A year ago this morning...

First visit with Brayden a year ago
today, wow between the pouty face
and the fact that he WOULD NOT
look at me, it was obvious he didn't remember a thing!! Does anyone else remember that we FORGOT
the camera cable?? These pics
were never posted, I had to take

them out of video this morning, had
to find the tape first!

A year ago tonight...

We were somewhere over something on our way to Frankfurt in Route to Omsk. Hard to believe that its been that long ago already. I don't even really remember how it feels to be jetlagged, but I do know how it feels to be "mama tired"!! We are going to have a celebratory weekend, as Sat is the mark of Court and final custody. More pics later as its already late tonight. But wanted to mark the date and time as a good memory!! I believe I watched Walk the Line and a cartoon movie on the airplane that night since sleep was VERY far from my mind!!

Big boots by popular demand!!

summer clearance

I have been enjoying the summer clearance for clothes for next year. Brayden had his Hep A shot on Tues the 7th, he did soooo good no crying or anything, so when we went shopping we found this hat. Actually we bought a different hat that had cars on it, when we found out they were on clearance, well we had to have the tigger hat too. It says "Away we go" on the back. The pooh hat has been relegated to the shop as its looking worn and dingy, now we have two new hats to wear to town and such.

A year ago

A year ago today, we were madly packing and trying to make sure everything was done and ready for us to be gone for a month. The crib was up and blankets in it and ready, clothes of all sizes were in the chest. We were ready to bring our little boy home to stay. Now after a year, we have changed out the clothes in the chest several times, from 12 mo to 2T, thats lots of sizes. On any given day there are toys scattered all over the house and yard. It truly has tons of evidence of a very active and happy toddler. The changes of the last year have been huge, tons of fun, full of challenge, never ending, and very appreciated. This has been just what we needed to show us the real meaning of life. We have become less selfish, lots less self centered, now we are Brayden centered. In reflection, all the hard work, stress over paperwork, stress in waiting, heartache in waiting, all was WORTH it in the end. We are so grateful in so many ways for the blessing this little boy has brought into our lives. I know that these feelings are also felt by those around us.

corn on cob means spitting some...

First jelly donut - deprivation!!!

Blowing good time - dry ice

First corn on the cob

Well he likes it, its fun to play with, its good to eat, only thing is...he doesn't chew it up very well. It makes for interesting potty time!!

Casper trip

yup we went back to Casper to meet my friend Jen and her daughter. We had a lovely day, caught up on lots of stuff. I enjoyed meeting her little girl, Megan is 6 now, I hadn't ever seen her before, what a lovely little girl. Granny and Papa went with us, so we were a car full and full of fun too. We all got to do our shopping and stuff. Brayden missed his nap, but got one on the way home, so we all survived rather nicely. The mall has this awesome play area, some of you have seen it. The play stuff is very spongy as is the floor. The kids go barefoot or stocking footed to play there, bare feet gives them grip to climb on the stuff. It has tunnels, bridges and lots of other fun stuff to climb on. As you can see, there is room for Papa and Daddy to watch as well as anyone else interested!!

just a FROG!!

We have had some rain the last couple of weeks, one morning when daddy was coming back in for breakfast...he brought this frog. Guess its a leopard frog, not a toad, long legs and all. This little guy stuck around for several days and endured a cat attack, and Brayden stepping on him. Don't know what ever happened to him, but he left, not wet enough now.

The best it got

With the wind there was no chance of the balloon glow, but the fires were neat just the same...perhaps another time, altho Grandma said she has never seen a balloon glow here. Trust Wyoming weather to not allow pretty things like glows.

a car just my size

See it fits him just right, but alas its not ours...was fun to look at though. He ran his hands over the top of the door and down the back window and onto the trunk. Just enjoying touching it, looking in the window etc. Tons of kids prints on the windows of this one!!

ITS ALL MINE... right??

This was the mystery bike of the evening, I would say he wanted a ride...just to be allowed to sit on it would have been a hit, but wouldn't have ended there!

Tweety

Here you can see it better. It also had a stuffed tweety in the back window.

Mystery car of the night

This is a true race car from Torrington Wyoming. Notice the tweety bird on the hood...

Cars and Balloons

Last night was the old car and bike cruise and the balloon glow on main street. We thought it would be fun to show Brayden a hot air balloon as well as all the cars and bikes. It was HOT, but we had a nice time. Grandma Donnabelle came along on this little excursion too. Brayden was not impressed with pizza, he just doesn't like it very good. Had to feed him with stuff I brought along in case...anyway, during supper we watched the cars and bikes go by in relative coolness. After we finished with our meal, taking our time aware of how hot it was going to be, we headed up to main to find a parking space. Had to walk a couple of blocks to get to main, but not too bad. The old cars were pretty neat, some newer cars we even neater. There was a new Lotus there, BMW diamond edition, and a Tahoe extreme upgraded edition. Of course the regular old timer cars, some old vetts and mustangs etc. The bikes were neat too if you could brave the "biker" crowd to get near them. They were parked right by a bar of course, so not really a kid friendly atmosphere. We didn't stay on that side street very long, but our adoption attorney was over with his bike, so we wanted to see it!! They were having "creeper races", bikes in lanes reved up real good, but racing to see who could go the SLOWEST. A real NOISY situation. Right before that street there was the burnout contest. Brayden was NOT impressed with the burnout or the creeper races, much to noisy and the smoke was awful. Grandma and I took Brayden and let daddy watch the creeper races. We went on down the street and then came back on the other side to the mister and kids play area. Brayden got a few minutes in a blowup slide deal with water in it. Just enough to get wet clear through because he fell down a couple of times. With it being 99 degrees I wasn't too concerned about him being wet!! I am sure he was much cooler than the rest of us were!! After his time in that little deal, he was much happier. We started all of this with tooo short of a nap, then his night was not very long either which means that today has been a challenge!! Finally just after dusk they drug the balloon baskets out and set them up. It was still pretty breezy and we weren't sure how the glow would be. At 9:25 we decided that there wouldn't be a glow afterall. The pilots would let their heaters blow a big flame into the air and it would just fan back and forth in the breeze. Those are pretty hot up close. Needless to say we didn't get up for the 6 a.m. lift off of the balloons. Maybe we can see them in the morning. Hope they drift our way!!

Yellowstone trip

We went to Yellowstone National Park on Saturday. There are soooo many pics that I don't want to post them here, so please follow this link to view them.
http://dleonhardt.sharpcast.com/albums/thumb/28485_122342143426612?recipientEmail=e5c2b05a1c06b4afa0235c073e5397acf169fa8608491e48adc
880991fa0a04f&shared=true&autoAccept=true

On this site, the slideshow doesn't put the entire pic on my screen. Don't know why, and don't want to sit here any longer and try to figure it out!! Some of the pics would have more detail than is shown, but you could see it on the indiv pics by themselves. I am not a computer guru and just don't enjoy sitting in front of one trying to figure all this stuff out. If anyone wants to send me tips or pointers, I will go try to fix it. :-)

Actually now I know why...if you right click on your desktop, click properties, then make it 32 bit colors and slide the bar to 1280x1024 click ok and yes, it will change the appearance on your screen to really small print, then the pics will be complete when you view the slideshow. After the slideshow, you can go reverse it all back to how you like it. :-) Sorry for the inconvenience.

I hope that will work ok for everyone. I wanted a page that I could add music to, but am tired of looking at all the options, so if anyone has a page like that, that is free of course, let me know. :-) Ya know I don't want to pay money for anything unnecessary!!

We had an absolutely beautiful day, it was about 76 degrees completely calm. Grandma Donnabelle went along on this trip, was really fun to have her there. We didn't get any pics with her though, boy was I NOT thinking!! Brayden did really well on the whole trip, just one or two fits total, mostly in the car. Going over Togwotee Pass there is lots of road construction, not much waiting, but tons of big equipment. That is really up his alley, big trachoes, backhoes, loaders, dump trucks, cranes, dozers, you get the idea. He was really awake and alert during all of that especially. We did have to wait one time for about 8 min or so, the flag man told us that they are seeing lots of bear activity. They don't seem to be afraid of all the noise and equipment, however, we didn't get to see any. There would be both grizzley and black bear up that way. So on our trip, we saw an elk, cow and bull moose, buffalo, chipmunks and lots of birds. It was a BIG day, with very little time to rest. Brayden caught a little cat nap of 15 min in the backpack, then he woke up for icecream cones and stayed awake till we were ready to head on home after a supper stop. We certainly wouldn't recommend Moose Haven for anything other than driving by. We didn't know anyone could mess up BBQ, but it is possible. It took us over 1 1/2 hrs to get supper done and get back on the road for home. I could give the whole sordid tale, but suffice it to say our waiter was glad to see us go!! Brayden had the best meal of all of us, his was in my bag in jars and such!! That should tell you how it was. But that was the only blight on the whole day, so can't dwell on that one. We got home just after 10 p.m. rolled Brayden out of his carseat and into pjs. He went right back to sleep and slept till after 8 the next morning. Just over 11 hrs of sleep for our little man. Needless to say mama and daddy haven't gotten caught up on sleep yet, but we are working on it. We need to catch up at a slower pace I guess. We had a small nap yest but it messed up the whole going to sleep thing last night. We aren't much for napping!! Best let this do for now, let me know if you have trouble with the photo site.

Mosquitos are AWFUL!!

Here we are today, its looking sooooo much better. He finally is getting his crease back in the lid now, it was so puffy that there wasn't even a crease in it at breakfast this morning. Amazing to me that the bite was just above the brow, look for the red dot, but it made the whole lid swell. They are such a menace, wonder why God even created them. We have our first case of West Nile Virus announced this last week here in our county too.

We had a family dinner on friday night up at Darrell and Bonnie's, while Brayden and Lex were out exploring, he got bit on the eyebrow by a mosquito. I noticed his brow being red and a bit swollen when we came home about 9 p.m. During his snack I put an asprin poltice on it, he kept wanting to mess with it, so when it all fell off, I let it go. This is the face we woke up to Sat morning, only a bit worse actually. He stood up in his crib and pointed to his eye and said "eye owie" He actually couldn't even open his eye to start with, so this is mid afternoon, he was really having it rough going on two doses of benedryl, so was really fussy. I called Grandpa so they could chat and took this pic to email and ask for any advice. In the long run, we had to let it go. I did put another asprin poltice on it right after he went to sleep for his nap, I froze it first with an ice pack and then the poltice. Poor kid, him and mosquitos just don't get along!!

Put this fish WHERE??

Fish

about the video below...

This is Brayden's first time in his pool. We had Rhoan and Sarah come over to help us initiate the pool. Sarah lives next door to us in Roger's mom's house, she has a degree in early child development and has been such a huge help to me. Its been great to have someone to meet at the fence and discuss issues with. Nice to have new ideas too.

First pool time

Shell Canyon

Here are the falls at Shell Canyon. Brayden liked hearing the water. I think he would have loved to be down there playing in it.

July 4th

July 4th, we went up to Medicine Lodge Lake and fished for a couple of hours, caught our limit of 30 cutbow trout and headed home. Grandpa was kind and brought us out via Shell Canyon so we stopped and took a break at the falls. Brayden had a good day and did some reeling in of fishing line, had a fish on the end of it a couple of times, but did lots of reeling with mama that wasn't real productive!! He caught a fish with Grandpa and one with Daddy, mama just wasn't gettin it done!! I did catch my limit plus some though.

Mud Puddles

He is a boy, he does like water, so it just stands to reason that MUD is fun too. He liked to get his hands muddy and then go over onto the lawn and find the hose with running water to wash them off!!

Hanging out at convention

Here are the playmates. They had a good time outside the campers.

Sleeping angel

Here's our little guy having a sleep in with the big guy. Big guy didn't want in the pic very bad, so I left him out!! They both needed to catch some extra zzzz's, so they slept till about 8:30.

Our little Farmer

Grandpa got him this tractor, at first he couldn't really get it to move, we had to push him around. Now he can get his feet to the floor good enough to get some push power of his own.

Demo Derby

We went to the Demo Derby with Grandpa and Granny, you might be able to pick out the bubbles in the pic if you look real close. There was a little boy that just loved to blow bubbles for these two to squeal about. He learned that demo derby cars go "vroom vroom BANG", and he says it just right. He wasn't impressed with the demo derby though, he jumped from Grandpa to mama and just cried and cried. I finally put his hood up over his ears and covered his ear with my hand, the other ear was buried in my chest! He would watch, but only in that position. He nearly came unglued when one car backed over the hood of another car.

Been a while...

Its been awhile again since I have posted. Thought maybe I better take a bit of time and get it done. We had a wonderful convention. Brayden did pretty good too, out of 9 mtgs we only took him out for correction purposes 3 times. The rest were potty breaks etc. We found a couple of times that just before he was about to lose it...if we took him out it saved the fit!! Good to learn that one. We had lots of toys and books for him to play with. The only thing that wasn't much fun was the heat. It was sooo hot there. Brayden hasn't been HOT really before that, so it wasn't easy on him. It made meal times a real chore too, he wasn't real interested in eating HOT food in a HOT dining room. Most meals I put his food in his bowl and let it cool while I ate and then I took him and his food to the camper, undressed him to his underwear and then fed him. It worked lots better that way. :-) We just had a underwear camp most of the time. He napped in his underwear too. Anyway, it went much better than I anticipated.

Now we are back home, where it is just as hot, but not so bad in the house. He has resumed playing with the neighbor kids some days, some days in the shop with daddy and some days with mama in the house. All things are back to normal. So with that said, there just isn't much more to add here. I will put the pics on now so you can see how tan he is getting!!

Just try to RESIST this face!!!

Just try to resist this face, its full of mischief and full of giggles!!

This is the hair...

This hair has been growing since we came home...trouble is its so cute when its curly, but its also LONG, so its about time to cut!!

Mama's Roses

These are the roses around the lamp post out front. They are really doing well this year.

on the dirt bike...

a quick ride around the yard before naptime!!

Garden work

Garden work what a bore...not for my son!! As long as it involves the hose...he is wonderful and usually quite wet!!

Check out that hair!!

We are getting a hair cut real SOON!!

Its summer time!!

Its summer time and we are busy in the yard and just plain work. Time sure does fly by in a hurry. Brayden is getting more and more tan. I told Roger yesterday that I am not sure the sunblock is working, it is keeping him from burning, but he is getting darker. Has quite the farmer tan going on.

We sprayed for mosquitos a couple days ago. I don't know if its working this good, or if the mosquito population just isn't much right now. They were certainly a problem last week, but we just don't know. We are hoping that it is the spray working this good. It means that our summer will be great. I have found that Brayden is a bit allergic to some of the repellant sprays. He gets little tiny bumps wherever I put it on his face mostly. They are in the shape of my fingers which gave me my first clue on what the problem was. Have to figure out something else that doesn't give him bumps!! :-) We have to have something, so I am going to try the avon skin so soft and see if that will work.

Brayden has gotten to be quite the little dirt bike rider. He loves to go for rides with Daddy. Roger is doing a few chores for Darrell and Bon this week, so he goes on the bike a couple times a day right now. If Brayden doesn't get to go with him, he waits till he gets home and then says "Daddy, ride?" Roger gave him a short ride before his nap today. He didn't want to lay down very bad let me tell you!!

Talking is getting better around our house all the time. He is coming along really well with words. Either that or I am just getting lots better at understanding him. He still goes over to play at Sarah's about once a day, sometimes twice and once in a while not at all!! Its great though for him to be around other kids around his age. I wonder if that is where some of the language help is coming from. He has learned the words supper and breakfast lately, that doesn't mean that meal times are necessarily easy here, just that he knows the words. We have been letting him decide if he wants to eat or not. It has certainly eliminated some of the battles!! We still hear a lot of NO in our house, it seems that our saying it all the time has translated to him saying it to our every request. Sarah gave me a line to say to him that she said she still uses with her kids..."you may not say no to mommy". We are trying it, it does seem to work part of the time, but like everything else it isn't forever or fail safe!!

Its time again to get the post placement report done, so we begin working on that when we get home from convention next week. Time to get the 12 - 20 photos ready and his latest dr report. We have a wellness exam for him this coming monday so that will be easy to report on.

We got our new camera too, so maybe the pics will print better than the old ones too. More pixels on this camera. Anyway, it is interesting trying to learn a new camera with such a willing subject!!
Best get on with my day.

Indoor day

Today has been an indoor day, either in the house or in the shop. It has been rainy and cold here today. It started raining last evening and rained off and on throughout the night, still raining this morning and even a bit of sleet in it around noon. About 3 or so this afternoon the sun came out, its still windy and not very warm, but the sun is shining. That is the first rain that has amounted to ANYTHING in our area all spring. Glad to have it altho Brayden doesn't understand why outside is sooo nasty. He has learned the word "rain" though. It was raining cats and dogs last evening when we left to go to meeting, so he saw it hitting the windows of the car.

Now its about nice enough to let him go outside for a bit and run off some energy. He has to find his boots first and his hat and then we have to put them on, all of this takes time and he is NOT a patient little guy when it comes to going OUTSIDE.

Mama has finally passed the job off again to the latest victim. I think this one will do ok, I still have to do part of the job, like the schools and sports and dances. But those are fairly easy and won't take as much time. Its just nice to have the phones moved.

Best let this do for now and get my son's boots on.

Now to play in the dish...

So we water the cats, then we play in their water...just want to get the flavor right.

Got the water on...

Brayden has found the water faucets on the outside of the house...it is soooo fun to water the cats now. And put rocks in their dish etc, but the water now thats good fun.

Making the most use of toys

The boat is rather uneventful for a toy, until you put it IN the rocking bench, then its a ROCKING BOAT. Now who would have figured that out...

Water, Water...

Brayden has found the hose!!! He loves it if it has water running out of it!! He waters indiv flowers and even waters himself rather a lot!!

Farmers TAN!!

Here we are outside on the porch at Granny and Grandpa's, wearing only pj bottoms, but look at that tan!! Pale white everywhere else, but tan little arms and hands. Obviously he loves to point at things.

What a CUTIE!!

Ok, so we are just a bit over the top, but we think he is just the cutest!! Alan took this pic in March when we were doing a school, it just turned out great, I had to order another package of them!!

Can't you keep up even a little??

This is the view we had of Brayden at the zoo most of the time, he was up there looking back.

Petting the Goat with Daddy

Just Swingin

When two people hold Brayden's hands, its an automatic invitation to SWING!!

First Girlfriend

We met this young lady at the end of the zoo day, she just turned three. Brayden got to the horse first and she was really put out about that. There were three other animals there to ride just like this, but somehow the horsey was the ONLY one for her!! Roger put her on the back and she was ok with that, Brayden was soon bored with that whole thing and went to ride some of the others, but when he wanted to come back, she was two steps away from it and rushed right back to get on before he could get there!! Human nature at its finest!!

Zoo and Mother's Day

We survived the weekend, it was actually a lot of fun to take Brayden to the zoo and let him run around. He pretty much ran the whole time. Tons of energy, would be nice if we could all keep up 24/7, but it just isn't that easy. We stayed in a hotel with a pool so after dinner we took Brayden to the pool, was fun to hold him and let him kick his legs like he was swimming. He and daddy had a real blast. Mama thought the water was tooo cold!! :-)
Mother's Day was a nice relaxed day. I spent time remembering mother's day last year. We spent the day then showing videos of our son to some special friends. I thought that was fun and ok a year ago, how different this year though to really be a mom and have Brayden here at home. Daddy took Brayden to the card aisle and they picked out a card and he wrote (scribbled) in it some. I will let the pics tell the story of the weekend for me.

A Dozen down, a lifetime to go!!

Today its been 12 years since Roger and I were married in my parents home in Scottsbluff. In many ways its been a long time ago and still in some seems like yesterday. We were sooo much younger, and more energetic etc, now we TRY to keep up with our two year old. :-) Some days it takes more effort than other days, but all days we are thankful. We have learned that no matter how much you want something, sometimes God has other plans, and for us those other plans have been more rewarding than even our own might have been. Over these 12 years we have lost some family close to us, we are glad for our memories and sad that we didn't get to share our little boy with them. Things change that is certain, so today we celebrate the time gone by, the tears, triumph and laughter and love. Many blessings we have known, but we are sure there are more to come. Here's to more good times, days and years. We are off to celebrate for the weekend, will post pics when we get home.

Maybe this will help

I have redone the video posts as per instructions from others more experienced than I...so this should make them viewable by everyone. Hope it helped and if you are still having trouble please email me and let me know. It works for me everytime, but thats because I own both accounts, so I had no idea it wasn't working for everyone. :-) My apologies and hope it will now. Please let us know if it works for you via email or guestbook.
Thanks

Sliding with Daddy

Future Craftsman, Present Improvisor

Our little woodworker

For all the woodworkers in the family and beyond, we thought you all would get a kick out of this improvised router. Brayden really does have an eye for everything daddy does and he really likes to try to do the same stuff. Of course mama is never in the shop to see this, so daddy has to make a run to the house when something is going on and grab the camera and run back. Its great exercise and once in a while we get some good footage too. Be sure to sign into the guest book again or comment on the page here. We love to hear from you all too.

video below

I will only leave this music video on for a few days as it plays every time you load the page. It can get annoying after some time!! It is a good song though with lots of good thoughts. It has been posted on several blogs of adoptive parents and kids the last little bit. Enjoy it, I will remove it next week or so.

listen to the words here

Music Video:WHEN LOVE TAKES YOU IN (by Steven Curtis Chapman)

Music Video Code provided by Video Code Zone