Lately...

We're just plain busy.

Tomorrow Caleb wraps up his baseball season.  We are so proud of our little player.  Each season he continues to improve.  He hits the ball well and has been making outs on the field.  His favorite positions to play are catcher and first base.  Patrick continues to help out with coaching.  So it's been a special time together for the boys.  And we just love watching him play.

Madeline continues to enjoy dance.  She has a Holiday performance coming up next month, for which she's very excited about.  She's also been begging me to do more school with her.  Although I have different programs I use to teach her, we barely do school together.  She does a great job of keeping herself busy while I work with Caleb.  However, she's asking me to teach her more.  So I'm carving out more time in the day to do that.

Still no word on our LID for Havi's adoption.  We're hoping to hear any day now.

With the cooler temps, the kids have been playing more in the front yard.  Although I don't like it getting dark so early, we do love this time of year.  It allows us to get outside any time of day, without having to load up on sunscreen and water. lol

Caleb asks me to play catch with him...daily.  It's precious.  So while we're doing that, Madeline is either riding her bike or her brother's scooter...or bringing her stuffed animals outside for storytime.

This afternoon, well, we're hoping to close on our new house.  And while we have LOVED this extra wide sidewalk in front of our house for the kids to play on (we live on a busy street), we are looking forward to living at the end of a cul-de-sac.

The reality of this impending move has really started to sink in.  There are lots of things about this house that I'm going to miss.  And I've decided that I want to do my best to capture it all one last time.  These images above really speak to how we spend our fall and winter afternoons.  I love hanging out in the front yard with the dumplings. And I LOVE hearing their squeals when Baba's car pulls into the driveway at the end of the day.  Gonna miss ya, little yellow house.

5 years with his Forever Family!

It's hard to believe that five years ago, our precious son Caleb was placed in our arms for the first time.

We love to celebrate this special time, though we know that not every adoptive family agrees that it's something to celebrate because the day is often traumatic for the adoptee. We thought we would treat Caleb to a night in a log cabin over at Fort Wilderness by the Mouse.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect...a coolness in the air without being too cold.  This was, in fact,  the warmest Family Day celebration on record for him.

The dumplings loved being surrounded by all the tall pine trees and playing on the playground before dinner.

After we finished dinner, we headed over to the Chip n Dale sing along for some marshmallow roasting and a movie outdoors on the big screen, "The Lion King."  Caleb enjoyed the marshmallows, while Madeline enjoyed the chocolate bars. I personally enjoyed eating them together in the form of 'smores.  Yum.

The next morning we headed over to the Grand Floridian for breakfast in order to fill our bellies before heading to the Magic Kingdom for the day.

Oh, and some of these photos were captured with either my iPhone or Patrick's.

We had a fun spin on the Teacups.

We managed to plan well when hitting the rides, grabbing as many fastpasses as we could, including Dumbo and Winnie-the-Pooh.

We headed over to Frontier Land for lunch.  Madeline thought her stickers looked better on her face than her shirt.

The kids really enjoyed Pirates of the Carribean, well Caleb did.  We got to ride Aladdin twice because the ride attendant placed two families on the same carpet.  Score another one for us! 

The Enchanted Tiki room was quite cute, and we thoroughly enjoyed the Jungle Queen and the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.

Normally we start in Tomorrowland and hit up Buzz pretty early, but we decided to change things up a bit.  We chose to hit Buzz and the Raceway just before heading out.

After I took this shot of Patrick, I saw that he was taking a picture of himself with the princess.  So I had to get him to share it with me.

I usually ride with Madeline, and Patrick rides with Caleb.  So again, we switched it up.

And since we had a few minutes to spare before our Buzz fastpasses, we grabbed a nice cold tasty treat.

We've never done so many rides in such a short time.  The weather was truly perfect. Normally, we are wearing jackets during the day with gloves in the morning.  But not this year!  After hitting the bathroom one last time before driving home, Patrick snapped a shot of me with Caleb.  I had no idea he grabbed my camera out of the bag while I was in the bathroom.  I really need to hand him my camera more often.  I'm thankful. though, he managed to snap a few photos of me with our dumplings using his iPhone.

Well, I couldn't leave off this post without sharing two funnies that Caleb made yesterday.

During school, after he had finished narrating his passage from The Little Duke, in which we learned of Richard receiving the ducal mantle and subsequent banquet...

Me: That was a long ceremony and feast.
Caleb: Yeah, being Duke is hard work!

Hanging out in our room watching the election returns...

Caleb: When are they going to stop talking?
Me: Oh, they're going to talk all night.
Caleb: So, they're nocturnal?

In another bit of news, I thought I would share that we found out that our dossier was sent to China this past Friday, Nov 2nd.  I know most of you were hoping the big news I shared earlier was a referral.  However, we had one last hiccup that prevented us from sending our dossier off a few weeks ago.  So we're now officially DTC Nov 2nd and are awaiting our LID. Hooray!  Hooray!

Costumes and candy

This week the dumplings had a couple of opportunities to dress up and indulge in some candy eating.  Madeline's dance class had the chance to dress up during class this week.  I'm so glad they let us back there to snap a group photo.  Although she's partially hidden by sweet little pirate in front, you can see that she is a...drumroll please... Flamenco dancer.

I used McCalls 6418 to make the dress.

It really came together easily, although I didn't care for the zipper instructions.  So I just inserted it the way I wanted to.  It has three gathered layers for a lot of twirl power.  Gosh, I do love to sew for her.

Okay, back to the festivities...both kids had the opportunity to fill their bags with candy at our church's trunk or treat.  Caleb wanted to be an astronaut this year.  He loves to study science, so I'm not at all surprised by his costume choice.

Since it takes a long time to make your way through the line of trunks, we brought the stroller along.  Madeline was so funny getting her dress pulled up so she could sit comfortably. She's wearing six yards of fabric!

Madeline graciously let her brother rest in the stroller at times.  He's not a big gum chewer, but he thought he might chew some while he was waiting to move on to the next car.

Lollilops, of course, are never far from Madeline's mouth.  

Another favorite around these parts are Starbursts.  So we had some pretty happy kids.

And then after all the trunk or treating was over, the kids hit the bounce houses.  We actually packed a change of clothes for Madeline in case she couldn't bounce in her dress, but she did a fabulous job holding it up.  No wardrobe change was necessary.

Then it was time to head home.

And dig through each others bags at least one more time, looking for pieces to trade.

And there she goes again with another lollipop and her "I'm gonna look at my brother and pose" pose.

On Halloween night, we headed over to our friends' neighborhood to trick or treat with them.  This is how they passed out candy.

And here's our little candy eating crew.  The three big kids headed one way and the four little ones another.

The kids had a great time going door to door.  While a lot of people sat on their front porches passing candy out, some of them stayed inside and waited for little ones to ring the bell or knock. Well, Miss Madeline was so very eager to ring that bell.  She was too funny.

For more fun photos, stop by Lisa's blog.
Have a great weekend!!!