He's FIVE!

I can't believe my baby boy is 5 years old already! What a blessing he is to our family!

Mason LOVES swimming so naturally, we thought we'd have a pool party for our little guy! Well, the day before his party the temperature was in the low 70s and raining...for us Phoenicians, that's like winter, and not really conducive to swimming! Luckily, I found a great deal on a bouncy house on Craigslist to save the party!

I loved all the bright colors Mason picked out for his party. 

Even though it was too cold for swimming, the kids had a BLAST jumping...

and playing with water marbles...

and blowing bubbles!

Mason with his buddy Travis. Such sweet friends. 

 Max thought these were for him...luckily he has the sweetest brother who said he could have them! 

We had so much fun celebrating our big boy!

Here's a fun little survey so you can learn more about Mason! Some of his answers were a little odd, and yes...this kid is ALL about The Avengers!

Chocolate Chip Day

We celebrated Chocolate Chip Day with our homeschool group! The kids enjoyed listening to "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and learning some interesting chocolate chip facts. 

In the kitchen they learned about the ingredients needed to make the cookies and had fun getting their hands dirty! 

This was the fun part. Each kid got to pretend to bake an edible cookie dough "cookie" in the oven! They all loved it. 

Happy chocolate chip day!

Friends along the way

I'm generally a quiet person. I've never been the type of girl to have a ton of girlfriends. In fact, as a child I was painfully shy. I have my close circle of friends and family, and that's always been good enough for me.

I'm convinced that adoption requires a little more support than just my handful of girlfriends (whom I love dearly). 

During our home study, our social worker asked me about my support system. She obviously gathered the fact that I'm pretty introverted and seemed slightly concerned that I wasn't this huge social butterfly. I didn't make the greatest case for myself when I mentioned that my Facebook Ind*a adoption group was really amazing and so helpful. 

Truth is, it IS amazing. There is something special about the women in this group. We pray, we cry, we rejoice, we sympathize, we gain knowledge from one another. I have made so many connections with women literally from all over the world and it's like we all share a heart.

A heart for a beautiful country, a heart's desire to seek God and his will, a heart for orphans, and a drive like no other to make those orphans sons and daughters. 

Don't get me wrong, my closest friends are amazing and speak so much truth and wisdom into my life, but sometimes, unless you're going through an Ind*an adoption you just might not completely get what I'm going through. 

The friendships I'm making along this adoption journey are priceless gifts from God. While it's true that I may never meet many of these amazing women in person, they are still special regardless. Just the other day as I was talking to another mama from Oklahoma on the phone, it dawned on me. We would have never "met" each other, much less talked on the phone, if it hadn't been for adoption. Now, I have a friend at a very similar stage in the process to share victories and struggles with, to pray with, and one day to look back at our journey and see God's faithfulness through it all. 

When we began this process almost a year ago, I never would have guessed that the friends along the way would have such an amazing impact on my life.

Thank you, Jesus for each and every one of them.