December Part 2--Christmas!

It was a big year for us in that we stayed home for Christmas! Our first time ever! We love going to family for Christmas, but it has gotten so cumbersome having to drag all the gifts and treats and everything wherever we go, and not even be able to use our own tree or anything! (Wow, what a first world problem!) So now that we're so much closer, we tried it out! It really was special and I liked it a lot. The sad thing is that Ashlyn came down with a fever on Christmas Eve afternoon, and was sick until about the 28th. She was still a pretty happy camper, but not her usual chipper self, and kind of out of it. Collin got sick right after she got better! Ugh! Germs! But we still had fun. It was really pretty nice to just stay at our own house. But I do have to say, it was a lot of WORK for me!!!! That was the biggest change! Who does all the cool Christmas stuff? MOM! That was all on me this year! So that was new. I'm used to just getting to chill and relax on Christmas Eve/Day since we've always been the visitors. But now everything fell to me, and it was just a lot! Still great though.

We had originally planned to make empanadas for Christmas eve dinner, and I'm SO glad that at the last minute I changed my mind and got Papa Murphy's!!! Totally worth it! We finally got to use our own Christmas dishes that we 've had for like 7 years and never pulled out of the boxes. Same with the table cloth and placemats. All fun special Christmas Eve things! We ate our yummy pizza and fresh pineapple by candlelight, which was so fun. Then that evening we read some new Christmas stories I had saved--The Grinch (which surprisingly, had Ashlyn riveted!), Berenstein Bears, and of course a kid version of the Nativity Story. Then we all watched Muppet Christmas Carol together. Again, sick kid was definitely out of it. But it was very cozy and fun. After she went to bed Collin and I watched a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie, Santa came, and we went to bed!

Ash didn't get up until almost 9:00 the next morning, nice! But sad because by then not only did she have a fever but her nose was running non-stop. She was still SO excited to see all that Santa had left her in her stocking. (Santa just does stockings here. All other stuff, credit goes to Mom and Dad!) Mom and Dad had set up a new play tent for her for a big gift, which she was excited about. We all had a yummy breakfast casserole breakfast, and then opened presents! Ash wanted to stop and play with each new thing she opened, of course. Especially the Diego movie she got, we had a tough time convincing her to wait and watch it later. She got some new paints in her stocking, and she spent a good 30 minutes painting as soon as we got done opening gifts.

We were all sufficiently spoiled, that's for sure. I had a bunch of Collin's high school and college wrestling VHS's put onto DVDs, which was his big gift. He got me a new floor lamp for the living room (no more $12 Walmart lamp we've had for 9 years), yeah! And the new Taylor Swift CD was another favorite gift I got from him! Our parents spoiled us so much too. We're very blessed.

After we got done with presents, we kind of had to rush to get showered and finish packing and get on the road. It was an awesome snowy Christmas we woke up to, except not awesome in that we had to drive! It was pretty windy and snowy. We left at about 1:00 for Idaho Falls and it took us like an extra 45 minutes to get there due to having to drive pretty slow at a few times. Good thing we had 1989 (Taylor Swift!) to listen to the WHOLE WAY! (yep that's right! Lucky Collin.)

Again, poor sick girl. She was happy to snuggle with her new Rainbow Dash pony and watch her new Diego movie, but she used almost a whole box of kleenex just on the drive to IF! 

We made it to my parents' house in time to get to skype with missionary Jodee! She's in San Antonio TX, and comes home in April, woohoo! She looked so good and it was so fun to talk with her. Ashlyn loved it too.

We had a lot of fun staying in IF! My parents pulled a sort of "Christmas with the Kranks" and took off for a vacation in Phoenix just a couple of days after we got there! But our little family stuck around to keep Alex and Andrea amused until New Year's Eve, and we had some fun! Collin and Alex took Ashlyn sledding for her first time! I think she had an awesome time! 

We all went to a fun little Nativity and Santa display at the Idaho Falls museum the day after Christmas. This was the 2 seconds that Ashlyn "helped" push Lauren. I seem to remember that Lauren didn't feel she was moving fast enough and got cranky. Sorry, Ashlyn. Lauren's a little particular! :)

One of the highlights of the trip was that we made a trip to Kelly Canyon! woop! Collin, me, Andrea, and Alex went up for a half day. Last time I went was probably 5 or 6 years ago, when I wasn't nearly as good at snowboarding as I am now (I'm by no means very great now, but just to explain, I have come a long way from back then, I didn't catch on quick!!) so the runs were a lot more do-able and it was really fun! The bad thing was that it was about 5 degrees! Even my hand and foot warmers didn't keep me warm for too long. I gave in after a little over 3 hours of boarding, and the rest lasted about a half hour longer. It was really fun, and if it wasn't so cold I would have stayed out a lot longer! When we were pulling out of the canyon, the Explorer's thermometer said it was -2 degrees. Well then.

Aw!

Our snow crew!

Cory and Hayley were kind enough to watch Ashlyn for us while we went snowboarding! Hopefully she was well-behaved. There was lots of snow so I guess Cory took Ashlyn and Adalyn out to sled and play in it....but apparently it was too fluffy to sled on, plus FREEZING outside so they didn't last long. But the pictures are CUTE!

AW! Seriously!!

So that was our Christmas break. We had some fun games of Just Dance, Scattergories, watching White Collar and Disney movies, went to some movies (Into the Woods and Unbroken!), and other fun stuff! It was great! 

And we even had a fun New Years Eve here in Jerome, believe it or not! Some new friends in our ward invited us over for games and dinner, and we had a lot of fun. Great way to ring in the new year. Collin left at 4am New Years Day to catch a flight to AZ for some clinics and visiting Tyler, so the fun ended quick after NYE! But anyway, more posts to come sometime. If anything interesting even happens in January, which it probably won't! :) Happy New Year!

December Part 1

December was nuts! I thought it would be a more relaxing December than in years past because we're new here and not that involved and generally not as busy as we've been in the past. But somehow I ended up being just as over-booked, behind, and sleep-deprived this year as I have been in past Decembers! Sheesh! I know it's like this for everyone. Every year I'm like, "this year I'm just going to do things simple." and somehow it all totally gets away from me! There's just SO MUCH to do, all the time, because there's SO MUCH going on. You know? I've realized that also a big factor that I never anticipate (for some stupid reason) is the musician thing. Musicians always have extra work in December. There's a Christmas program for everything! So I'm going to just start planning on being extra busy going into Decembers from now on. I hope it helps. But I doubt it will! ha ha. 

Anyway, crazy as it was, it was all AWESOME stuff we were doing! We definitely had a blast even if I was exhausted  and behind most of the time. 

Ashlyn and I took a 24-hour trip to Boise! I mainly went for my friends Chandra and Cheryl's phenomenal cookie exchange/crafting party, that has become an awesome tradition! I will continue to come back for this every year (as long as I keep getting invited! ;)  ) I also scheduled a couple of routine specialist dr. checkups for myself while we were going to be there, and my awesome friends watched Ashlyn while I went to those. She had SO much fun playing with friends. We stayed at hotel De La Cerda again, which is becoming my place to stay every time! (thanks, Lindsay!) And even Ashlyn actually slept all night there, surprise surprise. Sadly we had to leave at like 7:30am for me to make it back to Twin Falls for a rehearsal. But it was a fun trip! I miss my Boise friends SO much.

My cute travel buddy. We also went to my parent's house another weekend to surprise my mom for her birthday. I somehow have no pictures from that. But it was fun! While we were there we went out for Collin's birthday too. We now have to take the opportunity to go to Texas Roadhouse when we're in IF since we don't live by one any more. :(

 And that's Collin's favorite birthday tradition!

We celebrated Collin's 36th birthday! Wow! Hopefully we made it fun for him. It was a Monday and so far Mondays are like, hell on earth for him at work, the worst day of the week for the principal for sure. So I don't think work was awesome, but we had a yummy dinner of Creamy Italian Crock Pot Chicken (at his request) and birthday cake when he got home, and he got to open presents. I gave him new wrestling shoes! So I would say he had a good birthday.

Something that took up a LOT of my time was that I accompanied for the Gooding Elementary School's Christmas programs for every grade. That's two kindergartens and 1st thru 5th grade! 7 different programs! I had no idea how time consuming it would be when I agreed to do it. Just making it out there to rehearse with each class once, and play for the programs, ended up being 4 trips to Gooding a week. Throw in figuring out what to do with Ashlyn and the 30-minute drive each way, and that was like, my whole day almost every day. Let's not discuss the fact that my payment was a coffee mug filled with Hershey kisses..... I chalked it up to being my Christmas service for the year.

One of the times I was out in Gooding going over the music with the teacher, Ashlyn and Collin were able to go over to GHS and check out a craft fair they had there. Santa was there! He was a legit Santa too! Ashlyn was a lot happier to see him this year than last:

Here we are as we finally left GMS for the last time before Christmas break, wahoo! It was ugly sweater day and Collin's sweater actually fit right in with what a lot of the teachers wear every day, ha ha.  The last day I had to go, which was the day grades K-3 did their programs for the parents, Ashlyn just came along. I had exhausted my babysitting resources and was sick of farming her out to so many other people. She was a total gem. Seriously, what a good kid! She say right next to me during the whole 3rd grade program while I accompanied! (she was watching Yo Gabba Gabba on my ipod with headphones, but still.) She did get to go play at a wrestling family's house for a couple hours during the afternoon, but besides that she was a great trooper hanging out at the school all day. 

A couple of girls in the 6th grade at GMS made a book about Ashlyn for a book-writing project they did in their class! It was so, so cute. That day we spent at the school, she got to go into their class and they presented it to her and read it to her. They had made her a coloring book too. Look at that picture on it! I just died. How sweet.

So Collin never got anything from students/parents/co-workers besides the occasional card or small gift card over his years as a teacher and coach. Well enter being the principal.... and every night during the last week before the break he came home with craploads of gifts! Even if this job is anything but easy, at least he seems to be appreciated. Or at least there are a lot of brown-nosers..... Anyway, we seriously had so. many. treats. This is not a great shot but it's a table completely crammed with gifts people gave him. It was really nice. I hope he felt appreciated! I admit that we re-gifted just a couple things to neighbors......

Ashlyn takes a nap like once a month these days....but in December she took like 4! All the busy-ness wore her out sometimes. This was the best thing ever to find! Tipped over rocking chair, turned into a bed. So funny. The bad thing is that she still pees when she sleeps, so whenever she falls asleep I get to spend the rest of the afternoon doing 2-3 loads of bedding laundry. 

Some cute bows I made for my niece Grace. I need to make some more for my own kid!

I get these daily from Ashlyn. It's "writing." She will fill up page after page with this. She much prefers it to drawing actual pictures! 

I took this picture because she looked so grown up, "helping" me sweep. 

O Christmas Tree! Ours took up about 1/3 of our tiny living room and barely fit with our non-vaulted ceilings! At least we're just renting this place, right.

I LOVED having so many kid-friendly nativities this year. We have three of them and there wasn't a day they didn't get played with. I would find them like this a lot! I think it's a parade. :)

I made a little advent tree for us. I set it up in reverse order of numbers so that it would tell Ashlyn how many days were LEFT until Christmas. Because that's what she'd ask me every day. On the back of each bulb I had written in dry erase marker some sort of Christmas activity for us to do together. I planned it out pretty well so that there were things like, "visit friends in Boise" and "go to ward Christmas party" and "have the missionaries over for dinner" on days we already had that stuff planned, muah ha ha! I was super glad because if it really had some involved activity on days like that, it would not have happened! There were a lot of fun ones too though, don't worry.

We ended up doing so much baking this month! I didn't even have plans to, but somehow things got away from me. I found out that we live in a neighborhood where like, every neighbor brings the other neighbors a treat, so we ended up getting treats delivered like every night. Which was so awesome! But then I had to keep making treats to give back, ha ha. Ashlyn was a good little helper with some of them. I didn't take pictures of all the stuff I made, but I did take them of these for some reason.

We decorated sugar cookies together as a family one night, which was super fun!

We only had Mommy-Ashlyn preschool ONCE all month! Yikes! I had so many great ideas for cute Christmas crafts, too. Oh well. We did do one cute one for our one preschool session:

And then one night our family activity was painting Christmas pictures. Well, I colored while Ashlyn and Collin painted. I'll let you guess which pictures were done by who. :)

I LOVED getting Christmas cards this year more than ever before, I think! Probably because we are new here and still missing our old friends so much. It was so great to get a card from my buddies. And also from so many other friends and family. It's one of my favorite Christmas traditions!

Our ward Christmas party..... brought a new meaning of a "simple" ward party to me! Simplest one I've ever been to. And you know what, it was just as fun! I participated by playing Christmas music while everyone ate, which was fun. Somehow Ashlyn got 2 cupcakes, which she was pretty excited about. Santa showed up too, but I didn't take a picture of her with this Santa. She was very friendly with him and when he asked what she wanted for Christmas, she said, "presents."

I have had this little Christmas tree ever since junior high when Grandma Swackenberg bought it for me! I thought it would be perfect to let Ashlyn have her own little tree in her room. She loved it of course! It's nice that she's old enough to have something like that and I don't have to worry about it getting destroyed. We got some lights and decorations at the dollar store, and she was in heaven. It was sad after we took it down to just have to put her to bed in regular night-light light rather than the light of Christmas lights!

Just to show you what she kept doing while I was trying to get a good picture of her with the tree.

I tried a little photo shoot with my "2 kids" before Christmas Sunday. 

And these should give you a good idea of how that went:

On Christmas Eve-Eve-Eve Collin was away in Gooding doing a wrestling clinic so Ashlyn and I had a fun girls day together in Twin. I first worked out at the YMCA then showered there so we could stay in town and do some shopping. (it is definitely a pain working out at a gym that is not in the same town I live in. But let's not go down that road right now.) We had lunch at Arctic Circle and then shopped for some last minute gifts. Even though we didn't have too many errands to run, it still took us all afternoon! Mostly because traffic crawled along with Twin having pretty much one main road everything is on and all. Reminds me of what 17th Street in Idaho Falls was like back in the day. Right, right?! But having some actual traffic just made me feel right at home like I was back in Boise! :) It was a really fun day. I love that we can do things like that now.

My adorable lunch date. I found out that she will actually eat the chicken nuggets at Arctic Circle, first place she's done that in a while!

Next up..... Christmas Break!

Our wonderful family created this adoption fundraising page for us. We have been approached many times by those asking how they can help us in our adoption journey. Well besides spreading the word that we're hoping to adopt, we can definitely use a boost in our adoption fund. Now that our opportunity to adopt through LDS Family Services has ended (they ended their adoption services on 12/31/14), we are looking at much more expense to bring another child into our family. Domestic adoption costs range from $10,000-$40,000, which is no small chunk of change! If you're able to help us we'll be forever thankful, but please don't feel obligated. We appreciate your help and support in all forms. And if you know of anyone needing to give some huge tax-deductible donation, hey, send them our way..... Thanks everyone!

Link HERE

or here:
https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/ww77/please-help-the-robertsons-add-to-their-family?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fb_share_feed&utm_campaign=ui_frshare_publish&og_action=hug&t=3&fb_ref=2958654

And then. . .

After that ranting post I put on a bad day I thought I'd follow up with a reminder of Heavenly Father's tender mercies. The very next day, we got contacted by a birthmom! It's not really anything that I think will work out, but it still was timing I know wasn't coincidental. I appreciate Heavenly Father's mindfulness of me and my silly struggles, and helping me to keep my faith going. :)

Adoption Thoughts

Are you SO sick of seeing our adoption self-promotions on pretty much every social media outlet and website I'm friends with you on? I'm sorry. I'm SO sick of it myself. I hate it actually. I don't love putting private information about my family out there for anyone and their dog to see. I don't love being that annoying person who keeps posting that we're hoping to adopt and asking people to spread the word. I don't love spending the time on the computer/phone myself putting together profiles, blogs, facebook pages, instagram accounts. But most of all, I really just don't like that we still don't have a baby!

Ugh, I HATE it! That is such an immature way to put it, but that's how I feel today! And often, really. I am genuinely happy for everyone around me that is pretty much constantly announcing that they're pregnant. And all the great adoptive families we know that have been blessed with their own adopted babies lately. This is great. I'm totally at the age that well, you have kids. Like, as many as you can. I hardly go a day looking on social media without seeing someone new expecting, having a baby, adopting, or whatever. And it's always great news, but it also always stings too. There, I said it. It makes me sad. When is it our turn?????? I feel like each day, month, and year that goes by as we wait makes me feel more and more like my expectations for a family have been unrealistic. Why does wanting a family have to be unrealistic?? As childish as this sounds, sometimes all I can think is that it's really just not fair. Yes, I know that life isn't fair. My struggle might be with wanting a big family and that not coming (heck, forget big family. Even medium to smaller size family is ok with me by now), and I know everyone has their own struggles. There are even a ton of people out there struggling with this same exact thing.

Every day I am so thankful for the sweet wonderful family I have. Wishing, praying and hoping for another adoption opportunity just makes me more and more grateful that we have our sweet Ashlyn. Really, the more time that goes by and the more frustrating this wait for this baby is, the more appreciation and gratitude I gain for how truly miraculous her finding her way to our family was. I often find myself thinking, "how did that even happen?!?!" And then I have a reaffirming testimony continue to grow in my heart that she was sent straight to us by Heavenly Father. And I know He's mindful of us. But that doesn't make this much easier!

I think today is difficult because, along with being Jan 1 2015, guess what else that means. We are now officially no longer an adoptive couple through LDS Family Services. At the stroke of midnight last night, their adoptive services ended. We're just flying solo. Not like in 2 years they were able to find a baby for us anyways, but still. It's actually kind of hard to take and I hadn't anticipated that it would be. I think I really thought that something miraculous might come along just in the nick of time. Well it didn't. In preparation for LDSFS "dropping us" (for lack of a better term and also because I admit it's still a tiny sore spot, mostly just due to sadness and lack of patience), we have been doing all we can to work on finding our way on our own. We spent the past 8 months since "the announcement" from LDSFS checking out different national and local adoption agencies, and we've been in contact with several law practices, lawyers, and politicians that deal with adoption and have been checking that avenue out. We have felt like it's not time yet to take the plunge in signing up with one of them. Yet. So in the meantime I have now updated our stupid adoption blog more times than I care to count, since the original posts were written back in the summer of 2012. Yeah that is starting to be a pretty long time ago. I went a step beyond sharing that on facebook and made our own facebook page. I even just made an instagram account for us too, although we will see how much I end up being able to keep that updated. And the biggest thing is that we took the plunge and signed up with ParentProfiles.com, which is the adoptive parent registry for Adoption.com. We had been putting it off because well, partially we really did have hopes that we would be found through LDSFS, and also a huge thing was the $$. It costs a good chunk to be registered on there. Not much compared to listing with a private adoption agency (which is $30K-$40K, no joke), but still a good chunk of our monthly budget that would make things tight. We have a plan to list with them for the next 6 months, and at that point there may be more steps we take at that point. All this discussing and praying and planning and crying and hoping has not been my favorite over the past 8 months, but this is what it has come to at this point.  All these things are pretty much the same self-promoting crap that I hate to write but yet feel like I'm not doing enough. We have always been and still are big believers that faith without works is dead. And we're also both the kind of people that ridiculously throw ourselves into doing all we can for whatever cause we're involved in. Welllll, growing a family, that's definitely our most important cause. One that we have been trying as much as we can to do as much as we can for. Yet are we still not doing enough? I know it's in the Lord's hands. But being people who like to be proactive and step up and work hard to do what needs to be done, it's HARD to wait....and wait...... and wait.

There is definitely the fact that our lives have been turned upside down in the past 8 months. We completely uprooted and pretty much started a brand new life in a place we don't fit in and we're not used to, with a new really demanding job and in a tiny town. Everything's completely different besides our little family. I like to keep telling myself that with all these transitions, it's why we haven't been blessed with a sibling for Ashlyn yet. BUT, even that gets me down because well, if there's a time I'm able to stay at home and not work a lot because we're in a new town, it's now. If I have the time and the desire to have more kids, what is missing? We pray EVERY DAY to be blessed with another baby. We fast for it ALL THE TIME. I know that my family and friends do the same and I appreciate more than words can ever express all the help and support and prayers and fasting from them. It brings me to tears a lot. Through all this, my faith hasn't changed in that I know we'll have another baby. I know we'll adopt again. The confirmations I've had about this were so strong that my faith doesn't waiver. I'm really thankful for that, and truthfully I suspect that I was given such strong confirmations because well, it would need to last me a pretty long time! Either way, I'm thankful for them. And I'm so thankful for all the support we have been given from all of you who read this blog. SO much.

And sorry to have another rant on here. I just have been really down today, and I think it's worth recording so I can look back on this later. (and laugh, hopefully! :) ) Probably because I spent so much time creating that instagram account yesterday, that what else could it do than make adoption be right on my mind a lot? Yet another lame effect of trying to do all I can to help this happen. But if we need to do more, we'll do more. I have some fear of how much more that will be. But thankfully I have the most wonderful husband who is my partner in everything to discuss and pray together and decide which steps are best for us on this path. In the meantime we will continue doing our best in all that we're doing, or trying anyways. We're not ones to sit around and pine away after what we wish would happen. I think we've been living our lives to the fullest that we can while waiting. We'll keep it up. I really do love you guys that read this so much, and appreciate your thoughtfulness towards us. We love you! And Happy New Year. :)