In Honor..

In Honor

Of a mother

In China

who loved my daughter

enough to let her go

in a place she would be found

and brought to me

Our hearts cry for her loss

but are thankful for her

May she find God

and peace in her heart

2 years ago........

Sage's Birthday Pictures

For some reason Sage's birthday picture post just went up, so make sure you scroll under the slide show to see those.

Guess Who is Turning TWO!!!

I love you more...

I know there is something hiding in this package for me, where is it!
Because every little girl should have a pink kitchen at 2!
I am the birthday girl!
Two is kind of hard!


" Happy to me!" (and this is how she says it!)
Kisses to all
I am TWO cute!
Happy to me, happy to me..
And she could not wait to blow the candles out!



Oh, I can hardly believe it! 2, my baby is TWO! Terrifyingly, terrifically, TWO!!! I often blog about how spicy our Sage is, but she is also SO sweet! Someone at church made a comment one day and said, "Sage is the poster child for adoption". And she just is. She LOVES everyone, and knows no stranger. And if you think you are going to get by her w/ out saying hi, think again! She can't hardly stand it if someone ignores her. We all say here, "who is cute" and in her sweet Sagey voice she yells ME! She is a people person and just happy. Some Sage stuff for 2

• She talks, ALOT! And her voice is NOT quiet! I am amazed by how many things she says now. To many words to even count. I love you and hug me are our favorites to hear.



• She asks to sit on the potty, but when you are a spicy girl, sitting does not last long!



• LOVES to read. Which is the ONLY thing that gets her to sit for any length of time.



• Dia(dora) is her favorite. She likes the show for background noise, but is very excited to see anything w/ her on it.


• Still attached to the mer mer(pacifier) we TRY to only let her have it when in bed or for car rides. When I walk into her room in the morning, she throws it down in bed and says night night mer mer. And in the car as soon as we stop she hands it to me, here mama. Maybe by 3 it will be gone!


• She is an AWESOME sleeper, praise the Lord! When you live life as full as she does, you can only CRASH to get your energy back up!
• Enjoys art, mainly drawing on herself or any other object besides paper, but we are proud of her creative abilities to find all those amazing places to draw! ;)
• Can dress herself and is quite excited about that.
• Has a very strong opinion of what she wants and does not want.
• Is a HUGE daddy's girl. And Papa's girl.

Sage ChenYi Mae, my 2 year old. Delivered to us straight from the hands of a loving Father. A Father who loves her more. He made her for this family and she is more than we could have ever imagined. Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Fall Fun at Eckerts

A few weeks ago we had a perfect weekend to go to the pumpkin patch. We joined other Childrens Hope Families with beautiful fall weather. Everyone had a blast and Sage thought pumpkins were great fun!

Bye Bye Boring Blog!

After months of watching other bloggy friends get beautiful blog makeovers, I finally found someone to design mine for me. What do you think? Isn't it fun? I am loving it. If you want your own blog make-over click on her link to the side, the Blog Fairy. All the proceeds are going towards her son's adoption. And you all know how I love adoption!

Is This Normal?

If you know me, you know every change of season I am not fun to be around and all i do is complain about switching out closets. I HATE that job! We have decided to De junk our house, and we started with the clothes. I am a huge packrat, I won't deny it. i can look at an outfit that was Makennas as a baby and remember who gave it to me and why they gave it to me. So, I tend to hang on to everything. Well, it HAS to stop! Our storage is overflowing w/ clothes. I keep looking at those baby clothes and I just have a hard time letting go! And then the other bins, that will get used again, it is just a mess. So I bought me a fun little label maker and we pulled ALL the bins out of the basement and we worked away. We took lots of trashbags to the goodwill, and every box now has a label on it. The pictures above are when we were almost finished, I wish I had taken a before shot! Mark said in the middle of the mountains of clothes, can you imagine adding another set of clothes? I said, well we have every size for boy or girl, why not?

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Sage meets Annah!

Sweet Friends!

Abby and Lainey
Kylah(a spicy girl!) and Kenzie

Giving Kisses

Last weekend we were able to meet Annah! We just love seeing Kathy & her family and it was especially sweet to finally see Ms Annah Blu! Oh and she is a sweetie! She is 2 months younger than Sage, but quite a bit bigger. She looks so good and healthy! She and Sage had fun playing, and Malaine was in heaven having 3 girls her age to play with. The older 2 want to know when we are going to get adoption friends who have kids their age! ;)

All I want for Christmas?

Sawyer has had his front tooth hanging on by a thread for awhile now. He would not bob for apples at Trunk or Treat, for fear of losing it! (He swallowed one tooth at school last year, he will never forget that!) So yesterday he ran in, full of a bloody hand and his front tooth! He was counting down the minutes until bedtime so that he could slide that tooth under his pillow and wait for the tooth fairy. Bedtime came, we went to get the tooth that mommy had so carefully put into a small cup on the counter and it was GONE! Dad gets on these cleaning kicks every once in awhile and he just starts throwing away, does not look, just tosses. Of course he did not remember a little cup on the counter in his frenzy of cleaning. And I was NOT going to let my son go to bed w/ out that tooth under that pillow! So, we began to dig through the LARGE trash bag FULL of trash in the kitchen. Mark knew the odds were against him, and I could see him sweating! But praise the Lord, I FOUND the tooth! How, I am still not sure. You realize how tiny those teeth are when you are DIGGING through trash. So nasty. Mommy saves the day, and Sawyer is happy. Dad is happy to because he said if that tooth was lost, he knew he was going to get a mean blog all about him and never live it down in Sunday school class on Sunday. As if I am the type, ha!

Sawyer is hoping his second loose one will fall out so he can sing All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth!

The shirt says it ALL!!!

And if she was, I would be the one needing a rubber room!
Who me, I am a sweet Angel! Girls just want to have fun!

Well Mommy, you NEVER said only wash your hair IN the bathtub!

And bubbles in the sink are FUN! So is that squirty bottle of soap.

Ms Spice is wearing me out. Is it that I am older now? 4 children? Homeschooling? Or is it that she just truly is a Spicy girl? These are pictures from just this week. So far we

• jumped off a glass coffee table onto our booty.


• found soap and tried to wash our own hair.


• climbed up on the counter and took a dive into the bathtub during bath.


• climbed up on the bar stool and fell OVER the counter into the sink full of water, after squirting the Dawn all over her pants.

Mark and I go to bed at night and we just lay there and laugh, and PRAY that we (and she) will survive tomorrow. I really do watch my children by the way. But a mom does have to use the potty sometimes or help someone else go potty or well you know, just be a mom! If we could just lock her in a rubber room for the next year, life might be easier!

After telling my mom about Sage's hair washing episode, she says. "It is amazing, you did not give birth to her and she STILL has your genes!"