Here are a few snapshots of daily life @ the Roten house!Miss Priss, decided that she wanted to nap w/Miss O!
Happy Girls
My life is always filled with drama, at least from my perspective. But at the end of the day I am reminded God is in control and to laugh often at myself. Because if you don't laugh at yourself, other people will! Life is too short to take it so seriously. God has placed people in my life and given me life experiences that have reminded me to lighten up a little in the midst of my drama queen moments!
OK, OK so I am WOEFULLY behind on posting so here is my attempt to "catch up". After a few post you will see why there has been such a lack of updates. Here is Miss O back in May, just shy of three months old. What a blessing she and C continue to be in our lives - it's a bit wild at times but we LOVE IT! O has been a smiler since day one (not quite in these photos, but trust me) and she is such a "cheeser" and we thought C was the one to "ham it up" they will be competing for that title before long.
Michael and I consider ourselves blessed that our daughters are loved and cherished by so many amazing people! Our friends and family have showered our girls with love from day One! So I thought it would be fun to share little snapshots to that show just that!
OK so like WAY behind on this one, but sleeping through the night has helpful in blogging again. Our sweet Celeste turned 1 at the beginning of March and was showered with love from friends and family. Celeste is a true joy to our lives and we are so blessed that God has entrusted her to us. She loves the outdoors, walking, watching praise baby (worship dvd for kids), running up and down the hall and using her vocal cords (she is a girl!). All that to say I can already see that she is a loving sweet and curious little toddler. What a gift and we are so blessed by all those who daily share in our joy and love on our daughter unashamedly!
We had some friends from church stop by and we had an impromptu mini birthday bash (any excuse for cake!!!).
Grammy and grandpa graciously agreed to host a family celebration at their place in Raleigh. Celeste was loved on with out ceasing by her cousins, aunts and uncles! So blessed!!!
Her whatchya day? Her Gotchya day, as in the day we got her. In honor of that day we took her to build a bear (she told me she wanted to go, seriously... ok she didn't, but I thought it would be fun!). God is so good, He gave us the idea to use this little bear to help introduce the idea of adoption to celeste, because we get a birth certificate with her little Koala and we can talk about it how she adopted her little bear on March 13th. She was adorable!
She was so excited when we walked in!
She picked it out all by herself - she loved it!
She practically took the box out of our hand! It was such a wonderful time with our sweet daughter!!
Well - here we are the last picture as a family of Three on the morning we met our sweet Olivia. Let's back up about 24 hours earlier, and we were just going about our lives with no clue of what God had in store. Olivia's story starts even before that, in November when Michael and I decided that we would go ahead and start the adoption process for our second little blessing. We knew it could happen fast, as 38 hours notice for Celeste proved, but thought for sure it would not happen that quickly again (apparently naively, thinking). 3-4 months and a few phone calls from our adoption agency later we were talking and planning for another child, but at the same time busy with our increasingly mobile now 1 yr. old! On march 10th, while Michael is subbing at a school he calls and tells me we got a call from the executive director of our adoption agency and our minds immediately start racing but she left a message for him to call her back so they finally touch base and Michael calls me back and says that we can go tomorrow to meet our new daughter! I impatiently waited for Michael to get home literally walking in circles making phone calls and running though our shopping list! The moment we met her was beautiful and later that day she was welcomed by the rest of our family and we are settling into life as a family of four. Thank you to everyone for your love and support that you have offered our Family from the very beginning when it was just me and Michael.
Already smitten by our darling Olivia!