CAUTION! Name that snake!

My favorite gardening pal Camille, she thinks the snake could be a copperhead! ooh!

Do you see the markings?

What kind of snake is this?

Well, I wasn't going to post this, but I couldn't resist...we had a HUGE snake come by for a visit a few weeks ago. I looked out the door to the porch under our screened porch and this 6ft. plus snake was heading for our table. It wrapped itself around the chairs and even tried to crawl up the umbrella pole. Then it headed for the house and started to climb up the brick, not kidding, up the brick on the side of our house. We were in a panic (Dan hates, hates, did I say hates snakes) I tried calling Animal Control, well they were absolutely no help, which wasn't a big surprise, so we did the next best thing called our brave neighbor, who has boys! Mark came over and he and I got the shovels ready (Dan and the girls were safely in the house looking from inside the glass door! HaHa) Mark took aim and chopped the snakes head off! Really gross, but we felt good about the fact that this HUGE snake wouldn't show-up again uninvited!

For what it's worth, I think it's a rat snake and just for the record, I am really not that afraid of snakes!!

My mom started playing golf when she was 6 years old....mmm
wonder if I could become a professional?


Love the skirt!

It's all about the look, right?

Golf is in our blood, at least on mom's side of the family, wonder if it transfers if you're adopted? Well anyway, we are so excited to get these cool golf clubs, and mom is going to teach us. Our old clubs are up for grabs, they have a little snoopy on the head of the club!! If anyone wants a cute set of clubs, maybe let mom know on the next First Friday!

Chapman's Farm Market!!

We're farmin'!

Our first tomato, as you can see Avery (friend)

is not a happy farmer, maybe cause she missed

the camping last night!

Look mom our first crop is in!!!

We have been patiently waiting for this first tomato, boy was it good! We named it Luke and Grace and MiMi cut it up to serve us all for dinner last night, along with Ziegler's BBQ!!

Isn't summer great!!

Our First Official Sleepover

Pillow Fight

Isn't this a cool tent? Best part, no bugs!!

We had our first sleepover last night and what great memories! Grace E., Grace C. and MiMi. The sleepover sort of came by default:) lucky us. We were all thrilled to have Grace spend the day with us as the Evans family spent the afternoon at Scotish Rite with Annaleise during her 2nd cleft surgery. As the day unfolded the idea of the sleepover came up and then we all just kept coming up with more ideas for the night. The kids had flashlights, tons of pillows, lots of snacks, good movies and scary stories!

We hope the Evans family has a easy transition as Annaleise recovers. She will have about ten tough days and so many restrictions during this normally easy going time of the year. We hope you get well soon!

Thanks for sharing your sweet Grace with us, you're lucky we gave her back!!

Happy Father's Day Daddy

Daddy and his girls

Daddy....our hero! We love our Daddy so much and are so proud that he is our dad.

Every Saturday morning we go to the Waffle House at Brookstone, sit in a small booth and laugh when the waitress comes over to our table and calls Daddy darling, sweetpea or honey. She'll say "hey cutie pie, what will you have today" (to Dad, not us) we laugh and laugh. After our big waffle, egg, hashbrown, breakfast, we head to Home Depot to look around. We love Home Depot!

Our next adventure is Books a Million or Michael's, then to Steak and Shake for a milkshake before heading home. We all hangout together at home, play hide-n-seek, do puzzles, draw pictures, watch golf, make dinner and then mom comes home.

Daddy always gives mom every Saturday to do her own thing (she loves this time) but we love it too because it's our special day with dad.

To put it simply, we have an awesome dad and wish you a Happy Father's Day Daddy! We love you more than everything.....Love Grace, MiMi and Hope

The China Princess and Grace!

What a foursome!

Our good friends, Dave and Tina Evans, came over tonight to talk about the upcoming Chinese School year and to share some time together. We got so much done and are well on our way to getting this fall semester off to an awesome start!

As of this spring the school is now owned by the Evans and us. We restructured the school this past May and now the four of us will share all the responsibilities of the school and the officer roles. The cool part is that we all really enjoy each other and have a common goal to bring Chinese culture to our children. Great fun!!

The kids had a great time together and love spending time just playing family, what could be better.

I will post the name of the Chinese School in a few weeks when our website is up and running. The fall semester is going to be really "new and fun" while the kids learn about their chinese culture and heritage! Stay tuned............................

My Family and Mom and Dad's 50th!

Grandpa and MiMi

Mom and Dad

Big Hitter Grace

Nieces (Britt and Lo)

My Family

Huge surprise for my parents as we all came home for the first time in about 15 years! We got them so bad and had a blast sharing stories about growing up and working at the golf course (our family business for 40+ years). Ohio is awesome in May, lots of cool nights and clear blue skies.

My girls hit lots of balls on the range and all the adults, who aren't very competitive (ha), had scramble events everyday. The problem with growing up on a golf course is that it's always in your blood and seems to have trickled down into all the grandkids!!

Our Decision to Adopt Hope

Wow! Grace, Faith and now our sweet Hope!

Honestly, during this past year we were afraid to say "yes" to the sweet but gentle voice of Jesus as He tried to nudge us forward and begin this amazing adoption journey. We could think of so many reasons why this was not going to work in our plan, who would sleep where? could we send three kids to a private school? would three kids simply be overwhelming with everything we have going on??? The answers were confusing, nothing seemed clear and we couldn't define or justify why we would do this again....but we continued to pray for answers and some amazing truths began to be revealed.

The most revealing truth was the phrase "God's Perfect Plan"! These words just kept coming into my head and I kept thinking how or why would we change, add-to, or take away anything from these three words! The things we had on our radar were so insignificant. It's not our plan to begin with! The reality became more clear to us that our daughter Hope would be waiting in China for us as we struggled to design our own plan and would simply miss her as she would pay the price for our lack of faith. Big reality check!!

The thoughts then simply became why wouldn't we do this and we both received a tremendous peace about the whole thing and of course we said "yes". We are so excited to experience this journey with our friends and family and can't wait to watch "the plan" being revealed.

Our paperwork is well underway and we continue to get closer to our Log-In-Date, which by the way needs to be before September 7th when Dan turns 50. We hope everything will go smoothly, much easier the second time, but you never know with adoption!

Our girls are thrilled with the thought of having another sister and MiMi is especially jazzed because she will become a big sister! (or in her case the little big sister)

I am excited about starting this blog and thank you Angela D. for setting this up for me. She will eventually let me work up to the slideshow feature, but I must prove I'm capable at this level first! HaHa