Fall Break

We were on fall break last week, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed every bit of it. Several people I know traveled to either the beach or the mountains, and I have to admit I was a wee bit jealous of them at the beginning of the week. Mr. P (I still call him that even though the blog has changed, I'll come up with a new nickname sometime.) is on a big project right now so he could only take Monday off of work. But I ended up enjoying the down time, and I was glad that we stayed at home. We managed to stay pretty busy, so here's a recap of our week. I've tried to do some collage pics to keep this from being a total photo unload. 

We started our fall break off by spending last weekend at Jellystone Mammoth Cave. I've blogged about this park before, but I'll say it again-this is an awesome family park. If you live anywhere near this area, I highly recommend it. They have themed weekends each week from March until the end of October, and we usually go 3-4 times a year. This past weekend was the start of their Fall Festival weekends, which run until the end of the month. They had hayrides, visiting the pumpkin patch, painting your pumpkin, a costume contest, trick or treating (at over 300 campsites/cabins!), and karaoke. In addition, they have putt putt golf, basketball, a jumping pillow, two playgrounds, and a huge field to play football and other games in. They also have two pools and some water slides, but it was too cold for them this past weekend. We usually only camp with one other family, but every year for the past 4 years our Fall Festival weekend group has grown. This year, we had 6 families and 19 kids, including Mr. P's sister and her family. So much fun! Saturday was cold and rainy, but we managed to do most of the activities anyway. Sunday was a beautiful day, so we spent as much time as we could at the playground, playing basketball, riding bikes, and more. I was glad the weather cleared off after Saturday because we stayed an extra night at Jellystone and came home on Monday.

Tuesday was my birthday, and even though Mr. P had to work he made sure that I would have a special day. He had his mother to watch the girls for part of the day, and arranged for a spa day for me. Such a sweet guy! So I got some much-needed "me time" during the day, then we grilled steaks and enjoyed birthday cake as a family. It made turning 45 very painless! ; )

Wednesday was our first Gotcha Day. Mr. P was of course working, but I wanted to make it a special day for the girls and me. I decided to take them to Bowling Green to the train museum so they could learn about some of their ancestors. My grandaddy, great-grandaddy, and several uncles worked for the L & N railroad, which is featured at the train museum. I made my homemade lasagna for our celebratory dinner that night.

Thursday was another beautiful day, and we needed to scoot out of the house while my trusty housecleaners came to work their magic. So we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to one of our local parks. We ate lunch under the trees, explored the historical school house and residence, then spent some time at the playground before heading home.

Friday was a cloudy, rainy day so we decided to make that our stay-in day. I caught up on laundry, redid my blog, did my meal planning for the upcoming week, and made out my grocery list for Saturday. We had make-your-own-pizzas for dinner and watched a movie on Netflix. Little A made a traditional pepperoni pizza, Little A made pepperoni-onion-bacon (yuck!), Mr. P made an "all the meats" pizza, and I did chicken-bacon-alfredo with veggies.

Saturday morning was soccer, followed by lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Saturday afternoon, Mr. P took the girls to a church function for a little while and I did some grocery shopping.

Today our  minister was out, so Mr. P, being a lay speaker for the church, delivered the sermon. I think it was his best sermon yet, and I was so proud of him. I am so thankful to have him in my life.

Well that's all the news that fit to print from our house! Mr. P and I are sitting here eating the last of my birthday cake. It's a good thing that it's all gone now because I have to get back to healthy eating tomorrow. I've had a little too much food in the past week, but it was my birthday week after all! Tomorrow starts back with school, dance, soccer, tumbling, and everything else. Have a great week!

Blessings,

MB

New Name, New Attitude??

So, it's been a while since I've posted, right? I could say that life just got in the way, jobs and kids and church and soccer and dance all those other things took precedence over my poor little blog, but there are lots of bloggers out there whose lives are just as busy (or busier) than mine and they still manage to blog regularly. I know they are out there because I read their blogs and tell myself that if they can do, why can't I? So here I am, trying this blogging thing again.

I'll do some catch up posts later on but the biggest change in our lives has been the adoption of our girls, and what a glorious day it was!! We adopted on October 7, 2014 so we just celebrated our one year Gotcha Day this week. 

And as you can see, we had quite the group of family and friends to help us celebrate. In fact, when we were walking into the courtroom, I heard the judge say, "Are all these people here for the adoption?"  Lol

And a few weeks later, my mom's family had a big "Welcome to the Family" Party for my girls. It was so sweet. This is one of my favorite pictures of them, taken at the party.

You'll notice that I changed the name of the blog to Blessings and Raindrops. I thought long and hard about what I wanted the new name to be. It definitely didn't need to be the Pink Putter anymore as I haven't had a putter or any golf club of any kind in my hand for a long time, but I wanted it to reflect my life now. My life is different now, so I"m sure my posts will be a little different too. It is still going to be a mishmash of clothing, home stuff, and cooking but I also want to add in some devotionals and testimonials on my relationship with God. So for my blog to reflect that, I turned to something I love, music. One of my favorite songs is "Blessings" by Laura Story, and the chorus goes 

'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We certainly experienced our share of raindrops in our journey to get our girls. It was so incredibly hard, harder than I ever imagined it would be. I had what felt like a thousand sleepless nights, but actually it was 847 nights from the day they came to live with us until the day we went to adoption court. And although life has gotten much much easier since the adoption, we've also had some challenges in other parts of our life. But if our journey taught me anything, it was to keep moving forward no matter what happens. And after the storm that we went through on our journey, other things now just seem like a passing shower! 

Stay tuned for further updates on our life...I have lots of things to share! You might even get a second post this evening : ) Right now, I'm going to sign off and head to the kitchen. We are having make-your-own pizzas for dinner tonight, so I need to get the ingredients ready for that. The girls are very excited about it, and some of the combinations that they've come up with sound...um...interesting to say the least. We'll see how it turns out! 

Blessings,

MB