Santa 2010

On Saturday we went to see Santa.  Lexy thought very hard about what to ask him for and settled on a Squinkie House.  She took a brochure with pictures to show Santa exactly what she wanted so there were not mistakes :-)

Brooke and her friend Cristy decided that they wanted a picture with Santa too.  Santa was giving them a hard time and making them laugh so hard :-)





A reporter from the local paper took pictures of both Lexy and Brooke/Cristy with Santa and asked for their names and ages so one of the pictures may be in the paper this week!

UPDATE:  Both their pictures were in the Dec. 1, 2010 local paper.  Brooke and Cristy were on the front page and Lexy was on page 6!!!

Thanksgiving



Lexy's practice Thanksgiving meal!

 

Our beautiful girls on Thanksgiving!

Our Family

Papa & Grammy with the girls.

"The Leader of the Pack"

On November 19 & 20, 2010 Brooke performed in her school's "The Leader of the Pack" musical.  The cast did a wonderful job!  Brooke was in the chorus (she was scared to try for a leading role this year as a freshman) but she did have one number where just her and three other girls performed a dance to "Hanky Panky"...that was her favorite part :)

Show Us - Playroom

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner hosts a series called Show Us Your Life.  I've meant to join in before but never got around to it but today is playrooms (or any extra room) and I had to show off our playroom. 

The playroom is my favorite room in the house.  We decided back when we first started fostering (9 yrs. ago) to make our one car garage into a playroom for the kids.  Back then it had a sky theme with clouds, sun, rainbow, hot air balloons and angels.  After we decided to stop fostering (and concentrate on adopting) last summer we redid the playroom in a green/pink theme.  I still want to put diff. colored circles on the walls and get pictures of the girls to put on one of the walls.



Mike & I made this kitchen for the girls.

 

Craft area, one cabinet for the girls and one for me. (needs some clean up!).

Dress up cabinet and stage area.

Toys!

Music and TV area.  Dresser holds all our videos.

Brooke's Informal

Brooke attended her "Informal" dance on Saturday night.  She chose to get ready with her friends and then meet her date at the dance.  She said that she had a great time but that she didn't get to dance with her date b/c they didn't have a slow dance (except the "special dances" where they had to pick an object with someone else's date on it and dance with them) until after her date had to leave. 

From the pictures I've seen on facebook some of the kids went to the extreme when dressing up for the 80's theme dance!!  One of the moms commented that "I never wore anything like that in the 80's", I said "yeah I think our bad fashion got even worse in the translation!" :)

After teasing her hair Brooke came out and asked "My hair looks huge and messy, did you really do this to your hair?".  Yep we did :-)

Nothing New

It's been relatively quiet around here, really nothing new or exciting to talk about. 

Brooke will be working hard the next couple of weeks on perfecting her part in the musical.  She has practice four nights a week, next week the practices will be four hours each.  Then they will be performing next Friday and Sat. nights.  It's been a blessing that she's had a small break in her cheer schedule to concentrate on the musical.  Cheer will start back up with basketball at the beginning of Dec.

This weekend Brooke will be attending "Informal", a dance for the girls in the two sororities of her high school and their dates.  Each year they have two dances, Informal and Formal, one of the neat things they do at the dances is that they hand out gifts to each person with the name of someone elses date on it and they must dance one dance with that other person.  This years theme is 80's and Brooke has already got her outfit ready to go!  She also has her date lined up, a junior named Bryce.  It hasn't been decided yet if she will go out to eat with her date before the dance or just meet him there so she can go with her friends.  Brooke's really excited!

Lexy has decided to join Girl Scouts.  Brooke was never interested so this is my first experience with it.  We attended our first meeting the other night and Lexy had a great time.  I'm not thrilled with the whole cookie selling thing but thank goodness that's just a small part of it.  Lexy's looking forward to the activities, field trips and camp outs.  I'm looking forward to spending mommy & Lexy time with her!

Lexy went for allergy testing earlier this month.  She has been on allergy meds for her entire life, each time we have tried to take her off of them she has gotten severely congested.  Her meds were working fine to help with the congestion but because we don't have any of her family history we really wanted to know what exactly she was allergic to so that if there was anything we could eliminate from her environment/diet then we could work on that.  I was blown over surprised when the allergy testing showed that she was allergic to NONE of the things they tested for (trees, grass, molds, animals, pollen, etc.).  The allergy doctor said "some kids are just congested" and sent us home with a prescription for a nasal spray that I will not be getting b/c I will not torture Lexy like that when her Zyrtec works just fine!  I did ask the doctor if the congestion could be caused by something that she eats/drinks, my thought was possibly milk b/c she has had issued with it in the past (lactose intolerant) but the doctor was quick to tell me that was not possible.  I'm not totally convinced, everything I've been reading the past couple of days says that congestion can be caused by allergies to milk.  I'm going to continue to research but I'm not sure I could eliminate all milk products from Lexy's diet since she LOVES yogurt and cheese :(

Adoption...we have not heard anything new at all.  I check my e-mail several times a day just hoping that there will be an e-mail from our adoption worker...I get a little down each time there isn't :(

Anyway, I guess I had more to say than I thought :-)  And because a post is better with pictures...

Lexy did mommy's makeup with leftover Halloween makeup!



This is now what a sleepover looks like, laptops and cell phones for both girls :)



Halloween

We had a fun filled Halloween this year.  On Friday, Mike and I both got to attend Lexy's 1st grade fall party and then we all headed down to the local Spook Parade.  On Sunday, Mike and I took Lexy out trick or treating while Brooke went with some of her friends for the evening.

We didn't make it to a pumpkin patch or the apple orchard this year, much to Lexy's dismay!  I really don't have a reason other than lack of planning...we'll be sure to do both next year!

Cheer

Friday was a hard day for Brooke and everyone at her school, trying to process the death of Nathan Stiles.  He may not have been from our town but his death definately affected us all.  From all that I have read, Nathan was a wonderful young man and will be greatly missed.  Brooke and her classmates will be wearing purple & gold (Bronco colors) today as well as ribbons/hair ties and bracelets that have been made in Nathan's honor. 

I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the cheer squad from our last football game of the season.