the Life of Olena

Jason railing project...we still need to paint the deck once the weather improves. It reminds me a huge play pen when the gates are closed :) What we call the "good side" of the yard. We don't allow the dogs on this side. This is so that Olena can play safely and we don't have to worry about any "accidents" with the dogs...we love and trust our dogs completely however, they are pit bulls and dogs can be aggressive, we take ALL necessary precautions and Olena and the dogs are NEVER left alone together. Having separate sides of the yard is great! A shot of the "good side" the "bad side" or the aka "dog kennel". We use to have 3 beautiful Lilac bushes in the big dirt spot but we had to pull them up last year. The dogs chewed them to death.... literally

Laney, the middle "child" Mugsy, J's dog, the big goof. I call him "Moo" because he reminds me of a baby cow! Luther, the old man of the house....mama's boy too. He is also known at Bubba! This is the best dog anyone has ever known. He has so much personality and everyone who meets him can't help to fall in love!

Going to a wedding with Nina and Dadu (my mom and dad) Nina and Olena looking pretty! Could those brown eyes be any bigger??

Well this is my third time having to write this posting because for some reason this computer is acting wacky...sorry to make you have to suffer but I am not going to sit here again and type out 3 paragraphs of stuff so I am just going to bullet point everything I touched on in my previous attempts. As of 2 weeks ago I have lost a total of 36lbs since my surgery (Feb 11) I have lost approx another 5-6 lbs since that appt (my scale doesn't work properly to be accurate. I have had the band filled twice, and I now have a total of 3 cc's in the band It was filled using a 6 inch needle jabbed into my stomach, into the port of the band which is sewn under my skin. Olena still cannot ride her bike that the Easter Bunny brought, I even bought a tricycle for her to try and learn on. No luck! Any Ideas??? J and I did our part to boost the economy and used our stimulus check on 2 new Schwinn bikes and a bike trailer for Olena to ride in. Our bikes are COOL -- they are the old styl

Well the title says it all. We have been very busy around here and I haven't had much computer time at all. Now I am sitting here with my list of things to do and I am frantically speeding my way through everything because is is quarter after 6 and we still have to eat dinner, clean up, go for a family bike ride, and have some reading time so a busy night still lies ahead. Lets see what can I bring you up to date with....since my last post we have tackle a few of the home renovations projects. One being our deck. We have small deck off the back of our house and the railing need to be replaced badly. To save money we opted for an aluminum railing. Which we were going to buy at Lowes - but while tackling another project - we discovered we could replace the deck railing and only spend about 5 bucks. We had an aluminum pool deck that we were going to scrap but it seems that the railing on the pool deck, fit our porch deck perfectly. Jason did a great job and putting it all together. I

When Jason and I started our adoption, I never in my heart felt that I needed to know any information about my soon to be daughters birth family. In fact, I was somewhat against if. At the time I thought there was no reason for it. I was now her mother, and she had a new family and a new life. I have touched on this subject a few times in the old blog so I won’t elaborate much, but as most of you know, my feelings about this changed dramatically after meeting Olena. I am now actually somewhat embarrassed about my selfish and shallow thinking. After bringing this little girl into our lives, I found that I was often thinking about her birth family. Who did she get those huge brown eyes from? does her passion for singing come from one of her birth parents? What does her brother look like? These are only a fraction of the many questions that had crossed my mind the winter of 2006/07. We have always known from the very beginning that she had an older brother. During our appointment we given