Caught with her hand in the cookie dough!

The picture says it all-Our little cookie monster.

I needed to make cookies to take to church on Sunday. I had filled the 2 pans with dough, turned my back to put the bowl in the sink & this is what I saw!
(Don't worry, she ate out of the pan that we were keeping!)

Mmmmmmmm good!

Surprise visitor & dinner

April 19, 2008


Juel made a surprise visit home from college. Yeah! :) She surprised me by showing up at Matt's baseball game! Lindsay & Michael were both in on it. I was totally blown away. It is soooo great to see her. We all miss her so much & love it when she has some time to see us. It makes me feel so good to know that when she comes home, she always has time to come see us.
Aren't these girls beautiful?





Matt & Juel! We had a yummy dinner at Panda Express in San Luis.











Johnny braved it & came to dinner with us too. What a trooper he is...he doesn't even like chinese food & you never would have known it! What a guy!











Proud Mom & her 3 girls! (freezing in the wind!)
For those of you who don't know, Juel is like our 3rd daughter. She is one of the pastor's daughters from our previous church. We have gone on lots of trips together with different awana functions. What a blast we had. Good times!
Thank you God for these wonderful times!

(Michael was with us too-just taking the picture!)

The Royal Throne

Here is our latest in the bathroom remodel! :)


I don't think we are super close to potty training, but she knows the word "potty" really well. Hmmmm, I wonder where she learned that from?

It plays music when you potty in it.

Here is the princess on her Throne!
















Madeline loves to just sit on her Throne. We moved it into the bathroom today & she kept picking it up to bring out into the living room.

April 14-15 Science Fair Project

It is Sunday night, 4-13 about 10:30 pm! Here is Lindsay working on her science fair project that is due on Tue, 4-15.













Monday 11:34 pm. Here's mom with her trusty Sizzix, cutting out the longest title ever!













Monday about 11:40 pm. So now she's getting into making sticker letters!













Tuesday morning 1:10 am. Don't let a sleep-deprived teen have the camera at 1:10 am, the night before a huge project is due! :)


















Tuesday 1:20am. Mom helping with the subtitles.


















Tuesday 1:30 am. Putting the pieces together & getting them down on the board!


















Yes, it really is 2 am on Tuesday morning-day the project is due!













Thank goodness, we are finally done!
Looking good Sleeping Beauty!
What grade did "we" get on it?














It has taken us a few days to get back to "normal".

Mousetrap Car

On Sunday afternoon, Michael & Matt finished making his mousetrap car. They didn't allow pictures in their previous days of working on the car! :(

Matt raced it on Monday at school & didn't do so well, but had a 3rd place in the design.

No more mousetrap cars for 12 years! :)

Madeline 22 months old!

Madeline turned 22 months old on Saturday April 12, 2008. She enjoyed her day watching her big brother play baseball & then checking out the new shower!!! Yes, she is wearing a Dodger outfit! Sorry Giants fans. Happy day little one! :)

Play Ball!

Take me out to the ball game....

We have (finally) started baseball! Matt is playing on the Central Coast Mariners in Morro Bay. This team is in the juniors division of little league. Last year, he & his buddy Edward, played on a San Luis Obispo team because juniors was not available on the coast. It feels great to be back home again! In 2 games (so far this season) they both have played more then they did the entire season last year!

We had our first game this past Saturday down in Grover Beach. (The first half of the season, all the games will be there.) It was a chilly windy day. Matt went something like 3 for 5 batting, he was the "closer" & pitched to 2 batters-walked one & struck the other out. We won 15-6. Great opening day!

We had the privilege of having Lindsay & Jonathan with us. (Thanks for your help with Maddie!)

We had our second game tonight. The weather was amazing! Gentle breeze. Matt started out at shortstop & then came in as a reliever for Edward in the middle of the 2nd inning. He gave up a few walks, a handful of hits, several strike outs and NO runs! All in all, a good night of pitching. 3 for 5 (or something close to that-old minds that just can't remember it all!) with the bat, with the hits all doubles. We won 11-3. The boys looked really good tonight.

The other pictures are Madeline enjoying her goldfish at the ballpark.

Reading with Grandma Phillips

These pictures were too cute not to share with you. Here are Madeline & Grandma reading "Guess How Much I Love You".

Forever Family Day April 6, 2008

One year ago today, Lindsay & Matt finally got to meet & hold their baby sister that they have waited several years for! :) Madeline is finally home with her forever family. Thank you so much God! What a great gift.
Everyone in the adoption community probably already knows about this song, but I'm just a little slow. Thank you to Rachelle who told me about it. (In fact, her husband Mark, sang it at church this morning while a video was showing of their adoption of Ellie. The video
is on her blog: her link is to the right Surrendering to God's gift of Ellie Grace. You WILL need tissues to get through this!) But here are the words to the song. It is gorgeous.

When Love Takes You In
by Steven Curtis Chapman


I know you’ve heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You’ve heard about a place called home
But there doesn’t seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

And somewhere while you’re sleeping
Someone else is dreaming too
Counting down the days until
They hold you close and say I love you
And like the rain that falls into the sea
In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart

And this love will never let you go
There is nothing that could ever cause this love to lose its hold

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in it takes you in for good
When love takes you in

Ni Hao Kai-Lan

Madeline loves to watch Ni Hao Kai-Lan! Since Mommy did projects with the 2 older kids, we had to do one too! We made paper bag puppets of the main characters on Kai-Lan. One of Madeline's favorites is Rintoo-he roars! Maddie walks around "roaring". It is too funny. She gets really "throaty" with her roars. Here's Maddie & her puppets! The third picture, she is saying "No. Kai-Lan." We don't know why, but she started crying. This picture was just too sweet not to show.

Courageous Confederate

Let the projects roll on! :)Matt found out on Monday that he needed to make a flag for his History class, due next Monday, BUT if you turned it in on Friday, you got 100 extra credit points. So guess who wanted to turn it in on Friday? Yep! With a crazy week of baseball/basketball practices & youth group, we finally got to work on it Thursday night.So Colonel Matt & I made a Confederate flag (designed by a "Private" in his "Regiment"). I must admit, we did have a good time making it. Matt learned how to iron & the miracle of Wonder Under. (fabric adhesive) The flag came out pretty cool!

Mold Spores

Project 2 going on...Lindsay's science fair project... Something about does more sugar in bread cause it to mold faster. ( I don't know the technical title of her project) We spent Good Friday keeping the bread machine working by making 5 different loaves of bread, each loaf with 1 tsp more sugar in it. Then we sliced it (5 slices of each kind of bread) & put those into Ziploc bags with a cotton pad with dust on it. Those of have been sitting on my kitchen table for the past 2 weeks now. They are really starting to look UN-appetizing! So, I have a picture of Lindsay working on her project last night.