October

October has been busy, but uneventful. Mia is learning to talk... and I must say that she is going to have quite the southern drawl. It's funny to hear her new words... all of which are multi-syllabic.... :) dog: dawwwwwg, Cole: Toe, Nolan: Noh-nun, Garrett: Geeeee, Mama, Daaadaaa...Jack: ack (our neighbor's cat). The boys are doing well and are becoming pretty good baby-sitters. I am still trying to figure out how to cope with so much to do and so little time to do it. My sweet friend, KB, shared a great laundry idea and it is helping tremendously. Before, we just let it pile up until it looked like Mount Everest... now, we have baskets for each kid. Each boy was also issued a mesh laundry bag to put dirty clothes in. It is also their responsible for getting that bag to the laundry room every couple of days. Now we are seemingly staying more on top of the washing. Laundry is folded and placed in their baskets and the big boys are responsible for putting their clean clothes away. I am putting away Nolan's and Mia's. This one little organization idea is helping us tame the laundry beast. The next beast we must tame is housecleaning. I used to have a friend come to the house twice a month to help me clean. Once the adoption expenses began to rack up, we had to tighten the budgetary reigns, and unfortunately I had to give up this luxury. Now, I am finding very little time to do the housecleaning. I LOVE a clean house, many who know me probably will attest that it is a pet-peave of mine. I hate clutter, I hate dust, and I like for everything to smell fresh. So now I stay frustrated the majority of the time because my house looks like a member of the Al Queda just stopped by and left a nice bomb behind. My mom tried to encourage me that I just needed to begin trying to accept the mess... and I know she's right. But it's very hard to do when you are a neat-freak. There I said it, I admit it. I'm a freak... totally.

On to better topics... October brought better health my way. I seem to have made a full recovery from the September near-death experience. So many people were prayerful for us during that time and I know that God answered many, many petitions for my healing. I am so fortunate to have awesome friends and wonderful family.

Halloween was bittersweet for me this year. The sweet part first... I remember thinking last year and talking with the family about the fact that our sister from China would be with us next Halloween. At that time, we hadn't even been matched with our Mia. But we had the idea of her planted in our minds and we hoped for her then. Now, fast forward one year, and I'm dressing the cutest little ladybug you ever saw and I can't help but say "Thank you, Lord" for this little precious one. Again, a visible, living, breathing testament of answered prayers and miracles all wrapped up in our girl. Now on to the bitter part... every year I took my kids to my Aunt Ruby's house... she would always buy their favorite candy and she would let them get all they wanted. She loved seeing them and that made me happy. This year, Aunt Ruby was gone. She went to be with the Lord in January and I missed her so much this Halloween... I missed her standing at her door holding her little candy bowl with the Hershey bars spilling out. And then... Cole and Garrett declare that they are too old to dress up this year. So I am all the more aware that my babies are growing up and part of me is glad for that, and another part is sad. Thankfully, they still wanted to go trick-or-treating with Nolan and Mia and for that I was relieved.

I've been working on Mia's Gotcha Day video. I got one completely finished to later discover that it won't load to YouTube or to Facebook. Ughh.. So back to the drawing board, and now I'm learning to navigate another software called iMovie on my Mac. Hopefully, I will have it completed soon and ready to post.

Now on to a November...

Much love,
Ashley