Trip to MI! (Take 3!)

After being back 5 months, I've been itching to get "home". This weekend I flew here with Eliot (Russ had previous commitments) to celebrate my mom's accomplishment of graduating with her bachelors degree! (Congrats Mom!! I'm so proud of you!!)Isn't she cute?



Oh what a trip it's been. Eliot seems to living by the principle of "what happens at grandma's, stays at grandmas..." He has been such a little turkey all weekend! It's really quite a blessing that he's so cute.




Before I get to the list of offenses let me start by saying: he did great on the short flight. Then he slept all the way from the airport to my hometown. Little did I know that he was apparently storing up energy for the plans ahead. Pretty much all of Friday he was a little angel. I almost wonder if he went to bed laughing like a mad scientist knowing of all the potential ahead.

So, you may have guessed from my previous post that eliot set off the fire alarm in a room of over 500 people. This was after Eliot decided to fill in the silence between each name read at graduation with a loud and hearty growl. Then on our way from graduation to a special lunch to honor my mom, Mr. Evil Canievel figured out how to unlatch his car seat. He has also made the decision that his normal 12-2 nap should be moved to 5-7 at night. Not to mention that I threw a pack of diapers we had in the basement of a brand I WILL NEVER USE AGAIN into the suitcase, assuming they would work like the diapers we normally use. Hmmm, the poor busboy at our special lunch who needed his mop to clean up Eliot's mess might disagree with that. If I dare to leave him in these diapers more than 2 hours, I have to change his clothes. The last major offense for the weekend came in the form of E trying to make a shaker out of a box of cheeze-its. It worked great until he turned it upside down and it emptied all over the floor. His cute response to this surprise was to begin to put them back in the box. Great, huh? Except for the '2 for the box, 1 for me' idea he seemed to be implementing...

Anyway, I'll leave you with pics of our weekend! (By the way, we got around 9-10 inches of snow!!! How fun!!)

How's your holiday planning coming?

I'm pretty much doing what I have to in order to get things done around here...

Note to self...8

Oh my. When holding your investigative toddler on your hip in an over-crowded room of college graduates and their families all squished trying to stay inside from the cold, try to stand further away from the fire alarm.

Catch up?

Oh, I'm so behind on things to share that I'm not sure where to start. Items of interest: Family in town, Eliot's baptism, Christmas with family, and Eliot's first trip to Michigan (along with a blizzard!). So, after I get Eliot to finally take a nap today, I'll pick one of those and fill you in!

Here's the newstory link!

http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=136578

Enjoy!

Stocking update? uh...

Watch the NBC news at 10:00 tonight if you live in St. Louis! They heard about our stuffing party and sent a journalist and camera guy. Here's a little preview:







by the way, I hope no one is offended but we emptied all the stockings and redistributed all the goodies so that each stocking was stacked with equal goodies. Some stockings came in full of food, others full of electronics, so we made an executive decision to spill, organize and stuff! There was WAY TOO MUCH to fit in each stocking so Beth bought large Ziploc bags to put them in so we could just keep stuffing and not worry about it all falling out!







We were overwhelmed with the generous response. Each stocking was something to be proud and excited about! Thanks everyone!!

Santa Suckers!

In other words, we're the new parents who are suckers enough to pay the amount the mall is asking for one photo of our kid with Santa. We were looking for a this years vs. last years moment. This is 2007. Below is 2006.



Notice how I'm bending my knees to try and get to the Santa-height. Guatemalan Santa's aren't quite the same as ours...


I have several blogs coming about our huge weekend but they will have to wait as Beth and I have over 130 stockings to organize and ship this afternoon!!

Not old enough to drink, but old enough to marry

OK, my turn again.

10 years ago today I asked Katie McCoon to be my wife. Wow, 10 years? That means we have a 10th anniversary coming soon? What in the world?

Of course, the next question from all the ladies is, "how did you propose?" so I'll tell:

Brief history: a group of my friends at college all had a pact together to help each other with creative dates. We helped not only with several guys' engagements, but we'd often get involved in helping create elaborate and fun evenings for each other. It was was a lot of fun and helped not spend too much money when you had a group of crazy and creative guys willing to do ridiculous things to put a spark into what would have been a lame, cheap date. I even stopped traffic once in the middle of town dressed as a secret service agent so we could pull a friend's girl from her car. So along with this group of guys and some other friends, I assembled a team of 20 folks to pull off this historic event. It required lots of help and several organizational meetings.

Also, I had already managed to convince Katie I was going to visit a friend at Arkansas State University for a weekend while I drove to Michigan, took her parents to dinner to ask for their blessing and spent the weekend with them.

STAGE 1: Katie was expecting for me to pick her up at her house for a date. Instead, my roommate Scotty showed up in his car. He had with him a gift, which she was required to open. Upon opening the gift, she was also given a clue. Once she determined where she was supposed to go based on the clue, Scotty was to drive her to her next destination and drop her off. Once she arrived to the next place a different friend met her with a different gift, another clue, and so on. Each destination was a significant location in our relationship (like where our first date was, first kiss, etc.), and each gift was also somehow tied to different stories or inside jokes from our time dating. Each card with a clue also included a "password" to get the clue at the next stop. Often she was required to sing a silly song or do a dance or something embarrassing in order to receive the next gift/clue. All in all, she was escorted by 12 different guys with 12 gifts and 12 clues to 12 different locations, leading her from her dorm room at Greenville College to downtown St. Louis. 2 hours on our "date," and still no sign of me.

STAGE 2: The last of her escorts brought her to the front door of the Adam's Mark, a very classy hotel downtown. Inside was one of her favorite places, a little jazz club where she loved to go dancing. I met her outside with a rose and escorted her inside so we could go dancing. A few songs in, I asked her to walk outside with me. Outside the side door of the hotel awaited a white horse and carriage. We hopped inside and took a half hour romantic ride around Keiner Plaza, which was lit up with millions of Christmas lights.

STAGE 3: Upon arriving back at the hotel, we hopped out of the carriage only to find a quintet of street musicians playing jazz. Of course, the band was made up of my friends. Also on the scene were 2 photographers, one taking pics and one doing video.
So, we stopped, dropped a couple of dollars in the guitar player's case, and requested a song (the one she asked me to sing to her if/when I proposed to her). So right there on the busy downtown sidewalk, we danced and I sang "Moonlight Becomes You." Amazing how many people stopped to watch! The music continued and I got on one knee and proposed! She said yes, cried, and we danced some more. Best date ever.

Oh, and we were 20 years old. Yikes.

So here we are, 10 years later and so much has happened. I'm next to our family Christmas tree in our 2nd house, listening to silly music coming from our El's toys as he's playing in his bedroom. This weekend our entire family will be visiting for Eliot's baptism on Sunday morning. There is absolutely so much to celebrate right now I can't even get my mind around it. We are so thankful to God for His great love for us and for all He has done and provided. What an incredible way to celebrate the holiday season!

(Oh, and if any of you are able to come celebrate Eliot's baptism with us this Sunday, Dec. 9, it all goes down at Greentree at the 9:00 service.)

This time last year...

I had only been with Eliot for a week and a half. It was one of the hardest times of my life so far. Take one part culture shock, one part language barrier, one part transition into motherhood, one part loneliness of experiencing my dream come true...by myself, one part dealing with more bad news on our case, one part transition for an infant to a life he doesn't know and isn't comfortable with quite yet, one part transition into living somewhere you've never lived before, and on and on and on. Is anyone else stressed after reading that run-on sentence? We'll just move on to pictures to remind us of the reason one might sign up for such an experience! But as usual, among the stress God provided and protected. We had a safe and friendly place to stay, we were healthy, I had an easy transition back into the Spanish language, we were surrounded by a bazilion prayers and above all, I was with my little guate-baby!

This was taken at the airport. Hazel (the original foster mom) had a very hard time saying goodbye to her little "Sammy").

Notice the "who are you and why do you keep taking pictures of me?" look.

Seven

So, I've been protesting actually doing this but I'll do it anyway. I was 'tagged' by a fellow blogger (KL, errrrr) to post seven random things about me that people may not know. While some of you might head to your next blog upon hearing that, I thought I'd add seven pics of Eliot you haven't seen to keep you here for a few more minutes! I'll try to make them quirky so that it's at least a little interesting. Not many of you check this on Saturdays anyway!

1.After eating cereal each morning, I use the leftover milk in my coffee and to take my vitamins. Gross or resourceful?

2. I played bass drum in the high school marching band. Yep, band-geek. The good news is that the outfits were hideous and we attempted to be a dancing drum line. Oh, the good 'ol days....My only comfort in sharing that with you is that therapy has occured and all pictures burned. (not really, I'm just exaggerating again. It wasn't that bad, just 'character building')



3.When I was little I was convinced that I could talk as fast as the MicroMachines guy on TV. My brother encouraged me to keep at it. Hmmmm.



4. Russ and I tried to deviate from our 9 year habit of which side to sleep on in bed. We thought it might solve our domestic violence issues that occur between Russ's elbow and my face in the middle of the night. It turned out to be one of the worst nights sleep we've each had in awhile. Plan B anyone?



5. I'm writing a book. Not sure that I'm qualified to do that sort of thing but feel that the Lord gave us a story to tell. Not sure what I'm going to do with it but I've been working on it since spring. It's intimidating but if I haven't learned anything else, I've learned that it's okay to take risks. If nothing else, it's a great keepsake-ish type thing of our journey over the last couple years.


6. I'm trying to save money to go back to Guatemala. Not for baby #2 (not yet anyway), but to visit Melissa if she's still there in the early months of 2008. I'm actually excited to get back! What's wrong with me?



7. I grew up in the Slurpee Capital of the World. Yes, more people per capita drink slurpees in my home town than anywhere else. How's that for odd info? And speaking of making it to the top of the list, I grew up near Detroit (actually right in between Detroit and Flint), the city rated most dangerous city in the U.S. for years until it moved to 2nd place. 2nd place to what city? Oh, St. Louis. Hmmm. This year's list just came out last month. 1. Detroit, 2. St. Louis, 3. Flint,MI. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm danger. Actually, Russ always wanted his rap name to be DangerRuss...