Our Happy Life: Agan life update :)

I just returned home from a "tapas progressive dinner". It was hosted by our mentor for my table at MOPs and was so nice. It was a quiet evening in her beautifully decorated home and we went from room to room eating delicious fancy horderves. Seriously good for the mom soul! No kid toys or hiding messes that you are pretending not to see in sight! Just grown up chatting and eating. Refreshing for sure!

So now that I am refreshed I thought I could muster up a little blog post.

Although there isn't a whole lot new to share, there is still a very busy life happening here.

The girls:

These two little girlies are just getting so big. They tell us what they want now and can more or less communicate everything they want to get out. It just kinda happened over night and we now live with two little speaking humans. Weird. One of those little humans crawled out of her crib last night and opened her bedroom door as if she'd done it 100 times and walked to the refrigerator and asked for a snack. It was kinda of a terrifying and confusing event to be occurring at 3am. I surely do not have a plan in place to deal with a recurrence of this. But I'm pretty sure we are doomed!

The girls are so much easier these days. I feel like we have kind of hit our stride and seem to do life together fairly easily throughout the day. Mealtime is the exception and I kind of dread it! We do way more car eating than I would like to admit because mealtime is chaos. It's when the battle of the wills really comes out and it's hard. We have a lot of highchair/booster refusal and lots of food throwing and screaming "all done" after about 1 bite. Which then leads to begging all day for snacks because they just won't.sit.and.eat! Mainly Zoe. Nora is pretty good at meals. When I let them sit at the big chairs they fall off or crawl onto the table and jump up and down so really I never win. Which is definitely not how things should go!

Mealtime aside, our days are usually really great. Messy and hectic and calm and sweet and really fun! I think daily that there is just no place I would rather be. Watching these little babies turn into sweet little toddlers before my eyes is priceless. It really is just amazing.

Me:

As I mentioned before I am truly so content with my role as mommy. I still work a couple hours Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and it's nice. It's pretty hard to get the girls fed, down for naps and out the door looking half way decent by 2pm, but once I'm out it is ok. Not too stressful. I see my couple kiddos and head home. But it's so few hours that I have to be really careful not to let little things like notes and time sheets fall off my radar. Because they really do just slip right out of my mind sometimes and I forget I have this little job, which although it is only 4 hours a week it's not really that "little" of a job and I need to do better to treat it as such.

Along the lines of this "job" thing, I have been having some inner turmoil lately about being a pretty much stay at home mom when I have this wonderful, great paying job at my disposal. We are on a budget. A tight one and it is because I don't really work. My struggle lately is whether or not I am being selfish by not helping to secure our kids future financially when I could be. I have always felt that what was best for my kids was for me to be home with them. Whatever the cost. We would make it work. And we do and I am thankful. But I often wonder if I am giving myself too much credit insisting that they are best off with me at the expense of things like saving for college (or anything for that matter) and taking some of the pressure off Lance. But I think for me and our family this is best. I'm trying my best to just take things as they come and staying open. Maybe when the girls are in school work will be a reality for me. Maybe not. I was sharing this with some friends tonight and one brought up a good point. She told me that everyone defines success differently. And although being successful in a career and having money for trips and savings and college is considered "success" for some that the definition can be different for everyone and that's ok. So for now my definition of success is going to continue to be "just making it work". Nothing more and nothing less.

Lance:

Lance would be totally weirded out if he knew I wrote about him on my blog, but he's part of the family and should be included in a "family update" right!? But Lance is great. Still with the same company and still loving being transferred back to Houston, as we all definitely are! He is super dad. He works loooong days and walks in that door every night at 6:15 ready to work! He cleans and does laundry and dishes. I couldn't do it without him! Unfortunately for Lance, I have turned the girls into me and they sleep until almost 9am and go to bed that late too. So while the three of us sleep peacefully until after 8am each day, Lance is up and out the door by 6:30am and then has very little "kid free" time in the evenings, so he is pretty much on all day. But he's awesome and I try to convince him that the girls schedule is awesome because it allows for weekend sleep. Right!?

Adoption:

Oh adoption how you can be a roller coaster of emotions. We had a hard month in the adoption world. I don't think I can say much, but we essentially lost a referral for an 8month old little girl and it broke my heart. I cried and cried and cried and when I wasn't crying I just kinda sat and stared at the wall not sure what emotion to even feel. The deep level of sadness it caused caught me off guard. But we've gotten some answers on the situation and I can truly say I am at peace and know that child was not meant to be ours. So now we just wait for the next call. I am primed and ready at all times day or night for that phone call. I jump with anticipation every single time my phone rings. Which is why I use the word roller coaster to describe adoption. It's just flat out hard. So much disappointment each time the phone rings and you rush over to see its not "the call". One day it will be "the call", but the not knowing of it all is hard. So hard. We are so ready. As full as our family seems at times, it is not complete. We see the world with this third little girl in it. We know we are meant to have this third baby here with us and are so anxious and excited to finally have her join the family. The other hard thing is that based on the timeframes of all this it is almost certain that this child exists. She is out there. And this mama lays awake at night wondering where her sweet baby is. Is she safe? Is she loved? Is she hungry? Have the events of her being placed for adoption already occurred or are they still to come? It's just a weird feeling having these two little babies tucked safely under your roof and knowing nothing about the whereabouts of their sister. I think God must handpick ultra control freak moms for adoption. I cringe at the thought of relinquishing control of my girls, even for a few hours, totally my issue I know! It's like he is taking my biggest struggles and forcing them on me for my own good. So adoption is kinda hard and I'm sure will be even harder once she is home. But we'll take it. We signed up with God on this one for the long haul!

So there's our little life update! Like most posts, this is mainly for me so bless you if you are still reading!!

Hopefully a BIG EXCITING adoption post will come soon!

Enjoy a few pics.

They love to eat their snacks on the window sill. They also love hugging. Too much I must say!

The excitement of the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood is just about too much for them. They are in love!

She has no idea how wonderfully unique she is. She marches to her own beat for sure!

Cutie Zoe in her Christmas get up for church!

Lunchtime monkeys!

Little loves. Definitely not easy to get a good picture of 4 kids under 4!

After making our wagon rounds by day, we head back out with daddy at night to look at lights!

Never known girls to love baby dolls more! We've decided that if we present new baby sister like a new, but even better doll we will be in business!!

She is a jolly soul all day long! Bless her!

My cousin Amy came in town for my other cousins wedding. We hadn't seen each other in years and it was if no time had passed! She was pretty amused by our lives!

Trying to get new sheets on the bed for the in laws. It was like they were puppies and knew I was about to leave them and were trying to sabotage my every move!