Halloween 2013

For the 3rd year now we have had our dear friends, the Fosters, celebrate Halloween with us. Their son Nicholas is beloved by our clan. We also added the Edingtons to our party this year. So. Much. Fun. It rained though and by the end of the evening we had our minivan full of 6 adults, 5 children and a stroller.  (We took out all the seats.) Eden enjoyed having me take her picture, hence the many photos shown here. Yaya discovered her fondness for Hershey bars. Playing the Wii, was just as fun as “trick or treating” for Noah and Nicholas. Much fun was had by all.

Parades, Pumpkins, & Parties

Parade!

This was a big day for the for the girls at their preschool! It was the Halloween Parade! Sporting their favorite costumes all the children paraded around the parking lot twice. While waiting for the parade to begin, Mommy, Daddy, and Noah discussed if the girls would actually continue the parade route after spotting us. We waited. We wondered. We wowed! Spying us first, Yaya broke ranks and ran to Daddy. However, Ms. Mary her teacher, called her back to the line and she happily went. Eden seemed anxious and didn’t like the sun in her eyes, but she had a smile on her face. Slowly shuffling around the parking lot the entire school was decked out and looked amazing. We were extremely proud of the girls.

Pumpkins!

Bling’ing out your pumpkin is super fun! Just ask my girls. The top two pumpkins (Eden’s then Yaya’s) were made at preschool. I had thought we would carve our family pumpkins like normal. Interestingly, we did not. Favoring glue and hands on activity the girls instead “decorated” their own pumpkins. We bought a bunch of gems and googlie eyes and masterpieces were created. Yaya’s is the middle row and Eden’s is the bottom. Noah bought a pumpkin but did nothing with it. Pumpkins have never really been his thing. Viva la BLING!

Preschool Party!

Partying preschool style! We had a fun time at the girls Halloween party. The room was decorated so cute, the green and purple spiders you see with the girls names on them were on the door, each child had a spider they made. Amazing is a good word to describe the room moms who went all out for this party. Check out the mummy juice boxes and the owl marshmallow graham cracker treats. Noah was able to come with me and help out with the girls. Thankful for the help, I let him craft with Yaya and then eat all her party food. Pictures had to be taken with favorite friends. The opposite page top left is Eden with Chase. Top right is Yaya with Natalie. Bottom left is Eden with Natalie (she is a popular friend, clearly). Bottom right is Yaya with Addison. While I didn’t take a picture of them, the girls were given Halloween themed canvas bags with their names on them, which were made by another mom. It was good they had them because the amount of candy that was sent in was unreal. The girls loved having Noah and I celebrate with them and we all had a fun time together. Halloween 2013

First World Family

Okay so this was an interesting adventure in to materialism today. I took my three children in to Toys R Us and told them to take off the shelf whatever they wanted and I’d take a picture of it. They knew that we weren’t buying ANY of it nor were we ever going to buy all of it. Eden was shopping for both Birthday and Christmas, Noah was only Christmas and we aren’t sure what Yaya was doing or why she picked up several things, likely they were green. She didn’t get into the whole “take a picture of me with a toy idea” until the very end of the trip…hence her lack of pictures. It was not for her lack of want I assure you. I somewhat cringe to post this since it is sooooooo FIRST WORLD,  but considering the amount of toys in that wretched store, I’m fairly impressed the demand wasn’t higher.  I was really amused at what they all gravitated to. Eden is very girlie, but she wants art and spy stuff too. Noah is all boy but he is fairly focused on only a few product lines. Shockingly Yaya was most interested in the stuffed animals, but otherwise is all over the board and has no clue what she is doing at a toy store.  Here is what they came up with.

Halloween Parade!

Yaya is Princess Tiana from the Frog Princess…she has never seen the movie, she simply loves green. Eden is Doc McStuffins! So proud of both my girls for bravely parading around yesterday!

Krispy Kreme Makes Everyone Happy

Spontaneous trip to Krispy Kreme! Walking into the building, the children decided we all had to hold hands forming a circle to walk in. I’m not sure why, but it lent to the togetherness feel of the day. Once inside, pandemonium ensued. It was all I could do to order 4 doughnuts, 3 waters and get the kids to sit at a table. There is just something magical about the doughnut conveyor belt system, you just must press your face against the glass and drool...I mean watch.

EVERYONE wore hats.
EVERYONE ate doughnuts.
EVERYONE had a great time.
TWO little girls had: “post sugar rush let down.”

17 Months Post Gotcha Day…How Are Things REALLY?

Friends, it has been a long 17 months. I can’t remember our old “normal” anymore. I don’t know what new “normal'” actually looks like either; but I am getting glimpses of it and it is GRAND! It is with a lighter heart that I blog today because, by in large things are actually going well for the Williamsons. God has walked with us through the fire and led us out. Sure, we still have our fiery days, we always will I believe, however, we are better equipped to handle them now 17 months later. I read a blog the other day by Jen the Hatmaker, she is brilliant. It talked about this very thing and how a year and a half later life was just as hard as the first 6 months home, but in different ways. I totally agree. It is just as hard, but now I have tools to help navigate these difficult times. Our family has been blessed with so many amazing professionals that have worked so hard on behalf of our daughters and son and have trained us how to best parent them. I don’t know where we would be without these amazing ladies.

We have had many victories here in 2013:

1. Successfully repaired Yaya’s palate,
2. Got Yaya to eat solid foods,
3. Won Eden back to being the affectionate little girl she used to be, 
4. Started speech and are seeing great progress in communication,
5. No more diapers!
6. Both girls are happily in preschool,
7. Found a fantastic church in our neighborhood,
8. All children are happily in church classes and Eric and I get to worship,
9. Noah started and loves homeschool,
10. God has done a huge sanctifying work in Mama’s life,
11. Yaya and Noah both are in their own beds upstairs!
12. We have reclaimed our marriage (cross reference back to: no more kids in our bedroom at night!)

There is a list of just a dozen wonderful things God has brought to our family. Yaya is really doing well, she is back in a season of anxiousness, most of which we believe is related to starting preschool. She loves preschool mind you, but it is still stressful for her. Also, with Eric haven been on furlough (thanks Congress and Obama) he is home and Mama had to go back to work.  I was gone a lot. This has been hard on all the children, especially Eden. We are seeing some anger out of her again but it isn’t anything we can’t manage. Noah doesn’t work as well with Eric in the homeschool arena but they are worked it out and I believe they  found a way to do school “cool”. I missed being at home with Noah and doing homeschool with him.  Praise the Lord for homeschool though, it is such a gift to our family, especially during the time of uncertainty with Eric’s job.

As we enter the fall season, we know life will settle back down as Eric has returned to work and I have return home. We are in a complicated season, but it is filled with much more joy, freedom and hope than ever before. Keep us in your prayers and God continues to mold and shape the hearts of our family, making us into the people he created us to be, to serve him, serve others and give him all the glory.

BMX Track

Riding a bicycle is a fairly new thing for Noah. He has known for several years how to “ride”, but it has only been in our driveway or on a flat asphalt track at a local school. Increasingly, Noah can be found on his bike. So I decided it was time to take him “off-roading”! Last Monday we got up early and did our homeschool work. Around 10:30 a.m. Eric loaded up bikes for the three of us and we headed to a local state park which had a BMX track. Oh glorious day, oh glorious day! It was beautiful! We got there and excitement was in the air, and then Noah saw the track and it morphed into abject fear. However, to his credit he road the entire course. The beginning of the track has a lot of high step hills. We took those slowly. Nearing the end of the track there are little hills, reminding me of that old school green corrugated roofing. Noah enjoyed those immensely! We never “got any air” but we sure had fun. Eric only ran off the course into a fence one time and I only rammed  the top of a hill with my pedal twice, not resulting in any embarrassing off-roading. After riding the last half of the track a million times, we took a  ride on the big road that encircles the track. Skidding perfectly, about 9 feet to a halt next to me, Noah grinned like a Cheshire cat, so proud of himself. Shaking my head and smiling back, I responded. “Cool, Noah. That was awesome!” And it was indeed.