Adalyn's Birthday Party

As mentioned in my last post, we had the BEST time at Adalyn's birthday party. Her party was held out on their parcel of land in somewhat of the country and it was so peaceful with the wind blowing, the kids playing and just the plain ol' serenity of being outside and having fresh air. Several of our adoptive family buddies were there. Here's some of the shots from the evening.

This is Felicia's lovely family ... her husband Stu is every bit as friendly and engaging as Felicia is and so easy to talk to. Their daughter Ava is cute as a button and little Jake, oh man - he had all kinds of fun playing with the big boys.



And here is Miss Marlee who is about to become a big sister. Emma got just a tad bit jealous of me taking so many pictures of Marlee but I had more fun watching her. She stayed very busy tending the fire and even told her mom how hard a job that was (or something close to that). She was completely oblivious to my shutterbugging as she went about her busy little way. How can you get so much enjoyment just watching a child play?! Somehow I caught a whole boatload of pix of Marlee ... but none of her mom and dad.

This is the Corley family ... so full of fun and friendship. She's the queen mamarazzi (sp?), so very talented and so much fun to visit with. Thank you Leslie for teaching me how to make collages ... among many other things you have shared with me. The first thing I did this a.m. was to download picassa and start playing. Laundry to do and I'm making collages. I told Brian it was all your fault! haha!

This is the lovely little birthday girl's family. Miss Adalyn turned 4 and again we have yet another family who has been so kind and welcoming to us and another fun family. We have so many fun friends! Thanks for inviting us Marla, we had a great time!

These are of my dumplings from the party ... Ryan had a blast of epic proportions. He and the other little boys were playing with Dalton's nerf guns. They had all kinds of imaginary battles going on. They even caught up with the hayride at one point and climbed on, I think they were playing pirate or something like that. It really tickled me that even at this age they can have so much fun with their imaginations. They ran and romped and played all evening. He was one tired little sugar lump the next day!

Rebecca had a great time too although it seemed to take her a little longer to warm up. Once she did though it was fun from there on out. She had fun playing with Ava's dad and loved for him to pick her up and throw her up in the air. However, she was REALLY smitten with Marlee's dad. I have a picture of just her having some snuggle time with him but I was too close w/ my zoom lens to get him in the shot. He had her giggling up a storm.

Next we have Emma. Don't you just love the shot of her driving the little gator and Rebecca pushing? Makes you go hmmmm and wonder how the heck that happened. Like Ryan, Emma had lots of fun riding all the little toys and chasing after the big boys. But once she saw me taking pictures of Marlee tending the fire then all of a sudden it had all of her attention. The little stinker. She also had a lot of fun terrorizing Stu and he seemed to have lots of fun picking right back. Lots of fun to watch those two.

I suppose you can't tell at all that we had a wonderful time. To quote Miss Emma ... "Thank you Jesus for our friends". I was so disappointed when the job didn't work out in Oklahoma but I have my moments when I have to ask myself why I would ever want to leave this friendly community. God has blessed us with so many friends and we are truly grateful.