What $122 buys you

1000 adoption business cards from spacesforfaces.com:

 and a blog book from blog2print.com:

 table of contents:

 Posts from when I started the blog in November 2008 through the end of 2010:
  

The book ended up being 210 pages long. For those interested in making their own it cost $77 after coupon code. I signed up with the website a few months ago and they recently sent me a 15% off coupon so I decided to go for it. I'm quite pleased with the results, and happy to have a hard copy of the blog. It's fun looking at it with Gavin too.

What a handsome boy

I got Gavin to pose for some pictures today wearing his new suit. He was suprisingly cooperative, and seemed to think it was fun running to different spots to take the pictures.

Last Friday

Last Friday was a family work day. We spent about 6 hours finishing up cleaning out the flower beds. We still have to put down new landscaping fabric and pine straw. It was a pretty hot day, getting into the 80's. At one point Jake got the water gun out to help us all cool down.

 

Last Wednesday

Remember the shiny new wheelbarrow Gavin got for his birthday? It's still shiny and new because Gavin would rather...

...play with a diet coke box:

 while I cleaned out this portion of the flower beds: 

 We then moved to the backyard where Gavin did actually use his wheelbarrow a little. His favorite thing to do in the backyard is play in the dirt patch left when our septic tank was pumped:

 Most of Gavin's socks are stained with red clay now. I soak and bleach but the stains remain. This day for some reason Gavin took his shoes off while playing in the dirt. I figured these socks were a lost cause and threw them in the trash:



My thought process

So I was uploading pictures to do a new post, and I got a message saying I have used my free 1 GB of space and I would need to purchase more space if I wanted to post more pictures. So my immediate thought is to just make a new blog. That would be free. Then I remembered I just bought 1000 business cards for our adoption stuff that have this website listed on the back. And this site is also on our adoption page through LDSFS, which is a pain to get changed. So I'm going to just suck it up and pay the $5 a year to get more storage. But I'm not happy about it. And after we adopt again I'll probably be starting a new (free to me) blog.

I hate my camera

I hate my camera. It can take really good pictures when the lighting is right, but in dim light or when the flash is needed the pictures kinda suck. And are blurry.

Gavin woke up with a little bit of a cold or allergies this morning, so he wasn't feeling too great and took an unusual 2 hour nap this afternoon.

Then we went outside and I finished cleaning out all the wood chips and leaves and such out of this flower bed. It became clear as I was doing so that the previous owners had never cleaned anything out of it, they just added more wood chips over the debris. I even found a rusty tire iron under the bush. I started cleaning the bed on Saturday, and it took about 3 hours total.

We were outside playing until after 7 tonight. Spring in Georgia is awesome. Then Gavin chased "bad guys" for awhile with his bow and arrow. He came up with that himself, I never really looked at a clothes hanger and considered it could be used as a weapon.

Castle building

Today Gavin got his first issue of Lego magazine (it's free):

He saw the pages with the pictures of what kids have made with their blocks and of course wanted to get his blocks out. He wanted to make this castle:

He made this all by himself, and I think he did a great job:

Help us please!

Friends and family,


We have finished our adoption homestudy at our new house and are ready to find our next child, but we need your help! Many times people who adopt are placed with babies found through a friend or family member. Please refer anyone who may be able to help us find our next baby to our online profile:

https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/16731488/ourMessage.jsf

There's also a link on the right side of our blog.

If for some reason this link doesn't work, go to www.itsaboutlove.org, click on "view adopting family profiles" on the left side of the screen, and search for us by the names "Jake" and "Kelly" at the bottom of the screen under "find a profile."

Thanks!