Perry, Georgia National Fair (October)

Back in October, we went to Perry, Georgia to the Georgia National Fair. We had a blast! My sister, brother-in-law, and niece went with us. We saw lots of exhibits including Sea Lions, an exotic animal petting zoo, a circus, Austrialian animals, and lots of livestock. We spent the entire day and had a great time!

Eating her hamburger in the Circus

Enjoying Aunt Sissy's cotton candy!

Loving her first ride on a pony!

Kissing her pony good-bye

After the pig races (yes, I kid you not), Caroline spotted this pink camo 4 wheeler. She was super excited about this little toy!

Disney Princess on Ice

On November 12, we took Caroline to see the Disney Princess on Ice. It was so much fun! We decided to NOT tell her where we were going but to just surprise her when the show began. I took the advice from Tammy and brought two of Caroline's princess dolls (Belle and Snow White) with us so we could avoid buying 'goodies'. We had awesome seats and got them at a super price!

I cannot even begin to describe Caroline's excitement when the lights went off and the skaters took the ice. She started shaking with excitement and pure joy! For two hours, she never took her eyes off the rink and wanted more when it ended! As soon as we got back into the car, she immediately crashed and I grabbed some java for some quick energy to drive back home.

This is at the end of the first half when the princesses (minus Cinderella) were skating. You can see how close we were to the rink.

Princess Jasmine...the first of the Princesses to skate

Holding up her Snow White doll when Snow White took the ice!

Posing for a pic before the show started

A little vent....

Dear Caroline,

I just wanted to let you know that your future spouse does NOT stand a chance! I will be checking their background, starting with personal interviews of their kindergarten teacher and moving up to each grade. If their teacher is dead, I might just ressurect my friend Ann's witch board to summon them from the dead. (Insert sarcasm...maybe....kinda joking...okay, not really) If their mom is CRAZY, then YOU WILL NOT DATE THAT PERSON MUCH LESS MARRY THEM!!!!

Love,
Mom

Balancing Act?

As usual, I am starting off this blog entry with "We are still here...". Boy, do I sound like a broken record! But, we are still here and we've once again been super busy.

My hat goes off to ALL working moms! I honestly don't know how you guys do it and still manage to keep your house clean, meals cooked, and kids looking great! I AM STRUGGLING! Every time I seem to have my act together, I realize that my floors haven't been handmopped or my ironing is becoming the size of Mount Everest. But, my laundry is caught up and my meals are cooked! Then...as soon as I tackle Mount Everest and mopping, then meals aren't cooked and laundry falls behind! When does this evil cycle end????

We are in the process of domesticating our adoption of Caroline and legally changing her name. As we have found out, NOTHING that pertains to our adoption is easy, so why should this be?? We 'drew' the 'toughest' judge who made us redo our bloodwork and our homestudy. What does this mean? Just more money and more time involved! Arrggghhh.......But soon, we will have every bit of our adoption story CLOSED! :)

Caroline is LOVING school. She loves learning and is well on her way to a Yale or Harvard scholarship, lol! She is quite the conversationalist and doesn't seem to meet a stranger. She loves soccer and going to gymnastics every week. Each Tuesday, we go to Chick-fil-A for family craft night. On Tuesday mornings, she wakes up and reminds me of Chickfila night! Caroline loves putting together puzzles and is quite the puzzle master. She sits down and puts together a 48 piece floor puzzle with ease. I'm still quite amazed!

For Halloween this year, we went to Hilton Head Island for a mini vacation. I had furlough days on Monday and Tuesday, so Nana, Papa, Caroline and I packed up and enjoyed some fun in the sun! Caroline LOVED the beach and spent hours in the sand. It was so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of life. I loved seeing the pure excitement and joy on Caroline' face!

I have more work to do for school, cleaning around the house and a filthy girl to get in the bathtub, but I will return hopefully soon with some pictures.

August and September Picture Catch-up!

Love this outfit! It's so pretty and preppy! It looks like Caroline is going out to play a round of golf! Too funny!

We've been watching the Mommy Kangaroo ever since she was a few days pregnant for the joey. Caroline and I went to the zoo on Monday and viola! The joey had its legs sticking out of the mommy's pouch! Pretty cool!

She loves looking at the flamingos and telling me how stinky they are!

First day of soccer! It was quite the disaster and I'm hoping that next week proves to be MUCH better! But, we did go out and buy a shiny purple ball, pink shin guards, and pink/black soccer shoes!

Caroline LOVES the petting zoo now!

We met up with some other Guatemalan American families to spend the day at the zoo. Here Caroline is telling Katherine all about the petting zoo, or at least I hope that's what she was saying, lol!

Caroline, Luke, and Sydney riding the Komodo Dragon outside of the reptile house! Aren't they adorable!!!

Caroline and Sydney checking out the meerkats. Love this pic!

Look at how Sydney is checking Caroline out! Too funny!

Sporting our ever so preppy pink/green/white argyle and plaid shorts! Gotta love pink and preppy! ;) Caroline was trying to show off her fancy tennis hairbow, but she kept turning her head, lol!

As usual, we have been very busy around Casa de Rose! I have returned back to teaching full time and Tim has changed careers! Yes, we have our hands full! I knew I wanted to go back to teaching, but hadn't planned on returning this soon. But, a great opportunity knocked and I am back in the kindergarten classroom (my favorite age!). Tim just finished up broadcasting school and was offered a new job with his own sports talk radio show! Caroline is still in school but now goes until I get off work. It's a long day, but she seems to love it.

I'm sure I have lots to share, but for now, all I can do is post pics and give a brief explanation of where we've been! Talk to you soon!

It's Chapel Day!

It's Chapel Day at school and I LOVED not figuring out what clothes to have Caroline wear! I made her matching pigtail bows and 'jazzed' up her uniform by letting her wear polka dot canvas tennis shoes. Seeing her all dressed up, almost brought tears to my eyes...she looked so BIG! I wasn't quite ready for it!

For some reason, this picture reminds me of the pictures that we get of our sponsored child in the Dominican Republic...random background, forced smile, and standard clothes. It also made me realize that I need to weed and mulch my flower beds!
Cutie Caroline!

Caroline and Darren Mitchell, one of our good friends, posing together. Caroline LOVES him!

Any takers on weeding my flower beds???

First Day at a New School

On Thursday, Caroline started a new school. We enrolled her in a local private school for various reasons. She seems to be enjoying it and I can't wait to see her academic progress as the year goes on. The new school has a uniform policy and on Wednesdays, she must wear a 'real' uniform, complete with the khaki skirt and crested polo shirt. I can't wait to post pics of her wearing her adorable knee socks! Even though she doesn't have to wear the 'uniform' every day, they have certain rules pertaining to the dress code (as in no graphics, longer shorts, etc...). Graphics you say? I rarely put Caroline in graphic shirts, but apparently, anything 'sewn' a.k.a. appliques are considered graphics. WHAT??? Okay, so now we're in trouble! Even Tim told me I might need to go shopping! ;)

For the first day, I was very unsure of what to put her in, so I put her in a very 'calm' outfit. The second day, not so calm! Caroline wasn't too thrilled with some of the pictures, but I thought I would post them anyway so you can see her outfits!

We also signed Caroline up for gymnastics class. They come to the school one day a week and do a pull out session for an hour. Her teacher and principal said she loved it! The principal even said she was quite talented at it! But, on Fridays...don't dress her in jumpers/skirts/dresses! LOL!

The night before school started, Caroline boycotted going to sleep. She destroyed her room and decided to sleep 'backwards'!

Happy to go to school and happily eating her yogurt

She wanted to take a picture with her blanket...I said no!
I gave in to the blanket and we got a smile!
I love this picture!

In the car on the way to school (don't worry, I was at a stoplight)
Day 2's outfit. Yep, a bit more wild and looking more like Caroline's 'taste'! Caroline wasn't too thrilled with taking pictures since we were taking her friend D.M. to school.
I wish that I would have taken a picture of the back of her. The dress is supercute in the back and of course, I made her a matching zebra/pink/green hairbow to match! It was quite adorable!

Wordless Wednesday

Level 2 Swim Lessons....it's hard!

I love this picture and how it shows Caroline swimming on her back. She is continuing to do great with her swimming. We started Level 2 and it is HARD! The first day was quite painful for me to watch as she wass in the deeper end of the pool and couldn't touch. As a matter of fact, she's so little that she can't hold onto the side of the pool as long as the bigger kids. She had to be put up on the side of the pool to sit and wait for her turn. The older kids were very sweet to her and never took advantage of the fact that she was so little and young. I loved her being with the older kids for that reason (more to come on this subject later this week). Caroline is swimming the length of the pool on her back by herself and can swim the length on her belly with some assistance. They also taught her to roll over onto her back when she needs to take a 'break and rest' and then flip back over and swim. I am so proud of her!
I love how fearless Caroline is with jumping off the diving board. There was another child around 9 years old that refused to jump off. He could jump off the side of the pool but the extra height just freaked him out. Not Caroline! She loves jumping off and can swim independently to the wall.

Caroline is waiting on her turn to jump and listening to her instructors for the directions on how she is going to swim across the pool...belly or back.

Thumbs up for a great job!

I also love this picture of how the older kids took an interest in her and thought of her as an 'equal' in the class.

Caroline is very into posing for her pictures right now (as you can see!). Here she is standing in line to swim the width of the pool and practice her arm strokes. This is a really hard skill for her. She has trouble getting her arms to come up out of the water in the right direction. We practice it every night but it's still hard. She'll get it eventually! :)

We are in Level 2 this week, which will be our last week of lessons for the summer. It's a new instructor and an assistant with a new set of students. I'm not really liking this week as much but it has taught me several things, which I'll post more on later this week.