JJ Jackson

This is JJ's new thing...wearing socks on his hands. If he doesn't have shoes on, he insists on taking one sock off and wearing it on his hand. We have found him many mornings sleeping with his "sock hand."

Gotcha Day

Gotcha day was last week and didn't end up going as smoothly as I would have liked. I wanted to celebrate so we went to dinner, only JJ wasn't having it. He refused to sit and eat and wanted to run up and down the aisle and climb on top of the table. We ended up getting our Gotcha dinner to go. I tried to take pictures, but he wasn't having that either and wouldn't even look at the camera. So much for our big day. I did wake him up that morning and tell him the story of how mommy and daddy went all the way to Kyrgyzstan to pick him up and bring him home with us, but that was the extent of our little celebration. Next year we'll have to plan a little more and call our Kyrgyz friends or something. Happy Belated Gotcha Day Aliya (SC Martins)!

Jerret's mom and dad bought us a new grill for Christmas. We've been keeping it at their house until the weather was nice enough for us to actually use it, so Saturday Jerret decided to go over there and he and his dad put it together - with JJ as their little helper. He even brought his own tool belt and tools.

We have a very important day coming up tomorrow. I promise to post pictures soon!

Easter

We had a quiet Easter this year. Saturday night we went to my dad’s house and had dinner with my grandpa, sister and her 3 kids, and my bother and nephews. Dad lives next door to my great-great Aunt Edna who is 95 years old. She lives all alone and does great except for the fact that she needs a walker to get around. She is such a sweet lady and her mind still sharp as a tack. Dad and I took dinner over to her and visited for a while. She asked right away how JJ was and had he not been sick I would have taken him to see her. I think my family has great genes. My great grandfather lived to be 97 years old, my great grandmother was 92, my great uncle was 92, and we have Aunt Edna still going strong. I’ll have to ask her what the secret is.


Sunday morning we went to church, which was great as usual, but we still aren’t able to take JJ. He just doesn’t do well with us leaving him there. Maybe once he starts preschool things will be different. Go here to check out the service (click on "watch Message Now"). After church we had lunch at Jerret’s parents house followed by naps! I do have pics of us dying Easter eggs with JJ, but haven’t gotten them off of the camera yet.
Anyway – here are some pics of JJ.
PS – anyone know how to get red Easter egg dye out of carpet?

An Award? For ME?

Look at this! I have been given an award - twice! Fellow blogger mamas Shea at Tapsalteerie Farms and Andrea at Holding on For the Ride (see links list on right) have both given me this "You Make the World A Better Place Award" for my blog. How cool is that? Both Shea and Andrea have Kyrgyz kiddos who I am dying to meet in person. The three of us were part of an original group - pioneers, if you will - at our adoption agency when they were just starting their Kyrgyzstan program. In fact, in 2007 there were only 60 adoptions by US citizens in the entire country of Kyrgyzstan - and Andrea, Shea and I were part of that 60!
For this award I would like to thank...(picture me standing at podium holding this award) my wonderful husband for seven years of wedded bliss, my friends for all their support, Cold Stone for always being there through the tough times, and my favorite movie, Hope Floats for reminding me that all the negative junk sinks to the bottom and hope is what is left, and that's enough for me.
I now pass this award to...
Gen at More Than We Can Ask Or Imagine for her positive attitude and kind words for everyone.
Esther at SC Martins for being such a good friend and inspiration as a mother
and Mala at Bringing Home Beck for being a "real" mom who we all can relate to (well except for the fact that she's in movies!!)

Check Out My New Hat

After church Sat. night Jerret and I went shopping at the new mall. We wanted to get Aunt Jill a present for babysitting all the time and Jerret insisted on buying this Ohio State hat for JJ. It really is cute, especially when he wears it backwards like in the pics.

Sorry Y'all!

Sorry to say I am turning the anonymous comments option off. I have had some negative feedback left in the past few weeks and really wanted this to be a place where opinions are not only shared, but valued. Anyway, I can take the heat, but need to draw a line when other commenter's are getting attacked for sharing their opinions. Still feel free to comment, just say what you have to say without the comfort of anonymity! If you said it, say you said it!

Clarification...

I think I have been misrepresenting myself with this whole stay-at-home thing. It's not that I don't want to work at ALL. It's that I want something more flexible that doesn't require my being out of the house and away from JJ for 50 hours a week. I am actually pretty good at what I do and don't want to waste a bachelor's degree plus a year of grad school. I would really like to do something at home or telecommute. That's all. So I would rather be a WAHM (work at home mom) than a SAHM (stay at home mom). Just wanted to clear that up.

Look At The Tough Guy!

I am so impressed with the definition in JJ's arm that I had to show you all this pic. Jerret always talks about how strong JJ is and the other night he was lifting himself up between two chairs and balancing himself using only his hands (kinda like a gymnast does). It was spaghetti night when this picture was taken and we learned our lesson with trying to get tomato sauce stains out of JJ's clothes.

In other news...Aunt Bea isn't going to be able to watch JJ for a while. Her father-in-law has a serious staph infection and has been hospitalized and Bea needs to spend her time up there so we need to find somewhere else to take JJ. The problem is that we don't really have anyone else who can watch him on a consistent basis, so it looks like daycare for us. I am really not excited about this prospect, but there isn't any other option as I haven't yet been able to convince Jerret that I should stay at home.

Snow Days

We've had plenty of snow around here lately - enough to last until spring. I have no idea why this post is underlined. I've tried to fix it but can't. Weird. Anyway - below are some pics of us playing outside with JJ in the snow. He LOVES the snow and runs to the window to watch Jerret when he goes outside to use the tractor/snowblower. His favorite thing to do is eat the snow and if we don't let him, he collects whatever we bring in on our shoes and tries to eat that.