Thank You, 2010.

The clock is ticking to the end of the year and the beginning of something new. 2010 is so close to my heart. It brought us our son. It brought us the roller coaster journey of emotions that bringing us our son entailed. It was a year of personal journey as I juggled with who I was with just the two of us and then how I've transformed with the three of us. It was a year of decisions and the indecisiveness I always fight to come to a conclusion.

Here are my most memorable moments of 2010...

1. Seeing Gadisa's face light up and the biggest smile come across it the moment we looked at each other. I will never, ever, ever forget that sight and the emotions that flooded with it.

2. Watching my grandfather pass. I never saw him as often as I would have liked, but I am grateful to have been there when he moved on, surrounded by my extended familia. It was the way it was supposed to be.

3. A warm, summer evening giggling on a park bench in Rome with my husband and eating gelato. I knew when it was happening that I was in love with that moment.

4. Running through a downpour of rain with my oldest, closest friends after spending an evening enjoying them. I heart my friends!

5. The countless, slow summer days of sitting on the porch in my favorite rocking chair with my son swinging beside me completely happy with where I was.

I decided to extend my blogging experience to this new location. www.morningsparrow.com

Morning Sparrow is a new adventure of sharing for me. I wanted to expand beyond adoption blogging and well....just chat about whatever, whenever without having any topic boundaries.

I plan to still update this blog with all things Oliver Gadisa, adoption and our adventures, but with Morning Sparrow I hope to evolve into all sorts of things. It's really outside of my comfort level as I went back and forth on how much to share and why. Just starting this adoption blog was a big jump into letting walls down. I tend to be more private than blogging permits, but it's been good to just let it all flow out. In the end, writing is therapeutic for me and that won out all insecurities. So here I am. We'll see where it goes.

I hope the New Year brings you adventures, blissfulness and happiness galore. Happy New Year to you!

What a difference

Last year...last Christmas, I was anxiously awaiting a magical phone call from our adoption agency. I had a tiny glimmer of hope that they would surprise us on Xmas Day with THE phone call that we had a child. That call never came that day and I was disappointed.

This year, we spent the day with this little guy.

A long, slow, happy day with the 3 of us. Our first Christmas together. Our new tradition of spending Christmas day together in our house. We opened presents and sat around drinking coffee in our pajamas for most of the day. I feel overly grateful this Christmas. My family is together...happy and healthy. What a difference a year makes.

I hope all of you had a very relaxing, enjoyable Christmas with the ones that are the dearest to you. I hope you had a moment to stop, slow down and just be. Happy Holidays!

Swish, Swish, Swish

The other morning as I'm trying hard to get a few more minutes of sleep, I hear Josh get up and go into Ollie's room to get him up. I can hear through the baby monitor all this commotion as they greet each other for the day. Then, I keep hearing a "swish, swish" type sound. For the life of me, I can not figure out what that is. Swish, swish, swish....and then walks in G and Dad. Ta da! A super cheesy, 90's era Kansas University jumpsuit. I laughed and laughed. Perfect way to start a day! This outfit is courtesy of a summer garage sale item found by my sister. Too good to pass up. I need a matching one for Josh.

We celebrated the Hunt family Xmas this weekend. It was a costume Xmas and here is our little Jayhawk. I promise...he will get other options for costumes of his choosing as he gets older. ;)

I can't believe Christmas is this week! I'm looking forward to a very mello Christmas day with Gadisa. We decided to start our family tradition of spending Christmas day at our house instead of going out of town anywhere. We aren't going too overboard with his gifts, but we did have fun going shopping for him. Generally, we have the last 2 weeks of the year off from work off, but I'm still home with G for now on an extended maternity leave and Josh is working on some big festivals for the spring/summer already so he will be working as usual. I'm just thankful for the business so as long as I can steal Josh away for some 1/2 days I'm happy.