The girls do NOT like Santa or taking Christmas pictures

They were two separate incidents, but I think the picture says it all! :)

A few Thanksgiving recipes

Here are 3 of my MUST HAVES at Thanksgiving.

1) Cranberry Relish:
4 cups of fresh cranberries
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 cups of crushed pineapple DRAINED
1/4 cup of sugar

*taste test to see if another Tablespoon needs to be added the day of. 

Blend cranberries in a blender. Add other ingredients and blend. Chill and serve.

My notes: I recommend adding the lemon juice and sugar to the blended cranberries and then STIR in the pineapple so you have more texture.


2) Bobbi's Dressing:
Ingredients:
1/2 batch of crumbled cornbread (My fav. is Martha White Cornmeal mix - use recipie on back)Blue bag of Pepperidge Farm Bread crumbs (The actual name is "Herb Stuffing" - Here's a pic of it:
2 bunches of green onion
1/4 choppend yellow onion
3-4 stalks celery
1/4 cup butter
1 can cream of chicken soup
3 beaten eggs
salt and pepper
turkey drippings OR 2 cans chicken broth

In an iron skillet, melt butter. Chop and add veggies and saute. Pour into mixing bowl with stuffing mix and cornbread. Add chicken soup, salt, pepper, eggs. Stir. Add turkey drippings (or chicken broth). Mix. Add warm water if not moist and runny. Pour into baking dish. Sprinkle black pepper on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 45min-1hour.

Here is a picture of the dressing after it's been mixed:

Here is a picture of the dressing before it goes in the oven. I sprinkle a little pepper on top.

Who is Bobbi? Bobbi was my dad's mother. The oldest grandchild started calling her Bobbi and the name stuck. :) She died in 1997. This picture was taken in 1994 when I was in between my sophomore and junior year of college:

3) Sweet Potato Casserole:

Casserole Ingredients:
5-6 cups cooked sweet potatoes (mashed) - 3 cans of Bruce's yams drained and mashed work well.
1 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup margarine
2 beaten eggs
1 teas. vanilla
1/3 cup milk

Topping:
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans (or other nuts if you prefer)

Combine casserole ingredients and beat with a mixer. Put into a baking casserole dish (you'll see little slivers of butter throughout and that's ok)Combine topping ingredients. Sprinkle on top of casserole (it will look kind of dry but that's ok)Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Enjoy! :)

Rough day

Today was simply a hard day.
First, my keyboard on my laptop that is less than 6 months old will not allow me to type the letters m or n. I have no idea why. So I have to use the on-screen keyboard to type an m or n. I can't send it in to get fixed until I finish school in 23 days because I need it for school. *SIGH*
Second, I went to Wal-mart today to get ready for Thanksgiving. Silly me thought it would be worse to go tomorrow. Apparently everyone had the same idea. That would not have been so bad except I had to hear the comments about the girls and me trying to shop. To shop, I have to push the stroller with one hand and pull the cart with the other hand. It is VERY hard to manipulate the double stroller and the cart. It's even worse when it's crowded in a store. I am just going to be unbelievably blunt here. If you see a mom of twins with her hands full, it is NOT necessary to comment. Just keep your thoughts to yourself. Here is some of what I heard:
"Wow! You have your hands full!"
"OH! Double Trouble!" I hate that so I respond "Double Blessings!"
"You look like you need some help!" Then they walk away!!!
"Oh, that looks so hard!"
"You need someone to come with you to help you shop!"
Then there are the truly curious. I know the girls are facinating, but I REALLY don't have time to stop and chat with every person. It REALLY annoys me when someone stands in front of the stroller so I can't move while they admire. Again, it's sweet, but I am not exaggerating when I say at LEAST 20 people stopped me to talk today. I purchased about 9 bags of groceries. It took me over 2 hours.
Then it was time to leave but the line to check out was 20 minutes long. NOT fun!!!
I think the ultimate was in the parking lot. If you are clueless, it takes me a VERY long time to load and unload the car with the girls. Throw in groceries and it's at least a good 10 minutes. This lady decided she wanted my parking space. I'd be sympathetic but there was a space that was 2 spaces from mine, but it was further from the store. However, apparently my space was special so she waited. Today it was quite cold and windy so I started the van and heater first. Then I rolled the stroller to one side of the van and put one girl in. Then I rolled to the other side of the van and put the other girl in. Then I had to take down the stroller. All the while the lady is creeping closer and closer. Yeah, that will make me move faster. In the words of Doctor Phil "How's that workin' out for ya?" Then I had to unload the groceries. Then I had to put my cart somewhere. All the while traffic is backing up behind this woman because she didn't even have the courtesy to move her car to the side while she waited for my spot that was 2 spaces closer to the store. I finally get in the car and could barely pull out because she creeped up so much it was a tight fit!
The girls fell asleep on the way home because it was way past naptime. I realized that if they were going to get a decent nap then I couldn't get Andrew from school. I texted my sister and asked her to bring Andrew home. He has to go to after school care because her grade gets out later, but it was worth it for the girls to get a good nap.
During the nap I realize I forgot a few items and Leila seems to be getting a cold so I wanted to get some vapor steam for her room.
So the girls woke up and I was back for what was supposed to be a quick trip to get a few things from Sam's. Two hours later I was done and Leila managed to throw up all over herself and the stroller in the parking lot.
I am going to take a hot bath soon and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow is another day. :)

Andrew's Gotcha Day

Today is Andrew's Gotcha Day. Seven years ago today we saw and held Andrew for the first time. He was 10 days old.

We had been called the day before and told that we could pick him up the next evening. So, we didn't have much warning about him, but we were ready. I just felt this need a few months before to get ready. I guess it was the adoptive mother's version of nesting. :)

I won't go into the entire story as this is the internet but Andrew could tell you the entire story without leaving anything out like how Dad got a little lost, how we had been so nervous the whole day that we couldn't eat so we stopped at McDonald's on the way home and have a picture of Andrew in a snuggly being worn by Josh and Josh jokingly offering Andrew a french fry. We also stopped at Wal-mart when we got back to our town because I didn't realize that size 1 diapers were NOT the smallest so I needed newborn size and I had a whole roll of film from just that evening that needed to be developed! :) Here is our first family picture.

I'm not great at expressing myself with words, but I am so thankful that Andrew's birthmother chose us to be his parents. I'm thankful that both of his birthparents made the selfless choice to allow him to be adopted. We had the opportunity to meet with Andrew's birthmother on the night we picked him up. There isn't a Mother's Day that goes by that I don't think of her and hope she has peace in her heart for her decision. She gave us the greatest gift and I will always be grateful to her.

Andrew is a unique little boy that leaves me wondering how in the world will I be able to raise him successfully! :) He blows my mind with the way he thinks about issues and the way he solves problems. He loves the ladies and is quite charming. I often wonder what he'll be like in 15 years. I REALLY hope he doesn't break too many hearts and focuses on his studies in college first and foremost! :)

Andrew is a wonderful big brother and his sisters adore him. I think I'll be able to say that 15 years from now. I hope he'll help his dad keep the boys away from his sisters. :) I predict Andrew will be quite tall so he can stare the boys down while Dad cleans his weapons. :)

This was quite an emotional post for me. The amount of gratitude I feel for the opportunity I've been given to be Andrew's mother is overwhelming.

Happy Gotcha Day, dear Andrew. I love you very much!!!
Love,
Mom

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the past 7 years:

First Easter

The infamous "cheesey grin"

Hawaii

Easter Party on Base in Japan

Tokyo Disneyland

Halloween

Girls from Preschool

Gulf Shores

Utah (on the way to move to CA)

Monterey Bay, California

At a friend's ranch in California

Disneyland in California (I think we have a picture of him with EVERY princess!!!)

At school in Morocco

My little Jedi :)

Almost done with my Christmas shopping!!!

I only have to get Josh two more presents and I AM DONE!!!
Two years ago we started the tradition (suggested to me by a friend) of only receiving 3 presents. The wise men brought 3 presents so that should be enough.
So, Andrew gets 3, Leah gets 3, Leila gets 3, I get 3 and Josh gets 3. This really helps keep the spending under control as well as the chaos on Christmas day.
We are visiting Josh's family this year and he has 2 parents, 4 siblings, 1 sister in law and 4 neices. I got them all taken care of as well. That was tough since I haven't seen half of them in years!!!
I'm really excited about one present I got for Josh. I you want to see it, you'll have to e-mail me and I'll send a picture to you. You can also wait until Christmas. I'll try to remember to post it here. Some of you may have already seen it because I sent it to a few people out of excitement. :)

My bossy girls

We have a DVD cabinet that holds most of our DVDs. There are two doors to the cabinet and the girls quickly discovered how easy it was to open the cabinet and what fun it was to take the DVDs out. It seemed that the more that could hit the floor the happier they would be! :)
Needless to say, I didn't want to add "Pick up the DVDs" to my long list of things to do several times a day, so I started by saying "NO!" and pulling their hand off of the DVDs. At first they would slowly put their hands back on the DVDs to see what I would do. Of course, I would say "NO!" again. When they realized that I wasn't going to let them do this, they began to cry and cry and cry. It was like "How could you deprive your sweet little angels from the fun of pulling hundreds of DVDs onto the floor? What kind of mother are you? Don't you love us?"
Silly me thought that they would eventually give up but as the days passed the girls would constantly try to get the DVDs. If I was distracted, they would succeed. Otherwise, you heard me say "NO!" a LOT.
When Josh was visiting he asked me why I didn't put a child lock on the cabinet. Frankly, it's because the child lock is hard to operate for me so I didn't really WANT to do that. However, I gave in and put the lock on last week. The girls were devistated to discover that the cabinet was locked and soon seemed to forget about the cabinet's existence.
Yesterday Andrew wanted to watch a DVD but I couldn't get to the cabinet right away so he decided he would try to open the cabinet himself. Leila toddles over to Andrew and starts yelling "BO!!!" "BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" (She says "Bo!" instead of "No!") It was so funny. Then Leah toddles over and starts wagging her finger while Leila continued to fuss at Andrew by saying "Bo!" Fortunately, Andrew found it funny as well and eventually I got over to the cabinet to get the lock off for him.

I have to buy a new washer

I really shouldn't complain. We've bought the washer used right after we got married. It was kind of a funny story. I saw an add in the paper and called the guy (I still remember his name) and he explained that he had several washers and dryers. We went to his house and he took us through his house into his backyard. When we went through the living room, he had an altar set up with some trinkets (maybe statues? - I don't mean disrespect by using the wrong words) set up around the altar. He took us to backyard with a LOT of washer and dryers. So we picked a matching set that he had the receipt for and explained that it had been in storage for a few years. We were so dirt poor, we didn't care.
So he and some member of his congregation came and delivered our washer and dryer (we lived on the 2nd floor) and that was almost 11 years ago. When we moved to Japan we put our washer, dryer and other large items in storage that the Army paid for since washers, dryers and furniture was provided in base housing. We received the items back in California and they were badly damaged. Basically the movers didn't pack and stack our appliances correctly so our dryer was damaged beyond repair, our deep freeze was as well and our washer was missing knobs but it still worked! We got a very low amount of money for the damage so we bought a dryer and had to pay over $500 to have the damaged items hauled away because some contained chemicals so they had to be disposed of properly, etc.
When we went to Morocco we stored our items again and they survived. I kind of wanted a new washer to match my dryer but really couldn't justify spending the money on a new washer since the old one worked.
I noticed over the weekend that it wasn't transitioning to the different steps (rinse, spin, etc) without me manually turning the knob. Then yesterday afternoon I put a load in and later that night I went to put them in the dryer only to discover that the water was STILL running to rinse the clothes for the spin cycle. Fortunately, the water was draining out of the washer but unfortunately I wasted gallons of water on that load of laundry!!!
So, I get a new washer. I hate the timing of needing the new washer since Josh's plane tickets to come home for Thanksgiving were OUTRAGEOUS and Christmas is just around the corner. Oh well. Life goes on. :)
--Rachel

We have a diagnosis!

OK, I got off the phone less than an hour ago so for those who have been anxious to hear, here goes!

Leila has a mild Aortic Insufficiency (AI) due to a Bicuspid Aortic Valve and Atrial Septal Defect (ASD).

Here is a picture of a nomal valve (with 3 sections) above a Biscupid valve:

You can read about Biscuspid Aortic Valves here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007325.htm#Treatment

Here is a picture of what ASD looks like:

You can read more about ASD here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/18119.htm

The pediatric cardiologist comes to our hospital once a month so we'll see him on December 12th to discuss what we do. I'm still not too worried; just concerned.
I'm also thankful for AWESOME medical insurance!!!
I'll keep you all posted as I know more after December 12th!
--Rachel

New Toy, Misc. Pictures

Today is Leila's EKG. I figure she is going to be expected to sit a while so I decided to get her a new toy and not show it to her until we got to the hospital so she would hopefully devote her energy into the new toy. Last night as I was putting batteries in the toy I realized that the toy was full of magnets and may not be good for her to have around the equipment at the hospital. So, I put the toy on the fridge for them to discover this morning.
Leah found it first and came over to me and smiled and looked at the toy and did this sort of squat and looked at me again. I told her "Go ahead!" and went over to show her how to switch the animal pieces, etc. Then Leila quickly joined in and I started shooting pictures.
Leah shows her happiness with her new toy:


Leah and Leila playing together with their new toy:


They are playing so nicely together:


Uh, Leila, don't take it off of the fridge . . .


Leila, where are you going? Leah is getting upset!


What I didn't capture on camera was the fight that occured and me trying to break it up. Ah, the joy of twins! :)

Here are a few pictures from the Zoo Boo that we went to that I forgot to post. I liked Leila's smile b/c it's hard to get her to smile for the camera.


Andrew went as a Jedi for Zoo Boo:

You are being watched if you are visiting our blog

Recently we have had some friends who have experienced harassment from their blogs. One is a couple waiting to adopt and some anti-adoption groups sent harassing e-mails and comments because they feel that a child is better off dead than adopted. That's the beauty of our wonderful country, we have the opportunity to express our opinions. In this group's defense, they are mostly comprised of those who were adopted into bad situations. I truly hate that they were not treated the way that they deserved. However, efforts have been made with laws and policies to protect children from ending up into families who will mistreat them. I'm sure it isn't perfect, but I do believe that now the majority of children adopted are in good, loving homes. In case you've been living under a rock or something, we are pro-adoption. :)

Another is a military family and their harassment has come from anti-military or maybe anti-war people. Again, under that rock? We are a military family. I will not turn my family blog into a political and world issues discussion so I will not state my stance on the war but I will say this: My husband took an oath to serve his country and to follow orders of his leader and that is what he'll do.

That all being said, I feel it is best to add some protective measures to my blog. I REALLY don't want to close my blog off unless you have received a personal e-mail invitation from us. I have no problem with those who are curious about adoption or whatever to read our blog and learn more from our experiences.

So I have decided to place a monitor on my blog that tells me the location (down to your city) of every person who comes to our blog. It also records your IP address which is a unique code to your computer. Did you know your IP address is on every e-mail you send? One more way to identify who comes here. I do not plan to do anything with this information unless I need to based on any type of harassment. I have absolutely no problem contacting the FBI and giving them your information if you choose not to play nice on here.

So, play nice!!! If you don't agree with adoption or the military or anything else that is a part of our lives, there are hundreds of thousands of other blogs you can go read. More than likely the majority of them have more exciting lives anyway!!! There is no need to threaten or harass those who have different opinions than you. Sorry to sound so defensive, etc. but I REALLY don't want to shut down my blog or make it where only those who are personally invited by me can read it.

I promise a much lighter post next time. :) I think the girl have a surprise for me in their diaper now. Oh joy!
--Rachel

Leila has an appointment

Her EKG is Thursday afternoon. I've been told that it will be a few days before we get the results. Keep her in your prayers!
--Rachel

Crazy day!

The movers brought all 238 boxes of our stuff from Morocco. So far it looks like it survived the trip! I managed to get the kitchen almost completely unpacked. My room is full of boxes so I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight! :) There are a LOT of boxes in the carport because my house here is sooooooooooooo much smaller than some of my more recent houses. A friend took the girls this morning while everything was dropped off and she was worried about someone stealing my things out of the carport. These are things like our Christmas trees, sporting equipment, etc. If they want it, they can have it! :) I'll get it all put away soon enough. :)
I plan to have a garage sale in December to unload a LOT of things.
There has been a recall in my computer. Sony sent me a notice about it. Apparently something was put in wrong and it can cause certain models to overheat. So, over a month ago I scheduled the first available appointment (today from 8 to noon). The guy called and said he would come this afternoon. *SIGH* So much for 8 to noon! He arrived and smelled HORRIBLE! Part of it was cheap cigarettes but part of it was some other foul odor. The guy smelled so badly that my house still smelled after he left! I aired out the house and Sony contacted me about filling out a satisfaction survey. I feel badly that his boss will have to tell him that he's the smelly guy but oh well! :)

No word yet about Leila. I'll post here as soon as I know. I'm not worried, just concerned.
--Rachel