could immediately tell Brody was terrified. I knew there was no way he would go out on stage and "fight" Darth Vader himself. I felt so bad for him, because he had been talking about this moment for so long! But I don't blame him. Like I said, I probably wouldn't have done it either. He was excited to receive his certificate for completing his Jedi training and that was enough for him!