Home Sweet Home

Nothing quite like being home with family. As much as I love Oklahoma, it is hard to be away from family, especially from my sweet nephews and niece. Babies change so quickly and that is definitely the case with Miss Quinlan. She was just 5 months old at Christmastime and now at 9 months, she is crawling and jabbering away. Even though it was a chilly few hours at the Bona game, it was so fun to see these sweet kiddos and of course watch Thad play! It was too cold to take lots of pictures, but I did grab my camera from the car for a few shots.

You can't go to a baseball game without your glove!

I love this picture of Micah and Landon with Thad at bat in the background.

They rolled down this hill probably 25 times. It was making me dizzy just watching them!

It's also super fun dropping rocks down the drain. This kept them entertained for quite a while. Between this and rolling down the hill, they were happy.

Sweet baby girl!

My time in NY always goes way too fast. Soaking up every minute I can!

What I've Been Up To

Fall is almost here! Although it may not feel like it yet here in Oklahoma (the temps have still been in the low to mid 90's!), but it has been cooling down at night and in the mornings, which has been wonderful! There is something so refreshing about sitting on my porch on a cool morning with coffee in hand, preparing for the day.

 

Once in a while, I need to reflect on all that has happened in the last year. I am continually blown away by all that the Lord has done! It has not been easy but has been so worth it. I am so thankful for the four months I had in New York with my family last summer/fall after moving back to the U.S. Once my job fell into place, the pace of life picked up immensely! That was one thing that the Lord kept laying on my heart last summer and He sure was right!

 

My summer started off on June 19th, when I hopped back on a plane and flew back to the other side of the world for two weeks to co-lead Dillon's family tour. What a blast! If you missed my posts from that trip, you can find them in the archives for June and July. I landed back on U.S. soil on the 4th of July and then hit the ground running, again. Kiah spent a week with me here and then mid July, we flew to NY for me to spend 10 days with my family.

 

I am so thankful that I was able to spend time with my two nephews and meet my new niece!

 

 

Meeting Quinlan Grace for the first time, what a sweetheart! I love where I live but it is hard being so far away from family and watching these sweet kids grow up.

 

Sleeping angel. As much as I love my nephews, so exciting to add another little girl to this family!

 

My Mom, Kiah, and I thought we'd give my sister-in-law, a little beak, and took my nephews to the local park to run off some energy.

I love this picture of Landon. Once he was up on the monkey bars, he wasn't quite so sure!

 

Who knew that it would be so hard to get one good picture with these two silly boys. See the outtakes below...

 

 

 

Back to Oklahoma the end of July and right back into the swing of things at work. My newest role is Program Director of our Open Options program. This is a program that is unique to Dillon and I absolutely love it! Many families may have a country in mind when they start the adoption process, but others know that they want to adopt, just don't know where from! This program is a way for them to start the paperwork process, but not make a decision right away. There are a few ways that a family can decide on a country.

 

a) They can make a choice on their own and officially switch.

 

b) They can wait until we receive referrals and if we have a child that would be a good match for them, then they would switch.

 

I only have about 9 families in the program right now, but hoping that it will grow in the coming months. Here is a short informational video we filmed for our website. I can't say that I am too thrilled watching myself, but it does tell you more about the program.

Happy Saturday!

{Sunday Snapshot} Fun in the Sun

 Hard to believe that the end of summer is upon us. To me, Labor Day ends summer. And tomorrow is Labor Day. It's time to head back to school and get into "fall mode." For me? Well I'm still here.... my summer isn't quite ending I guess! This summer has been wonderful. Even though I missed half of it, the second half has been great. I have spent lot's of time outside and at the pool. Yesterday, my brother, sister-in-law, and nephews came down for one last trip to the pool. 

Happy Labor Day 2014, everyone!

A Summer Party

Well... I had my DSLR camera back for a few hours yesterday to snap a few pictures of the big summer birthday party before it was sent off to the Canon Repair Center again for the THIRD time to be fixed. *Sigh* Hopefully one of these days they will actually fix it so I don't have to edit out those little black dots you'll notice in some of my pictures. Obviously I am tired of editing them out and so I just left them this time. 

Anyways, enough of my frustration about that. Last night we were able to have us all together including my aunt, uncle, cousin, grandma, nephews, brothers, the whole gang to celebrate my brother, Asa's, 23rd birthday (which was August 1st) and my nephew, Landon's, 5th birthday (which was July 11th, while I was still in China with my mom and Kiah). We had gorgeous weather and it was so wonderful to have everyone together for an evening of celebration. 

A summer evening at the Johnson's would not be complete without a little baseball. Obviously Micah loved it.

As did Landon!

The birthday boys: Asa and Landon. 

Landon decided to be a little ham for the camera, which I didn't mind.

Our neighbors who farm the fields next to our house, decided to do some work last evening. Tage and Landon were so cute sitting out on the grass, watching the tractor. I'm sure I'll have a separate post with all the cute pictures I snapped of the two of them.

Grandma or "bama" and Micah. I asked Micah, "can you look at the camera for Aunt Anneli?"

His response? "No." So there you have it. It's still a cute picture, even if he's not looking.

Present time!

And of course a birthday party is not complete without one of Grandma Rich's famous cakes.

The evening came to an end while sitting out by our new fire pit that Tage built. Having campfires is one of the things I have been looking forward to all summer. Nothing quite like a chilly, summer evening in western NY, sitting by a camp fire, roasting s'mores. Unfortunately I was too full from the pizza, chicken wing dip, veggies, and cake to eat any s'mores. I guess we'll have to do it again sometime soon. 

Landon has been anticipating this party ever since we arrived home from China. He already had a party on his actual birthday, but we wanted to do something when all of us were home. I hope it was worth the wait!