39 More Days Until Utah

This weekend we got Ty's room cleaned right out and set the toddler bed up in there for him. We also cleaned Caleb's room really well again. I was pretty sick for most of the weekend, so that stunk. On Friday we went to our ward's Cultural Night. We brought Swedish Meatballs as our dish as I'm part Swedish (which I've only found out in the last few years and I think is super cool). There was a lot of really good food there and we had a lot of fun. We managed to squish our family and John's sister's family at one round table so we had 4 adults and 8 kids there. The youngest two had to sit on laps. Caleb fell in love with meatballs and spring rolls.

Activity Days on Wednesday went really well, it was my easiest activity yet. It's great because the men are so laid back and were pretty much "There's food? This is awesome." I had lots of fun, and it was very obvious that the girls did too.

Not too much else is new here, though. I've got a lot going on this week though, I hope it all goes okay. Since this upcoming Sunday is Father's Day, I want to make a note of some important men in my life.

First is D, who is a wonderful man and great Father to L. I hope he has a wonderful Father's Day.

Second is Jason, who is like my Church dad. He is super amazing and the world needs more good people like him.

Third is my little Roo, who really isn't so little anymore. He was the man of the house as we were growing up and I'm very proud of the man that he has become.

Fourth is Dad Bly who is always there for me when I need someone to calm me down and help me level out, who has been one of the most supportive people through my struggles this last year. I sure lucked out in the father-in-law department, I got the best of the best.

Fifth is Dad Mattson, my dad, who has been so helpful with watching the boys and is always there for me when I need something during the day when John can't make it home.

Sixth is John. I love you so much and I'm so grateful to be your eternal companion. I'm so glad that we are experience the trials and blessings of parenthood together.

Seventh and last, is my loving Heavenly Father who loves me more than I can comprehend and who has helped me find a life so much better than the one that I had. This coming weekend will be 6 years since my baptism and confirmation and I'm so grateful to have Heavenly Father as a part of my life. Je t'aime.

No More Eggs!

My fingers are killing me. That might have something to do with the 8 dozen hardboiled eggs that I peeled by myself yesterday. Then I had to make those eggs into egg salad and get said egg salad into almost 100 buns, individually wrapped after assembled (John cut the buns and wrapped them up for me). If the men at Activity Days tonight don't appreciate the effort that went into them, I may cry:P

John got found out today that he's getting a raise, PLUS we found out yesterday that I'm able to get my supplement at a discounted price. We are so blessed by our Heavenly Father. It has really strengthened my testimony of tithing. We knew money was going to be super tight now that we'd be paying for my vitamins on our own plus our rent increasing at the end of August, but as always, Heavenly Father has saved the day for us by giving us blessings that we didn't think we'd be able to get. I love having a Heavenly Father who knows me and loves me.

44 Days Until Utah!!!

The Rest of the Secrets

I guess I can spill the other secrets now. I've just started being the secretary for the Canadian Regional Birth Parent Training Committee. I haven't really done anything yet, but I'm excited about it. It's through LDS Family Services, so I've gotten to talk to my case worker from L's adoption a few times in this last week. It should be really good though, and I'm so excited to be able to give back to the world of adoption. I know I've been talking about it a lot lately, and I'm sorry if it's boring the snot out of people, but it's something I'm really passionate about.

And I just found out yesterday that I'll be on the major birth parent panel during the FSA National Conference in Utah at the end of July. This means I'll be telling my adoption story and answering questions about adoption in front of hundreds of people. I will be honest, I feel like I'm going to need to bring a puke bucket with me. But I'm so honoured to do this. When I wrote the story out on here a couple of months ago, I bawled my eyes out while doing so. It was the first time I'd ever told the WHOLE story all at once. It was really hard. But so much good has come out of me writing that story. A from FSA read about it and things just kind of snowballed from there. I know now that I was prompted to write about it so that I could start serving in the adoption community the way that I'm going to be from now on.

I'm starting to get nervous about how I will handle the stress of these new responsibilities along with the stress of my calling in Activity Days. I was pretty stressed when it was just Activity Days. But I feel so strongly that I'm supposed to do this, so I have faith that I'll be given the strength that I need to serve.

50 Days Until Utah! YAHOO!!!

End of May Already

I just spent a fair amount of time going back and deleting the majority of the comments left on my blog. It's nothing personal, it's just that I'm working towards having my blog made into a book for us to keep, so I'm trying to condense stuff. I did keep some of the comments that were more important to me, though.

I've been busy blogging this week, but none of you would know that, obviously. I've created two private blogs. One for just John and I, and one for just me. I find that it's a LOT easier for me to keep up with stuff on the computer than it is for me to keep up with a paper journal. In the private blogs I can be as open and honest as I want, which is good.

On Friday we had the Diaz family over for supper. It was fun. Then later that night I went to Jen's place and made some cards. It was SO nice to do that again. I have to admit, I'm still a bit gunshy when it comes to friends. It seems like every time I make a good friend, they go inactive or they move out of the ward (except for Amber). But I'm working on getting over that, and Jen is great.

I spent Saturday and Sunday with a super bad headache. It's doing a lot better today, though, so that's really nice.

Anyways, going through my past posts this morning, I realized I still haven't talked about my big adventure. I guess I'm in there enough now, that I can start talking about it. I'm getting into volunteering and helping with FSA. I've been answering questions for a website that's being created, I'm helping with a committee for the conference and there's some other stuff going on that I can't talk about yet, but it's been great. I love adoption!

On the note of adoption, I had to write the Coles Notes version of my adoption story yesterday. I sent it off, and was asked if it would be possible to take out the part where I said that the biggest deciding factor was the sealing covenant. It ended up being reworded, but not taken out. The reason is this, without the sealing covenant, there would have been no adoption story. L wouldn't exist, cause she wouldn't be called L, she would have been Collette (family name). C&D wouldn't have their precious girl, because I would have stuck to my selfishness and attempted to raise her myself. Just another reason why I'm so grateful for the sealing covenant, because it helped to strengthen 2 families instead of the weak one that would have been.

Today marks 53 days until we will arrive in Utah. I have the countdown on my calendar on the desk and I check it every day.

So basically, things are going good here. I'm in a far better place about the baby girl situation. I've been doing so much better with my personal prayers and scriptures lately, and I'm certain that's the reason why. I just love the gospel:)

The Pad

Caleb got into a lot of stuff he wasn't supposed to today. One of the times was while he was in the washroom, supposedly going pee. After a while I went in and found a huge mess he'd made with stuff from under the sink. There was cleaner out, conditioner a magic eraser and pad wrappers. I just walked out. After Caleb had taken a 'nap' he informed me that he hurt inside of his pants. I told him to leave himself alone and left it at that. A few minutes later while we were in my room he starts pulling off his pants and telling me that his crotch hurt. I was like "no Caleb, don't do that". He pulls off his underwear and there is a pad stuck to his crotch and butt. He's walked in on me using a pad a few times, so he knew where it was supposed to go. Anyways, he's trying to pull the pad off and crying because it hurts and I'm like "NO!". I laid him on my bed and pulled the pad off as quickly as I could. He winced, but didn't cry. Anyways, so that's Caleb's first experience with a pad...I don't think he's brave enough for a repeat.

A Day Late Posting

I didn't post yesterday because I couldn't trust myself to not go completely bonkers. It was looking like we weren't going to be able to go to Utah, and I took it REALLY hard. However, we are still and officially making the trek. I registered John and I for the FSA Conference last night and booked our hotel room in Layton for the conference. I can't believe that Utah is only 59 days away. Less than 2 months. YAHOO!!! The last few months have been great. I have such a renewed passion for adoption. It is an amazing and inspired blessing and anyone who thinks otherwise needs reeducation.

Not a lot of news to report here. I went to 2 baby showers last week, both babies were girls. I came home from the first one and cried. I almost didn't go to the second one because I didn't think I'd be able to handle it. I'm glad that I decided to go, though. It was lots of fun and I got to hold the baby for a while. It was actually a calming thing instead of something that made me feel worse.

Friday night I went to a scrapbooking thing at the church. We made a set of Easter pages. It was fun and it got me back into cardmaking and scrapbooking, so John is really glad that I went. He was disappointed that I haven't been doing cards. I guess it fell apart when I got sick last year. So during the weekend we took down the crib and set up the hobby room.

Not too much else is really new here. Ty still thinks nursery is the worst thing ever invented. Caleb still loves primary and his teacher. He is actually learning some of the songs now, so that makes me happy. Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Good Saturday:)

We had a really good day on Saturday. Well, it didn't start out so well. I had fallen asleep on the couch Friday night and decided to just stay there for the night rather than crawling up the stairs while half asleep. I'm so glad that I did. John came downstairs at about 6:30 am and says "Nikki, Caleb just threw up". I don't know if I've explained this before, but I have the weakest stomach for vomit. Give me protruding bones and gushing blood and I'll do whatever needs to be done, but throw in a queasy stomach and I'm done for. Anyways, I went upstairs and gave Caleb some gravol and decided to check my e-mail. 10 minutes later Caleb got sick again. Eww!

Anyways, he went for about 3 hours without getting sick again, and he was in fine form, so we went out and got groceries. After that we came home and had lunch. Then we went to the dollar store and Walmart (and picked up hats for the boys). Off we went to the park. The boys had lots of fun there, but Ty wouldn't keep his hat on, so we had to leave when his face started to resemble a tomato. We stopped at a hobby shop for John and to Zellers for freezies and then dropped off our bottle empties. We got about $33, which basically tells us that we drink way too much pop. They weren't all from pop, though, some of it was milk jugs.

We came home from that and had barbequed hot dogs and some potato salad for supper. The boys had a bath and then they went to bed. It was a really nice day with my 3 boys.

Also, I planted my flowers that my mum gave me last week and on Friday Caleb and I planted our garden. We made a small garden in the back. It's maybe 3'x6'. We planted some lettuce, carrots and green beans. Hopefully we'll have a bit of luck with it. I guess we'll see.

Not too much else is really new here, though. We're excited for the upcoming long weekend. We don't really have any plans, but it will be nice to have John at home for an extra day. Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week.