The best day of the year

When I was a kid my sisters and I looked forward to Christmas cookie decorating day almost as much as Christmas day itself. I have tried to carry on with this tradition with my 2 girls. Decorating christmas cookies takes a certain amount mental preparation as a parent that it didn't require when I was child. Now, I'm the supervising adult, that is, the person who cleans up the rainbow frosting with sprinkles explosion that is left behind at the end. I never understood before as a kid why my Mom wasn't more excited about christmas cookies or why she aways seemed a little tired when it was over- I get it now, Mom. This was a really fun year. I only had to remind Ava once not to lick the frosting knife between cookies and I'm getting better at planning ways to minimize the amount of frosting that has to be scraped off the table and floor at the end too. It was a really fun cookie day- Anabelle said it was the best day of the year.


Ava tries to put all the different kinds of sprinkles on the same cookies every time. You can tell who made which cookie.

Anabelle very carefully spreading her frosting.
I don't know what Ava is doing here. I feel this way alot about Ava: "What is she doing?"



Heath usually decorates one cookie. It kind of looks like an alien or a fly this year- I got to eat it.






I usually do 3 or 4 really pretty ones and then start making them in mass so that the pile will get smaller faster so we can eat some.




This year I put the finished christmas cookies in the tin my Nana used. This tin is so loaded with memories for me of Nana bringing pie to Thanksgiving and cookies at Christmas. I think she would be really glad we're using it. It feels right- she spent alot of time baking and cooking for us. I tried to tell Anabelle and Ava about how she would decorate her cookies exactly the same every year for as long as I can remember. All the bells were exactly the same, the trees, the stars, the giant snowman, the camel (yeah, I have no idea where she found a camel cookie cutter). Nana helped me love baking, my Mom showed me how to not get crazy when process makes a colossal mess- I hope I can pass those on to my girls.

happy memory lane

Heath and I were just reading through some old blog posts and I cried my eyes out laughing so hard at this one. I decided to re-post it originally written by Heath 2 years ago. Ava was 2 and a half Anabelle was 4. You're going to love it!! :)

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off

On Tuesday afternoons Andrea goes to Dallas to tutor some Thai refugee children, and I get in some special "daddy and daughter" time. Our usual routine is to go to the park, the library, and then come home to eat eggs and biscuits. But, we have been eating eggs and biscuits every Tuesday for a while now, and a new Chick-fil-A opened up nearby with a killer playplace inside, so we went there today. It was interesting.

The place is packed because it is the new cool thing in town. We order our food, I get the drinks, and go get the girls seated at a table, and then go back to wait for the food. I order 12 nuggets and a regular chicken sandwich- fairly standard items- and it took almost 10 minutes. This is a long time when you have two precious sweeties at a table unsupervised and hungry.

I get the food and distribute it to the kids, settle in to my chair, and take a bite of my sandwich, where upon Anabelle informs me that she needs to "go tee-tee." So, we all go to the bathroom, she does her thing, and then we go back to our table. After about 5 minutes of peaceful eating, Anabelle knocks her drink over, spilling water all over the table. Fortunately, the lid did not come all the way off, so I managed to clean it up with only about 50 napkins. I was a little troubled by this, because this is the third time in the past two days Anabelle has knocked a full glass over. I took a deep breath and started to eat again. Anabelle said, "Daddy, thank you so much for cleaning up my spot." That made me really happy and warm inside, and I felt like the evening was taking a turn for the better. Feelings, however, are not always reliable.

After about 5 more minutes of eating, Ava knocked her drink off the table. I ordered small waters for the girls, but they were out of small cups, so this was a medium cup full of water. It hit the ground with such force that not only did the lid come off completely, but the bottom of the cup blew out as well, and 22 oz. of water and ice were all over the floor. Napkins would stand no chance facing this giant. So I went and asked a nice young guy who worked there if he would clean it up. He was very courteous, but I am not sure he had ever held a mop before. So he came over and sloshed it around and smeared it everywhere. I am pretty sure someone had just mopped around the fry vats with this mop, because the floor all around our table became very greasy and slick. Every time someone would walk by they would almost slip, and then glance over at me with a look that I interpreted as saying, "thanks alot buddy, because you can't keep your kids in line I almost broke my neck."

So we ate some more, and as we were finishing I thought to myself, "Heath, you need a challenge." So, I got the girls an ice cream cone. This was Ava's first ice cream cone ever. Anabelle methodically licked around the edges, making sure none dripped. Ave dispensed with such formalites, and after I handed it to her the first thing she did was smash it into her face, as if she were trying to get the whole cone in her mouth. She ate the rest of the cone like this, trying to smash it all into her mouth. It was so much fun to watch.

We finished our meal and headed into the play area. We got the shoes off, put away in the little secure cubby holes, and they started to play. Then Anabelle said, "Daddy, I need to go do gross." So, we got the shoes back on, and went back to the bathroom. Anabelle did her business, I did the closing paperwork, and we started to leave our stall. I was surprised to see a little boy (like 3 or 4 years old) waiting to come in the stall. He was by himself. Ava got in his face and, using her intimidating voice (the one she uses with Silas), said, "Hey, what are you doing in here?!" She proceeded to follow him back in the stall, and I had to go back and forcible remove her so this little guy could do his thing.

So , we went back to the play area and played happily for about 20 minutes, and then came home.

Several of you who read this blog from time to time have kids. Sometimes it is therapeutic to here about things like this, so hopefully this story will be of some benefit to someone. I hope to God that there is some redeeming value to this unfortunate series of events.

December week 1

This has been a christmas of several firsts for us. This was Heaths first year to ring the bell by hte red Salvation Army bucket out side our local Wal-Mart- also, our first year to put money in the bucket. It was about 34 degrees out that day :)



This was Ava's first year to not cry in her Christmas program. She was SO cute. I could hear her singing four or five rows back. So talented.


This is Anabelle's first year to play tic-tac-toe. She played about 30 games with Heath before Ava's christmas program.



This is actually the second attempt at putting the star on the tree. The first time the tree fell over. I'm sorry to say that it was not our first time to have our tree fall over...

I'm thankful for...

Sculpture I: Portrait Bust...

This is me and my friend Amber. It turns out that Amber and I have almost every thing in common including how smokin' hot we make these respirator masks and goggles look. Besides being unhealthy to breath, silicone smells like vinegar and sweat. It really is horrible.

Below is what I would look like with silicone all over my head- personally, I think its a little disturbing.

Andrea and Anabelle: the art show

Here are a few recent pieces of art Anabelle and I have done. Above is a wax waffle. I'm am finding that all of the art that I do that I think is good tends to be about food or coffee...


This is one of my favorite coffee cups. When ever I try out a medium I'm not comfortable with or haven't used much before I seem to use it to do this cup. This is oil pastel- which I really loved. Its like using oily crayons.



This is charcoal. I'm pretty comfortable with charcoal. This is actually the first drawing I've done of Anabelle and Ava and even though I like them I think I will NOT be drawing them again soon. They are tough critics: "Why aren't there any flowers on my scooter?" "Why am I smaller than Anabelle?" "Why didn't you put the basket on my scooter?" (I put a fake basket on Ava's scooter because she complained about it so much.)



This is an origami house collage by Anabelle. She is brilliant, as you can plainly see.


This is a graphite pencil drawing by Anabelle. This is a great piece and it has inspired me to do an owl myself soon.

A Post by Heath

This evening I took Anabelle, along with Ava, to her “Academic Night.” I am not sure what the point of this was. Parents got to watch their kids work a math problem in their classroom (I think Anabelle finished before all the others), and the rest of the time the teacher kept asking, to no avail, if anyone had any questions.

There were several interesting things I got to take note of, however. First, her teacher had the good idea of having all the kids write on a poster-sized piece of paper a few things about themselves. She then hung these around the room. While the kids were working the math problem (the other kids, that is, since Anabelle finished very quickly) I read them all. It was interesting to me that Anabelle is the only one in the class that wrote that she liked to play with her mom and dad. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that we are the best parents, but I think an objective assessment of this would have to include a strong implication in that direction.

Second, Ava has become very schizophrenic in terms of her public relations skills. Case in point: Last week we went to the park and Ava took the initiative to strike up a conversation with a total stranger at the park who was the mom of a girl in Anabelle’s class that was there playing as well. Ava enjoyed talking to her so much that she was still talking to her as I was pulling her away and getting her in the car. Tonight, this mom was there and said “hi” to Ava and Ava put her head down without saying anything. I said, “Ava, do you remember Mrs. Fedra from the park?” She nodded her head in agreement, but had a look of extreme tension on her face and started hugging my leg. Fedra again tried to make small talk with her, to which Ava proceeded again to nervously slink away from her. I don’t get it. Sometimes I wonder what the people think who are on the other end of these diametrically opposed conversational styles that Ava seems to embody.

After the classroom time was over we went to the cafeteria and got cookies, looked at the kids’ art, and then went out to the playground to swing for a bit. This leads me to my third interesting observation of the evening. While we were playing a father (or some such male guardian figure) and a couple of little boys came to play. At one point, one of the boys about Anabelle’s age ran away from the playground area into the middle of an open field (still in the fenced in playground area) where he proceeded to relieve his bladder of unnecessary pressure. He was, thankfully, facing away from the swings, but he was also facing the road where lots of cars were driving by. Now, I am no prude about this kind of thing. Outdoor urination is a classic pastime of good ole country boys, and it is good to see such a practice passed on to the next generation. On the other hand, this was at a playground where this kid presumably normally plays at. Does he do this during school? Do the teachers on duty have a laissez-faire attitude about this kind of thing? Perhaps more troubling was that the father was watching the whole thing, and he not only didn’t discourage it in any way, he also didn’t blink an eye.

All in all it was a fine time at the Watson Elementary School at Huntsville, Arkansas. Right now it is moments before I announce bedtime, and Anabelle is finally smelling Ava’s stincky sock after much pleading on Ava’s part for her to do so. Anabelle may be brilliant, but there are still some things she has to learn (like you only smell someone else’s stinky sock if they agree to smell yours at the same time).

I know it's been a little while since I"ve posted. Things got pretty hectic when school started. Here is the short update of how things are going here:

Anabelle started first grade this year. She is doing great. She's had a few pieces of homework so far that have been pretty fun and include number cards or coloring something. She really likes her teacher so that just makes it that much better.
Ava is at her same preschool as last year, 3 days a week. She also really likes it and is learning letters and sounds. She can write her name pretty recognizably. On the days that we are home together we try to watch Barefoot Contessa on Foodnetwork while we fold laundry.

We recently dug out the Nintendo 64 and have revived Mario Golf. Heath has been moving right through it and teaching the girls how to play. Great times.

I started back to school too- I'm in Color Studies, Sculpture I and Figure drawing. My home work for color studies looks alot like some of the stuff Anabelle brings home from her art class.

We started our parenting class for becoming adoptive parents. It meets once a week through October and then after someone checks out our house to make sure its safe, they will place some children in our home. The teacher of the class said that we would probably have kids by Christmas. We sort of thought that could happen but having some one who knows what they are talking about say it out loud made it feel very real. Exciting, and honestly, a little scary. We've got some beds put up and a dresser painted. Below is a pic of me and the girls before school one morning. My back pack is the heaviest.

We figure 6 to 9 months...

So about 8 to 10 weeks ago Heath says to me "Andrea, I've been thinking about something that I think God wants us to do. I've been thinking and praying about this for about 6 months or so. I want us to think about becoming adoptive parents." So I looked at Heath, coughed (to remind him that I was still sick with pneumonia), and essentially said "I don't think God wants me to do that." He looked confused and mildly annoyed with the coughing (which had been going on for months by the way) and said "Well, you can think about it for awhile." I thought this was a good response- if I'm just going to think about it that means the ball is in my court, and my plan was to throw the ball out of the gym and never go look for it.
That worked for about 6 weeks. And then I woke up one night at about 3 am and realized something that made me think I might be pregnant (I'm not, but I had a real legitemate scare). I confirmed by 2 o'clock the next day that I was in fact not pregnant. But in the roughly 11 hours that I didn't know I considered something that I had not considered for a solid 4 years. And that was the possibility that maybe, just maybe, our family wasn't done. That was all it took really. Just something to make me seriously consider it. By 8 that night I had found the dept of Child and Family services and reviewed some of the qualifications we had to have.
So, we are going to adopt some children. We've filled out a small truck load of paper work and turned it in to the right people. We have to wait for our back ground checks to go through before we can begin training (the last 6 years of parenting don't count). Training takes about 6 weeks followed by home studies (because our house might not be safe- even for the children we already have!!) and then they'll try to match us with some kids who need happy homes.
We are not trying to adopt babies. We like babies but infants have an easier time finding parents then older children. We also don't think we have the parenting skills yet for children over the age of 6 or 7. Also, siblings are less likely to find a home where they can all be together then just 1 child alone so we want to adopt a sibling group. Heath thinks 2 but I'm pretty sure 3 is the magic number (I'm a real all or nothing kind of girl- from "NO" to "at least 3"). So we could get a baby if it comes with a couple of older sisters- we're pretty good at parenting girls so far, I think we could handle up to 1 boy if he was pretty small to start with (again, Heath and I are not in total agreement on this- he doesn't seem to think that we should have a boy- I'm not worried though, things usually go my way when it comes time ;))
Thats the story so far. We could have more kids by christmas. It could be longer. We don't really know exactly. We know it's kind of crazy. Please don't warn us how hard this could be. We know adopting older children through the state out of foster care isn't going to be simple. But here is something we do know: God loves abandonded , parentless children and wants them to be loved by a momma and daddy. We can, and strangly, already do love them.

Thanks to computer applications in art I have made a photo of our new family. Sort of...;0)


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Anabelle's graduation pics + trip to LR

Here are some of the pictures from Anabelle's Kindergarten Graduation. I'm afraid I must admit that Heath and I had a difficult time seeing this as a monumental event but so many people talked to us about it as if it was that we felt compelled to treat it as such (really we kept thinking of that line from "The Incredibles" were Bob says "they keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity...") It was in the gym which was really hot and Heath had to take Ava out early because she looked like a wilting flower. All in all, I thought it was very sweet. There really is nothing as cute as seeing your 5 yr old sing "I've been working on the railroad" with all the hand motions along with 200 other 5 and 6 yr olds.





Seriously, how cute is that?


I think the video is in an earlier post.


Early this last week we went to visit my sister and her family in Little Rock. It was really fun. I love my niece and nephews so much and always love to see them.
This is Liza. She likes apple sauce. She is a really happy baby.


This and Alice, my older sister, and me and also it looks like some herbs. Alice is older, but I'm taller and I think if we got in wrestling match I would win :)


We went swimming at their neighborhood pool and this is how things went down when we got back- it was pretty close to supper time but there no supper yet and the people were getting restless with the chex mix we gave them to try and appease them while they waited. As you can see, delaying supper for 4 children 5 and under who have been swiming can lead to climbing on the table in revolt.

We went to the zoo and this was almost the last picture I took. I got some animal pics but this one is my favorite. its very telling.

Another Hiking Adventure

It was a great time, but the pics don't exactly convey the full range of emotions experienced on this outing. The mile hike down to the waterfall was fine. We rested there while listening to the flowing water and drank Yoo-hoo and ate bananas. Paradise was restored for a brief time.

Experienced and shrewd parents will be wincing right now, though, because you will have realized that I have committed a cardinal error of parenting: giving the fun snack only half way into the hike. I knew this was a mistake as I was doing it, but that is how it happened. ("The good I want to do I do not do...")

The mile back was, to use good Christian language, an opportunity for developing more patience and character and all that good stuff you would rather avoid. I had to carry Ava back the whole mile because she said her legs couldn't move anymore. Anabelle had to go #1 "real bad" so I took her behind a tree but I couldn't get her to assume the right position, so I told her she would have to hold it. About 1/4 from the end Ava started crying and repeating, "I have to go poo so bad, I have to go poo so bad..." Right before we got back to the parking lot, both girls said, "I never want to do this hike again." Like I said, the pics don't tell the whole story.

I am happy to say that both girls were able to maintain control over their excretive systems until the proper facilities were made available to them, and I was able to maintain control over my nervous system the whole time (well, most of the whole time).

Another Family Graduation

Ava's Birthday, Laundry, Backyard Painting

Ava's Birthday was actually at the end of April- it was an exceptionally busy April and May so I'm a little late with the birthday post, but here it is, none the less.
Ava turned 4 this year. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe- it doesn't feel like that long ago that she was that adorable little baby that cried all the time. Or that 18 month old who broke down into total melt down when a stranger would smile at her in the grocery store. Or even the 2 year old whose face was just never really clean- dirt of food, all the time. I really enjoy knowing Ava. And I really look forward to the girl she is growing up to be. I know there are very exciting in store for her because she is wild and tenacious and confident and fearlessly loving. I am so glad I'm her momma.



Ava couldn't decide between chocolate and strawberry cake so this is what I did. I was pretty good.

Love that crazy pre-cake smile.


The day after my last final (the longest hardest essay test I've ever taken) I pretty much crashed with pneumonia for a solid week. Essentially I laid on the couch in my pajamas and wished I was unconscious. There were loads of laundry on the other couch that I was too exhausted to fold. I enlisted some very good helpers. They sorted and folded and put away all their own laundry. It was great and I think we might just keep on doing it.








The weather has been great so we've pretty much been outside all the time that we're not sleeping. The other day the girls did some painting and they are just so cute when they're getting along. They've definitly got talent.

Graduation!!

Heath graduated from seminary last weekend! I thought it was so great. I knew I was proud that he was so good at school but there was something about the ceremony that just made me crazy proud- now there is a document validating what I've always known. He graduated Summa Cum Laude (Thats the highest one :)) and looked so smart in his hood and cap- just look at him (I actually think he looks really happy in this picture because it was over). So there he is- he has mastered Divinty.


This is Clayton and Irving on either side of Heath. I love these boys so much and I am so happy they came- it was very meaningful.


I heart Heath Bradley, M.A., M. Div.