We were elfed

Apparently some people couldn't get the whole click on the title of the post so I made a link in the post to help you all out!

Click here to see our elf show!

Clara Turns 3

Today is a big day! Clara is 3 today and I just can't believe it. She is such a blessing in our lives and I am so grateful for her. I remember the day my Dr. told me that it was probably not likely I would have children of my own. What do you do when you hear something like? Well obviously you cry and you cry some more, but eventually you come to terms with it and decide what your next step will be. After multiple unexplained miscarriages and 2 years of struggling to bear children I finally hit that point where I realized it was time to do something else. So, we looked into adoption. It was only a few weeks later that I found out that I was pregnant again. There was something different about it this time. I could never in a million years explain the reasoning of that to anyone, but in my heart, I knew this was for real. Don't get me wrong, I had many nightmares of bad things happening, but that is all they were.

Along came Clara. What a beautiful little blessing and it is so humbling to me to reflect on this as we celebrate her birthday. She truly is a miracle.

Clara loves princesses, the Doodlebops and Dora. She loves her teddy bears that she got for her first birthday and she has to sleep with them every night, along with all the other toys she can think of as she is getting into bed. No joking, sometimes she sleeps with 10 different toys or books. It drives me crazy, but she loves it. She loves doing crafts and she LOVES bubbles!! Her favorite food has got to be french fries, although she is a pretty good eater and will try pretty much anything on her plate. As long as you don't try to feed her breakfast food for dinner, or snack food for breakfast because she is pretty particular about which foods can be eaten at what time of day and for what meal they are appropriate. I think what she loves most in this world is her little brother. She is such a mother to him. She likes bossing him around, but she loves playing with him. She loves showing him new things. She loves kissing him and hugging him. She loves reading him stories. It is the sweetest thing to watch the two of them together. I hope they will be good friends through out their lives.

She is such a happy girl and she is so full of life. I love my little girl so much, there is no greater blessing than being her mother.

Happy birthday sweet angel, we love you to pieces!!

This is a slideshow I put together in honor of her birthday. I created this shorter one for anyone who doesn't want to spend 5 minutes watching a slide show of Clara. Ha!!

This is the REALLY long version, so feel free to skip it. It's mostly for us to have, not to make everyone else watch. With 3 years full of pictures it is hard to cut any out!

Trick or Treat

So this year was the first year that Clara got trick or treating. I was so excited to go trick or treating with the kids. Now that it's over, I am so glad it is a whole year before I have to do it again! Guess it's not as exciting as I thought it would be. Clara loved it though, she was just really tired. Donovan as well. Tired, cold kids combined with candy does not make for a great night.

Clara was a monkey for Halloween and Donovan was a giraffe. I called them our zoo animals as often it feels that way on a normal day!! They had lots of fun and Clara loved saying trick or treat. This morning she woke up and the first thing she said was, "Where's my trick or treat?" Usually the first thing she says to me is "Where's my daddy?". I guess candy prevailed this time around.

Here are some pictures of our Halloween, blogger won't let me upload them all, which is probably a good thing for the people reading this!! Hopefully everyone else had a good time trick or treating as well!!