Thanksgiving and Christmas

The holidays were fun and crazy and full of lots of family time. We had our usual feast at my parents house with everything except for Lizzy and Brandon. Just like every other year, we all really enjoyed the food and over ate. The next morning my Mom and I did our annual Black Friday shopping. We didn't get very much, but we sure had a great time going to all the stores and shopping at 1:00am.

This is the one picture I can find right now........My, my niece and sister Katie:


Christmas was wonderful as always. We had our annual family progressive dinner, Lizzy and Brandon were here, we had time off work, nice and cold weather, snow on Christmas Eve, lots of game playing and treat making and I really enjoyed the holiday season. It was so fun to watch my niece and nephews open their gifts this year, they really understood Santa and were so happy to open presents. I loved being able to spend time with Lizzy and Brandon. It's sad we don't get to see them very much, but we sure love the time we get. This year we got my parents a Wii and we had lots of fun playing the Wii Fit and Mario Cart. Christmas always seems to come to quick and never last long enough.




Apparently we take games very seriously in our family.......

Katie's kids:

Opening presents:

Grandma got the perfect gift:

Blessings in Disguise

The end of October and early November brought some unexpected changes for us. We finally got around to doing our health exams for the adoption paper work and had some interesting results. We found out that I have hypothyroidism and will have to take a daily pill for the rest of my life. (I know, that sounds like a lot of fun.) In during research about hypothyroidism I discovered that a common side effect is infertility. That got me thinking about whether or not that could have been the underlying reason what none of the previous fertility treatments had worked.

Just a week before our health exams, Chris and I had a heart to heart conversation about the whole adoption thing and why he's been dragging his feet. He told me that he's been having this feeling that we'll have a baby of our own and that he just didn't feel right about adoption right now. Me being the nice person that I am told him (in not such a nice way) to suck it up and get going on the paperwork.

That next week Chris' employer informed him that they would be changing insurance providers and he had 5 days to get the paperwork turned in. I jokingly told him to find out if the new insurance had infertility benefits because it seems like no one ever covers it. After many phone calls back and forth with the HR people we found out they have some coverage but we couldn't confirm to what extent. To make a really long story short, in 2 days we had to decide whether we wanted to take a risk and hope they covered infertility, cancel my insurance and join his plan and lose the excellent benefits I already had. We went with our guts and picked to use his new insurance. As it turns out we picked right; they have excellent infertility coverage! What a blessing!! Now we can head back to the fertility doctor and pick back up where we left off.

I almost forgot to mention that Chris wasn't ever supposed to be on any insurance plan. They made a clerical error 6 month ago and added him to the insurance. Once they figured what had happened, out of the kindness of their hearts they left him on the plan. And during that 5 day window of adding and changing insurances, we were supposed to on a cruise celebrating our 8 year anniversary. What we thought was terrible luck with our vacation planning ended up being a blessing. It's crazy how many wonderful things happened in just a 2 week time period! It just goes to show that we may not see what God's plan is, but he sure does!

Debbie's Wedding

In November Chris' mom got remarried to a wonderful man and we were blessed to be able to attend the wedding. She got married the week before Thanksgiving and they flew Chris and I to Holland, Michigan for a short weekend getaway. This was my first time there and it was so cold and so beautiful. They live 5 miles from Lake Michigan and I had no idea just how big that lake was. I also got to meet Chris's grandma for the first time. Holland is such a cute little town and we happened to be there the weekend they have the town open house. Downtown Holland transforms into a cute little Christmas town and it reminds me of a Norman Rockwell picture (complete with carolers!) I'm so glad we got to be apart of Debbie and Ron's special day and we're very excited to have him part of the family.

Fall

In the fall we welcomed cooler temperatures! My Mom, Wendy and I took my nephews and niece to Sweet Berry Farms for a fun filled afternoon. We fed the goats, picked flowers, took a hay ride, painted pumpkins and climbed in the hay bales. We had a great time. For Halloween everyone came over to my parents house for the customary movie outside and treat or treating. This year wasn't so great; poor Bryleigh blistered and burned her fingers in the fire pit, my parents dog got sprayed by a skunk and stunk up the entire house and my mom and I ended up missing most of the treat or treating. Luckily the kids had a great time and they got lots of candy.

Family Reunion

The best part about this summer was the Summers' family reunion! The last time we were together for a reunion was 10 years ago, so this was a long time coming. The reunion was on the beautiful Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho. My parents, Chris and I packed up the 5th wheel and made the 38 hour drive to the reunion. Luckily we love road trips! We saw some of the most beautiful landscaping and really enjoyed seeing the sites. In Colorado we decided to do some white water rafting, to bad we picked the day it was 52 degrees outside and raining! The water wasn't much warmer and it was really low. We ended up dragging across the rocks most of the time, but we still had fun. I got to see a real river otter not more then 5 ft in front of me. We also saw what was the start of a huge forest fire somewhere in Colorado. On our way to northern Idaho we stopped in Orem, UT and picked up Lizzy and Brandon. They joined our caravan and were able to stay for a few days at the reunion. It was really fun to camp and spend time with them. The reunion was such a great experience! We had some fun much watching my aunts and uncles do the 'senior Olympics.' We had 2 boats on the lake and lots of canoes to ride on. My cousin put on a great show with his wake boarding skills. We really enjoyed the camp fires, singing songs, playing games, eating lots of great food with everyone and doing what we do best talking and laughing. I'm so glad most everyone got to be there; we had well over 100 people for the 4 day event. Not to mention being on the lake with the whole area to our selves was a real treat.

Summer Time

This summer was a hot one! We spent 68 days at 100 degrees or more. Luckily my parents bought a 3ft deep pool for the back yard and we pretty much spent most of the time in there. Both of my nephews learned how to swim under water and my niece started swimming on her own.




In August I decided to donate my hair to Locks of Love and chopped off 13" of hair! I really like it short, so I'll probably keep it this way for a while.



We also spent a lot of time working on our back yard. This summer we put in our back fence, landscaped, bought, moved, raked, shoveled more rocks, laid sod, worked on drainage and made it so much better. I'm very glad we have great friends who spent their Saturdays helping us out!

I have returned!

I've finally got around to updating my blog. I'm so sorry it's been stuck on that same post for so long! Sadly I can't really remember all the things that have happened since I last posted, so I'll just give the highlights and some pictures. Here goes!