The end of May!!!

What a busy week it has been since I last posted. I am now officially on the job hunt. I have been receiving several calls but of course only one has been remotely linked to what I want to do. My ultimate dream job??? Make millions of dollars and have a perfect work/life balance. Ha! No really, most everybody knows I am trying to get into medical/pharmaceutical sales. I would prefer medical sales but I am not ruling anything else at this point. It is a hard industry to get into but I have done well in sales and I know I would excel in a position like this. Ironically, all three of my brothers'-in-law are in the medical sales field so one of them is working on getting me some names of some good recruiters. Keep your fingers crossed for me!! I love being home with Parker but he will be going to preschool in the fall and honestly, I need to mainstream back into society. The great thing about a sales role is that it is flexible and you work from home when you are not out cold calling. Like I said, keep your fingers crossed for me. I am hoping to be working by August/beginning of September at the latest.

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Our friends Rebecca, JJ, and Celia came over Sunday night and we had a wonderful dinner! They are such great friends with them and it is truly a joy to watch our children grow up together! It is also a great bonus that they love each other so much! We are so looking forward to our summer vacation with them at the end of June!

Monday, my parents came over along with another friend of mine and her son. We had the standard cook out food and it was terrific! It was a great way to end the weekend.

School is out and Frisco and even though Matt is still working and busy, I think he is relieved that the year went so well. He loves his job in Frisco and I am so happy for him. I know he is looking forward to having a few weeks off this summer...however, most of it will be spent finishing up his dissertation so he can graduate in December. Hope everybody is having a great week!

P.S. I am having problems posting pictures...I will try to do this soon!

Is that MY child???

So it is already Wednesday and this week has flown by. School ends tomorrow in Frisco and it ended yesterday in Plano. I cannot believe how quickly the year has flown. Why does it seem the older we get, the quicker time goes by? Summer is an okay season but definately not my favorite. I love it when kids are in school...it always seems like everything is much more harmonious in the world. Besides, summers here are so blistering hot it is hard to enjoy them.

Monday, we had Mollianne and Erin over to play and I think we had just as much fun as they did. We talked nonstop and time flew by. The kids played together wonderfully and I think that Mollianne is a wonderful little girl. She is so polite and I cracked up at the fact that she carried this little purse with her the entire time she was at my house. I don't think she let go of it for one second...I like to see somebody try and take her purse away :)!

We spent Monday afternoon at another friends house and I think Parker picked up a cold there. He has that telltale runny nose. We will see what happens.

Nothing too new on the adoption front...Erin brought over her huge stack of information to help me and guide me and we ended up talking the entire time. Actually, this is a slow week as far as adoption stuff goes as we are just waiting to finish up our home study which will happen in the next few weeks. Everytime I spend time with Erin and she her beautiful, polite, happy little girl, I get so excited! The entire process is exciting but there are definitely lulls in the middle since it is such a long process.

So when I was at my friend's house on Monday, she and another one of my best friends made fun of Parker's hair. I was trying to grow it out to cute longer hairstyle...well, it just looked shaggy. I was told by Kathy, my best friend of about 21 years that he had a mullet. Nice, thanks so much...so I decided a haircut is in order. Haircuts with Parker are an experience to say the least. You would think that a child who spent three months in the NICU, had surgery for a common preemie heart problem, and passed several kidney stones would sail through a haircut. Not so. The last haircut I took him to, I made my Mother come with me. It is one of those cute places that has movies, puts the kids in cute little cars, the whole shebang. Well, when the last haircut occured, Parker cried like he was being stabbed with hot pokers, I was clawed so badly that I was left with bruises, and my mom was exhausted from just trying to hold Parker in the chair. Yesterday, I made Matt sit with him while he got his haircut. It went much better than the past few times and ended up shorter than I would have liked but it does look better. Needless to say, my son now looks like he is six. I went in to get him up this morning and I had to think for a minute who the big boy was in the bed. He looks so grown up now.

Parker before the haircut...yes, he got into my lipstick and that is lipstick all over his leg.

Parker with his big boy haircut and his favorite toy, his vacuum!!

Could It Get Any Hotter????

Well here we are and it is not even the end of May and we hit a record high of 98 degrees yesterday. Of course, there is no rain in sight to relieve us either. We kept busy this week with our second to last swim lesson on Thursday. Parker is turning out to be quite a water baby. Of course, he loves swimming in his back yard pool much more than the organized lessons.

Moving forward on the adoption front. I had my first meeting with our social worker this week. I did my one on one. It was nice and easy and only took a little over an hour. Matt and I drove out to our second meeting today and that was also easy. Now Matt just has to have his meeting and we will have our final home meeting the second week in June. We are moving right along. This has been a smooth process so far and I hope it remains so. I know this is the easy part, the hard part is waiting. Keep your fingers crossed that the rest of our paperchase goes this smoothly.

I had to miss my lunch with my wonderful adoption friends yesterday but instead I got to spend some time in the Redman waterpark. This consists of my backyard, a kiddie pool, a slide, and an Elmo that squirts water. See the pictures for yourself. Parker had two of his friends over yesterday and they had to much fun! I was watching his friend Celia for awhile and then my other great friend Melanie came over with her son Blake. By the time we went inside after three hours outside, we were all beat. I think Mel and I were more beat than the kids. And yes, we lathered them with sunscreen. Needless to say, we didn't venture outside today.

We are looking forward to seeing our friends Erin and Mollianne on Monday. Erin needs some big hugs and we are going to give them to you. Maybe Mollianne will be up for playing in the Redman waterpark if it isn't too warm. Hope everybody is having a wonderful weekend!!

Trying to catch up...

I have been meaning to post for the last several days. As you can see, I am trying to change the template of my blog. I found this super cute template but it is not coming through well. I am still tweaking it so bear with me.

We had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. We started our weekend off with a trip to our friend Mollianne's house for her third birthday party. Parker had so much fun there. She had a bounce house, a balloon man, a fun outdoor playhouse and so much more. It was great to see all of our adoption friends there with their beautiful daughters. Mollianne got some great things and had a wonderful party.

Mother's Day was wondeful! I got some books on China from Parker and Matt and then my Mom and I went to a movie and lunch together. It was nice just being to get away for a few hours. Plus we saw Poesidan...who doesn't love a good disaster flick? I also got some great Hibiscus plants from my Mother...those plants last almost all year here and they are beautiful all year.

On the adoption front, I had my first meeting with our social worker yesterday and it went really well. We have our second meeting this coming Saturday so we are cruising right along. We hope to have that all done with (there are four meetings) by the end of the first week in June. Then we will be able to submit our form to the government for adoption...the approval process for that can take up to three months. During that time we wait. We hope to have everything complete and get our Dossier to China by the end of July or early August. Keep your fingers crossed.

Today marks Parker's four month countdown to his birthday. I can't believe he will be three soon. He is such a great kid but he can beat me down at times. He is always on the move and always into everything but he is so affectionate and very loving. We had to take our vacuum in for repair the other day...Parker was in heaven. For those of you who do not know, Parker is obsessed with vacuums. He is on his second toy one now. So I am thinking that maybe I should just have his birthday party at the vacuum store. That would be fun right???

Hopefully, I will get the blog in better shape soon! Thanks to all of my good friends who wrote letters of recommendation for Matt and I! We love you!

Yes, I am finally posting again!!!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. Last Thursday night, both Matt and I came down with this haneous flu bug. We thought it was food poisioning but soon found out it was not. I was luckiest out of everybody as mine pretty much resolved itself by late Friday. However, I think I maybe forced it to resolve as we had Parker's Godfather coming in town that day from Denmark...and of course, Matt was sicker than I was (which is always the case :))! So my Mom, who is a Saint, came over and helped me all weekend with Parker and entertaining Torben while my husband laid in bed and moaned. Of course, no gastro bug would be complete without making its way through the whole family...Parker got it on Sunday and didn't fully recover until yesterday. We then got a call from our out of town visitor, who was also in town for work this week, that he too got the bug on Tuesday and had to spend the whole day in his hotel room. You gotta love the fact that he came all the way over from Denmark to get sick. However, everybody is better now...but something is going around so remember to wash your hands!

On the adoption front, we have our first meeting with our social worker a week from this Saturday. I am so excited! We should be able to schedule our other meetings with her when we meet with her. I would love to get all of this done and just be waiting on the government paperwork. Speaking of which, we went down to the police station to get our reports yesterday as well so that is done. The only thing left is to get our blood tests again...I gave our medical info sheet to our doctor to fill out but we will need blood tests again because the tests that we have will be more than nine months old when our paperwork is registered...and they need to be less than that by the time our paperwork is sent to China.

We are moving right along. School is coming to an end which means Matt is very busy. I have also started contacting some recruiters and looking at potential job listings. We are also looking forward to our summer vacation next month to Keystone, Colorado with our friends. We all need a nice long break.

Other than than Parker is growing like a weed and chatting up a storm. I am so proud of his speaking skills, they have come a long way. We back tracked a little with the eating because of this illness but I am getting right back on the wagon. Hope this posting finds everbody doing well!

Oh and for those of you who are fans of "The Office"...Jim finally told Pam he loved her! Yippee! That made my night! What a great episode!

Seriously, come on now...

This has just been one of those weeks where I feel like I have a lot to do but I am not getting anything done. Everything I seem to do lately, Parker undoes within five minutes. The house will be clean and five minutes later it looks like a tornado went through. Parker's newest adventure is play in the catfood. He likes to put the catfood in the water dish and then he gets a spoon and mixes it. The only way to stop him from doing this is to move the catfood off the floor. Needless to say our cat, Merlin, is less than thrilled by this idea. So it is a battle I face everyday.

What a fun game! Merlin and Mom love it!

Wow! Merlin loves to eat from a spoon!

Yes, I did just put the spoon in my mouth...I'm two come on!

Thankfully, he is napping today. He didn't yesterday and I am beginning to think we are on the verge of ending nap time, which, coincidentally, happens to be one of my favorite times during the day.

We heard from our social worker today. She wants to arrange our first meeting...one catch though, we have to go to her office which in Fort Worth. Fort Worth is over an hour away from where we live. I have lived her almost my entire life and I think I have been to Fort Worth maybe 8 times. Nothing against it, it is just the opposite side of the earth. I have emailed her to see if we can meet in the middle somewhere. If she doesn't go for that then we have to postpone our first visit with her until the end of May after school is over. Matt is very busy right now with end of the school year stuff: prom, graduation, awards banquets. Once school is out, yes he still works he doesnt' get three months off-only a few weeks, than he is a little more flexible. So keep your fingers crossed. I really don't want to postpone anymore than we have to.

Other than that life is great. I have been thinking about going back to work more lately. I am really looking forward to it. I love being with Parker but he is at an age where he gets bored easily with me and I think he would flourish around other kids. Oh, it will be hard but I think it will be good for us. It won't happen until at least the end of July so we still have plenty of time together. Now I have to go clean my house for our out of town guest coming tomorrow. My mom has been great enough to watch him this afternoon so I can clean without any further cat food isses :)!