So much to catch up on

So on Sunday, May 6, I wrote this post and hit the publish button. Instead of publishing what I had written, it chose to send the post into cyber space. So now it's just hanging out there somewhere...maybe in the same place the socks go when they disappear from the dryer, huh?

Here's a synopsis of what I wrote on the 6th. The title was "Babies Galore." Nope. We're not having any more babies. Hope is our one and only. Why try again when we already have perfection?? hehehe Anyway...the morning of the 6th I woke up and the first thing I saw was Mommy and Daddy Goose on our lawn down by the river with their 6 babies. So cute! We've seen them since and the babies are growing like crazy. Then when we got home from church Mark looked out our back deck windows and said that both Mommy and Daddy Cardinal were at the bird feeder. That had me a little concerned because Mommy Cardinal had, until that time, been diligently sitting on her nest with 3 eggs. The nest is located right outside our front door in the spruce tree. Well, I went out the front door to make sure the nest was still OK. Not only was the nest still OK, it had three baby cardinals in it!! YEAH!! You should see them now! They are getting so big there's almost not room in the nest for them. According to what I've read, they should be learning to fly any day now. The really cool thing about cardinals is that they never go very far from their birth home once they do learn to fly. That means we'll get to see these babies grow up. Oh...we did find one baby out of the nest on our lawn last Friday. Mark put gloves on and put it in the nest. Apparently Mommy Cardinal was OK with that because the baby is still in the nest. They are so cute! I took a picture that I'll post soon. The third bit of baby news that we got on May 6th is that Mark's Godson Brandon and his wife Natalie became parents on May 6th at 4:08am. Tyler Scott is a cute little guy. Hard to believe he's over a week old already. We're anxious to see him in person.

Now here's some other really good news. Our friends Beth and Ron leave for China to get their daughter Hope on May 29th. That's just TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY!! We are so excited for them!! I wish I could be a little fly on the wall when I see them look into her beautiful face for the very first time. I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about that moment for them. They bought her some red, white and blue dresses that they'll take to China with them. Isn't that a great idea?? I know it has taken forever for them to get to this point in their journey to Hope, but soon Hope will be here and it'll seem like she's always been here. Soon they won't be able to remember what life was like without her. I know I can't remember much about life before our Hope. If you want to keep updated on Beth and Ron's story, just check out their blog via the link on our blog. They're intending to update their blog as they can while they're in China. They're even hoping to do some geocaching while they're there. How fun would that be??

It's been busy, busy, busy here for us. I'm winding down everything for the school year at church and I'll be glad when it's all done. Time for a break. Hope continues to be a bundle of energy. Ya never know what she's going to say, either! On Friday we had two embarassing moments come out of her mouth. For the sake of time, I'll only tell you about one. We were in the grocery store and this young woman (I'd say in her early 20s) saw Hope, came over to our cart and said, "Wow! Is she a cutie!" Hope looked at her, pointed to her chest (which was large) and said, "Booboos. Booboos." I turned bright red!! I could do nothing but apologize. Of course the woman laughed and was a very good sport about it. Oh sheesh!! I'm told this is the first of MANY! She keeps us laughing,that's for sure. Hope now knows what city she lives in (it's so cute to hear her say River Falls) and what town Grammy and Papa live in. Today we went to find Mark at the library on campus (he's working there since we're home this week and it's noisy here). I have no idea where the library is on campus,but Mark has taken Hope there many times. So when we got on campus I asked Hope which building was the library. She pointed to a building and guess what?? It WAS the library. She even pointed me in the direction of the front doors!! She is so smart. We signed her up for swimming lessons this summer. She'll take two weeks of lessons. The last day is on her birthday! It's a parent/child class so I guess we'll take turns going with her, which will be fun. I'm debating whether or not to sign her up for dance lessons this fall. And I've been thinking that a year from now we'll already have her signed up for pre-school!! This is happening WAY too quickly for me. Where did my little baby go?

OK...I should wind this up before you get too bored. Plus, I have to finish the scrapbook I've been working on. And get things ready for Kids Club tomorrow. And do some more planning for Senior Recognition Sunday which is this Sunday. And get details nailed down for a youth event after church this Sunday. And start making my list of things I need to take to Stevens Point with me for Memorial Day weekend. I guess that can wait until next week.

Thanks for reading!
Melody
PS...I almost forgot to update you on the car thing. We've been driving the Touareg for about 3 weeks now and LOVE it!! Looks like we'll be getting rid of the Avalanche this week. Our dealer finally found the exact car we want. It's not in the first choice of color, but it'll be nice anyway. We're getting a Chevy HHR. The color is Majestic Amathyst Metallic. The best part about this deal is that we got more for the trade in of the Avalanche than the car costs so not only will we NOT have a car payment on the HHR, we're getting money back from the dealership. Nice, huh?